DataKnightmare @dataKnightmare@octodon.social

Peermaps
https://peermaps.org/

(submitted by bpierre)

Microsoft has released their new Terminal application to GitHub, marketing it as another demonstration of their commitment to "open source". While the project is MIT licensed, did you know it is inextricably linked and dependent upon numerous proprietary SDK tools, headers, and the Visual C++ ATL.

Do not be fooled, see through the mirage of feigned support to undermine and sabotage the original ethics of the free software movement!

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

Google se voit comme fournisseur de carte d'identité électronique ... Que pourrait-il mal se passer ? https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/09/google-is-bringing-electronic-ids-to-android/

Dopo 34 episodi in due settimane sono giunto alla conclusione che @dataKnightmare sia il miglior podcast italiano per chiunque sia minimamente interessato a capire i tempi odierni. Se ne sai qualcosa di informatica (ma non per forza) e ti interessa mettere le tue conoscenze in relazione con il mondo, ascoltalo.

hoooooly shit dood

A World Run with Code
https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2019/05/a-world-run-with-code/

(submitted by dustinupdyke)

"Edit" information? INSIDE the computer?

Donc, c'est confirmé. Voici la preuve que les US veulent #Assange pour "obtention et dissémation d'informations confidentielles" (journalisme, quoi), dans le cadre de l'"Espionnage Act" de 1917 (pour lequel les sanctions vont jusqu'à la peine de mort...).

Même si vous n'aimez pas le type, s'il n'est pas parfait, si vous pensez qu'il a pu dire ou faire des conneries, il est tout de même moment de le soutenir.

https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wikileaks-the-us-is-indeed-investigating-assange-for-publishing-secret-information-doj-letter-suggests/

#FreeAssange #FreeChelsea #FreeOlaBini

once upon a time, software came with a billion little switches. any feature it came with could be disabled. behavior could be adjusted to user taste. even the entire ui could be radically altered by end-users.

then came along apple, with their emphasis on design and heavily-curated experience, and with enough ego to declare irrelevant end-user opinions about how software should operate. this is, essentially, the software design equivalent of “tastemaking”.

to their credit, apple’s designers were, for a time, very good. the default experience that they provide was clean and approachable, and was very usable, straight off the shelf, by the average user.

and because apple’s approach worked very well for them, for a time, it caught on. google and microsoft and even mozilla and friends all took note and also moved away from providing highly-configurable software in favour of heavily-curated default designs with very few user-configurable elements.

but a thing that technology designers forget is that technology, including software, is ultimately a tool, and tools are never the final goal of a production pipeline. in the end, software, like any other tool, exists to enable its user to get other, more important things done.

and if a user disagrees with design decisions, those design decisions are wrong, even if just for that user, because they interfere with the tool’s ability to serve its own purpose.

given:

finely-tuned default workflows are good. it is important for tools to be maximally usable straight off the shelf by the average user. this is an important element of accessibility.

but:

users come with a wide variety of often-conflicting needs, and users know their own needs better than even the best designer.

so:

bring back the days of heavily-configurable software!

maybe hide the more fiddly settings behind an “advanced” settings pane, sure, but do provide them. not talking about arcane undocumented registry settings or chrome/firefox-style about:config hackery, either.

software configurability is an important element of accessibility, too.

and unironically:

winamp-style ui skinning was a good thing, even if it allowed people with divergent artistic sensibilities to produce things that make you cringe.

'Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth

'WIthout cyberlibertarianism, it is difficult if not impossible to understand the arguments some technology critics are recommending'
https://medium.com/@davidgolumbia/do-you-oppose-bad-technology-or-democracy-c8bab5e53b32