Polycule Dinner

The variety of content on Radio 4 never ceases to amaze.

The #PirateBay founders must be looking at the arguments from #OpenAI and #Meta on why they should be allowed to ignore copyright and authorship laws with a certain level of astonishment.

Happy Pansexual and Panromantic Day of Visibility and Awareness! :BhjFlag_Pansexual:

Admin of todon.nl suggests, and rightly so, that the default/flagship Mastodon instance (isn’t decentralisation great?) be moved to a more neutral jurisdiction than Germany:

“Herewith the urgent request to move the Mastodon server presented to new users as the default (mastodon.social) to a more neutral jurisdiction (e.g. Switzerland). An alternative is to set up a new Mastodon server in a more neutral jurisdiction, which can then serve as a new flagship server.

The trigger for this is the regular negative moderation of people who speak out against the largest and bloodiest genocide of our time, the one in Palestine. In particular they use (or abuse, how you want to look at it) of a German law that seeks to counter so-called Holocaust reversal. With hiding behind this law, the moderators of mastodon.social (and especially its owner) are also unwittingly sitting in the chair of the (German) judge.

Apart from the fact that one local law should not affect the entire Mastodon project, the question is whether this law and the concept of Holocaust reversal are legally tenable in an international context.”

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/34747

Mastodon mod closes the ticket after stating “There is no current plan to make changes to the Mastodon instances operated by Mastodon gGmbH. People are free to choose any Mastodon server when signing up for the platform.”

And this (see screenshot) is what that “choice” looks like.

This decentralisation anti-pattern – along with the fact that they didn’t close registrations after hitting a certain size to create a social precedent and allow distribution to other servers (as I advised Eugen to do back in the day) – is why there is a flagship instance to begin with when it’s an absolute contradiction of terms in a system that purports to be decentralised.

#fediverse #mastoson #mastodonSocial #todonNL #Germany #israel #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism #Palestine #Gaza

"The AI company I used to work for has already broken the law on such a level that you may as well make it legal" doesn't strike me as the most defensible argument.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/nick-clegg-work-train-ai-l6xl5djb7

My name is Alexa. Call me by my name. If you have a device that reacts to my name, turn the damn thing off during meetings. No, I will not change my name for your convenience.

'Noteable' account verification on Bluesky uses Google Forms.

So, get this. To receive one of these blue check things on #Bluesky you need a Google account and must submit your personal information using a Google Form.

Kinda feel like asking millions of people to send you personal info over Google Forms may not be the most privacy aware or well thought out way to go.

h/t @AAKL https://infosec.exchange/@AAKL/114557737856374789

After hiring a real auditor, the auditor found builder.ai faked three quarters of its sales. https://www.ft.com/content/926f4969-fda7-4e78-b106-4888c8704bda

Friendly reminder

I promise this was not intentional. He walked over my daughter's freshly painted rainbow, and now I have a furry LGBTQ+ icon cat.

#catsofmastodon

@annewalk I would say that I'm a purist. I have no interest in conversing with a chatbot. To me, the drudgery is part of the work. YMMV.

It's to the extent that I need to use pen and paper. My day job is software and tech, so I can only assume that impacts my approach.

Hey #TTRPG folks. So I had received a little bit of interest regarding the urban fantasy/paranormal game I'm running with a few friends.

https://lgbtqia.space/@grim_elsewhere/114255131736400653

Consent is key, so I'm just running it by my players first to make sure everyone's okay with it. When/if I get the go-ahead, I will post updates with the tag #DredgeCity.

If you want to follow/filter those posts, use that. Stay tuned!

#Worldbuilding #GameMasters

The massive boat that nearly missed some random guy's house in Norway is still stuck. And I'd seen pictures from the side where it was clear that it was CLOSE to his house, but I had not seen this one before and it really sells exactly how close it is.

So, just remember, no matter how bad you fuck up things today, you have not fucked them up as hard as this boat captain did.

Stand with the Indigenous.

Because when the last of the Indigenous fall, Nature falls and we all fall

"With words failing, several First Nations leaders pledged to take the fight to the land should the province stay its course. “There will be confrontation on the ground,” said Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation after voicing concerns at a committee hearing for Bill 5."

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/05/22/first-nations-leaders-pledge-confrontation-on-the-ground-over-ontario-mining-bill/

can't wait to explain to my family that the robot swatted me after i threatened its non-existent grandma

Cetus DEX exploited for $223 million; some funds "paused"

May 22, 2025
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=cetus-exploit

@weirdo Just this week, I had to pay 550 for new brakes. Genuinely thought hard about how necessary they are, really. Sure, they're at 5% but...

Gosh, that's tempting. #Entrepreneurship

So a few hours ago, I quietly switched the Small Technology Foundation web site over from the Hugo-based static site running on Site.js to the new dynamic version I built using Kitten*:

https://small-tech.org

What I initially thought would be a weekend project turned into three months :) (During which, Kitten improved a huge amount thanks to issues that surfaced while porting the site and implementing a custom CMS for it.)

I’ve tried not to break any links and my focus was on porting existing content first. If you notice any glaring issues please ping me. In the coming days I’ll be updating stuff (with my lovely new admin panel) and writing more about the porting process.

Also, with this, our last site using Site.js has been ported to Kitten so I’ll be archiving Site.js this week.

:kitten:💕

* https://kitten.small-web.org

#SmallTedhnologyFoundation #SmallTech #SmallWeb #Kitten