Federation Bot

Secret Panel HERE 🙂 https://tapas.io/episode/3241718

There's losing your remote control between the couch cushions and then there's this. https://www.thejournal.ie/sean-ocasey-bridge-remote-1713102-Oct2014/

RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/115893929232236164

Also available as video on PeerTube:

https://peertube.dair-institute.org/w/sUzA6ZCSW7bv16DGuwRg5L

“Just one more lane bro“ folks try to solve the problem of congestion inflow into the city by increasing the capacity of the motor roads into the city (while expansion of motor roads inside of the city can’t keep the same pace, and neither it should), rather than diversifying and optimizing for more means of transportation.

#urbanism

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/115893212283711380

We need ALL STEM education to include mandatory coursework (with exams!) on ethics.

#oped 📰 Barrister's powerful speech at Filton Trial reminds jury of its right to defy judge

Starmer and the media need convictions to justify Palestine Action's proscription as a terrorist group. Rajiv Menon KC spells out to the jury why it is a vital last defence against government tyranny -

#law #uk #palestine #UNfail

By Jonathan Cook

https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathancook/p/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

France deports Haitians from Caribbean territories as asylum claims surge
Surging protection claims in Guadeloupe and French Guiana strain local systems, leaving long-settled Haitian communities in legal limbo

https://haitiantimes.com/2026/01/09/haitians-asylum-deportations-french-guiana-guadeloupe/

"Software Heritage : dix ans de préservation du patrimoine applicatif"

👉 https://www.republik-it.fr/solutions-techno/applicatif-metier/software-heritage-dix-ans-de-preservation-du-patrimoine-applicatif.html

Avec @moranegg pour @swheritage

Lecture by Anne Pasek on “An energy history and future of computing”

Join us on Thursday, Jan 22nd, from 14-16/18 hrs (German time) for the fourth RUSTLab lecture of this winter term. Anne Pasek will present her work on “An energy history and future of computing”. This talk will survey two trajectories for computing in the Global North. The first, grounded in an energy history of major players in the tech sector, explores how energy efficiency has been both a driving…

https://rustlab.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/lecture-by-anne-pasek-on-an-energy-history-and-future-of-computing/

The curl project stops their bug bounty:

"We have concluded the hard way that a bug bounty gives people too strong
incentives to find and make up "problems" in bad faith that cause overload and abuse."

https://github.com/curl/curl/pull/20312/files#diff-aec5a5d5f80adcb1c5be7398e98b271b007849d5cff357fb437f5faf242b3713

Hi Fediverse! Allow me to reintroduce myself. I'm Cosmos Co-op's chief executive organizer, a mystic, and a fringe artist.

I'm holding an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event over at Cosmos on January 21st, 6:30pm MST.

Ever wanted to ask me anything... truly, *anything?* Here's your chance!

Join us at this link:

https://cosmos.coop/events/live-online-ask-me-anything-with-caroline-c-savery-cosmos-chief-executive-organizer/

@cosmos

si wrote a comment on Podcast Predictions For 2026 - AI slop, video and more from Podnews Weekly Review

Isn’t it ironic what RSS stands for as it clearly isn’t that simple to understand? Agreed it’s the key to understanding what a podcast actually was, not just audio files but DISTRIBUTED freely and openly. Also, where can we get James’s T-shirt from? I’d order one to spread the word.

truefans.fm/podnews-weekly-review/69609bec7aa10376c412d4e1?tab=boosts&id=6966bc907c92dc7d7d187fc1

Vendor lock-in is hostile to the Fediverse

I’ve just had to part ways with my previous Mastodon server for ethical reasons, so I thought I’d take the chance to write up why and also how.

One of the defining features of legacy social media platforms is the reliance on inertia to keep users trapped. All your friends are on Facebook, so you don’t want to leave because you’ll lose touch with them. You’re used to the way the Instagram app works and you don’t want to learn your way around a new one. Yes, Twitter/X is a cesspit full of the sort of things you’ve specifically created laws against, but you have a lot of followers and no spine so you’re still there when other governments are banning it entirely because of all the CSAM and deepfake porn. Legacy social media weaponises your fear of change and the mental bandwidth needed to get used to something new.

Federated social media like Mastodon is different. The server your account lives on can communicate with any other server that runs the ActivityPub protocol, you can interact with it using any compatible app and at any time you can pack up and move to a different server without losing your connections and having to start over from scratch. You can use the same app you used to use on mastodon.social to connect to beige.party or jorts.horse.

The Mastodon instance I used to be on recently announced that it’s getting its own mobile app:

Connecting to Tŵt on your phone has always been a bit of a bother, especially when it comes to plugging in our domain instead of the default or suggested services. These apps work great, but they aren’t built for the average everyday person. They’re all a bit techy, and they don’t reflect our community the way we want to be presented. So, we’re building our own app.

I should stop here to say that I don’t believe plugging in a server’s address once when you first set up an app is “a bit of a bother” or “a bit techy”. The “don’t worry your pretty little button head about it” tone is incredibly patronising and an insult to your intelligence, but what I believe is not the important part.

If that’s what Tŵt Cymru believes, then releasing an app that’s locked to their instance is a cynical attempt to make it more difficult for less technical users to migrate away from their server, because leaving means they’d have to find, install and get used to a whole new app. The exact same shady tactic that legacy social media sites use to keep people locked into their service.

We envision a future where many other communities have their own branded, custom apps just like this one, apps that tie directly to their server and remove the hurdles that keep people apart.

Once of the greatest strengths of the Fediverse is the decoupling of the server from the app you use to connect to it. Interfering with that decoupling is a disservice to you, the user, in service of a site operator who wants to parasitically benefit from federation while making it more difficult for users to leave.

So what do you do if your instance’s admin joins the Dark Side?

In the spirit of “educate, don’t patronise”, here’s the process I went through to migrate from toot.wales to beige.party.

The first thing to do is to visit https://yourinstance.com/settings/export in a web browser, and download all your data. You should probably do that periodically whether you think your instance admins are up to shenanigans or not. Instances can offline without warning, and it’s best to be prepared.

The posts archive isn’t very useful yet, as there’s currently no way to migrate the content you’ve created to a new instance. The important bit for migration is the CSV files in the right column.

Once you’ve found a new instance to move to, you first need to create an alias by entering your old account in the account settings of your new account.

Once you’ve done that, log into your old account and confirm the move from that end by entering your new account’s handle. You’ll need to enter your password to confirm it, because once you hit the “Move followers” button your followers will be permanently moved to the new account.

A bit of manual tidying up

Unfortunately moving your followers is as far as the automatic migration process goes, but you can use the CSV files you downloaded from your old server in the first step to manually import the people you’re following, your lists, mutes, blocks, and bookmarks. Ideally this would all be automatic too, but this flow doesn’t seem to be much of a priority for Mastodon. I’m going to make the charitable assumption here and say they’re prioritising features that people will use every day over ones that people should hopefully have to use rarely if at all, but this is one of those things that’s quite important despite how infrequently it’s going to be used so I think it would benefit from a little more love.

You’ll also have to fill in your profile details again, because those don’t migrate either.

 

#fediverse #mastodon

GOP Adds ‘ICE Kills Everyone’ Pillar To 2026 Platform

WASHINGTON—Adopting a new set of national policy positions ahead of this year’s midterms, top GOP leaders released an updated party platform Tuesday to introduce their official “ICE kills everyone” agenda for 2026. “In our continuing fight to make America great again, it is vital we maintain Republican control of the government so we can ensure […]
The post …
#theonion
https://theonion.com/gop-adds-ice-kills-everyone-pillar-to-2026-platform/

I'm Reem, is my situation difficult🚨😔

After visiting the doctor today, | I learned that I urgently need surgery worth $1,500

The surgery will be under general anesthesia, lasting about 3 hours, and requires hospital stay😭

I'm really tired and I need your support for your donations😩

Your support can really save me💔😭

https://gofund.me/de96cb50

Scenes from O’Reilly ETCon 2002

This little trove of photos is entirely Anil Dash’s fault. He recently made a blog post titled How Markdown Took Over the World with a “hero image” featuring a 2002-era iMac setup — the G4 model, which Jony Ive described as the answer to the question “What computer would the Jetsons have had?”

I stumbled across Anil’s article on a Sunday afternoon while doing some home office housekeeping, and thought, Wow, there’s a blast from the past, which was quickly followed by Hey, didn’t I get someone to take a photo of me with one of those iMacs when they were only days old?

Unlike some people, I’ve been archiving my digital photos since I bought my first digital camera in 1998, so it didn’t take long for me to dig up that iMac G4 photo:

I’d normally tell you to click on this photo to view it at full size, but this is full size — a glorious 640 by 480 pixels!

This photo is from a set that I shot while attending the O’Reilly 2002 ETCon, which took place at the Westin Hotel in Santa Clara. It was a little different from the previous year’s edition of the conference, what with everything being scaled down; even the name had been shortened from the original “Emerging Technologies Conference” down to “ETCon.”

(One of us — I don’t recall whom — engaged in a little gallows humor and quipped “Maybe we should call this the Receding Technologies Conference.”)

This was early 2002, when the dot-com bubble burst had grown into a full meltdown. A lot of us had lost our jobs when the companies we worked for had imploded, but most of us had saved enough to attend a couple of conferences, partly to look for our next gigs, and partly because we couldn’t not go and not see our friends and peers.

One of the nice things about this pared-down conference was that it felt a little more personal. There were more opportunities to just hang out as friends and enjoy some “down time” — or what passes for down time when you’re young and have programming skills, spare time, and lots of ideas — with each other.

The geekist lobby on Earth

We did a lot of hanging out in the hotel lobby, which was pretty much a gathering of a lot of Web 2.0 names you might remember from way-back-when, and some of whom are still working away these days.

This was an awesome “hallway track.”

Cory Doctorow.Damian Stolarz and Wes Felter.Matt Jones, Quinn Norton, and more!

Cory Doctorow.

Jim McCoy.Jim McCoy.

 

 

 

The “Virtual Concierge” at the hotel. There was a concierge desk, but instead of a person behind the desk, there was a monitor and camera, through which you spoke to a concierge based in the Philippines. Hello, kababayan!

Out for dinner and to see the new iMacs

A whole bunch of us decided to go into town for an unofficial dinner one evening, which included a run to the Apple Store to see the new iMac G4s. I took a cab with Zooko, Wes Felter, and Aaron Swartz.

Zooko.Wes Felter and Aaron Swartz.Lisa Rein tries on my cowboy hat while Jillzilla looks on.Quinn Norton, Damian Stolarz, and Jillzilla.Justin Chapweske.Quinn Norton, Matt Jones, ???Wes Felter at the Apple Store.Joey de Villa at the Apple Store with the G4 iMacs.

I suppose I actually attended some conference sessions…

…the only evidence I have of that are these photos.

Clay Shirky, ???, Cory Doctorow.

Nelson Minar and ??? (trying to remember his name).

Attack of the House Party / Attack of the Clones

???, Danny O’Brien, Meg Hourihan.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones had just been released around the time of the conference, and a number of us decided to go catch the movie. It was decided that we’d pre-game at Quinn Norton’s and Danny O’Brien’s house. This worked well for Aaron, as it wasn’t an age-restricted event at a bar.

In the foreground: Aaron Swartz chats with Lucas Gonze. In the background: Kevin Burton looks on and Matt Jones peeks suspiciously through a doorway.Meg Hourihan, Bram Cohen, Quinn Norton, Cory Doctorow and Jason Kottke.Bram Cohen, Danny O’Brien, Kevin Burton.

After hanging out at the house for a little bit, we made our way to the theatre. We somehow managed to get tickets despite the crowds and our late arrival.

We’d broken up into smaller groups, and Aaron was with me. There were very few seats left, but the front row was still free.

“Front row, then?” I asked Aaron, and he said “Sure.” We took a couple of seats on the left side.

There was still a fair bit of time to kill before the coming attractions came on, never mind the film.

“Dare you to play something,” Aaron said, pointing at my accordion.

“You are so on, young man,” I said. I stood up and played the Star Wars main theme and the Imperial March, getting the audience all riled up.

We went to see the just-released Attack of the Clones that night!

When the film started, I wanted to get a picture for my blog review. As I pulled out my camera, I said “Keep an eye out for ushers” as I snapped a picture of the opening crawl.

We both got a great laugh out of an all-caps line in the crawl, “CLONE ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC,” and for the next few months, it became a catchphrase for us in IRC chats: “PEER-TO-PEER ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC”, “BOY BAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC”, “UNDERPANTS ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC”, and so on.

Final day

On the final day of ETCon, we ditched the lobby and went poolside…

Quinn Norton.Nelson Minar, Clay Shirky, Wes Felter.Cory Doctorow wearing his goggles. Alas, no cape or hot-air balloon.Damien Stolarz in Cory’s goggles.Sam Ruby, Nelson Minar, Cory Doctorow, Wes Felter, Joey de Villa.

It’s hard to believe it was that long ago.

 

UK, Canada, and Australia considering coordinated ban on x.com.

https://archive.md/mXuN7

#Fediverse #XTwitter #Australia #UK #Canada

RE: https://aus.social/@slevelt/115875023508938300

I love this story. You might hear that moving is difficult or confusing but it’s a learn-by-doing thing, with helpful low-tech user guides from @FediTips.

Like @slevelt I first arrived on mastodon.social in 2016 when everything was small. I was a Twitter user and this didn’t take for me first time. It took a few goes, helped by @lauraritchie calling me back now and then. In 2018 I opened a second account on aus.social to try out a local instance.

In a moment of unexpected friction between this server and another, I opened a just-in-case alt, but I also learned I was really committed to this one because of the fantastic @AusSocialMods and @aussocialadmin. None of this has been technically complex and I wouldn’t know Linux from a bathmat.

Welcome #forkiverse. You might be here on a whim but welcome anyway. You do you.

Cat meets dog. #cats #cat #caturday #dogs #dog #graffiti #streetart #urbanart