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• Post #4372081

  RE: https://social.ftm.nl/@EricChrSmit/117036253076647168 #BigTech is an aberration and it is important to see it as that, rather than accepting "this is just how things are". Even in the context of our flawed democracies and economic systems the historically unprecedented concentration of power and influence in the hands of a tiny oligarchy is extraordinary. We actually have far worse and difficult #sustainability problems to solve, but we will simply not get there as long as big...

• Post #3607940

  A very tangible way to think about how much we have lost from the decades-long oligopoly strangling digital tech is to compare desktop versus mobile capabilities around #creativecoding #algorithmicart #livecoding and similar creative pursuits across music and visual creations. The #opensource frameworks available for desktops are mind boggling in diversity and capabilities, are arguably among the most sophisticated uses of personal computing. Comparatively, there is almost nothing on mobile.

• Post #3607939

  An awe-inspiring aspect of all these extaordinary space missions of the last decades (which we were the first generatio and so very lucky to witness🙏) is how *familiar* these alien landscapes, whether on a icy comet, on Mars etc. how they immediately generate a sense a "place". Which in retrospect makes perfect sense: They are all just different fragments of the same icy-rocky disk round the Sun that Earth is part of. But before these missions we never had the vision https...

• Post #3607938

  RE: https://social.coop/@afewbugs/116838061340666577 Same wish, but for us on planet Earth, not just the UK 😅 We'll probably never get rid of status symbols and conspicuous consumption has always been such a symbol, but maybe we can decouple them from massive environmental footprint.

• Post #3607937

  RE: https://mastodon.online/@BrentToderian/116841799092682308 The denser the urban environment, the less it makes sense to use cars as the primary means of transport.

• Post #3607936

  "Towards a Post-Social Media Studies" "For two decades, “social media” has been the master lens through which scholars have understood digital communication - an era defined by user-generated content, networked publics, and participatory culture. That era is drawing to a close" A timely review of the transformation of #adtech #socialmedia (which were never really "social") into algorithmically driven content delivery platforms Can the #fed...

• Post #3607935

  The #fediverse uses the terms distributed (or decentralized) #socialnetworks a lot. There is even a Wikipedia entry [1] about them 🖖 Which is fine, except it is strangely redundant term as there are no "centralized" networks. A network is either a network, or it is one of Zuck's databases to which everybody's browsers connect, *pretending* to be a network 🥶 People have been ranting about this for ever [2] but hope springs eternal 🙏 [1] https://en.wikipedi...

• Post #3423801

  People who think/wish that worsening climate fundamentals leading to #heatwave events will suddenly sensitize society to environmental #sustainability are probably counting themselves prematurely rich. Just a few years ago we had a planetary scale biological #pandemic risk event which is now almost forgotten. As soon as stress subsides prevalent cultures and mental models reassert themselves, like an elastic band that returns to its base state Real change does happen but is infuriatingly slow

• Post #3097263

  #EuroDaCe is a new project to compile a #crowdsourced database of public information about #datacenters, with a focus on facilities operating within Europe and towards estimating their environmental footprints (carbon and water usage). Critical geospatial information is sourced from #openstreetmap but must be further processed and combined towards creating the desired impact metrics. Description and first release are available here: https://www.openriskmanagement.com/eurodace/

• Post #3097262

  The concept of an "AI" PC keeps swirling around those days. This time its #Nvidia with an #arm CPU and a GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores(...) but running... windoz 🤣 Anyway, #linux support might happen at some point but unclear if there will ever be a "new era" for #personalcomputing After the explosion of #smartphones , #surveillancecapitalism and tech oligopolies the trend has been dumbification and disenfranchisement. But one *can* envision a different tim...

• Post #3097261

  The #OpenSource Strategy is an important new statement from the EU - maybe the last chance towards European #digitalsovereignty The aim is to strengthen Europe's open digital ecosystems by supporting the development, scaling, deployment and sustainability of open source technologies across both the public and private sectors. Read about: * Why it matters * Who benefits * Current challenges * Concrete approaches * The EU's Objectives * EU actions already in place https:/...

• Post #984707

  Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation, what the #fediverse calls "normies" are 99.8% of the population. In a normal distribution, being here is a statistically notable 3-sigma event🤣 Its not the case that #mastodon (or #bluesky) are "dying", but in terms of actual impact: changing the online experience for the *vast* majority of people, its obviously zilch - as has always been Yet maintaining faith in these proof-of-concept projects feels important. Its...

• Post #942659

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@pojntfx/116345677794218793 The cynical take is that the current furore about #digitalsovereignty focuses on cloud and office software procurement by the public sector only because there exist some European providers that could gain market share. Mobile-linked identity and payments is super essential for vast numbers of Europeans, but since there is hardly any competitor to the US duopoly, everybody just keeps quiet as if it's a non-issue. This is non-sensi...

• Post #715681

  Seems like an important discovery... The belief that life ingredients and the processes that make them are unique to Earth might be the last anthropocentric myth to fall? Life as a fundamental something that happens in multiple places (whenever the physical environment is conducive of course) makes more logical sense. https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/16427903

• Post #715680

  In the end we have to admit that we (as societies) are suffering much more than needed because we are still culturally very bad at politics. Not the performative cheerleading politics and polarisation around arbitrary "issues" invented for distraction, but the deep politics of directly debating and addressing the stuff that really matters: societal welfare within planetary boundaries. No reason to be defeatist, it's not like it is known how to do this. #sustainability...

• Post #671307

  RE: https://mastodon.opencloud.lu/@BrideOfLinux/116211610043917134 The dramatic and terminal twist is that nobody who had any leverage over this choice (politicians, regulators, investors etc.) pushed back when it was still possible. Not only in the US, where this abomination originated, but nowhere else either. It's only full blown fascism when larger parts of society partake in the moral failings of some power group. And this is, alas, what we have witnessed.

• Post #671304

  The focus of early web was text (http is #hypertext after all). Text is powerful. You can share poetry with text. Searching text made Google a giant. Sharing snippets of text made Twitter a minor giant. But once money chased eyeballs, the focus changed to visual media. Less cognitive load. Text requires literacy, image does not. The early "lack of vision" was corrected with acquisitions. Google bought Youtube. Facebook bought Instagram. Finally TikTok came along. Pulp fictio...

• Post #307643

  Many developers still treat #python as another programming language. But there are now many hints that we are witnessing a new phenomenon, a new mode of interacting with computers. Not as general but more widely accessible. Evidence the huge popularity of #jupyter notebooks which are among the most downloaded visual studio code extensions. Sometimes people say Python is the new excel but thats not quite capturing it. Its more the extension of #linux sysadmin scripting to include #datascience

• Post #307642

  In this 20 min video Brett Scott explains clearly and in non-technical terms what is at stake as monetary systems go digital, the role of cash, private and state digital money and stablecoins. Convenience vs resilience, surveillance and power and a great casino chip analogy. #wero #DigitalEuro #digitalcash #stablecoins #tegenlight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZpfhvfJ3s

• Post #275041

  The early Web had a quality that has been lost ever since: it was *simple* Download #httpd , #netscape write some #html by hand and boom, the concept of a networked digital society is born. It first started going pear shaped with #LAMP . The complexity of a full blown database was not justified for most use cases. As proven decades later by the popularity of #sqlite and #ssg approaches. The final blow was when #bigtech got into the act. Immense complexity for the simplest things became a moat

• Post #167760

  In the early days people would #dualboot #linux on windows desktops for years before eventually commiting to switch 100% Maybe the same approach could work now for #android mobile phones given pure linux phones still struggle to be daily drivers? Assuming a fast and seamless switch function, it could be a practical way to smooth the transition: Keep access to critical apps while test driving and helping the development of truly free and #opensource mobile computing. https://www.theregister.c...