Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org
Interested in Technology, Science, Chemistry, Education, Fediverse, GNU/Linux and free software.
Joined Mar 2020
Paul Sutton
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Paul Sutton
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I still haven't solved my problem with @Libreoffice. Each time I try to open a document, there is a delay with a "waiting for printer" message appearing, which I have to cancel before the document will open. Looking online, it turns out it's been an issue for at least a couple of years. Something possible with printer or Windows settings? Can anyone walk me through a fix? (Pretty please)
And yes, I updated #libreoffice
Paul Sutton
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ICE (backed by a Blackhawk helicopter hovering immediately overhead) handcuffed every occupant of an apartment building in a Black neighborhood in Chicago and said they would detain anyone with outstanding warrants. Does this sound like "immigration enforcement" to you, or the creation of a new national police force answerable to only one man?
@DeliaChristina
Paul Sutton
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Scientists have found a simple way for any conventional smartphone camera to serve as a hyperspectral sensor, reporting what molecules are in its photo. Identifying chemicals present in photos could be used in medical diagnostics, distinguishing authentic versus counterfeit products, monitoring air quality, and non-destructive analysis of pigments in artwork. https://spectrum.ieee.org/hyperspectral-imaging?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Mastodon-Daily-Pipeline
Paul Sutton
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#PPOD: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged a gigantic and symmetric protostellar jet at the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy in the forming cluster Sh2-284. From tip to tip, this protostellar jet is 8 light-years across, about double the distance from our Sun to its closest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Paul Sutton
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Global protests against Israel’s intercepton of Gaza flotilla
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/10/2/global-protests-against-israels-intercepton-of-gaza-flotilla?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Europe News @europe-news-AlJazeera
Paul Sutton
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A big majority of Israelis support Donald Trump’s Gaza peace planBinyamin Netanyahu hopes he can use this to hold on to officeAnshel Pfeffer www.e...
Paul Sutton
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Paul Sutton
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Anne, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom has visited #Kyiv.
She has come to show support to those who suffer from the war.
Thank you!
🇬🇧🇺🇦
Following the decision of Imgur to block UK users, I have put these to links together to help anyone looking at moving to PixelFed as result of this.
BBC news Imgur blocks access to UK users after regulator warned of fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo
PIXELFED
Pixelfed: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Self-Hosting
https://www.selfhostedninja.com/pixelfed-a-beginner-friendly-guide-to-self-hosting/
Paul Sutton
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In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon’s south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon’s surface, whilst others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus’s orbit.
Paul Sutton
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:agenderFlag: :transgenderFlag:
What the fuck. Imgur has now blocked the UK entirely from accessing it’s website. This is awful. So many OTHER websites use Imgur as a host, so now those images will become blocked as well, rendering them unusable. This is really annoying.
What makes it more worse is that Imgur, for some reason, heavily blocks VPN access — sometimes the website works via a VPN and sometimes it doesn’t. So just having a VPN doesn’t bypass it entirely.
This is also, like way too late? The OSA became operational a few months ago, why does Imgur suddenly have a problem with it now?
Paul Sutton
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*New age-gating laws aimed at making the internet safer actually threaten free speech.* The article is a little timid about stating the danger of making non-minors identify themselves. It is not only that age verification sites might fail to keep users' identification data secure; it is that they may be compelled to help a repressive state identify dissidents.
Paul Sutton
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📺 PeerTube Co-op FAQ: Building a Member-Owned Alternative to YouTube
The future of video doesn’t belong to platforms. It belongs to people.
We’re building a PeerTube co-op: a member-owned, democratically governed video platform based in BC. No algorithms deciding what matters. No corporate choke points. No waiting for permission.
This is about taking control of the infrastructure, the governance, and the culture—and doing it together.
Why a co-op?
Because co-ops give people ownership, governance rights, and collective resilience. Instead of handing data and control to a platform, members pool resources, share decision-making, and shape policies together.
BC has a strong legal framework for co-operatives, which makes it a natural place to explore this seriously.
Why PeerTube?
PeerTube is federated, open-source, and already battle-tested as a decentralized alternative to YouTube. It’s not perfect—but it provides a solid foundation for a co-op structure to build on top of.
The idea is to pair federated tech with co-operative governance, so neither corporate control nor a single admin dictates the rules.
Who’s behind this?
Right now, this is being organized by me (@atomicpoet) and @Crissy, along with a growing group of interested folks: creators, privacy advocates, security experts, and co-op thinkers from around the world.
We’re still early—think founding conversations, not bylaws and board elections. But the energy is real.
How much does it cost to join?
What follows is the proposed model, not something set in stone. The final structure will be decided by the member-owners once the co-op is formed.
The idea is to keep membership affordable for individuals while ensuring the co-op is financially sustainable from the start—with no ads, no data harvesting, and no outside investors. Just members pooling resources to run the platform together.
Base membership: C$5.95/month
Medium tier (10–100 GB/month): +C$3 → C$8.95/month
Heavy tier (100 GB+): +C$10 → C$15.95/month
At scale, with a typical user mix (80% base / 15% medium / 5% heavy), this works out to about C$6.90 per member per month, which comfortably covers hosting and operational costs.
There’s also a one-time buy-in of C$50, which funds initial setup (domain, CDN deposits, buffer) and helps keep the early months profitable without raising dues. When spread over the first year, that’s roughly C$4.17/month in effective cost coverage.
What happens if the co-op grows faster than expected?
The financial and technical model is step-wise, not linear. As membership increases, transcoding nodes, storage/CDN tiers, and egress commitments scale at defined traffic thresholds.
The co-op’s development will unfold in three phases, with member-owners deciding collectively when to move from one to the next.
Do I need technical skills to participate?
No. Technical expertise is welcome but not required. Governance, policy, communications, creative, and community-building skills are just as valuable. Infrastructure will be professionally managed, with costs shared through dues.
Will the co-op run its own infrastructure or rely on third parties?
The proposal uses managed hosting as a baseline, scaling as membership grows. This provides reliability early on while retaining the ability to self-host more components later.
How will moderation work?
Moderation scales with user base and federation breadth:
Member reporting and rotating stewards handle first-line triage
Paid moderation begins once activity reaches 10–15+ hours/week
Budget estimates: up to C$270/month for ~100 users; part-time moderation (~C$1,755/month) for ~500 users
Will the instance federate with everyone or be selective?
The proposal starts with a curated allowlist of trusted instances to control load.
It will also:
Adopt shared blocklists as a baseline
Document defederation criteria and appeals to keep the process transparent
As membership grows, federation posture can be revisited by member-owners.
What’s the timeline for incorporation and launch?
We’re not working toward rigid dates—we’re building deliberately, in three clear phases:
Phase 1: Formation and groundwork. Incorporation, drafting bylaws, establishing MVP infrastructure, and setting out the core policies (ToS, AUP, takedown).
Phase 2: Growth and refinement. Expanding membership, activating the hybrid pricing model, introducing stipends, and refining federation posture.
Phase 3: Maturity and expansion. Adding part-time moderation, building reserves and insurance, and exploring potential expansion into other Fediverse services.
Each phase builds on the last, and decisions about when to transition between them will be made collectively by member-owners.
What drives costs the most?
Egress and bandwidth dominate, not storage. P2P offload reduces egress as viewer concurrency rises, but outbound data remains the biggest expense.
How does the pricing hold up financially?
At as few as five members, the co-op becomes cash-flow positive, and margins scale significantly with growth.
100 members → estimated monthly surplus C$587
1,000 members → estimated monthly surplus C$6,870
I’ve never been in a co-op before. Will there be guidance?
Yes. The initial bylaws and governance structure will include clear documentation. New members will be onboarded through AGMs, published policies, and transparent reporting, as required under BC Co-operative Association law.
Will you use open-source tools for internal communications?
That will ultimately be up to the member-owners to decide collectively.
For now, tools like Google Docs are being used temporarily to get everyone aligned quickly. Yes, the irony isn’t lost—it’s like holding a union meeting in Jeff Bezos’ living room. But this is just to get the ball rolling, not a long-term choice.
How will governance work?
We’re still defining this collectively, but the plan is to follow BC co-op regulations while ensuring member governance is meaningful, not symbolic. Expect conversations around:
Founding member structure
Board or steering committee setup
Decision-making processes
Transparency and accountability measures
I’m not a PeerTube user, but I’m interested in the co-op structure. Is that relevant?
Yes—very. Some participants are here primarily because they’re passionate about co-operatives, not necessarily PeerTube. That expertise will be crucial for getting the legal, organizational, and governance frameworks right.
Will non-members be able to watch videos?
Yes. As with most PeerTube instances, most viewing will be public, but uploading and policy decisions are reserved for member-owners. The co-op’s primary responsibility is to its members, while still providing an open and accessible platform for viewers.
What will the co-op be called?
The official name and branding will be chosen collectively by the founding member-owners after incorporation.
How do I get involved or stay informed?
The next step will be setting up an initial coordination space (on open-source infrastructure, if members choose that path) to keep everyone looped in and start shaping this together.
If you want to be kept informed, reach out privately or share your email so you can be included when that happens.
Isn’t this ambitious?
Yes. But the response so far has been incredible. The mix of skills and motivations showing up this early—technical, organizational, privacy, cultural—is exactly what’s needed to make something real.
📝 Closing Thought
This is still early days. But something’s forming—a group of people who see the cracks in the platform world and want to build something better, together.
If that resonates with you, you’re welcome here.
#PeerTubeCoop #PeerTube #Cooperative
RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/2289eb47-0f39-463d-a056-8568e12e70f3
Tired of YouTube calling all the shots? It’s time to build something better—together. Here’s the slide deck for a proposal to launch a PeerTube co-...
Paul Sutton
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Independent UK Bookshops To Begin Selling eBooks - Independent UK bookshops will now be able to sell ebooks via a new platform (Books... - https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/01/0326222/independent-uk-bookshops-to-begin-selling-ebooks?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed #books
Paul Sutton
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Online Safety Act: A well-intentioned disaster? | Professional Security Magazine
https://alecmuffett.com/article/115334
#AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #surveillance #vpns
Paul Sutton
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Those jokes about the Met not using facial recognition because it might reveal their own officers at the London demos might not be jokes.
The Metropolitan police are braced for an undercover documentary showing officers and staff allegedly being supportive of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, making anti-Muslim comments and using excessive force against suspects in custody.
Paul Sutton
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Did you know...
In countries like the UK, Canada, or Australia, if the government can't pass a budget, there is no "shutdown". Instead, the government is forced to resign, and new elections are held.
Sounds like a good idea. We should do the same. 👍
Paul Sutton
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Reason 4 To Choose Linux 😍
No new hardware, no licensing costs!
A new laptop costs a lot of money. Many Linux 🐧 operating systems are available for free.
Security updates, bug fixes, and new features are also free, forever.
Every day can be I ❤️ Free Software #ilovefs day. Show your support with donations or by volunteering!
#FreeSoftware #OpenSource is much more than code. All skills, from design and outreach to bug reporting, are welcome 🚀
Paul Sutton
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Andy Burnham here talking very positively about #LandValueTax and #WealthTax.
Politics Weekly UK: Andy Burnham live in conversation
Episode webpage: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/series/politicsweekly
Media file: https://flex.acast.com/audio.guim.co.uk/2025/09/29-64201-Andy+Burnham+live+in+conversation.mp3
Interested in Technology, Science, Chemistry, Education, Fediverse, GNU/Linux and free software.
Joined Mar 2020
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