It's tantalisingly close... 😍 LibreOffice 7.1 will be released in a few weeks, and our community is putting the final touches to it! Help them to polish the new features and iron-out any bugs before release: https://qa.blog.documentfoundation.org/2021/01/20/libreoffice-7-1-rc2-is-available-for-testing/
Der seltsam leere Tag nach dem #rC3 Weltuntergang. War eine wunderbare 2d World. Bereue jetzt nur irgendwie die Zeit, die ich mir doch Vorträge angehört habe, anstatt einfach nur in der Welt rumzulaufen.
Es bleibt ein "Warum haben wir sowas eigentlich nicht dauerhaft?" Frust, weil die retro Kombi aus pixeligen Avateren und Webcams sich soviel mehr nach dem Internetz anfühlt, das ich mir mal ersehnt habe, bevor diese ganz anderen Vi$ionen real wurden.
Everyone is busy preparing for 2021 so I'll make it short: a big THANK YOU 🙏 to everyone who cares enough to support my work on #emacs #orgmode, either on https://liberapay.com/bzg/ or on https://github.com/sponsors/bzg
Happy new #freesoftware year! 🎉
For anyone interested in the history of RiseUp.net, one of the oldest community-hosting collectives using and recommending exclusively free code software, here's a 2020 interview with some of the collective members:
https://pramen.io/en/2020/06/interview-with-riseup-tech-collective/
Note the comments on the role of Indymedia in their genesis and growth.
Computer users all around the world care about free software. See their messages in these videos, and then: join the FSF! We need 195 more members to meet our goal of 500 new members: https://u.fsf.org/38e https://www.fsf.org/appeal/
Dear web developers and admins,
please stop embedding Google's hideous #ReCaptcha into your websites. Its algorithm is faulty, forcing regular users to click dozens or even hundreds of fire hydrants, bicycles, or traffic lights each day. It puts a 'suspicious activity' flag on users who won't obey to Google's business model - such as people who don't sign into Chrome, use anonymity VPNs, or use browser extensions to suppress common tracking mechanisms. Enough is enough. Stop it.
Hi #rC3 enthusiasts. Tonight we'll have another load test for our infrastructure. We would be happy if many of you'll attend. The more the merrier! Participation details will be published on events.ccc.de at 4pm CET (16:00 Uhr). (please share)
I’ve been thinking a lot about various creative reactions to the absurdity that we all carry supercomputers in our pocket but have to keep upgrading even to retain functionality because software gets worse and surveillance gets more pervasive
Things like low-power computing (Rpi and friends, microcomputers, retro computing, etc), some of the solarpunk stuff, the “smolnet” (Gopher and Gemini and the like), and so on seem to be interesting ways of highlighting that things could be other than they are
Is there an umbrella term for this? Is someone collecting projects that relate to “computing designed to work well even with low-performance/low-power gear”?
Got tired of complaining about @fdroidorg being "permanently understaffed" – and when asked on how you can help, having nothing to show but vague hints.
So I put something together, based on what I do daily. It's still very raw, and will have to be "fine-tuned" over the next days/weeks. Your feedback is welcome to make this something useful:
https://android.izzysoft.de/articles/named/fdroid-intro-4?lang=en
(Deutsche Fassung folgt ggf. später, wenn die Kanten etwas geglättet sind)
The GNU Project & RMS are looking for specific instances of planned obsolescence in computing which relate somehow to nonfree software. Find something not listed in https://gnu.org/malware/proprietary-obsolescence.html? Email webmasters@gnu.org.
A reminder that our weekly Small Tech / Small Web live stream, Small is Beautiful, is tomorrow (Thursday) at 5PM Irish time (UTC).
You can join us in the studio to ask live questions or join the conversation so have your webcam and headphones ready.
In case you missed it, a couple of years ago Mastodon made an animated introduction explaining how it works.
✅ Mastodon's official promo video is available on PeerTube at https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/887e7b95-a6b1-4df1-83fd-d5c47f17ec4c and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSbNdBmWKE
The same video is also useful for explaining federated networks in general.
Emacs survey results are out! Lots of interesting tidbits: people love magit, ivy and flycheck, and a striking number of respondents are fairly new to Emacs! This seems great for the health of the community.
Do you mainly want to post long form written articles on the Fediverse?
✅ Write Freely is the Fediverse's alternative to Medium, which can be followed by people from Mastodon or elsewhere on the Fediverse. You can join an existing instance at https://writefreely.org/instances
You can also run your own Write Freely instance either by self-hosting (instructions are here https://writefreely.org/start) or by using a managed hosting service (for example https://writefreely.host).
Zrythm 1.0.0-alpha.6.0.1 has been released!
Learn more:
https://forum.zrythm.org/t/zrythm-1-0-0-alpha-6-0-1-release
Download:
https://www.zrythm.org/en/
Demo by Panos Alevropoulos (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
The problems Apple users encountered last month, when non-Apple applications wouldn't launch, is symptomatic of a much deeper problem. The OCSP debacle is just the most recent example of why users shouldn't trust Apple with their computing: https://u.fsf.org/380
Maybe the best place to post photos on the Fediverse is PixelFed.
✅ PixelFed is the Fediverse's alternative to Instagram, with a similar interface and features. You can find out more at https://www.pixelfed.org and there's a list of instances to join at https://beta.joinpixelfed.org
It doesn't matter which instance you join, people on other PixelFed or Mastodon instances can follow you because Fediverse instances talk to each other.
CentOS Linux is dead–and Red Hat says Stream is “not a replacement” - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-shifts-from-red-hat-unbranded-to-red-hat-beta/
Peertube instance suggestion
I have been uplaoding some Lisp-related videos to peertube.mastodon.host. This instance has been somewhat unstable, and is completely down at the moment.
I am considering running my own instance, but the last time I tried to set it up I had a lot of issues. So I wonder if there is a good public instance I can use? What are some good suggestions?
experimental physicist, privacy advocate and free software supporter