Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan @vu3rdd@octodon.social

@vu3rdd hell yeah! When something works flawlessly we do not rush to a bug tracker to fill an issue (and say thank you).

In the end we have a biased view that everything sucks and everything is broken, because we do not pay attention when it works.

Thank you for paying attention
ヽ(*＾▽＾)／

Hey Mastodons, I hear you like open source and federation, so I'd like to tell you about https://gettogether.community/ an open source, federated(*) event planning service similar to Meetup

It's free to use, and while it's still very early development it is live! Try it yourself, share it with your friends, start a team ahd have a Get Together! #gettogether

* Federation is simple and minimal, any help would be most welcomed. Source code is at https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether https://mastodon.cloud/media/cPwAJ8QWw5m9yjpJqQk

"It's not an open source project unless it's on github" is not something I agree with and in fact I think it's toxic to software freedom.

I work in technology and I think that humanity needs to remember that at the end of the day technology is only as good as our social constructs.

Technology should work to serve nobler goals, not serve hedonism or temporary greed.

Advancement for advancement's sake is not noble without purpose.

We must build things that last. All things crumble to dust eventually, but the legacy it leaves should aim to be positive.

A lot of technology I see being made seems to do far more harm than good.

ActivityPub is a W3C Recommendation! Yes! At last! Finally!

Let your social networks be free! https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785 https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

Susan Kare, graphic designer who created many familiar icons & fonts for Apple, NeXT, Microsoft, and IBM.

Her creations include most of the iconography and fonts which shipped with the original Macintosh, and many icons which persisted in Windows from version 3 until XP.

#SusanKare #iconic #womenintech #design #designers #graphicdesign #Macintosh #NeXT #Windows #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputing

@ajroach42 Another handy service that The Internet Archive operates is purl.org, which is a free service for setting permanent URLs. If you like to host your own media, but you have to move hosts/domains sometimes, PURL is good for when you want to say, "I always want a page for my album to be available at http://purl.org/me/myalbum". Then you can move around its actual URL however much you need to.

To fight Centralization:
- Own your data.
- Archive your data online and off.
- Use decentralized services like Mastodon and Matrix and whatever whenever possible.
- publish to places that aren't facebook or medium (and if you must, only use central services for syndication.)

To fight user hostility:
- Use ad blockers and privacy badger
- If you can get away with it, use no-script or similar when possible.
- Stop using, or reduce your use of, platforms that profit from treating you poorly.

I failed to write my #introduction... former PostDoc at University if Cambridge computer labs, interested in formal methods (recent: netsem, a HOL4 model of TCP and sockets API, validated with FreeBSD12 with DTrace), security, network, operating systems. #FreeBSD since 4.6, #MirageOS since 1.0. #OCaml enthusiast who wants to change the world with unikernels. Co-authored TLS in OCaml, working on package signing, #barista, #cyclist, #anarchist, back in #Berlin work at http://robur.io

The Management Engine: an attack on computer users' freedom

via @fsf

With security issues like the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered in Intel chips in early 2018, it became more important than ever to talk about the necessity of software freedom in these deeply embedded technologies. Thanks to Denis GNUtoo Carikli, we have a new basis for that conversation in this article.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/the-management-engine-an-attack-on-computer-users-freedom

Oof this post gets to the very heart of breadth vs depth. I like the idea of a Depth Year 🤔 http://www.raptitude.com/2017/12/go-deeper-not-wider/

It's so nice when a button, a switch, a knob is solidly made and enjoyable to manipulate. I think most people enjoy simple tactile pleasures like this, even if they don't consciously notice, but the past decade or so has been a tactile desert of touchscreens, dodgy laptop keyboards, and mushy unresponsive TV remote buttons.
How do we get a tactile renaissance going?

"You have too much time on your hands" is one of the worst possible sentences to utter

It demeans quest for happiness, arguably the only reason for sentience. The person who says it has given up experiencing joy for its own sake, to have pleasure in activities beyond productivity

A person who judges another's use of free time so callously is already dead inside

OMG I can't believe it, they finally did it! Somebody made a graphing calculator with ~modern hardware and got it approved for use in exams!

https://www.numworks.com

I've been complaining about TI being able to sell their _ancient_ tech at new prices for so long. I hope TI never moves another unit

Interesting design decisions like: it has only 256KB of RAM! Software runs on bare metal without a third party kernel.

Code is CC BY-NC-ND, so not Free, but less user-hostile than I was expecting.

Get the difference between Meltdown and Spectre:

Meltdown: Intel only, easily exploitable, patch causes up to 30% decrease in performance

Spectre: EVERY processor since a few decades (including AMD, ARM, etc), not easily exploitable but NOT fixable

All #34C3 talks https://media.ccc.de/c/34c3