Any of you have experience with / recommendations for a legal professional for a low-mid-6-figure software as a service company looking to update it's DPA and ToS?

#AskFedi #SFBA #BoostsWelcome #Law #Legal

@soaproot yeah, usability of that kind of feature would vary a lot, I think. IMO separate lexicons (vs extending existing ones) is still the right approach, though, to maintain the possibility of user preference. Distributed protocols make it easier to make apps that blend content, so maybe people who do want a blend of microblogging and organism observations could use a client that combines them, and spare the rest of the world from wading through every single tiny gray moth at the moth sheet.

@soaproot right now it's using a totally separate lexicon so you would not be able to see all the observations on bluesky... and believe me, you wouldn't want to. We tried that on iNat and twitter way back in the day and it pollutes your social media feed with a lot of generally uninteresting stuff. Bookwyrm reviews happen at a low enough frequency that they fit into mastodon nicely, but I can say from experience that natural history observations probably would not. More analogous to scrobbling than book reviews, imo.

I know I've been pretty quiet for the last month and I should probably post about what *I've* been working on, but first, check out these other cool projects I learned about recently! https://www.patreon.com/posts/other-stuff-150352203

What is the use case for Zen window sync?

*types* semantic vomit message
*thinks* wait no...
*thinks again* after all... why not
*clicks* Search

If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how we're responding. #AI #Bots #Abuse

#Electronics / #Microcontroller question

I'm looking for an easy way to store some metadata (just a few bytes) with some electronic components.

The project involves #RaspberryPi computers operating a camera and lighting to attract and image night-flying insects.

The lighting includes two components: 1) a set of white high-power LEDs to provide illumination for the camera, and 2) a set of UV, white, green and blue high-power LEDs to attract the insects. I make up these components and attach them to the RPi with pluggable cables. See: https://amt.hobern.net/ to get the idea.

Based on power availability, portability and other considerations, the number and type of LEDs in each component may be different. The camera illumination may use 3 or 6 LEDs or substitute with a ring-light. The attractant may be 6 UV + 1 white + 1 green + 1 blue or 3 UV + 1 white + 1 green + 1 blue or just 3 UV. I want switching lighting components to be plug-and-play.

It's also important to record metadata on the configuration actually used for any session. Right now, it's the responsibility of the user to remember to update a configuration file if they change the lighting. This is error-prone.

I'd be interested in including something in each component that the RPi can read to determine the lights in use. Is there an easy and reasonably cost-effective way to do this? I can easily use cables with more pins. Is there a cheap solid-state component that I can include in each lighting unit and that I can simply flash with some short string or a few bytes and that I can read from the RPi side?

Or am I just wasting time on this thought exercise?

Calflora is hiring if you're a Java person (or want to become one): https://www.calflora.org/newsletter/Jobs/DeveloperJobPosting.pdf

@Mikal take this with a grain of salt because I don't know what I'm talking about and I have no aptitude for this kind of thing, but here's an idea I've thought about for a while:

Throw a big party.

Like, iNat-a-con North America, with workshops on beetle ID and performances by nature-themed bands. Get Pattie Gonia and Steven Rinella to show up. Build organizing muscle in the name of something fun and joyous, and then stay in shape with more events. Keep it independent and user-organized. Then you're definitely organized enough to act at a meaningful scale.

Or, get involved with existing groups. The biggest independent iNat-related group I know of is the iNat Discord: https://discord.com/invite/uskv2yx. In the Bay Area we've also got https://www.bioblitz.club.

And, as discussed, try out alternatives, or think about what you'd want in an ideal alternative.

@kueda Folks, dont overlook the part where he says...

"...I do not advise stopping your use of iNat, and I definitely don’t advise deleting your account. I’m certainly not doing either. I was appalled at the number of people who went nuclear and deleted their accounts during the gen AI debacle.....destroying existing data that can’t be retrieved hurts everyone."

@kueda, Thanks for your role in iNat. It has changed my interaction with nature and resulted in me describing several new species!

@Myotis_cuniculus I had not thought about observation.org but will give them a look. For the record, I am not against the use of genAI or LLMs personally, I just think the iNat Leadership team shouldn't have kept staff or users in the dark about what they wanted to do and it blew up in the org's face as a result.

Also, I *was* in a leadership position during the pride fiasco / pronoungate, and while I didn't agree with everything we did in terms of moderation, I actually don't think that episode was symptomatic of the management problems I've described. Internally there was a lot of consultation and collaboration, including people currently on the Leadership team. I know many people weren't satisfied with our decisions during that period, but we were trying our best to be fair in a maelstrom of conflicting opinions. I *do* think it's symptomatic of the problem of centralization, though. People who are not satisfied with iNat's moderation should be able to decamp with their data.

@MarkBrigham Amazing! I love these kinds of stories.

@ELS I think "concerned" is the right calibration right now because I don't think things have gotten bad yet, but it's always a good to think about alternatives.

And if you want more detail on why I left iNat, I wrote about that too: https://kueda.net/blog/2026/01/06/why-i-left-inat

I quit my job at #iNaturalist, the product I co-founded. If you'd like me to keep working on natural history software, support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/kueda. FWIW, I'm building an iNat backup tool and an app for viewing geologic maps.

Or, if you think you'd like to hire me, get in touch!

@xurizaemon hah, yes, I'm all too familiar with the horrors of multiple sources of truth. What I probably want is a client that gives me the option to cross-post when I'm ready to hit "Post". Thanks for the links!

What do you use for bluesky / mastodon cross posting? Bridgyfed doesn't give me enough control over one of the accounts. I'd like to be able to post to either and have that post replicated on the other.

@joebeone did you double down with coriander, dal, and mango pickle?

@zspencer if the merchandise being sold by an ad platform (or ad publisher) is attention and a person's attention is physically located in a state, could regular old sales and use tax law apply? Might depend on viewing attention as a physical good, which it kind of is since it's an aspect of my physical body. Kind of a stretch