@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

happyborg

@happyborg@fosstodon.org

Working on #decentralization, #p2p and #dWeb tech, online #privacy and #security, #CopyLeft, #FOSS, #Rust and #autonomi (find me on https://forum.autonomi.community as happybeing).

Note: autonomi was called #SafeNetwork.

Possibly still maintaining #vdash on github.

The #fediverse is a lifeboat, #p2p is the shore.

#nobridge #noaitraining #norobots

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molly0xfff, to web
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the , what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?

No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@molly0xfff
I've been though the whole period and look upon all of it with fondness and appreciation for my experiences.

I don't long for any good old days though, I've always been working to build new, better days, and I've never been so excited as I am right now with the upcoming launch of truly autonomous decentralised technology from Autonomi.

So not AI. Jury still out there, but I see massive change and hopefully benefits beginning later this year from a sea-change in peer-to-peer.

emilymbender, to random
@emilymbender@dair-community.social avatar

Must-read reporting by +972 on how the IDF are using “AI” in their indiscriminate murder in Gaza. It’s horrific, and we must not look away. And it’s an absolute nightmare of the usual sorts of AI harms cranked up to the extreme: mass surveillance, "we don't have any choice but to automate", AI as pretext for deadly violence.

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@emilymbender
It's not just the ridiculousness of deferring to AI, it's the basis of those matches which is terrible (weak associations) and worst of all that to hit one of those suspected militants, the deaths of up to twenty innocents is accepted as perfectly ok.

This is why so many families have been targeted without any concern, and what has lead to the blood lust wreckless on aid workers.

is committing mass murder in with no humanity or regard for the law.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I swear, in the long term the most useful part of my tech education—which includes a master's degree in computer science from 1990—has turned out to be reading comp.risks religiously since the late 80s and watching every new grift and scam and dark design pattern and type of malware on the internet emerge in realtime.

I hate that in this century everyone needs the paranoia and skill set of a 90s network security administrator.

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@cstross
Yep, it's an unsustainable mess and will continue to make life worse for a while, but ..

Autonomi is a p2p autonomous network that should kick the dial back quite a bit for those who use it. And will offer a way for those building with security and privacy in mind to keep that dial moving.

A secure, autonomous network can help us begin to take back our autonomy.

matthew_d_green, to random
@matthew_d_green@ioc.exchange avatar

The weirdest thing about 2024 is the rapid rollout of unconstitutional age verification laws for websites, and how little the “free speech” tech crowd seems to care about this.

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@evacide @matthew_d_green

I'm glad some of the tech crowd have been working for years because this trajectory was apparent to them 20 years ago.

I wish they had solved the problems and got the design right a decade ago.

But I'm so, so happy that they plan to give everyone an alternative way to do internet before the end of 2024.

18+ Frances_Larina, to random
@Frances_Larina@sfba.social avatar

"Tesla Cybertruck No Match For Car Wash"

Things to note:

  • Rebooting the truck takes 5 hours
  • The owners manual cautions against ever washing the truck in direct sunlight
  • It must be put into Car Wash Mode before washing
  • Car washes can void the warranty

This is seriously the most fragile "pickup truck" ever built.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-cybertruck-no-match-for-car-wash-1851417011

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@Frances_Larina The Cybertruck also needs someone to walk in front of it with a red flag.

agx, to random

Dear companies,

please don't make having access to Google's or Apple's app stores to use your products a requirement.

This locks so many of us out because we either don't have a compatible device or the device doesn't have the software to access these services (like google play services).

1️⃣ /2️⃣

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@agx
Appealing to sociopathic entities who follow the interests of owners above all is pointless. Best case is a temporary shift while the positive PR is judged financially preferable.

If we want to fix these corporations we have to bypass them, which means delivering better products and services, and helping people move.

Some try to improve regulation, tackle the monopolies etc, which is good, but will be far more effective if we also have better alternatives.

happyborg, to opensource
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

There’s an open source non profit alternative to StackExchange called Codidact, who knew?! 🤷‍♂️

Mastodon: @codidact
Website: https://codidact.com

happyborg, (edited ) to privacy
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Very worthwhile read on the fallacy, yes fallacy of "if you're not paying, you are the product".

@pluralistic argues that this implies you have some power from paying because you can stop.

But the reality is different: if you are locked in you won't stop so your payments have no leverage. So we can't make companies behave by paying for services.

The key is freedom from lock in, and . That's what would help, not being able to pay for privacy.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

happyborg, to ai
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

AI identifies passwords from sound of typing 😱

> Tapping in a computer password while chatting over Zoom could open the door to a cyber-attack, research suggests, after a study revealed artificial intelligence () can work out which keys are being pressed by eavesdropping on the sound of the typing...and devices with built-in microphones have become ubiquitous, the threat of cyber-attacks based on sounds has also risen.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/08/ai-could-identify-passwords-by-sound-of-keys-being-pressed-study-suggests

happyborg, to random
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

I have much to look forward to in tech in 2024, but very little of that is to do with the latest tech frenzy.

Throughout 2024 most people are going to be chasing so called AI unicorns and rapidly drowning in unicorn poo, but keep an eye on peer-to-peer projects (not fedi) including tokens (not Blockchain, not defi or web3).

There are still projects putting values before shareholder value and some are ready to take off.

happyborg, (edited ) to SafeNetwork
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

ICYMI from last night...

  • has a new CEO, Bux () ex COO.
  • beta next month
  • launch in October
  • leveraging secure, private personal storage to provide personal assistant AI based on your data without sharing it with anyone else.
  • David to retire into his garage to make robots (kidding)

happyborg, to rust
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Async Rust is a Bad Language by Matt Kline.

Very good intro and thought provoking article on and , and their use in .

It champions 's model of concurrency which takes me back. Back to the time I failed to get funding for a start-up to build an compiler targeting i386. Which was largely a ploy to get the UK government to buy me some neat kit 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, here's the article:
https://bitbashing.io/async-rust.html

ilumium, to aitools
@ilumium@eupolicy.social avatar

for paying apps directly in start menu: continues to enshittify its operating system.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/04/12/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-22635-3495-beta-channel/

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@ilumium
Imagine what a corporation would do if it had control of an implant in your brain.

Thank goodness that can never happen.

Um.

alexbfree, to privacy
@alexbfree@mastodon.social avatar

Sooner or later law does catch up with technology. Incognito mode is going to become a lot more Incognito, which can only be a good thing.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/04/01/google-will-destroy-incognito-mode-browsing-data-heres-what-that-means-for-users/

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@alexbfree only when incognito mode sends you to download a privacy respecting browser. 😉

1br0wn, to random
@1br0wn@eupolicy.social avatar

🇬🇧 “Demand [for business parks] has waned from occupiers because they need to go back into towns and city centres in order to compete for the employees,” the boss of one commercial property group said. “People don’t want to work in business parks. They want [to work] somewhere they’ll have a choice of Itsu or Pret or Starbucks.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5f5113b2-b99b-4223-ab4f-87402bf7e86c?shareToken=e9411aee27a953baecfd3fc092893ff3

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@1br0wn "choice of ..." 🤔

It's an interesting point. I worked most of my career on two 'business' parks, but they really were parks, not just in name. There were places for picnics on the grass, a volleyball net, large ponds to walk around etc. 'Country park' would be a better description for both. That was how they competed for us then.

What happens when they no longer need to compete? [Rhetorical]

cuchaz, to random
@cuchaz@gladtech.social avatar

Sheesh, Mozilla has really lost their way. Putting ads in the search bar? We already have a search engine that does that, we don't need two running at the same time.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-search-update/

Once Mozilla fully enshittifies, what else is there? Are we without hope?

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@cuchaz
I mostly use now (with the shit turned off) because was degrading in performance and stability, and became unusable on my cheap mobile. For now that's ok.

That are doing this is very sad. I am though hopeful better days are coming, with new ecosystems based on that will bypass the enclosure and unleash the next generation of openeness & creativity.

I'm literally working on a demo to publish and browse websites on , so it's not just work thinking.

happyborg, to SafeNetwork
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Next week is big week for Safe Network:

  • Monday: updated White Paper
  • Wednesday: new branding

happyborg, to random
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@jjn1
I read your summary of the We Need to Re-wild the Internet and wonder if you might want to look into a long term project which aims to open it up again.

After eighteen years of work, ten of which I've voluntarily helped with daily, the autonomous internet is set to launch this year.

I'm hoping it will level the playing field and create opportunities for innovation way beyond the 80's and TBL's breakthrough in '94. I was excited then, but even moreso now.

Happy to help if interested.

happyborg, to rust
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

I'm still taking this in.

A couple of years after starting a little project to learn , that little app is in the Debian repos and I can install it from the latest Ubuntu 24.04.

I am so chuffed. A very happyborg to have finally given something back to the community in the form of an app.

The app, is very niche, so not of interest to many but has an enthusiastic band of fans using it every day and sharing their observations by posting screenshots online. 🥳

daringfireball, to random
@daringfireball@mastodon.social avatar

★ Face the Critic: Ian Betteridge Edition
https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/face_the_critic_ian_betteridge_edition

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@daringfireball something else that's habitually ignored:

  1. signing up to pay is itself effort, a barrier, and regardless of cost it is much easier to skip that and click "Yes, take all my data and use it for anything you like". If only the question was that honest.

  2. signing up to pay is also giving away privacy, just not quite as godawfully harmful and abusive, maybe. I've not read about what happens to information gathered by payment processors, and banks etc so maybe it's really bad too.

jonny, (edited ) to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

so we have been batting around the idea of some kinda paper bot for awhile re: the question "how do we track discussions around scholarly work" and I am starting to think this paper-feeds project is the way to do it.

So say it is an AP instance and it has one primary bot user, you follow it and it follows you back. When you make a post with something that resolves to a DOI, then that post is linked to that work. Any hashtags used in that post are added to that papers keywords (assuming some basic moderation and word ban lists). Then keyword feeds are also represented as AP actors that can be followed and make a post per paper. I wonder if we can spoof the "in reply to" field to present all those posts as being replies to that paper.

So say the bot also has some simple microsyntax for linking your account to an ORCID - either directly in a profile field, or by @'ing the bot and checking a rel=me, or hell even oauth. Then you could also relate when the authors of given works talk about other works and use that as another proximity measure. Then you could make an author RSS feed/AP actor that is just the works someone publishes and optionally that they talk mention - so eg I could make an aggregate feed for the papers my friends are reading.

Then you could have instances of this feed generator follow one another and broadcast aggregated similarity information at a paper level not linked to personal information, and also opt-in info like the fedi account <-> ORCID link. Since youre on AP already you basically get that for free.

Thinking about what would be useful for social discovery of scholarly works, and there are a lot of really interesting ideas once you start actually yno doing it starting from a place of not having a product to sell or a platform to run so you avoid some of the scale and liability probs.

Edit: prior post here: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/111688727690129033
And repo here: https://github.com/sneakers-the-rat/paper-feeds/
And ill start tagging these with but that last post has too many interactions to edit now

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@hochstenbach
All the info and links are collected in a post on the #SafeNetwork forum, including the presentation video, slides etc: https://safenetforum.org/t/devcon-talk-supercharging-the-safe-network-with-project-solid/23081?u=happybeing

The demos no longer work on Safe Network as the APIs have changed but the key elements demonstrated were:

  • hosting #Solid apps on a decentralised #p2p network with just one library swapped
  • using p2p storage via LDP API in standard Solid apps
  • no dependence on ephemeral centralised DNS, web server or serverside code
    @jonny #LinkedData
cuchaz, to random
@cuchaz@gladtech.social avatar

Once again I get foiled by switching languages. :blobcatfacepalm2:

In Javascript, you have to compare strings with ===, not ==, or else you'll run into type coercion problems, because Javascript thinks 1 == "1" is a totally fine thing to be true. (it's not)

But in Kotlin, === compares identity not equality for strings. But in the JVM, string values are aggressively cached, so === actually does what you want most of the time. Unless your strings come from weird places, like JNI code. Then you get awful non-deterministic behavior that's incredibly hard to debug, but it totally goes away when you use the correct comparison operator == for strings.

sigh I'm not really as good at this whole programming thing as I should be by now.

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@cuchaz
Programming is hard.

A skill is choosing systems and tools that make it easier and making meta choices to enable you to maximise your agency in those choices.

I remember the pain I endured learning #nodeJS a decade ago, then looking at #Angular [shudder] and #React hmm.

Then the pleasure that followed learning to use #Svelte and #Rust. You'd have a hard time getting me to use anything else now. Not happening.

My debut Rust project is now part of debian / Ubuntu.

"===" 🤣
#RustLang

silverpill, to random
@silverpill@mitra.social avatar

If only there was a way to integrate peer to peer payments into federated social media without relying on Stripe and Google... Maybe someday it will be discovered!

https://mastodon.social/users/dansup/statuses/112489844955494674

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@silverpill
Social apps are planned for which has it's own payments system built in (no Blockchain).

This is , no gatekeepers or dictators, just you the network and privacy.

johnleonard, to worldnews
@johnleonard@mastodon.social avatar

Chancellor wants to build $1tn 'British Microsoft'

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt plans to raise a homegrown tech titan, but does the UK's investment landscape support that lofty ambition?

https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4207796/chancellor-build-usd1tn-british-microsoft

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@johnleonard
Because what the world, and Britain needs is another Microsoft. 🤦‍♂️

1br0wn, to ai
@1br0wn@eupolicy.social avatar

‘The head of Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services has said artificial intelligence will result in “minimal” need for call centres in as soon as a year, with ’s rapid advances set to upend a vast industry across Asia and beyond... its pipeline of projects doubled quarter over quarter to be worth $900mn to the end of March.’ https://www.ft.com/content/149681f0-ea71-42b0-b85b-86073354fb73

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@1br0wn
Is this going to be a repeat of "let's outsource all our call centres to some distant country with low pay and poor employment rights" followed by campaigns proclaiming "we've brought our call centres back to UK"?

I wonder what the environmental impact of such replacement will be.

The people making these decisions only factor in short term share price. We need them to pay when they damage people/environment, even years later.

Wld help if Post Office execs went to prison for example.

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