Notices by Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jun-2019 22:17:49 UTC 
Bob Mottram π§ β β
matrix.org apparently having hardware problems.
I've been saying it for a while, but the project really needs to put more emphasis on running homeservers. This means redesigning the initial setup of Riot apps to make using another homeserver trivially easy. The way it's done right now strongly guides the average user to matrix.org. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 15-May-2019 17:58:50 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@brennen @cwebber @brainblasted @catonano In the US in the past the free speech battle was mainly from the left in terms of anti-communism and also suppression of protest against the draft during the Vietnam war. Communists, union organizers or even anyone suspected of holding vague left wing sympathies was removed from official positions and from the entertainment industry and anything which looked like left wing talk was removed from newspapers and magazines.
So the ability to speak and organize in public is pretty important, but this is not really what the far right are up to. They know that "free speech" is a weakness, especially in the academic environment where people are very tolerant of unconventional ideas. They know that by using this they can create shock and fear and most importantly shut down any oppositional counterspeech. Once people are in a psychological state of fear they will no longer criticize the regime and be too scared to organize in public, and that's the environment in which right wing authoritarianism thrives. The blueprint is that they always use a combination of scapegoating hate speech combined with shocking acts of violence publicized as widely as possible. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 15-May-2019 16:23:10 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@cwebber @nev @brainblasted @catonano The claims on "free speech" by the far right were never honest and for them it's not even a new tactic. They're just reheating the rhetoric of the 1930s and deploying it in a modern context. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 29-Apr-2019 21:12:12 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"Constant surveillance facilitated by digital technology, whether by corporations or governments, is harmful to society and chilling to civil liberties."
-- Mozilla
https://internethealthreport.org/2019/in-defense-of-anonymity
π€ -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 26-Apr-2019 21:05:29 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Some Microsoft person, Chris Bishop, thinking that a Wired Magazine headline means that neural networks will be able to write software without a human programmer.
What he doesn't say is that there's a long history of automated programming, and that it's a much harder problem than just throwing Deep Learning at it and seeing what comes out on the other side.
Also Wired magazine is to technology what The Daily Mail is to UK journalism. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 30-Mar-2019 23:55:13 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Zuck wants to remake the internet by his rules https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html
Neither Zuckerberg nor governments should be deciding what happens on the internet. This is a very top-down style of thinking.
He probably by now knows, as the article indicates, that he can't solve the moderation problem without breaking the business model. So he's trying to find ways to externalize that to governments and make it somebody else's problem/cost. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Mar-2019 19:16:54 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
@lnxw48a1 @erroruser@example.com @moonman That's good news, although the mere fact that they had that feature doesn't give me any confidence in the decision making of whoever is running that site. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Saturday, 16-Mar-2019 22:48:30 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
The recent thing in NZ is really the first time I've actually appreciated having the CW feature. In the last 24 hours I've avoided reading silo posts because at a glance I can see that people are completely transfixed and obsessing over this in the way that always happens and isn't constructive.
I don't have much motivation to read about the details. There have been many similar things in the past. Often there's a lot of calls that "the government must do something" followed by bad laws rushed through which only create more authoritarianism and take away freedoms. Often the shooter gets turned into a celebrity and every aspect of their life, or their BS manifesto, gets analyzed in excruciating detail. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 21-Feb-2019 11:59:58 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
How Brexit could create a crisis at the Irish border https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0xGHf8o-9k -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Feb-2019 13:27:58 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
"Todayβs most innovative police states owe more to Mark Zuckerberg than to Joseph Stalin." -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 18-Feb-2019 14:23:06 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Terminal operator at Bell Labs, 1969
Bell_Labs__0011.jpg -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 10-Feb-2019 19:35:30 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
The kinds of things which the Russian government is now doing to its internet I expect the UK to be doing within five years to ten years. That is, to try to lock everything down into a "national internet" with only approved systems running. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Thursday, 07-Feb-2019 18:54:33 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
βCritics of the big tech companies are often told, βIf you donβt like the company, donβt use its products.β I did this experiment to find out if that is possible, and I found out that itβs notβwith the exception of Apple. These companies are unavoidable because they control internet infrastructure, online commerce, and information flows. Many of them specialize in tracking you around the web, whether you use their products or notβ
https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 30-Jan-2019 09:44:20 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
βAs the situation deteriorates around us, our community must cooperate to ameliorate this disaster. We need to help each other and communicate about thoughtful choices when drawing lines that weβd rather not draw. We fool ourselves if we believe we can live in our modern society while avoiding proprietary software. The situation is dire. There are many examples of where you simply cannot reasonably function without agreeing to interact with proprietary software.β
β Karen Sandler and Bradley M. Kuhn
This applies especially on mobile, where itβs hard to avoid proprietary graphics, baseband firmware and wifi drivers.
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Jun-2018 12:48:20 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Spycops http://player.lush.com/channels/soapbox/radio/alisons-story-spycops -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 03-Jun-2018 21:33:55 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
(sigh)
Ok, so unless Bloomberg are now in the fake news business it's official. Microsoft is buying Github.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-03/microsoft-is-said-to-have-agreed-to-acquire-coding-site-github
There is no way that any code I wrote will fall under the dominion of Microsoft.
Therefore in the coming week I'll be moving out of Github. Initially I'll just self-host on Gogs, but I'll also be looking for a secondary host as backup for cases where my own server is down or doesn't have enough bandwidth.
I'm sure that this will be rough for a lot of projects. Many things currently point to Github. Some will side with Microsoft, believing that they are allies of FOSS or just favoring convenience over disruption. When Microsoft is involved this is always a mistake. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Wednesday, 30-May-2018 17:53:13 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
Updated CryptPad to the latest version on #freedombone. It now has a new kanban app which is a bit flaky but works. So now you can collaboratively kanban on the mesh. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Sunday, 27-May-2018 09:37:21 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
A quite detailed profile of Jordan Peterson's academic career by someone who worked with him.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html
I'd put Peterson in the same sort of category as Steven Pinker and other pop intellectuals or pseudoscientists. It is possible to dress up personal prejudices in the language and mannerisms of science, or just to ignore decades of research results if they're inconvenient to the narrative. -
Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Friday, 25-May-2018 13:38:24 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
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Bob Mottram π§ β β (bob@soc.freedombone.net)'s status on Tuesday, 22-May-2018 08:40:05 UTC
Bob Mottram π§ β β
GDPR email reads:
"We are sure by now you have had your fill of GDPR emails so we want to make this as brief and pain free as possible for you"
Wall of text follows.
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