timorl @timorl@qoto.org

panic! at the .unwrap()

@mary Why would copyright apply to a collection of subcooled particles in a Bose-Einstein condensate, whose current state we can't know unless we make a measurement, in which case the potential copyright infringing particles will lose their copyright infringement status?
I'm sure we'll find a way, the quest for copyright enforcement is too important to be left to the fundamental laws of nature.

Happy I took time to study some topology this summer. Algebraic topology is all the things I hoped for.

I am not sure I quite get it yet, but a topology of something seems to be usable as a definition to a lot of geometric notions. All of analysis work seems to just be applied topology. And with homotopy type theory, all sorts of data science, machine learning, and statistics work could be made easier and more precise.

Cubical type theory, (a computation friendly HOTT) is not even 2 years old. It is going to be big.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cangiuli/thesis/thesis.pdf

@georgia We. Have. Magic.

>magic: The application of rituals or actions, especially those based on occult knowledge, to subdue or manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces in order to have some benefit from them

I am typing this on a slab of glass that glows, buzzes, sings, and sees because we taught a sand golem how to think. A collective of thousands of mages, warlocks, witches, and all sorts of sorcerers contributed to the tomes upon tomes of knowledge and intricate spells that keep this pocket golem alive. I use it to write minor enchantments of my own.

If you think fantasy magic would look any different from what we have discovered and invented today, you are ignoring human nature. The same structures and processes you see with our technology are the exact same that would have developed with bona fide fantasy magic. Microsoft and Apple would exist, and they would build magic mirrors for businesses, and little nice-looking enchanted slabs for rich people. They would curse you if you tried to discover their workings, as that's Microsoft or Apple's intellectual property. Google would exist, and it would offer you a free crystal ball that shows you ads half of the time, all while Google's own golems looked back through it to record what you like. @chj0 would be summoning deprecated types of imps just to try and get them to do some weird trick. I would have studied the creation and maintenance of the magical channels that connect our various charms and trinkets. Opal would constantly be mad at how clunky the existing spells and rituals are, and vowing to write her own from scratch. Textbooks and papers would be written to fill the asinine magical theory circlejerk that modern math and science have become, and academic publishers would keep them locked up just like they do now. Most people would still be ignorant of the inner workings of the tools they use. A butcher doesn't care if he rings up your pound of ham on a magic record book or a cash register, so long as he can see how much he sold, and he doesn't need to figure out the taxes in his head.

You flip a light switch. The light comes on. There is no functional difference between some ethereal force powering it, and electricity.

straight up I am in love with water fountains. whenever I look at a public water fountain I go "this is literally a monument to a functioning civilization." when I look at a public water fountain I think about all of the technology, all of the water filtration and pipes and infrastructure that came together to provide Me drinkable water in a public space
some urban designer built Me a fountain to drink from because I might be thirsty. Literally the opposite of hostile architecture.

Can open sometimes be too open? Here's a post about what the @gnome community wish it didn't do when deploying its @matrix instance, and how it's going to fix it.

https://blog.ergaster.org/post/20210610-sovereignty-federated-system-gnome/

#sxmo on the #pinephone is one of the coolest and most empowering computing experiences i had in a long while!

A tiled window-manager on a mobile computer sounds crazy? not as much as the unified uni-dimensional logic of mobile interfaces, all trying to mimick android/iOS...

The ethos of sxmo/pmOS is of minimalism (shell scripts, suckless, dwm, etc.) and user empowerment. So easy to build interface/menus/scripts that suit your need!

Never thought i'd be excited by computers so much again :)

@realcaseyrollins

Yea in the few minutes i spent looking it up since you mentioned it I saw something similar though you got some important details backwards (assuming my source was accurate).

Basically early on he told people not to wear masks. In email it showed he actually thought wearing masks were effective despite telling people not to wear them (in the email he said they are effective for infected people to wear them but did nothing for healthy people).

Basically people were mad at them because he was telling them not to wear masks when really he knew that was bad advice. Apparently Fauci responded to that allegationa nd justified it by saying he was trying to prevent people overbuying masks and leaving none for the medical professionals.

Side note, if we accept that masks are effective but only when infected people wear it and there is little need for uninfected people wearing it then this would in fact been a reasonable argument that everyone should wear a mask, since we often dont know who is or is not infected until they have already been infectious for some time.

@timorl

Polish university student Wojciech Kosior shares his story of how he managed to graduate without being forced to use Zoom, Skype, or other nonfree programs: https://u.fsf.org/3bv

I knew, going into #PinePhone ownership, that on account of #Mobian being early-stage and hacky, and PinePhone being (by modern phone standards) a bit underpowered, that it would involve some work to make the phone into something I could bear to use daily.

Here's an example though of how the flip-side applies - that I _can put in the work to make it better_:
https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=howto:keyboard

I wanted áúóéí characters for my Gaeilge, and the built-in keyboards don't provide AltGr which is used to type those in Gnome/Linux. No problem, it seems - I can just change some config files and add either AltGr, or perhaps just make a totally custom and more useful keyboard that lets me switch more comfortably between languages.

This is why I choose a true Linux phone.

Słucham sobie pierwszego webinaru realizowanego w ramach #GAAD i nie mogę wyjść ze zdumienia. Webinar jest o technologiach asystujących, w dużej części dla osób niewidomych. I wybrali do tego bodaj najbardziej niedostępne narzędzie, jakim jest #GoToWebinar. Dlaczego nie Jit.si, Zoom, Teams, Webex, BBB lub cokolwiek innego? Smuteczek. Sam nie wiem, czy dalej słuchać, czy unieść się i odłączyć...

Privacy-wise, Matrix is worse than Slack for public rooms.

Don't hit respond yet, read further.

With this whole freenode mess, some of the online communities I'm part of moved to Matrix. Despite how much I personally love IRC (that's top-notch privacy-wise for public rooms), I have to admit the overall Matrix UX is order of magnitude better and more in line withthe 2021 standards. It lowers the barrier of entry, and I'm all in for that!

However, there's a *massive* catch: the read status. Every time you can see a message on a public room, Matrix will show your avatar next to the said message to materialize you "read" (at least saw) it,

There's currently no way to disable this feature, be it on synapse or dendrite. The read status gets broadcasted to *all the room participants*, including bots.

Some bots are autojoining all the big room as soon as your open them. It's not clear who operate them, they don't ask nobody's consent before joining. You can assume this presence data is actively getting stored and mined by them, it's trivial to do. I implemented such a POC in a couple of hours yesterday night (I obviously turned it off and deleted the data after showing it to some friends).

Back to my initial punch line: this situation is worse than it it is with Slack. At least, with Slack, my read status stays between me, Slack corp and the people they decide to share the data with. With Matrix, it's open bar, private data for everyone.

The Vector team seem not to care too much [1] and are not considering this situation as urgent.

We absolutely need a way to disable these read status on a per room (or space?) level. As free software devs, we should be able to protect our peers and users privacy. My presence status, be it on a public chat is definitely *not* a public data that should carelessly be shared.

[1] https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2527

W czwartek jest Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD. W piątek będzie duża konferencja, którą chyba nawet poprowadzę. Ale co z czwartkiem? Wymyśliłem, że mogę tu na Mastodonie opisać, jak badać dostępność cyfrową stron internetowych. Jednak za stary jestem, by robić dla nikogo, więc chcę mieć pod tutkiem przynajmniej 10 polubień lub podbić. Aco!