@downey@floss.social
@downey@floss.social avatar

downey

@downey@floss.social

Software freedom and digital rights activist. FLOSS.social founder. Boards: https://floss.social/@librehealth, https://floss.social/@fdroidorg, @gnome, https://fosstodon.org/@osuosl.

Formerly: #OpenSource programs at #UnitedNations Foundation, #Community at OpenMRS.

Quality toots since 2017.

#FreeSoftware #HumanRights #DigitalAutonomy #SurveillanceCapitalism #privacy #UN #fedi22

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downey, to privacy
@downey@floss.social avatar

:fists_raised: ๐Ÿ‘๏ธ Mass protests used to offer a degree of safety in numbers. Facial recognition technology changes the equation.

๐Ÿ“ฐ Read "The changing face of protest":

https://restofworld.org/2024/facial-recognition-government-protest-surveillance/

drewdevault, (edited ) to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

Quick FOSS legal literacy quiz

Imagine the following situation: your project is MIT licensed. Someone takes the whole project and white-labels it (changes the name), then sells it commercially without providing the source code or sharing any of the sales revenue with you. They include "Copyright <your name>" and a copy of the MIT license in the "about" page of the software.

Is this allowed?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@makdaam

That (trademarks are protected without registration) is also the case in the US, too.

@drewdevault

https://www.rocketlawyer.com/business-and-contracts/intellectual-property/trademarks/legal-guide/registered-vs-unregistered-trademark

thibaultamartin, to random
@thibaultamartin@mamot.fr avatar

Fediverse, what nonprofits do you donate to, and why did you choose them?

If you don't mind specifying, I'd love to know what region of the world you're from!

๐Ÿ”„ Please boost to help me discover the problems people want to solve and the orgs solving them!

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@thibaultamartin Nonprofits on the Fediverse to which I currently donate:

:gnome: @gnome - Making free software accessible for everyone's daily computing

๐ŸŒณ @conservancy - Protecting software freedom and promoting its sustainability and diversity

:matrix: @matrix - Revolutionizing distributed, private, secure communication

:fsfe: @fsfe - The global leader in software freedom advoacy for the public sector

downey, to Roku
@downey@floss.social avatar

Normalize not perpetuating the myth that consumers have no choice but to obey unlawful terms of service.

downey, to opensource
@downey@floss.social avatar

๐Ÿ“ฃ Once more for the people in the back.

:opensource: software is a public good.

๐Ÿ‘ฅ Open Source communities are common pool resources.

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

PSA: ICYMI or you're like me and got thrown off by leap day, today is ...

Go forth and support the independent musicians of your choice ๐ŸŽต

PresGas, to random
@PresGas@freeradical.zone avatar

may be shutting down?

https://daniel-lange.com/archives/186-Opencollective-shutting-down.html

Looks like some and some groups will have some decisions to make and then communicate.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@PresGas Not the platform or the Open Source Collective 501(c)(6) business league that hosts many groups. Only the OCF 501(c)(3) public charity entity is winding down.

The blog title is unfortunately misleading and, while a loss to the world, is also causing a lot of unnecessary panic today.

sonny, to Matrix
@sonny@floss.social avatar

I'm looking for a solution to only allow people with a specific email domain to join a Matrix room.

Ideally a bot that would be able to send emails, verify the user and invite them into the room.

Any idea or suggestion?

@matrix @element

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@sonny Thinking this might be a starting point: https://github.com/medienhaus/matrix-email-onboarding

@matrix @element

jik, to accessibility
@jik@federate.social avatar

If anyone knows of any concrete evidence that Google's Invisible reCAPTCHA adversely impacts people with disabilities more than others, I'd be grateful if you could share it with me.
I searched but could not find any; on the contrary, I found at least one study showing that Invisible reCAPTCHA is equally usable for disabled and non-disabled people.
To be clear, I'm not looking for theoreticals, I'm looking for concrete evidence one way or the other.
Thanks.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@jik I don't know of any studies, but the problem with their "invisible" product is that it's only invisible if it has n inference (true or false) that the user is human. So it reverts to the same accessibility challenges as the others in a portion of visits.

downey, to mastodon
@downey@floss.social avatar

:boost_love: Boost if you think groups like @NGIZero @nlnetlabs and others should band together and fund a hard fork of that prioritizes trust and safety, and the needs of admins to protect their users from abuse.

โญ Favorite if you would support with a little money, too.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@NGIZero @nlnetlabs Yes, oops! ๐Ÿ’š

stefan, to mastodon
@stefan@gardenstate.social avatar

Guess when the spam started?

I think the only way to reduce is to delete posts and media no one has interacted with in the past X number of days?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stefan Unfortunately Mastodon only has the ability to automatically purge-after-time for all content, and still doesn't allow keeping content that was interacted with (replies, favorites, bookmarks). This has been requested by folks and ignored for a long time.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stefan I'm referring to

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/19260

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@jwildeboer

๐Ÿ˜ตโ€๐Ÿ’ซ๐Ÿคช๐Ÿ™ƒ๐Ÿคฏ

anders, to random
@anders@mastodon.cyborch.com avatar

Are we getting to the point where we want to start instituting spam heuristics on posts just like we have on mail?

#Spam #MastoAdmin #MastoDev

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@shanie @anders

If the powers that be ever decided to spend literally any time at all on features one thing they could have built would be a UI to allow admins to determine what server software and versions with whom to allow/block federation.

We can't even get simple admin-focused UI fixes.

Gargron, to random
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

There is an ongoing spam attack on the fediverse for the last couple of days. It's more widespread than before, as attackers are targeting smaller servers to create accounts. Before, usually only mastodon.social was targeted and our team could take care of it. For server administrators out there: If you don't need open registrations, switch over to approval mode. If you do, blocking disposable e-mail providers is a massive stopgap to the problem. Mastodon also supports hCaptcha.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@sam To be fair there are like 5+ years of ignored admin/moderation improvement requests in the queue ๐Ÿ˜…

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

Dear โ€”

Can someone explain to me how isn't simple copyright infringement?

๐Ÿค”

For example, see this case that determined the implied license of an RSS feed for personal use, doesn't necessarily include permission for another site to republish the material: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/copyright/1047416/implied-copyright-licenses-in-the-digital-world-blogs-rss-feeds-and-aggregators

mattj, to random
@mattj@floss.social avatar

Google have been quietly de-listing apps from their Play store one-by-one for made-up reasons. Today they finally came for Conversations (https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111929074071688694 ).

@fdroidorg doesn't have these problems, and they additionally rebuild from source, supporting reproducible builds (so unlike the Play store, you know the published source code matches what's in the app you download). With their recent enhancements (https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html ) I'll be recommending it to more people.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@strypey @chrastecky

And if the team needs to improve the documentation at https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/ (or elsewhere) we can certainly propose some suggestions.

codinghorror, to random

What's your biggest guilty pleasure band? It's gotta be borderline shameful. I have quite a few, but I'll go with Styx to start.. ๐Ÿ˜‚

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@codinghorror https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=SPlQpGeTbIE

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

I am sad to not be able to safely attend FOSDEM this year. There are so many people I want to spend time with.

However, as is the case with hundreds or maybe thousands of us past attendees, our immune systems can't handle the risk of such a crowded event that makes no effort to implement a health and safety plan.

SARS-CoV-2 viral load levels in Belgium this January were 43x what they were in July, as indicated by highly reliable wastewater sampling.

Safe events can still happen: @phpledge

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@rachel Hmm, interesting that wasn't communicated online in advance materials.

Nevertheless, our wider communities didn't accept blasรฉ "do the right thing" Code of Conduct policies for events, and we shouldn't settle for the same passivity for ensuring people don't have to needlessly be at risk during an ongoing respiratory pandemic.

and @NorthBayPython come to mind as positive examples.

https://publichealthpledge.com/badging

downey, to GNOME
@downey@floss.social avatar

The Foundation Board Meeting & strategy workshop is getting underway! โ˜• ๐Ÿซ :gnome:

pezmico, to random
@pezmico@mastodon.nz avatar

I insist:

Choosing not to wear a mask in an airbourne virus pandemic is a personal choice like driving while drunk is a personal choice.

It's irresponsible and while you might get away with it if lucky, once it goes wrong it'll be disastrous and you'll know for sure it wasn't worth it. You'll hurt yourself and those around you.

Wear a mask.
Breathe the cleanest air you can.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@jamwil

2021 US deaths: 13,000 (NHTSA)

2021 US deaths: 460,000 (CDC)

You're right. 35x more annual deaths in the US is "absolutely not even close to the same magnitude of risk".

@pezmico @mitch

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

Suing YouTubeโ€™s Science Scammers

"Earlier this year, I highlighted what I saw as a growing crisis: a glut of โ€œscienceโ€ spam and scam channels on YouTube that use the veneer of science โ€“ and copyrighted footage โ€“ for views and ad revenue. It got a tremendous response. What's next? Actually suing content thieves."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMfk-zP4xr0

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stux This is you?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stux ๐Ÿ˜… got it... The "I" was confusing me!

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