Michael Downey 🇺🇳 @downey@floss.social
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FLOSS.social admin. Open source person at the United Nations Foundation by day. 🇺🇳
Joined Apr 2018
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A few folks have asked how they can support the expenses of running the FLOSS.social #Mastodon instance. There are not a lot of expenses right now (€10/month) but if you're interested in chipping in, you can now become a FLOSS.social "Monthly Supporter"! Donations accepted via CommitChange, who run the free software Houdini Project to manage transactions. 🙂
Thanks!
New on the reading list: "The Rise of Digital Repression" from Steven Feldstein
Interesting new book discussing political repression that is enabled by #SurveillanceCapitalism, #AI, #ML, etc.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-of-digital-repression-9780190057497
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
Stellarium is a free and open source, multi-platform desktop planetarium, renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL
Install: PPA repository, Deb, RPM, Snap, Flatpak and AppImage packages, EXE (Windows), .App (macOS)
Apparently there are still a lot of people out there that don't understand that most #OpenSource and #CreativeCommons licenses require attribution where you give credit to the creators whose work you are reusing or building upon. Being a good digital citizen and doing this only helps grow the commons. Don't forget.
"It will not work. Man is not suited to endure such a reckless idea of freedom. It is one thing to imagine a state of freedom, quite another to live it. The mind is capable of painting freedom as infinity, but no one has the emotional staying power to realize it. By throwing off tradition, custom, and social convention as the yoke of repression, man is essentially going to war against himself. It is a war he cannot hope to win."
"This revolution is different: it is man against society. Previous revolutions have been motivated out of despair against poverty, misery, and injustice. This revolution is different: it is motivated out of despair against the limitations of the human condition. It is the ultimate revolution."
Once upon a time (1988) conservatives in the US believed personal #freedom included social responsbility:
"Beginning with the Greeks, to be free meant to be free from arbitrary and capricious rule. It did not mean freedom from social sanctions. It meant that individuals could freely pursue their own interests, consistent always with respect for the rights of others and in deference to the general interests of society."
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
RT @OpenSourceOrg@twitter.com
Making OSS accessible to the next gen of contributors is a priority that faces challenges. Join @teckids_eV@twitter.com’s Dominik George @ #POSI to learn how youth contribute to open source, and how we can “escape making them second-class FOSS citizens.” Register now: https://eventyay.com/e/e7dfbfc4
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/OpenSourceOrg/status/1431224979345993731
#Apple: "Designed in California, Assembled in China, Purchased by You, Owned by Us."
New America's "Ranking Digital Rights" program is #hiring a #technology manager to lead building an #OpenSource tool that helps people evaluate terms of service, #privacy policies, etc. used by tech giants against human rights standards. Read more about the #job and apply:
https://newamerica.applytojob.com/apply/hMcD4HEj9G/Technology-Manager
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
Happy 30th Birthday, Linux!
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
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The whole digital infrastructure in Afghanistan is at risk of falling into the hands of a new entity.
Question are emerging about
- who will be in control
- purposes for which systems will be used
The answers will impact millions of people.
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
We just released #newpipe 0.21.9 🎉
This version comes with
🖼️ seekbar thumbnails in the player
💓 heart reactions in the comments
🗨️ improved support for videos with disabled comments
✔️ the ability to mark streams as watched from within your feeds
🏎️ various performance improvements
🐞 multiple bug fixes
Learn more by reading the full blog post: https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/release/newpipe-0.21.9-released/
You can get this brand new version from our #fdroid repository or by downloading it directly from GitHub.
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
I find microG Software Project interesting.
A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.
❤️ See also @replicant @fdroidorg @efoundation @Fairphone.
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
I would like to request a bit of hive intelligence:
I want to make a cross-platform application with a #Python backend that can run either as a standalone #GUI app or as a #webApp.
After a quick check, it seems that https://pywebview.flowrl.com/ would be nice for that.
Anyone has already used it and has positive/negative feedback about it?
Or if you know other tools that you'd rather recommend, I'm also interested.
Boosts welcome :)
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
Took some time and set up a space to aggregate and curate scientific communities and topics on #Matrix. It can be hard to find good, serious communities relevant to your interests, so this is my initiative to make it easier.
It has subspaces for natural sciences, #mathematics and computer #science (which also has a subspace for programming languages), as well rooms such as "Ask Science" and "Philosophy of Science".
For anyone interested, you can find the space via this link: https://matrix.to/#/!lBZPyclsQiWAwbHjTk:matrix.org?via=matrix.org&via=nordgedanken.dev&via=t2bot.io
Boosts are welcome. Would be nice if this could be a thing, especially given the experimental support for LaTeX in Element's composer it could be of some interest to scientific communities.
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
Organic Maps: Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, and cyclists based on top of crowd-sourced @openstreetmap https://organicmaps.app/ #freesoftware available in @fdroidorg
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
We've joined a coalition of more than 90 organizations calling on Apple to halt its plans to scan the files and iMessages of iPhone users.
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
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We're hiring additional software engineers to join the SecureDrop team!
Full-time, fully remote. Help us protect journalists & whistleblowers by writing free and open source software. Here's what we're looking for:
https://freedom.press/jobs/sr-software-engineers-securedrop/
Michael Downey 🇺🇳
boosted
If you ever need to write (1/36) at the end of a tweet, get a blog!
Finally checked up on @keyoxide and they've done a great job! I dropped them a donation and you should too -- just after you set up your profile.
- Languages
- 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇨🇲
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Admin
FLOSS.social admin. Open source person at the United Nations Foundation by day. 🇺🇳
Joined Apr 2018
Michael Downey 🇺🇳's choices:
