tad_lispy

joined 1 year ago
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I'd like to invite you to a Better Tech Club workshop that we organize next Tuesday, that is 2026-05-26, at 18:00 in Bussum Library. The topic is Mastodon: a Social Network That Respects You.

Big tech platforms owned by US American billionaires or Chinese mega-corporations bring havoc on our societies - addiction, over-consumption, violations of privacy, misinformation, and growing polarization that threaten democratic processes. We want to present a viable alternative - a social network owned and controlled by community, decentralized, free of harmful algorithms, invasive advertisement and full of real people with interesting things to say. Clearly a better tech.

We will deliver a short (15 minutes) introduction, explaining what is Mastodon and the related concept of Fediverse and why all of this matters. Later, we will divide into smaller groups to discuss, set up accounts, and connect with each other and other interesting people. Feel free to share this invitation with your friends.

What Is Better Tech Club?

We are a small but growing community in Het Gooi, the Netherlands, advocating and supporting each other to use ethical technology (i.e. not US American Big Tech). More information at https://bettertechclub.eu/.

Every few weeks we plan to organize a small workshop to highlight an important issue intersecting society, politics, and technology - and offer practical advice.

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by tad_lispy to c/esc
 

This episode of Corecursive podcast discusses in practical (but not very technical) terms how big tech social media addictive algorithms work, their history and evolution, and makes a strong case for regulation.

The AI slopped cover image is relevant to the topic. Please consider it before down-voting.

Corey told me about his AI cat reel problem. He found these AI-generated cat videos hilarious. Who makes these? He kept sending them to his wife. Then he tried to stop watching and he couldn’t.

So I went down the rabbit hole of how social media algorithms actually work. It starts simple. Upvote, downvote, sort by time. But by 2017 Facebook has a metric that quietly reshapes what two billion people see. Then a leaked playbook lands, and a CEO takes the stand in Los Angeles.

Today is an investigation into what happens when the algorithm knows you better than you know yourself.

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Declarative NixOS containers (blog.beardhatcode.be)
 

Everything you need to know about declarative containers in NixOS with a simple example to demonstrate logging in, mounting volumes and forwarding ports.

It's a really elegant way to isolate different services running on a single server. Very well written!

[–] tad_lispy 3 points 6 months ago

Proton is not a social medium. As to "how high", the lawmakers have to decide on that, hopefully after some research and public consultations. It's not an unprecedented problem.

Another criterion might be revenue. If a company monetises users attention and makes above certain amount, put extra moderation requirements on them.

[–] tad_lispy 4 points 8 months ago

I imagine ability to fork, comment, open an issue or a merge (pull) request, do a code review etc from an account on one instance to a project on another. That would enable true decentralisation of software development. It was one of the original promises of Git, but was lost with the emergence of GitHub. With such federated network of forges each developer, or a group working on a project, could run their own server and collaborate with anyone else, without registering accounts on hundreds of services. I'd love that.

0
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by tad_lispy to c/esc
 

We saved 76% on our cloud bills while tripling our capacity by migrating to Hetzner from AWS and DigitalOcean. Digital Society is a not-for-profit cooperative helping you get your projects off the ground and realise the value of your data.

[–] tad_lispy 5 points 8 months ago

The project is very interesting. After quickly browsing their website I understand that it's a kind of a framework to build fediverse apps. It's implemented in Elixir programming language and uses Postgres as a database. Looks like they are putting a lot is emphasis on community and cooperative aspects.

[–] tad_lispy 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You are talking about civilizations, but it seems to me that a more appropriate word would be "empires", which in a sense is an antithesis of "civilization". Most people around the world don't have imperial aspirations, and yet they do live in civilized societies. That extends to most governments, today and historically. Perhaps peaceful societies leave less footprint. Empires need a lot of propaganda to justify their antisocial actions - things like monuments, colossal architecture, anthems, heroic poems. Naturally their spectacular violence attracts more of our attention. But I don't think imperialism was ever a norm.

Cooperation was achieved at a gun point. There is no solidarity even in communist regimes.

That's an assertion without any merit. Especially in oppressive regimes solidarity is what keeps society together. I understand that you are writing from USA, so I don't blame you for this dark and cynical worldview. My impression from a safe distance is that breaking of basic and natural solidarity and voluntary cooperation is an intentional effort of a tiny class of imperialists in your country. They want you cynical, hopeless and alienated. Don't give up the hope!

[–] tad_lispy 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

How do you know it's "due to slavery and violence" rather then "despite slavery and violence"? It seems more likely to me that civilisation is rooted in cooperation and solidarity, while slavery and violence is a cancer that grows on top of it, and hurts almost everyone involved.

[–] tad_lispy 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, we will have much success converting people from WhatsApp and shit by telling them to run their own servers /s. If a non technical friend asks me what to use instead and I'll advise them to use Matrix, you can be sure they'll go to app store, install Element and register at matrix.org. So I do want to know if it's operated by Mossad before I send my friends there.

[–] tad_lispy 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm absolutely for free software, but this statement is very simplistic. Do "we" control software running on matrix.org, where most users have accounts? Or do "we" control what binaries of Element are being deployed to App Store or Play Store? Just because something has a free software licence, doesn't mean it's not important who the maintainers and major developers are. One of the important features of free software is transparency, which allow us as community to learn and discuss who and how develops the software. I'm not saying Matrix is bad. I'm still using it. I just want to know more about it and who's running the show, and hear other peoples opinions and arguments.

[–] tad_lispy 2 points 9 months ago

The sentence is a bit vague, but I would read it differently. I think they mean "50% of queries made in France", kind of like 50% market share. That would be very ambitious though.

[–] tad_lispy 5 points 9 months ago

What's a better alternative? Which other platforms are you referring to? How do they compare in terms of features and adoption? From all the decentralised, e2e encrypted platforms I tried, matrix is the only one more or less accessible for normies.

[–] tad_lispy 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

That wouldn't apply to conversations you have within a group that hosts their own server, would it? Like within a family or a club.

[–] tad_lispy 3 points 9 months ago

I started a discussion about this post here:

https://europe.pub/post/4315776

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submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by tad_lispy to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

The article alleges that Matrix:

  • has links to Israeli intelligence.
  • sends a lot of sensitive data to matrix.org servers, even when Synapse is self-hosted.

Is this information accurate?

To be clear, I'm not saying Matrix is bad. I'm still using it. I just want to know more about it and who's running the show, and hear other people's opinions and arguments. Thanks for all the insightful comments.

[–] tad_lispy 9 points 9 months ago

Fixed. Thanks!

 

Thunderbird Pro will offer Thundermail email service, appointment scheduling, file sharing, and maybe even AI features. Email will be hosted on German servers.

 

European search engines Qwant and Ecosia said on Wednesday that they have both started serving search queries through an index they developed together, Staan, which aims to be a cheaper, more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Bing.

Last year, French privacy-focused search engine Qwant struck a joint venture with German non-profit search engine Ecosia, to develop a European search index. Called European Search Perspective (EUSP), the JV now aims to serve around 50% of French queries and 33% of German queries by the end of the year.

Qwant said it is using the new index to power some of its features, like AI summaries for search, and Ecosia has plans to add some AI features soon to its platform, too.

EUSP is also in talks with companies to spur the adoption of its index for enabling search within apps. Notably, it is targeting chatbots, presenting Staan as a cheaper alternative to Google and Bing.

“If you’re using ChatGPT or any other AI chatbot, they all do knowledge grounding with web search […] our index can power deep research and AI summary features. Google and Bing’s solutions are also pricey, and our index can offer power search features at a tenth of the cost,” Christian Kroll, CEO of Ecosia, told TechCrunch.

EUSP, like Proton, is pushing to develop a European tech stack that doesn’t rely on technology from the U.S. or China.

“The timing could not be more urgent. The outcome of the 2024 U.S. election has reminded European policymakers and innovators just how exposed Europe remains when it comes to core digital infrastructure. Much of Europe’s search, cloud, and AI layers are built on American Big Tech stacks, putting entire sectors – from journalism to climate tech – at the mercy of political or commercial agendas,” the companies said in a statement.

Kroll added that through this index, combined with European privacy laws, EUSP can offer a more privacy-friendly search solution as compared to its U.S. counterparts.

 

The Danish Ministry of Digitization is to completely abandon Microsoft in the coming months and use Linux instead of Windows and switch from Office 365 to LibreOffice. Minister Caroline Stage (Moderaterne) announced this in an interview with the daily newspaper Politiken. It comes just a few days after the country's two largest municipalities initiated similar steps. This summer, half of the ministry's employees will be equipped with Linux and LibreOffice. If everything goes as expected, the entire ministry will be free of Microsoft by the fall, Politiken summarizes.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/27182683

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28006908

Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice.

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