@aral@mastodon.ar.al
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

aral

@aral@mastodon.ar.al

I make small things.

My posts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

🍉🌻 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

#SmallWeb #SmallTech #web #tech #privacy #humanRights #personhood #democracy #aral #fedi22 #searchable

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simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Several of the major social media platforms - Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter - have effectively declared war on linking to things and I absolutely hate it

"Link in my bio" / "Link in thread" / "Link in first comment"... or increasingly no link at all, just an unsourced screenshot of a page

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@simon @exterm Almost like this whole surveillance capitalism / people farming thing isn’t wonderful or something.

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Capitalism (n): see enshittification

jasonkoebler, to random
@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social avatar

Scoop: Solar storm is causing farmers' tractor GPS systems to go haywire. Many have shut down planting altogether during a critical period. A Deere dealer said accuracy is "extremely compromised"

https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

side and how much the equipment can go side to side that if we aren't
absolutely perfect, it just doesn't work. You just physically can't drive that
straight [without guidance]. If you're sitting up there in a tractor seat, you can't
steer fast enough or well enough to not kill the crop because we're so tight on
clearances." (2/2)

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@jasonkoebler Alt text: Schwarz says organic farms like his rely heavily on precision farming features,
because rows of crops are planted very tightly together to prevent weeds from
growing in the spaces between plants. "We used to have markers that would
scratch a line in the ground that you could then use to kind of drive by eye," he
said. "Now, we plant so tight in terms of how much the tractor can go side to… (1/2)

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@jasonkoebler Alt text: "Due to the way the RTK network works, the base stations were sending out
corrections that have been affected by the geomagnetic storm and were
causing drastic shifts in the field and even some heading changes that were
drastic," the dealership told farmers Saturday morning.

Highlighted in green:
"When you head back
into these fields to side dress, spray, cultivate, harvest, etc. over the next… (1/2)

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

several months, we expect that the rows won't be where the AutoPath lines
think they are. (End highlight)

This will only affect the fields that are planted during times of
reduced accuracy. It is most likely going to be difficult-if not impossible-to
make AutoPath work in these fields as the inaccuracy is most likely
inconsistent." (2/2)

LALegault, to random
@LALegault@newsie.social avatar

6.5 million, that’s .5 million more.

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@LALegault The percentages are nowhere near but nor must they be for it to be a genocide. And for goodness’ sake, if our red line is to wait for Holocaust-level atrocity before acting we have learned nothing from history and “never again” is absolutely devoid of meaning.

It’s genocide because of genocidal intent backed by genocidal practice. Jewish scholars in Holocaust studies and genocide have called it genocide. We cannot wait until Israel succeeds before calling it that.

aral, (edited ) to design
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

If you design a system such that you cannot differentiate people from corporations and bots and that’s your defense for calling all of them “users”, you’ve designed a system that conflates people – who are mortal, have feelings, can feel pain and be hurt and who have human rights that must be protected – with the very entities that oftentimes exist to exploit them.

Design for people. Call them people. All else is secondary.

#design #technology #ethics #peopleNotUsers

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@fmhueffer * of Big Tech.

We can have different tech if we have different ideologies underpinning it. e.g., Small Tech:

https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@blogdiva Thanks :)

And we can (and must) go beyond “static”. The Small Web vision is that people can have a dynamic site that can be (at least one of) their online identities. Protected by public-key encryption so that we can interact with each other privately (end-to-end encrypted) without Big Tech intermediaries and also be public as we please.

paoloredaelli, to random Italian
@paoloredaelli@mastodon.uno avatar

@aral why #node_js to build #kitty? To lower the bar for end-user?
Of course you must start from a solid foundation, but are not tying yourselves to #GAFAM for foundations?
I don't want to polemic, just understand

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@paoloredaelli You have to pick somewhere on the stack. I thought that was commodified enough and compatible with what I need it for. We do the best with what we have. If I wanted to go for ideological purity across the stack I’d need several trillion dollars so I’ll settle for pragmatism that gets us off the ground and which we can evolve as we go. That said, I don’t see this particular decision becoming a pain point anytime soon.

aral, to ai
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

“Mario Fusco, a great software developer, once said: ‘The code you write makes you a programmer. The code you delete makes you a good one. The code you don’t have to write makes you a great one.’ So maybe, for once, AI is on to something.”

https://www.inkl.com/a/nPvYapcJNlJ

Way to quote someone without understanding a word they’re saying.

Take a bow, John Naughton.

aral, to Eurovision
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Hey, I’m thinking of setting up a new song contest where you can vote as many times you want for the contestant of your choice (but only 20 votes per credit card, we don’t want it to appear like a money grab after all). I’m also thinking it should be a safe space for apartheid states committing genocide. Oh wait, sorry, Eurovision already exists.

What a shit show.

raganwald, to random
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us avatar

A rallying cry for the "Make Something Wonderful" crowd.

🪖 @aral

https://social.bau-ha.us/@aral@mastodon.ar.al/112427628706932284

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@raganwald 💕

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@raganwald Haha :)

aral, to SmallWeb
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Sitting outside on a rare sunny day at a lovely pub in Bray, refactoring Kitten* to pull out the settings page sections into their own pages (and use Kitten’s new Streaming HTML workflow**) and enjoying a yummy pint of Tundra IPA.

No complaints :)

#Kitten #SmallWeb #Bray #Ireland

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@juliancday Ah, nice. Alas, if I have another pint I’ll be a danger to myself and others on my OneWheel so perhaps another time :)

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@fkamiah17 Sadly, I don’t tan. I go lobster red then back to white again. Worst Turkish genes ever :)

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Here’s an idea: let’s call people “people” on the fediverse instead of “users” whenever we can.

Compare:

“There are 42 users on this instance.”

vs

“There are 42 people on this instance.”

Which acknowledges our humanity more?

Language matters. We don’t need to perpetuate mainstream technology’s othering/colonial framing of “us” – designers/developers/other “clever folks” – and “them” – the users (usually one step removed from “dumb user” and usually the ones who get used).

#peopleNotUsers

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@jasonemiller If only there was a word we could use to denote different accounts that a single person might have on a system. I don’t know, maybe something like “account?”

aral, to SmallWeb
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

The Evergreen Web section in Kitten’s¹ settings now has its own page too (and uses Kitten’s new Streaming HTML² workflow).

If you have the previous version of your site up somewhere, you can use the 404-to-307 technique³ to forward missing pages to your old site so as not to break the Web.

I’ll add local static archive support later.

¹ https://codeberg.org/kitten/app
² https://ar.al/2024/03/08/streaming-html/
³ https://4042307.org

aral, (edited ) to Israel
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

That feeling when you open the silly little collaborative drawing app you made and you find that some folks made this.

https://draw-together.small-web.org

✊

PS. If you want to learn how the app was made, here’s a video tutorial using Kitten¹: https://ar.al/2024/03/26/draw-together/

¹ https://codeberg.org/kitten/app

#FreeGaza #BDS #protest #keffiyeh #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #settlerColonialism #apartheid #ethnicCleansing #genocide #SmallWeb #Kitten #DrawTogether

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

@setto Was that you helping? If so, thank you :)

💕

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Ooh, and someone just made it even better :)

💕

aral, to Eurovision
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Fuck Eurovision. Fuck Israel. Fuck Zionism. Fuck settler colonialism. Fuck apartheid. Fuck ethnic cleansing. Fuck genocide.

(And if you’re more concerned by my language than with the injustices it decries then fuck you too.)

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