Mastodon Feed: Posts

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

First, you should read @mnot's most recent post:

https://www.mnot.net/blog/2026/02/20/open%5Fsystems.html

Then, let's discuss "permissionless innovation" and what he called recently "the power of 'no'":

https://www.mnot.net/blog/2026/02/13/no.html

A short thread thisaway... 👇

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

Last year I pointed out that Apple has effectively broken this permissionless structure and hollowed out the internet's standards bodies:

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-internet-community/

This situation persists, and it matters because what Apple (and to a lesser extent, Google's Android team) are doing here is to enact an *enclosure agenda*.

The enclosure agenda works by lacing open and standardised technologies with proprietary entrypoints, backed by legal agreements everyone who wants to play must sign.

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

In the beginning of a platform's life, this is an empty-ish threat. Platforms that aren't monopolies don't have the power to do more than rattle sabers regarding the the embedded patent, copyright, and breach of contract consequences of these agreements. But what happens when the situation flips? When market power begets legal and lobbying might? When firms become comfortable corrupting governments to protect profits?

That's the situation in our pockets. Every smartphone perpetuates enclosure.

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

In an earlier era, the web stood in opposition to this sort of enclosure. Open operating systems enabled browsers to go "over the top" of OS vendors and liberate essential system capabilities, re-standardizing capabilities that had their open, low-level representations overgrown in a thicket of proprietary OS goo. Browsers could create a tunnel of IP safety down to those essential features, standardising them, and making them interoperable.

And it's interoperability that gatekeepers *hate*.

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

The path to technology that serves open societies (qua Popper) flows directly through open sysetms of the sort @mnot describes. And through those open systems, we can achieve the goal of interoperability, and through it, portability.

And as @pluralistic will tell you, that's how you fix the outsized power of these petty tyrants. The gatekeepers only get away with extraction because they denigrate (and sometimes dynamite) the foundations of portable, interoperable computing: open access to APIs.

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

Apple and Google arrive at enclosure differently thanks to their differing relationships to hardware ODMs, but the contours are similar: you, a developer, must pay a vig to them to get access to essential APIs, either on the front-end, or through a cut of revenue, and no permissionless innovation will be tolerated once it becomes big enough to catch the eye of the app store taxman.

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

To make it explicit, these actions are *corrupt*. They are corrupt because they almost always require the application of government power (and/or unjust inaction) to create situations in which public capacity is abused for private ends.

Or said differently, the way modern mobile duopolists make money is by closing off access to APIs from browsers (and other metaplatforms) that could disrupt them with openness through competition.

And they require government support to maintain unjust power.

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

The mobile duopolists fear and loathe the potential of interoperability with the intensity of a thousand suns and the briefs of a thousand lawyers. As I type this they (primarily Apple) are doing are doing a dozen underhanded and shitty things to keep anything from threatening the monopoly they've declared on standardized, largely Open Source, features and capabilities of underlying hardware and OSes.

Want access to a USB device? Or to make games? Or to access MIDI controllers? Pay up.

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

"Heads up! we're migrating your stolen data!"

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

what in the data-privacy-hell is this?

i don't know who any of you people are!

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

@NfNitLoop there is a missing comma after the "tags" array

jwz wrote:

As I continue hitting delete on the crap that is sliding right past spamassassin without a fuss, I have come to the conclusion that that there are simply too many web sites.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Physics is so unforgiving.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/02/19/youve-convinced-me-mr-feynman/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTTQmhvDqJI

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

We're in our golden years. We don't need constant hand-holding.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/02/19/im-not-going-to-be-an-entitled-old-man/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Waveform Podcast is the first I've seen give a disclosure that Anthropic has run ads with them in the past, and that that no one at waveform has any monetary ties to any AI companies.

https://youtu.be/4rZXRXOv6xw

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

@db The JSON is valid for me? (Whether or not it's a valid Nostr event, though, I'm not sure.)

I got into nostr for a while and wrote some tools for it. But, the protocol/conventions are too open to spam, and the community (un?relatedly?) a bit too full of crypto-coin bros.

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

I feel like I want to get back into music, specifically my own collection, in a different way than I have been—so I’m trying out Longplay, an album-focused Apple Music app.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/longplay/id1495152002

Boosted by jwz:
mattbors@mstdn.ca ("Matt Bors") wrote:

I feel like this should be widely available over-the-counter medication / by @mcfadden
https://inthesetimes.com/article/i-went-to-pedophile-island-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-shirt

zkat@toot.cat wrote:

RE: https://anticapitalist.party/@marnanel/116093865204914505

There's a #CavesOfQud t-shirt for that: https://mightymerch.store/products/hated-by-baboons-tshirt

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
InternetEh@dads.cool ("Sid 🇵🇸") wrote:

Say it with me now:

AI is designed to *sound* correct
It is not designed to *be* correct

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

The Threads interpolation is a big stain on Mastodon's brand. It's the type of thing that tends to bubble back up every so often.

When it does, all the newcomers will absolutely feel betrayed because Mastodon positioned itself as the anti-corporate alternative.

Personally, until Mastodon Org makes the terms of their relation with Meta crystal clear, I can't be an advocate for it.

Because Meta will set its sights back on the Fediverse one day.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

And yes, "when the butter hits the baguette" is a trademarked phrase.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Mastodon has a history of co-opting the language of revolution in its marketing.

But when the butter hits the baguette, when it's time to do a revolution, Mastodon Org side with current power structures (Meta) and gaslight us into thinking they were never anti-corporate. 🫠🫠

If a post with the title "Mastodon is for the people" was published just three years ago, there'd be outrage over the hypocrisy.

Aahhhggg. It's so frustrating. 😭

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/mastodon-is-for-the-people/

Boosted by jwz:
cmconseils ("Laura Manach :bongoCat:") wrote:

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

I have been teaching genetics for so long that I can now teach it while on diazepam with my back covered with lidocaine patches.

I think.

I'll have to find out from my students later.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I fucking love Shrinking. It's one of few shows that depicts people of color battling mental illness.

That's important imo because we had a whole decades worth of mental illness discourse on social media that really didn't include brown people.

And now that we're about to see an entire generation of traumatized Latin kids, I wonder how this country will respond to them? I fear we get Super Predator 2.0.

Boosted by ratatui_rs@fosstodon.org ("Ratatui"):
orhun@fosstodon.org ("Orhun Parmaksız 👾") wrote:

Gave a full conference talk on a 320x240 screen today.

Running Rust & Ratatui 🦀🐁

RustNation UK was amazing, thanks everyone! ♥️

#rustlang #ratatui #conference #rustnation #rustnationuk

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
Daojoan ("JA Westenberg") wrote:

The people excited about vibe coding are, almost by definition, people who were already interested in building things, and they're projecting their own enthusiasm onto a general population that has repeatedley demonstrated a preference for buying solutions over building them.

And why wouldn't they?

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/ai-twitters-favourite-lie-everyone-wants-to-be-a-developer/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Remember Email Forgiveness Day? A day when we're forgiven for all the unanswered emails sitting in our inbox?

Wouldn't it be cool to have an Email Appreciation Day? A day when we collectively email the authors and creators of our favorite blogs and personal websites?

Not that we should need a specific day to do that, but it would be nice to spread that specific type of joy—unexpectedly receiving an email from someone who likes your creations.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
shellsharks@shellsharks.social wrote:

@fromjason Not saying you have to do this, but I’ve really liked sticking all the nice things people say about my site (or w/e) in one li’l place so I can go back and get a pick-me-up when I need.

https://shellsharks.com/kindness

Note: I try to document each entry in a way that preserves privacy.