aral

aral, 6 months ago to Israel

Here’s a wild idea: If you don’t like being criticised for committing genocide, how about try not fucking committing genocide?

#israel #palestine #gaza #genocide #ethnicCleansing #crimesAgainstHumanity

aral, 6 months ago to Israel

“I don’t care about your calls for a premature ceasefire, about your demand that we provide them with electricity, that we stop fighting for ‘humanitarian reasons.’
…
I don’t care that you wave the flag of ‘human rights’…that you shout fancy slogans you don’t understand such as proportionality, occupation and apartheid.
…
I don’t care that you blame us for 1948 refugees, for the fact that they have no state, for…their fantasy of ‘right of return.’”

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dear-world-i-dont-care/

#israel #genocide

aral, 9 months ago to random

“We rebuilt the Mastodon backend from scratch and made it able to handle Twitter-scale (500M users, 20M writes/second, unbalanced social graph, etc.)”

Congratulations, you reinvented Big Tech.

Did you stop to consider that fediverse (emphasis “diverse”) servers should not be trying to reach “Twitter scale?” That they should be kept small on purpose? That the goal isn’t to recreate Twitter but with some other asshole in charge?

(Of course, it’s a VC-backed startup.)

https://redplanetlabs.com/mastodon-clone

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

Oh, nice, looks like the Fosstodon instance (@fosstodon) silenced my profile.

https://fosstodon.org/@JoshStrobl/110688888195898758

I guess it tells you more about “FOSS”todon than anything else that they chose to block a human rights activist/privacy advocate who wakes up and works at a not-for-profit on free and open software every day. Maybe if I were to work at Google and hack on a hobby open source project in the evenings I’d be acceptable?

smh

Edit: “silenced” not “blocked (i.e., suspended)”

aral, 1 month ago to threads

Dear @Gargron,

A fediverse server called Threads is violating mastodon.social’s second server rule:

“2. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia…
Transphobic behavior such as intentional misgendering and deadnaming is strictly prohibited.”

https://glaad.org/smsi/report-meta-fails-to-moderate-extreme-anti-trans-hate-across-facebook-instagram-and-threads/

Can you please defederate from this server to protect the trans people on mastodon.social?

Thank you.

PS. It’s run by these guys: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-snooped-snapchat-user-traffic/

#mastodonSocial #fediblock #threads #meta #mastodon #transphobia

aral, 3 months ago to Israel

Israel—a terrorist state committing genocide in Palestine backed by the US, Canada, and the UK—has just destroyed the office building of the Belgian Agency for Development Cooperation in Gaza as retaliation a day after Belgium announced it would continue to fund the vital humanitarian work of UNRWA.

Belgium is a member of the EU and NATO.

https://partyon.xyz/@nullagent/111859218913958892

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/belgium-to-summon-israeli-envoy-after-its-development-agency-in-gaza-completely-destroyed/

#israel #gaza #palestine #genocide #ethnicCleansing #warCrimes #enabel #belgium #eu #nato #unrwa #un

aral, 11 months ago to random

If there is even a single gram of truth to this…

Any instance that goes along with such a thing will be lost to surveillance capitalism. I don’t care how large they are or who they are, any instance that becomes Meta’s bitch should be defederated immediately by all others. Let the largest few get swallowed up whole by Silicon Valley if they’re dumb enough to do it. The rest of us will rebuild.

I really hope no one is stupid enough to take Meta up on this if it’s true. https://beach.city/@vantablack/110594120842443355

aral, 2 months ago to SmallWeb

So given it’s Saturday night, I thought I’d have a little fun with Kitten and make a tiny collaborative drawing toy.

You have a 20×20 grid and only black and white to draw with and everyone shares the same canvas.

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

Have fun + looking forward to seeing what we all, umm, draw together.

:kitten:💕

PS. It took about 60 lines of code.

View source: https://codeberg.org/aral/draw-together

#Kitten #SmallWeb #DrawTogether #toy #game #web #dev

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

We’re looking to buy a place in #Ireland (because renting here is nigh on impossible these days) so I approached a mortgage broker and they just got back to me with this gem:

“Bank of Ireland will not consider your mortgage application because you run a not-for-profit.”

How bloody lovely.

Congratulations on creating a system that rewards the worst of the worst and fucks over those striving to work for the common good. I, for one, won’t be shedding a tear should it burn to the ground.

#boi

aral, 5 months ago to random

Those of you caught up debating the technical minutiae of federating with Threads are missing the forest for the trees.

This is about one thing: Affording social capital to/normalising/legitimising Meta/Facebook/surveillance capitalism (and thereby delegitimising those who oppose them).

Hey, if the author of Mastodon thinks Meta/Facebook/Instagram/surveillance capitalism is socially acceptable there must be something wrong with you if you don’t.

So thanks for that, Eugen.

(Yes, I’m livid.)

aral, 8 months ago to twitter

Your Twitter/X account is a microphone connected to a mixer controlled by a fascist. You can speak all you want. The fascist controls your volume and can mute you whenever he wants. And you might not even know you’ve been muted because you can still hear yourself in your headphones.

It’s not called resistance when your volume knob is in someone else’s hand.

#twitter #x #algorithmicTimeline #elonMusk #fascism

aral, 8 months ago to twitter

Twitter/X is a Nazi bar.

If you’re still on Twitter/X, you frequent a Nazi bar.

You might say, “But I’m not a Nazi!”

So the question remains: Then why are you drinking at a fucking Nazi bar?

https://mastodon.lawprofs.org/@coreyrayburnyung/110997938267873087

#twitter #x #naziBar #fascism #elonMusk

aral, 3 months ago to firefox

Mozilla fires 60 people to “focus on bringing ‘trustworthy AI into Firefox.’”

Fuck you, Mozilla. No one is asking for AI in Firefox. Sadly, you’re the best we can hope for under capitalism. So if we want something better, we should look into alternative models.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/

#mozilla #firefox #ai

aral, 8 months ago to twitter

If you’re still on Twitter/X does that mean you’re a fascist?

No, of course not.

It just means fascism isn’t a deal breaker for you.

#twitter #x #fascism

aral, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to Israel

‘At least 500’ dead after Edit: <strike>Israeli</strike> airstrike on Gaza hospital

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/10/17/israel-hamas-war-air-strikes-pound-gaza-as-efforts-made-to-break-deadlock-on-aid/

More than 1,000 children have reportedly been killed in 11 days of airstrikes on Gaza – one child every 15 minutes – with children making up a third of total fatalities in Gaza.

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/save-the-children-calls-for-ceasefire-in-gaza

This is not war. This is slaughter. This is barbarism. Nothing justifies this.

And yet the West watches—cheers with blood lust, even—as Israel commits genocide.

#israel #gaza #genocide

aral, 9 months ago to ads

Whenever you see the words “ads”, “cryptocurrency”, “blockchain”, “web 3”, or “AI”, just replace them with “farts” and you’ll know whether you want them or not.

“Can the fediverse survive without farts?”

Yes, perfectly well.

“Will farts replace people?”

I hope not.

“The European Commission embraces farts.”

That’s unfortunate.

“This new startup wants to improve your life with farts.”

I’m good, thanks.

#SiliconValley #BigTech #farts #buzzword #bullshit #ads #adtech #blockchain #ai #web3

aral, 11 months ago to fediverse

Myth: The #Fediverse™ Is Decentralised™

I run my own #Mastodon instance just for myself. An instance of one. What does that mean on today’s fediverse?

It means I’m on mastodon.social.

What?

That makes no sense!

Let me explain:

Since I have my own instance, surely I decide who I follow and anyone can follow me, right?

Wrong.

For ~1M accounts, Eugen decides. If he blocks my instance, a large number of people who follow me today will no longer be able to.

So I may as well be on his server.

aral, 10 months ago to random

Basically, what we’re saying to people today is:

You’re interested in tech and you want a nice home (or just any home) and stability? Go work at Google, Facebook, or some other surveillance capitalist.

What’s that? You want to work on free and open source? Sure, go work at IBM or Oracle… Oh… you don’t mean enterprise software? Tech to protect human rights/democracy? Not for profit hippie-dippie crap for the common good?

Oh, then suffer.

I mean, is it any surprise things are as they are?

aral, 11 months ago to fediverse

Some fediverse instance admins: “How cool, Meta invited us to the adult table.”

Yes, they did.

Because you’re what’s for dinner.

#fediverse #mastodon #meta #Project92 #BigTech #SiliconValley #SurveillanceCapitalism

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to chrome

State of the Web, circa 2023:

“Would you like to use the browser by Company X, or the browser by the company that survives on half-a-billion dollars a year from Company X, or the browser by the company that gets paid an estimated $20 billion a year by Company X even though it can survive without it?”

We desperately need a web browser by an independent organisation funded by EU taxpayer money and maintained for the common good.

#web #Chrome #Firefox #Safari #Google #Mozilla #Apple #eu

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to Facebook

Folks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.

#DigitalServicesAct

aral, 9 months ago to random

“We see you’re using an ad-blocker.”

I see you’re douchebags.

#surveillanceCapitalism #adtech #web #tracking #douchebags

aral, 11 months ago to security

Wow, Bank of Ireland are completely clueless about #security.

“BOI: We need to speak to you about your credit card application…

Me: Sure…

BOI: First, let’s verify you…full name, date of birth…

Me: …

BOI: Mother’s maiden name?

Me: LjwOtrNGIgpJlJE

BOI: So this is the problem: We need your mother’s maiden name.

Me: I just gave it. This is a security question and I provided you with a password.

BOI: No, that won’t work, we need her name.

Me: Wow… OK… Please cancel my application.”

aral, 8 months ago to fediverse

Mathematical italic capital h mathematical italic small e mathematical italic small l mathematical italic small l mathematical italic small o.

WTF?

Oh, I just said “Hello” to you in italics.

(That’s similar to what someone who uses a screen reader hears when you use fancy non-alphabetical Unicode characters to simulate italics or boldface on your fediverse posts. So please don’t do that.)

#fediverse #acessibility #a11y #unicode

aral, 11 months ago to random

What’s happening in Turkey today is not some exotic oddity. It’s a forewarning of exactly what can (and is) happening in the West.

Does this timeline seem familiar?

1. Neoliberals get elected. They fill their coffers while alienating a whole swath of society who they deem too far beneath them to matter.

2. A religious fundamentalist arises who speaks to those marginalised people, telling them they’ve been wronged (they have) and that he will make it right.

3. He gets elected.

4. He stays.