glyn @underlap@qoto.org

@freemo or anyone: I'm trying to find out how connected the graph of fediverse nodes is. For instance, if it's fully connected (every node connected to every other), that might imply a scalability limit to the number of nodes.

I guess another way of framing the question is whether two nodes A and B are necessarily directly connected because a user in node A follows a user in node B.

#fediverse #graph #connectedness #topology #scalability

The UK government ignored the advice of their scientific advisers on 15 December (https://t.co/JgCt5ZsJXK). They are now preparing for hospitals to be overwhelmed by building field hospital in car parks, but without sufficient medical staff to run them. It's high time scientific advice is taken more seriously.
#COVID #govuk

@prz80 I stopped using Goodreads because I don't like how its parent company, Amazon, avoids taxes and results in independent bookshops closing. I prefer https://www.thestorygraph.com/, partly because the founder went to the same university/college as me and used to work for the same firm (Pivotal).

@PsychoCod3r Ouch! Get well soon and Happy New Year!

@PsychoCod3r Having a math(s) background, I found this really helpful in in understanding git: https://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/

#git #compsci

@PsychoCod3r Yeah. Code reading is good. Testing and reading the (recent) commit history is also very valuable.

I wrote an article, "So you want to be a software developer?": https://wordsmith.social/underlap/how-to-become-a-software-developer

#software #softwaredevelopment #softwareskills

@PsychoCod3r Self-serving is indeed pretty much a zero sum game.

@PsychoCod3r I wonder if you have a rather narrow definition of what it is to live a successful life? I've seen what happens when a development charity helps people in Ugandan slums get better education and healthcare so they can escape the cycle of poverty and supply their own basic needs. This doesn't feel like a zero-sum game because it unleashes people to start to reach their own potential and there's a net gain in quality of life.

Agreed!

Just ran into some anti-vaxxing toots. What's the approach to fact checking in the #fediverse? The usual tools of replying or quoting are unhelpful as they effectively promote problematic toots.

Twitter is able to label fake news as such, especially in relation to #COVID19: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52632909

It appears that #keyoxide claims can only be added for a fixed set of "platforms" and the keyoxide code needs to be modified to add further platforms. This seems inherently centralised. I wonder if it would be feasible to support a more generic approach to claims which would not need to be hardcoded into keyoxide? I guess the platform-specific aspect is being sure that a particular URI points at something which is owned by a user who may be asserting the claim.

Keyoxide allows me to prove that I own certain email and other accounts by building up a relationship between each account and a public/private key pair. This enables a third party to check that two accounts are owned by the same entity. I say "entity" because it is *possible*, although highly dubious, for someone to share their private key with others. So the proven relationships are really between accounts and a private key. I'm still fuzzy how this relates to an individual's identity, unless that is somehow inferred from a "convincing" collection of accounts.
#identity #fediverse #keyoxide

@freemo understood. Thank you.

@freemo Thanks. I've used keybase, but will investigate keyoxide for comparison.

What's the state of the art of identity in the fediverse? [This blog](https://mattball.io/2018/09/18/fediverse-identity/) is a decent problem statement.
#identity #fediverse @freemo

@mushambo Sometimes there are fewer obstacles to collaborating with someone in another company than with someone in your own company. I guess it's about alignment of goals.