Joseph Nuthalapati @njoseph@social.masto.host

Do you use #FDroid on de-googled or stock #android?

#gafam #google #privacy

Don’t give Twitter any more of your mindshare or content. Write long form on your blog where it truly belongs.

@nytpu Personally I think there's no way Rust will achieve Java's level of success on the backend. The institutions powering the world economy probably won't ever upgrade from Java 8; they'll just pay a company to backport security fixes indefinitely or stay on an abandoned version. Some might rewrite some Python 2 code in Java to give junior devs something to do.

I'm dead serious. This is not an exaggeration. I seriously doubt most companies on Java 8 will ever switch to a newer version of Java. There's no chance they'll re-write everything in Rust. Therefore, Rust will not become the "new Java".

@fsf find it hard to believe that you haven't included the best #FOSS video conferencing tool available, specifically designed for the education context: BigBlueButton - https://bigbluebutton.org

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."

Barry Gehm

"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it."

Florence Ambrose (Freefall, Stanley)

"It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done."

Terry Pratchett

So how did we get from the gleaming promise of the digital age as imagined in the 70s to the harsh cyberpunk reality of the 20s?

Centralization, rent seeking, planned obsolescence, surveillance, advertising, and copyright.

How do we move forward?

Re-decentralization, a rejection of the profit motive, building for the future/to be repaired, building for privacy, rejecting advertising, and embracing Free software.

Imagine if YouTube was shut down.

It would be a literal tragedy for the human race. Billions of hours worth of creativity would disappear in an instant.

"That would never happen!" some believe.

But it already has.

Remember Google+? All of it's gone forever.

Or remember all that media stored on MySpace? It's vanished.

We must stop depending on Big Tech to archive our data. Their mandate is to profit off our data, not preserve it.

@LasseGismo Absolutely, we're committed to offering it on F-Droid even after it evolves into Thunderbird.

If we lived in a city or area that's heavily car dependent, my son would be unable to gain the organic experiences that makes life worth living. There's no serendipity and a very rigid flow to one's daily schedule. He'd be in a virtual prison.

Podcasts I'd like to see^W hear:

Dramatic Readings of Academic Papers

Take the rapidly spiralling American worries over "who is accessing all our TikTok data, since ByteDance is based in China",

and then pretend for a moment that you live outside the USA and yet Silicon Valley companies are still the ones managing all the data your entire country runs on.

I'm not saying the USA is the same as China. It's differently dysfunctional. But it's, uh, not exactly leading the world in functionality and yet it's wired into everything.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access

When I was small, and first heard about the UN, I wanted it to be like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/17/fossil-fuel-firms-un-head-antonio-guterres-blistering-attack

UnifiedPush support has been merged into Element Android!

Element is the flagship @matrix client and one of the biggest apps that will soon support UnifiedPush!

#UnifiedPush #element #matrix #pushnotifications #fdroid

To folks who think the Microsoft Corporation is A-Ok, consider: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22995144/microsoft-foreign-corrupt-practices-bribery-whistleblower-contracting That's been Standard Operating Procedure (combined with its time honoured Embrace, Extend, Extinguish playbook) for decades. That's how you get to be a $ trillion corporation. Not by playing fair, or by being ethical. Anything Microsoft (or any of the Frightful Five) is involved in is tarnished by association, and we shouldn't let it go by without comment.

Facebook: Here's a photo you posted nine years ago about debugging segfaults on facebook.com late at night.

Me: The real segfault was the threat to democracy we created along the way.