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graydon @graydon@octodon.social

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"The old promise of the internet — niche communities, human connection, people exchanging ideas, maybe even paying each other for the work they’d made — never really lost its appeal, but this year it came back with a miniature vengeance."

Tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017 - Tiny, weird online communities made a comeback in 2017 - theverge.com/2017/12/28/167950

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If guaranteed minimum income and universal healthcare were a thing, I think so many of my programmer colleagues would immediately take low-income sabbaticals to write high-quality good-ui users-first free and open source software that it would inspire tedious "how was it possible?!?" medium dot com thinkpieces for years and years

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The Female Pioneers of the Bauhaus Art Movement: Discover Gertrud Arndt, Marianne Brandt, Anni Albers & Other Forgotten Innovators bit.ly/2tqgDer t.co/TZxRrFETw7

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Hear Two Legends, Lead Belly & Woody Guthrie, Performing on the Same Radio Show (1940) goo.gl/mjo4TR t.co/s1YEBKB6kz

Happy new year, y’all 🎉

I'd like to think we're at a point where the infinitesimal cost of bulk transport and storage of text makes it implausible to suppress information freedom completely. At least I would have thought so some years ago.

But this underestimates the extent to which information can be a weapon: to identify a target, to misinform, to libel, to harass, to define a crime in the eyes of the state, to insult, to waste time.

Information freedom-to also requires a degree of information freedom-from.

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PDA, NYE traditions Show more

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whoever at Environment Canada is writing the copy for these Extreme cold weather warnings, you are doing a great job, thank you

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Environment Canada says its gonna be a very cold start to the new year eh

"2017 is about to end with the coldest air of the year. A fresh surge of record-breaking Arctic air is forecast to encompass the entire province in its icy grip. A trough of low pressure currently over Southern Ontario will drop south of the Great Lakes tonight, opening the door to an even colder northerly wind."

weather.gc.ca/warnings/report_

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From 2014, this is a touching rebuke of the idea that "ad free social networking" is a new thing and the notion that Pinterest and such attracting particular demographics is unusual

As someone who was part of that forum scene before "social networking" had a name, I can relate

flowerhack.dreamwidth.org/3230

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@FuckOffGoogle
Couldn't be here, but I think that some folks will be presenting our last 3 years works with:
* ungooglize.org (32 alternative services to Google and co)
* chatons.org (a collective of 50 organizations providing ethical alternative services to GAFAM)
* contributopia.org/en/home
* framatube.org/#en (alternative to youtube based on peertube)

But we will be at FOSDEM to present all this projects (that will be translated at this time).

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There are 7,591,180,400 kinds of people in the world: people who think that the way Sisko calls Dax “old man” even though she isn’t that person anymore is Cute and Good, and people who think that Sisko calling Dax “old man” is sad and incapable of letting go of her former identity. And also a bunch of other kinds too I guess.

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In all honesty, I have had some pretty good Thanksgivings back when I was young and single. I use to put my folks on a plane to see my siblings and spend it by myself.

That was awesome.

I did that for Christmas too.

My friends would invite me over thinking I'd be lonely. I always passed. Solitude is a good way to stay sane.

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It always pains me when I see fellow software developers call other projects "shit."

Especially when the "shit" represents man-decades of hard work, like a browser or an OS.

C'mon. If you don't know how hard this stuff is, then you're a n00b.

Sure, we can always find fault and call everything shit, but is that kind of venting making anything better?

Maybe it makes you feel better, but every time we indulge in this kind of thing we're making tech a more hostile place to work and/or play.

Also I've read some pretty goddamned excellent thesis-es this vacation and I just want to tell everyone doing thinking work that your brains are fantastic.