Post A6evOPkiJetrtFqByS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) More posts by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) Post #A6esqWL37gv0YvXyPw by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T02:59:38Z
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"A masochistic part of my brain reminds me that I am in this mess because I used a site [AirBnB] hosted by AWS. I could have just booked a normal hotel room via the phone, and then I would be picking up a new key card at this very moment. Technology creates the problems that technology solves, and vice versa."- #KashmirHill, 2019https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194#technology #datafarms
(DIR) Post #A6etS3Qr2pDzun9y2C by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T03:06:40Z
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I've posted a few times linking to Kadhmir Hill's article series on her experiment in life without the "tech giants". They're well written and they demonstrate just how deeply dependent the contemporary net has become on background services controlled by the datafarms. Reading them has been a reality check for me on the costs of my longtime habit of "digital veganism" and how hard it would be for many people to do the same.
(DIR) Post #A6eu25TEwWXKf7SPuS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T03:11:33Z
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I've posted a few times linking to Kashmir Hill's article series on her experiment in life without the "tech giants". They're well written and they demonstrate just how deeply dependent the contemporary net has become on background services controlled by the datafarms. Reading them has been a reality check for me on the costs of my longtime habit of "digital veganism" and how hard it would be for many people to do the same.
(DIR) Post #A6euqnm4Uri4XyRql6 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T03:22:18Z
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Fundamentally, there are two problems to be solved. One is the "business model" problem of replacing ads as the main revenue for building and maintaining internet infrastructure. The pandemic, like the GFC before it, has demonstrated the limitations of community-built infrastructure dependent on volunteers and donations. We urgently need to figure out how to build financially sustainable organizations that can fund salaries for skilled tech workers and cover external costs like hosting.
(DIR) Post #A6evOPkiJetrtFqByS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T03:28:23Z
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The other problem is the oft-discussed "network effect". How many people would use community-run email services if they couldn't send email to Gmail etc? Where community-built infrastructure can't interoperate with the legacy services, it will struggle to displace them. An avante-garde of early adopters may use them in parallel with the datafarms, but only weirdo hermits like me will even try to use them exclusively, for reasons that Hill's articles illustrate vividly.
(DIR) Post #A6evmQ2Cv12LiPTApM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-27T03:32:46Z
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Arnold ( @humanetech ) has been exploring funding options for ethical tech development orgs here: https://codeberg.org/teaserbot-labs/delightful-funding/issues/1#funding #EthicalTech
(DIR) Post #A6ez6gTJoZ84LgVOVM by alcinnz@floss.social
2021-04-27T04:10:03Z
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@strypey "In the economy of free, the Earth pays. The economy of free is a hugely wasteful economy because it gives one million people a carrot in order to get one sucker to buy a juicer. The economy of free is a hugely wasteful economy because it is primarily an economy of wants rather than of needs. Why not download the app? It’s free. You may not use it more than once, but so what? It’s free."World Wide Waste by Gerry McGovern Ch11 "Ads are the oil industry of the Web"
(DIR) Post #A6f65vEW98crWHAMAy by olamina@eweg.be
2021-04-27T05:28:15Z
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@strypeyThere are already some out there. At CoLET (https://colet.space) we use Koumbit (worker owned) and are leveraging it to soon offer a solidarity economy SquareSpace alternative
(DIR) Post #A6f8EUwfSAWmVI2AZk by meena@cathode.church
2021-04-27T05:52:08Z
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@strypeyexternal costs like hostingi think we need more coöperative ran cloud providerswe need services that can scale up, and down, but still inter-connectthen there's another issue, that of trust: you can't run a mail server on digitalocean, for instance, because gmail has a blanket ban on their IP spaceso to interoperate with the rest of the world, you need trust to the giants you're trying to displace and to your customers/members. a difficult bridge to span in certain areas, in some outright dangerous
(DIR) Post #A6fFXtRRIfc1eucfBY by SkinnyFeels@mas.to
2021-04-27T07:14:12Z
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@strypey love that phrase. Digital veganism. Gina start using it. Thanks!
(DIR) Post #A6gJr9h5gy3yXeLNIG by jdaviescoates@social.coop
2021-04-27T19:37:01Z
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@strypey I often share that series of articles too. Aside from so the Tech Giants stuff, one thing that really scared me was that he 2 year old had already flown 52 times or something (hello, climate emergency), and was already addicted to to Siri.
(DIR) Post #A6gOhMt2Hq8YKi5EXo by dazinism@social.coop
2021-04-27T20:31:16Z
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@strypey Wondering why you say the pandemic and GFC proved it?
(DIR) Post #A6gop3KTTxtMnlF66S by ajeremias@social.coletivos.org
2021-04-28T01:24:09Z
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@strypey have u stumble upon https://opencollective.com/ https://liberapay.com and the crowdfunding of https://framasoft.org/en/ anyway... money is boring. we should do it mostly for the fun.. but make projects independent and autonomous on their economics is important.. but revenue? then the fun is gone... no?
(DIR) Post #A6gp3UjaO6lvqosI08 by ajeremias@social.coletivos.org
2021-04-28T01:26:43Z
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@strypey have u heard about this https://disroot.org/en/blog/microsoft_hostility yeah they re quite offensive.. but as soon as people start realizing how scary it is to trust ur data to a weird rich guy in silicon valley :blackcat:
(DIR) Post #A6gpMmMZ4L021lInAG by ajeremias@social.coletivos.org
2021-04-28T01:29:34Z
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@strypey have u heard about this https://disroot.org/en/blog/microsoft_hostility yeah they re quite offensive.. but as soon as people start realizing how scary it is to trust ur data to a weird rich guy in silicon valley :blackcat: they'll come here.. hopefully.
(DIR) Post #A6j2KHZOH1IpfJMRQe by gemlog@tilde.zone
2021-04-29T03:04:51Z
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@strypey See @bob idea for a practical start backed by govt (not the usa one) https://epicyon.freedombone.net/@bob/106132618564207175"The EU mandates that a small ActivityPub server, whose development they fund, be built into every internet router shipped, and supports the backend domain name for it. All EU citizens with an internet router keep full control of their social data."IPV6 has plenty of room for this or something similar. We already pay Telus, Orange, BT, whoever for infrastructure and b/w. Nextcloud, masto, framasoft, w/e subset needs to be thought out better, but that's actually doable politically and practically.
(DIR) Post #A6lFhQQDDQkrV3Ly8u by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-30T04:42:34Z
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@ajeremias Microsoft are able to get away with that kind of arbitrary blocking of independent email services precisely because of the power their network effect gives them. If that kind of behaviour resulted in large-scale migrations away from the datafarms, they would be ghost towns by now. Sadly, most people either don't know, don't care, or have too many other balls in the air to worry about changing who hosts their online services.
(DIR) Post #A6lG0qO2u0PxWzbEvI by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-30T04:47:40Z
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@dazinism Maybe it's just me projecting my own situation outwards onto the world, but it seems to me that the pandemic sucked a lot of the volunteer oxygen out of the rooms (both literal and virtual) where ethical tech is developed. I've noticed a bunch of volunteer-dependent projects seem to be dormant or defunct, or struggling to maintain. Bryan Lunduke seems to have noticed something similar, it's one of the concerns expressed in his 2020 'Linux Sucks' talk.
(DIR) Post #A6lGDkHeu8eeMqlR2G by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-30T04:50:04Z
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@bob Agreed. I was using "tech workers" in a general sense, not sure coders and sysadmins, but anyone with specialist skills that are required to keep community-built infrastructure running (and ideally improving). Otherwise I wouldn't be including myself ;)
(DIR) Post #A6lGkEgRPlA5uvqfHE by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-04-30T04:55:59Z
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@olamina > At CoLET (https://colet.space) we use Koumbit (worker owned) and are leveraging it to soon offer a solidarity economy SquareSpace alternativeAwesome work! Please feel free to join the Open App Ecosystem group on Loomio and compare notes with others working on similar projects:https://www.loomio.org/g/exAKrBUp/open-app-ecosystemIt's been pretty quiet there through the pandemic, but I'm hoping the community will get a bit more active again over the coming months.#OpenAppEcosystem
(DIR) Post #A6n8fXcn9agntgJOgC by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2021-05-01T02:34:49Z
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@humanetechIs the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) on your radar for the funding research?
(DIR) Post #A6nPFhJODHvXdHV0bI by humanetech@mastodon.social
2021-05-01T05:40:36Z
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@strypey yes, very much so. The 3-part ActivityPub for Administration event for EU/EC representatives that just concluded was done in co-op with NGI Zero, and I have some good contact there, atm.