Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
m2m@sonomu.club ("Simone S") wrote:

Surveillance as a Service.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Went to two frontend conferences in as many days, and learned a lot; not all of it what the presenters hoped I'd take away:

https://infrequently.org/2025/06/conferences-clarity-and-smokescreens/

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@mark
"stares in infosec"

Yeah well, I think this is a "two kinds of people" situation.

1: The computer is a tool that I own. It is a force amplifier of my will. When I say, "Give me a void* to the frame buffer", that's just *table stakes*. It does that, or it does not *belong* to me.

2: You own nothing, computers are appliances for access to corporate services. You must be prevented from exploiting their full capabilities at all costs. It's for your own good: you might do something illegal!

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

One more thing- reading these old blogs it's wild to think that #Facebook was once considered a fairly "private" platform, so much that it was a selling point for some.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090213175451/www.webmonkey.com/blog/OpenSocial%5FIs%5FDoomed:%5FMarc%5FCuban%5Fs%5FFacebook-Yahoo%5FMashup%5FFantasies

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Anyway. It's late. I'm rambling. End of thread.

Here's a picture of a cup of coffee I made this morning in my favorite mug gifted to me by my niece.

I made the Cuban-style coffee in my moka pot :)

https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/the-bliss-of-good-enough-an-ode-to-my-moka-pot/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Looking back, no one could've predicted just how good Facebook would become at data mining our personal information.

Would opening Facebook up so that social activity is indexable on Google help prevent the surveillance capitalist system we have today? Surely not.

Knowing what we know now, do we *really* want our posts, likes, comments, and shares available for anyone to quantify, analyze, use against us etc?

Is that the same as open accessible knowledge on the web? I don't think so.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

It's facisnating to see how the #OpenWeb ideology was formed in the late aughts. Technologists and early Internet tech personalities have long believed in open and free information.

That's great for academia, and the accumulation of humanity's knowledge. But when we extend that ideology to personal data we end up with what we have now.

Open Web evangelists criticizing early Facebook for being *too private* is an incredible heap of irony.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

> I wanted to clarify my comments about Facebook’s similarities to AOL. I don’t think Facebook is a bad company or that they won’t be successful; they seem like smart passionate people who genuinely care about making a great space for their users

No shade to Kottke but this sounds exactly like what people are saying about #Bluesky right now.

https://kottke.org/07/07/facebook-vs-aol-redux

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

> Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore.

That didn't really happen but Kottke was right about the AOL comparison

https://kottke.org/07/06/facebook-is-the-new-aol

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Reading vintage tech blogs is my love language

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Finding some really great vintage blog posts tonight

> I feel very strongly that we already have the world’s best public social networking tool right in front of us: it’s called the internet.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/avoiding-walled-gardens-on-the-internet/

#OpenSocialWeb #Fediverse

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Just spent some minutes figuring out and fixing borked mp3 tags in an album I bought off Amazon. Felt like 00s never went away. But really, I'll gladly take having to tweak things manually once in a while over what we have now as state-of-the-art consumerized software.

(eyeD3 worked for me, if you must know.)

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
ludoloon@mastodon.gamedev.place ("LudoLoon Studio") wrote:

Make the web unprofitable again

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
BlackStag@ni.hil.ist ("Black Stag") wrote:

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I want to write a novel on this thing

From: @keyboards
https://mastodon.social/@keyboards/114752854780857356

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

This remains super cool: https://chartscss.org/

Boosted by jwz:
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:

remember that Creative Commons has fallen for NFT and shitcoin grifts before, when they let Filecoin bribe them into NFT land

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/11/26/creative-commons-is-shilling-nfts/

and EFF was crawling up coiners' arses at the same time too, reminding us that these are Silicon Valley libertarian organisations that are extremely into the corporate funding

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

@slightlyoff I have been lamenting to friends that I keep seeing people fall for slick looking web sites that claim their tech solves all your problems. Then you try to use said tech and it’s ♨️💩

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

Me: I wish there could be more nuance around what “AI” covers in the groups I’m in, so interesting, non-exploitative uses don’t get angrily dismissed.

Also me: If one more app shoves “now with AI!” in my face I will burn Silicon Valley to the ground.

Boosted by jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi"):
jswatz_tx@threads.net ("John Schwartz") wrote:

Damn, we've lost another great Texan. Bill Moyers, who "could interpret Boston to Austin,” has died. https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/26/bill-moyers-lbj-pbs-broadcasting-dead/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/26/bill-moyers-lbj-pbs-broadcasting-dead/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/06/26/bill-moyers-lbj-pbs-broadcasting-dead/

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Every engineer worthy of the title adopts one unshakeable article of faith: POPULARITY IS NOT A QUALITY METRIC

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
jk ("josef") wrote:

a lot of younger people don't know that the term 'youtuber' comes from back in the mid-2000s when we did actually use potatoes as cameras

jwz wrote:

I honestly thought that "grab a screenshot" would be a straightforward and non-controversial thing. I mean how could it not be?

But you kick over any Wayland rock, and this is the kind of absolutely bugfuck insanity you find underneath.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
alberto_cottica@mastodon.green ("Alberto Cottica") wrote:

Ye Gods. @pluralistic goes straight to the heart: advances in surveillance technology make it possible for the oligarchs to push our society deeper jnto democratic debt. Until... What? 100 families eat UK the entire world's wealth? The guillotines come out?

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114750843996343134

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
b0rk@jvns.ca ("Julia Evans") wrote:

If you want to get "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" (or any other zine!) and you're in a country with a weaker currency than the US (India, Brazil, etc), there's a discount to make the zines more affordable. You can see it in action here:

https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal/

If you're in a country this applies to, you should see something like this:

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
tay@transfem.social ("Tay") wrote:

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I'm incredibly bored by the narrative that Trump had anything to do with the militarization of our police, or the fascist sensibilities of #ICE.

Trump has built *nothing*. He is a child playing with his father's loaded gun.

If and when we survive his reign, that loaded gun will still exist, waiting for the next wanna-be dictator to come along and cock the hammer.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

It's been a full decade since Trump entered our political consciousness. Ten years and 2 won elections. And yet, it's the same bullshit from the liberal voices who made their name off our fears in 2016. Strategies haven't changed. No lessons learned outside of the constant reaffirmation of our intellectual superiority over #MAGA

I'm incredibly bored by it. There's been an uptick in class consciousness but you wouldn't know it listening to the average liberal political influencer.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

✔️tomato plants trimmed
✔️tree colonization attempt beaten off
✔️hands & knees properly dirtied

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Took this upcoming novel from @joe_hill with me on vacation to read. No spoilers here - you'll want to experience it for yourself - but I will say this: When they talk about "natural born storytellers," it's Joe Hill they're talking about.