rysiek

rysiek, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to Bulgaria

If you are a citizen of any EU Member State, I implore you to consider signing the Tax-the-Rich citizens' initiative:
https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/

The idea is to tax the super rich and then use the money for climate transition. :blobcathappypaws:

This is an official EU citizens' initiative, meaning that if it reaches certain thresholds, it will have to be considered by the EU institutions. That's a really powerful tool, if actually used.

So we should use it. :blobcatcool:

🧵⬇️

#TaxTheRich #EU

rysiek, 1 year ago to random

Seriously though, fedi was built by furries, trans and queer folk, disabled neurodivergent people.

This is the reason the culture here is what it is. Why CWs are a thing. Why image descriptions are a thing. Why privacy matters here. Why moderation tools not only exist, but are usable — and used.

If you had joined and asked yourself "wow, how come this place is so chill and kinda… nice?" — that's thanks to all the nice people from communities some people call "weird".

So #KeepFediWeird.

rysiek, 10 months ago to random

"typing speed"?

I prefer the term: "terminal velocity"

rysiek, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to random

This is your irregular reminder #Adobe are fucking dicks:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3xk3p/adobe-tells-users-they-can-get-sued-for-using-old-versions-of-photoshop

> Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop

We need #FLOSS tools to get to the point where they can replace Adobe tools. Open alternatives are great, but they are sadly not there yet to replace Adobe tools for professionals.

And won't be unless projects like @inkscape get enough funding to develop to a point of being viable alternatives.

Yes, it is in no small part about the money.

rysiek, 10 months ago to fediverse

Hug your #FediAdmin today.

There's a lot of shit flying in the #Fediverse lately and a lot of times perspective seems to get lost. Yes, there are things we need to talk about, and yes there are things we will not agree on. And that's okay.

But leave the pitchforks and torches out of this.

Fedi admins put in the hours and effort and emotion into making fedi happen. Sometimes they make decisions we might not agree with. We should criticize, but we should not pile-on.

rysiek, 6 months ago to Iceland

Apparently, according to police estimates, there were ~100.000 people at the Women's Strike today in Reykjavík.

That's pretty wild when you consider that the whole country is less than 400.000 people.

#Iceland

rysiek, 5 months ago to random

Revolution might not be televised, but apparently genocide will be mathwashed.

From the team behind "we kill people based on metadata", a new exciting project: "we kill people based on… we don't even know what, it's a 2bln parameters black box that we have no real way of actually understanding."

> The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/the-pentagon-is-moving-toward-letting-ai-weapons-autonomously-decide-to-kill-humans/articleshow/105420637.cms

rysiek, 9 months ago to random

"We just updated our services. Pray we don't update them any further."

rysiek, 1 month ago to fediverse

Happy seventh anniversary of "Six reasons Mastodon won't survive" to all who celebrate:
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive

#Fediverse #Mastodon

rysiek, 10 months ago to mastodon

"#Mastodon is failing" so hard that #Fediverse just crossed 4mln monthly active accounts (based on the-federation.info). :blobcatgiggle:

This is already slightly more than Nov and Dec #TwitterMigration waves' peaks. And it is still going up.

What I find particularly important is that it seems like a lot of this is not new accounts, but people returning to accounts created before and then left unused.

I expect this to be a more resilient kind of growth. Less of a drop after it peaks.

rysiek, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

If you need to "clarify" your Terms of Service (ToS) in a blog-post, your ToS are shit and need to be re-written.

✨ I don't give a crap about your blogpost. If it's not in the ToS, it's not binding. ✨

If you think I should understand your ToS in a specific way, great, there exists a perfect place to put that clarification in: your ToS.

And if you think your ToS are getting too long? Well that is hardly my fault, now is it.

rysiek, 7 months ago to infosec

So wait building all these "secure" chat apps on a browser engine packaged in a thin layer of UI, with its insane number of dependencies and the gigantic, immense attack surface that this entails, was somehow a bad idea?

Who knew! Who could have foreseen this! Shocking, really.

#InfoSec #Electron #WebP

rysiek, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to fediverse

Well if it isn't cryptocurrency spam coming from the biggest, open instance on the #Fediverse. 👀

I wonder if this is at all related to challenges with moderating an instance of checks notes 200k active accounts? Or with moderating new accounts on the only instance actively promoted in the official apps? :thinking_rotate:

Thankfully we can always defederate! What's that? It's the biggest instance so there are real concerns about a lot of people losing connections? Whodda thunk it!

rysiek, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to ai

I wonder if the whole #AI thing will finally convince artists that modern #copyright regime was never meant to protect them.

It was meant to protect the middlemen. The Amazons, the Spotifies, the Sonys, the Disneys. The film studios, the publishing houses.

Now the middlemen figured out they own basically all of art, and that they can just train a computer on that, to replace artists with a piece of software.

And then stop paying artists even the pittance they were being paid so far.

🧵

rysiek, 7 months ago to random

Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible
https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

> The numbers confirm what many of us have long suspected — that Twitter wasn’t worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic

:thaenkin:

/via @cguess

rysiek, 9 months ago to random

"I'm afraid I can't let you browse that Dave."

#WebEnvironmentIntegrity #FuckGoogle

---

CC By SA 4.0, based on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000_-_Sharper_Reflections.svg

SVG version here:
https://rys.io/static/chrome9000-by-rysiek-cc-by-sa-4.0.svg

rysiek, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to fediverse

Oh snap, #Discourse is adding #ActivityPub support!
https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-support-for-discourse/90921/108

#Fediverse

rysiek, 9 months ago to random

Climate catastrophe is now, just not evenly distributed.

rysiek, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

I am seeing more and more images without alt-text, or with alt-text that is not useful ("a photo", for example). :sadcat1:

Come on, people, we can do better. And the reason I know we can is because we used to do much better on this front. :blobcatcoffee:

If an image is worth posting, it is worth being described. It only takes a few seconds. :blobcateyes:

Edit: yes, adding alt-text is work, and sometimes there is no spoons, but people can help — see: https://kind.social/@cy/111250447586674080

rysiek, 1 year ago to fediverse

Mastodon instance: <goes invite-only>
People: Mastodon will fail! This is unacceptable! Bad UX! They don't want us there! 😠

BlueSky: <is invite-only>
People: 😍 Can I haz?.. 🥺 Notice me senpai! Such elite! Many professional! :blobaww:

🤣

#Fediverse #Mastodon #BlueSky

rysiek, 4 months ago to threads

Now would be a good time for instance admins to clearly communicate with people on their instances about some things:

1. Are they going to block Threads?

2. Are they going to defederate from instances that do not block Threads?

3. When? How much time do people have to move accounts before they potentially lose contact with their friends?

Whatever you plan to do as an admin, please communicate your plan to your instance community.

The sooner, the better. :blobcat:

#Threads #Fediverse

rysiek, 10 months ago to random

With "AI-generated content" all over the place, perhaps more people will get it why I objected and continue to object to using the term "user-generated content" for anything, anywhere, ever.

It's people, not "users."
It's created, not "generated."

And often it's just as creative as any "serious art."

Of course, tech robber barons want to make it seem like it's some undetermined grey goo, "content" to be mined and filtered and "engaged with", instead.

#LanguageMatters

rysiek, 2 months ago to Russia

2003 Yuri Shchekochikhin
2003 Sergei Yushenkov
2006 Anna Politkovskaya
2006 Alexander Litvinenko
2009 Stanislav Markelov
2009 Anastasia Baburova
2009 Natalia Estemirova
2009 Sergei Magnitsky
2015 Boris Nemtsov
2024 Alexei Navalny

#Russia #Putin

rysiek, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to fediverse

#Mastodon monoculture problem
https://rys.io/en/168.html

> Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole #Fediverse, on a single instance.

> Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.

🧵/1

rysiek, 11 days ago to random

Oh my Dog, @baldur yet again hits multiple nails square in their heads:
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/react-electron-llms-labour-arbitrage/

🔥 🔥 🔥

> Tech management will sacrifice technological progress – performance, design, and general product effectiveness – if it disempowers labour.

> If you’re unlucky enough to have to use any of this garbage we’re shipping and calling ‘software’, now you know why it all feels a bit shit.

> This is what unions were made for

🔥 🔥 🔥