Adrian Cochrane @alcinnz@floss.social

Make that 1986, since the Hypertext Abstract Machine described here apparently was for the Neptune CAD system

Like the big deal about HTML/HTTP wasn't that it was hypertext - there were dozens of hypertext systems by then.

It was that it was hypertext *across the Internet*, that it was super-easy to write for because it used text files and didn't need a compile step (Microsoft Hypertext Help in Windows 3.0 needed a special compiler), and it provided a just-good-enough frontend for the Net.

But I guess I don't feel so bad because Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been struggling to get people to understand the concept ever since he invented HTML, and even with *him* talking about the Semantic Web, nobody wanted to listen

probably didn't help that the actual Semantic Web was the worst possible implementation of the idea of a semantic web

but they didn't even want to know the *idea*

Everyone (with money) just wanted 'TV with a buy button' and so that's exactly what they built.

I'm returning to reading RSS (newsblur) and one of the weird fucking feeds I subscribed to ten years ago is "show me all new Flickr photos geolocated in my tiny town" and it's remarkably random and weird and I would suggest everyone else follow suit if you don't live in a big city.

As a Linux user we should embrace newcomers and provide support and guidance.
We are the future. #Linux #Foss

@bob I focus a bit differently. Rather than looking at rationales ("just math"), think ends and means.

The ends of this game (for our adversaries) is concentrated power, and the means are "any way possible".

They saw widely available crypto as a threat. We (or rather, Phil Z., the EFF, and friends) succeeded in thwarting them.

Our goal is, if I may: distributed autonomous power.

@bob Didn't Free Software go through that inthe 90s & aughts with crypto and copyright? Any lessons or warnings? Maybe useful tactics?

Hey I know there’s a lot of #Linux users in the #fediverse. Why and how should I, as a not very tech-savvy Windows 10 user, switch to Linux, and which distro should I use? I’ve been thinking about switching for a while but I want some expert opinions.

fun fact I think BDFL and people "owning" projects is fine, but of course also that forking projects is a fundamental right that must always be supported by the original community as much as possible. it's an opportunity to grow or to make enemies depending on how you take it

@garbados
The fix is changing how we internetwork. Once we collectively realize large corporations aren't serving us, but shareholders, and stop using them, and building our own community owned services is when we'll fix the problem.

How often do you find features getting forced into your MVP because people are concerned they'll never get implemented otherwise? How often does that cause the project to fail for reasons other than the fundamental brokenness of the process that causes stakeholders not to trust that features will get implemented later?

Did you know you can browse #DrmFree eBooks directly on Kobo?

(They seem to have buried the link nowadays, but it still works)

USA
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/drm-free

UK
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/p/drm-free

Canada
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/p/drm-free

France
https://www.kobo.com/fr/fr/p/drm-free

etc.

To get your local version, click on any of the links above and choose your country and language at the top of the screen (where the flag is).

(via @damko@diasp.org)

See also DRM-free Kobo search:

https://switching.social/unofficial-kobo-search/

#DeleteAmazon #eBooks #Books

Finding new people to follow is hard for newbies on any platform. I'm hoping that #Trunk can help. What I need is people volunteering to be on lists so newbies can follow a bunch of people right away. Please reply to this post if you agree to be on a list. Feel free to suggest new lists that I haven't thought of. (Living in my own filter bubble, I know!) Please boost!
https://communitywiki.org/trunk
Also looking for more lists. 😃

I hate DRM

@bhaugen @dredmorbius i believe, than competition is only working on scale, because it hides the huge amount of cooperation within structures which is needed to hold up competition on scale

RT @jospoortvliet@twitter.com
End to end encryption in a browser is like using a car seat belt on a bike.

Can it be done? *Sure.*

Does it make you any safer? *Nope.*

#mustread on #california #consumer #privacy act

"on its face, it was not a frontal attack on Silicon Valley.. the proposal took aim at the so-called 3rd-party market for #personaldata.
Under the proposed law, every California consumer could demand her digital dossier, showing what categories of #personalinformation the company had collected... not only name and address but also your #browsing history, your #fingerprints, your #facescans or your #location data."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/magazine/facebook-google-privacy-data.html

Yesterday morning at $dayjob we were asked to go around and share an "unpopular opinion" we held.

Mine? #FreeSoftware is a moral imperative. People should have the power to own and change the tools they use in their lives.

Maybe not too unpopular in my circles though; I got at least one person applauding. 😉