lori

Events of 2015 galvanized my worldview from a vague anarcho-communism to a focused anti-nationalism.

Respawned host, hoping account also respawns and toots propagate to the feudiverse.

@cstross@wandering.shop @guyjantic@infosec.exchange The source code in its current form is here: codeberg.org/n8chz/survey

@cstross@wandering.shop @guyjantic@infosec.exchange If I have a data backup it's on my old PC which is somewhere else. I'll check for it next time I'm there. I did find the source code, had to massage it quite a bit to get it working, sans capcha, so hopefully not too many spam responses. I've run it once, so as of this writing there should be one completed survey on the system. astoundingteam.com/survey/

@cstross@wandering.shop @guyjantic@infosec.exchange These Likert-scale ideological quizzes are always a psychometric shitshow. Here's my thorough panning of one a few decades ago: astoundingteam.com/2010/06/04/… So I decided to roll my own. I tried to cut down on package dealing and make each response item as clear, direct, and unambiguous as possible. Unfortunately, I am a disorganized slob and the source code is lost to the sands of time. The Wayback Machine did however capture the questions. This is what I came up with: web.archive.org/web/2016080507… I didn't include a scoring system, per se. My desire was to use clustering to identify "factions" within my "electorate" but I didn't yet know how to code that. I did play around with the correlation matrix, between questions: web.archive.org/web/2015050202… and between respondents (identified by whatever name they give for their ideology): web.archive.org/web/2015050202… I did make a little PCA map: flickr.com/photos/61180684@N07…

@RnDanger @mjd @d6 ack

@phooky @mjd @manu By that I assume you mean they are the observed, not the observer.

@EndicottAuthor @VeroniqueB99 Looks like something I saw on 911 Nashville just last night.

@therobburgessshow@newsie.social I don't trust him, but now he's the nominee apparent, and I want more than anything to have the highest possible number of Democrats in the Senate.

@MediaActivist @mayintoronto The blurb under the name Alex Gude in the sidebar is very low contrast and barely accessible to me. It's also in a very thin font. By contrast (lol) the samples of text in the Eldar color scheme are highly readable to me. Happily, contrast ratio is now part of accessibility praxis.

@MediaActivist @mayintoronto Easy on the eyes is probably subjective. I find high contrast easy on my eyes ( as in, legible, e.g. alexgude.com/blog/vim-eldar/ ),, but low contrast seems to be the fashion, although, unbeknownst to me, perhaps it is also functional for some.

@MediaActivist @mayintoronto It can certainly be done. I still think of it as a tradeoff. I imagine (perhaps incorrectly) there being a sort of efficiency frontier between slique and independence, between decor and function.

@MediaActivist @mayintoronto What do you mean by sleek? I need help understanding the technological preferences of normies. Not that I'd assume that you're a normie, but I tend to gravitate away from sleek--I think. I'm assuming for now that sleek is different from slick. I tend to be turned off by anything (tech or otherwise) that has what I think of as slick, professional production values. Inevitably it means a big budget project, and if a tech project, monetized to the hilt. If a publication or something, I expect slick, professional looking publications to represent a "pro-business" attitude. For that reason my preferred web style is raw unstyled HTML.

@profcarroll@federate.social Oh, cool, now it says "not enough resources."

@profcarroll@federate.social Perhaps, as we speak, there are portions of the AT-sphere interacting with each other, like in a golden era IRC netsplit. Here's hoping they're partying in blacksky.

@profcarroll@federate.social Down as of now, and your report above reads on my Friendica account as 2 hours ago.

@dajb I resent that humans tampering with the things they own is considered more dangerous than silicon valley business models (enshittification gimmicks) driving us around town. As far as disallowing humans from coding, I think the mathematical fact of general purpose computing is a factor on our side, but the seeming paucity of open source hardware may turn out to be our undoing. I find my allegiance rapidly shifting to the black hat side on a lot of things...

@dajb The Mythos thing or the source code thing? I'm absolutely sure the source code thing was a bit of guerrilla marketing. The Mythos thing is more interesting. How would one call their bluff?

@dajb I dunno, in hindsight I think much of the predatory business model (information asymmetry+adware+subscriptions) associated with the Internet could have been prevented.

@osma Maybe there's something to that "digital republic" mystique.

I'm undecided whether I love or hate bellingcat (the CIA stuff is just rumors right?), but I must admit I love their "show your work" style of expository writing, and almost forensic approach to uncovering facts.

I dunno I think Mastodon is largely in broadcast mode.

@Haste @bri7 @rmq @odd I think what turned all the creators into moneygrubbers was not the bell curve but the long tail.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al @detritus@todon.eu Some combination of phone banking and web banking has met my banking needs so far, but my financial life is ridiculously uncomplicated, probably considered kindergarten level by people who caught the career bus. The part of me that's always waiting for the other shoe to drop is wondering when phone banking and web banking will be phased out. Also, I haven't yet tried logging into my financial institution account on a mobile web browser. I have run into a number of businesses who are literally "we don't serve your kind" when it comes to "mobile web," and have heard that capitalism is even more exclusionary toward degoogled phone users. So far, I have been able to end-run these by simply flipping the switch to the eyestrain-inducing "desktop mode" in the mobile browser, but I don't expect that to last forever, either. If ad blocking is considered stealing, at some point non-app access will be considered stealing.

@dibi58@this.mouse.rocks @aral@mastodon.ar.al What is needed is not a brand endorsement, but strong endorsement (i.e. mandate) of open standards and open APIs, certainly for governmental functions such as paying taxes, followed perhaps by the introduction of some kind of "postal banking" which of course should also feature an open API.

@gabrielesvelto @datarama How did you lose amateur status? I've been trying to do so practically since childhood but 100.0000% of programming jobs require paid programming experience. Shameless plug codeberg.org/n8chz

@mhoye @mekkaokereke The efficiency experts can't conceive of themselves as a cost center.

@GossiTheDog Entertainment for a captive audence. Thank dog I run Linux. One of the non-systemd ones.

@Khrys@mamot.fr @fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk @0x0@hachyderm.io Everything I do other than surfing the web I could retrocompute. Both of the two (2) viable web layout engines are bloatware because the web standard is bloatware. astoundingteam.com/2020/04/21/…

@Khrys@mamot.fr @fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk I've long been saying that, instead of debating the relative merits of open source software and free software, we should have been demanding noncommercial software. Now it may be too late. FOSS is no anarchist collective, but arguably hacking is. Unfortunately too many of the hacker era hackers were ancaps and could be hired to do the dirty work of the powerful. But now that computing freedom is by definition illegal, maybe a new generation of hackers will arise. One can only hope.

@robinadams @bloor Post-GRE SQL is graduate-level SQL. SQL is absolutely squirrel, though, it's where you squirrel away the things.

@Daojoan@mastodon.social That's why I favor a non-market approach to things.

@gabek@social.gabekangas.com @danielskatz@fediscience.org "Server," in that last one, is especially doing a lot of work. Sublets within sublets, I guess. Way of the platforms.

@EricLawton@kolektiva.social @alice@lgbtqia.space @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange I aspire to become a volunteer volunteer recruiter recruiter.

@Dr_Bombay@mstdn.social

@jwz@mastodon.social @azonenberg@ioc.exchange I can take or leave ad blockers. If I (miraculously) had the budget to coordinate the development of a browser ex nihilo, the design principle throughout would be making it monetization-hostile. This would be a higher priority than standards compliance, as large portions of the standards have been drafted by the IP or adware industries to serve their own interests. Particularly, the Javascript runtime would be highly user customizable to make broadly defined categories of events loggable, bypassable, etc. I would include opt-in telemetry, but specifically to enable users of the browser to "compare notes" (in an automated way) on the multitude of domains in the asset pipelines of the websites they visit.

@jwz@mastodon.social @n3bulous@ruby.social EFF but for the Web is basically IceCat. I like IceCat, even though it's basically unusable. IceCat is unusable because of how websites are implemented, not because of how IceCat is implemented. I like to fire it up every now and then just to update my mental friend/foe list. Privacy Badger (also supplied by EFF) is also very educational in that way. The Tor Browser has a similar but different usability/unusability pattern. Retail websites block Tor exit nodes about as aggressively as news media websites accuse tracker blockers (such as Privacy Badger) of being ad blockers (which it absolutely is not). People speak of tools like Privacy Badger "breaking" certain websites. The message discipline I use reverses this. I describe tracker-dependent sites as "breaking" Privacy Badger. With such tools amplifying the contrast between "figure" and "ground" (breakage and non-breakage), you can practically see the outline of various business models. It's as entertaining as it is educational. What I really want is the pre-Web Internet. Do the young people even know that the Internet is older than the Web?

@jwz@mastodon.social @n3bulous@ruby.social I can live without a new UX. I can even live with incomplete implementation of the standards. astoundingteam.com/2020/04/21/… What I really miss is the independence. When Firefox was first airdropped into the public domain, legions of indy websites advertised it, for free. You literally can't buy that kind of enthusiasm and loyalty, but Mozilla sure knows how to piss it away. astoundingteam.com/2022/07/22/…

@climagic@mastodon.social @suetanvil@freeradical.zone I assume you're referring to the .xlsx files. Is this also true of the .xls files?

@mho@social.heise.de Nice to see that #friendica respresents.

@ChrisO_wiki@mastodon.social I shall now refer to it as 1/X

@Canucklehead@kolektiva.social @davetroy@toad.social Another one is those. Enjoy your victory lap, I guess.

@emptywheel the everything app

@Gargron@mastodon.social I have long wondered whether there’s something in the Iron Laws of Economics that dictates that the role of small businesses and startups is to serve as feeder fish in the world of commerce. Startup founders describe themselves and their ventures as “disruptive,” but it’s getting hard to identify possible outcomes for such ventures other than (1) a failed business or (2) a business that is for sale.

Certainly Stefan Molyneux is the current public face of libertarianism.

From what I've seen, when people describe themselves as "conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues" they figure treating social issues as non-political issues counts as that. Non-persecution equals allyship is one example. Another is being against government prohibition of transition (or abortion or some other crime against teh buybull), but against government funding of transition with noticeably higher priority. Or the erroneous (IMHO) belief that economic freedom is a necessary and sufficient condition for all personal freedoms. Also, self promotion is one of my weakest suits, so the "conservative on economic issues" part is also hostile to my interests. The private sector is a meritocracy of sociopathy. The best of both worlds would be the labor market conditions of the postwar era (including the post office jobs for us introverts) combined with the social freedoms that peaked during the Obama era.