boris

joined 2 years ago
 

I’ve posted a fair bit of links around Bill C18 and how it’s bad, and had people assume that I’m somehow on the side of Google & Facebook.

Moscrop does a good job explaining that literally everyone involved here is bad, but that it does need fixing.

we ought to accept a few things: the Online News Act is bad law that needs to be amended or scrapped, Google and Meta are not your friends, we need to find a way to save journalism, some (legacy) media companies are awful themselves, and we need to reign in the tech giants and force them to pay for what they extract from their workers and from us.

 

Michael Geist's commentary on Google removing corporate media from Search and News

That surely presented an unwelcome choice either way: agree to flawed legislation that creates a dangerous precedent on paying for links or knowingly decrease the value of its own service. By choosing to block links, the damage will be felt across Canada. For the news sector, this could result in news outlets shutting down altogether as the combined effect of blocked news links and news sharing on the Google and Meta will cut some sites traffic in half and lead to huge revenue losses. Services with existing deals with likely see that revenue disappear as well. For Canadians, Google search will be less reliable with Canadian news links removed and the Google News service shut down. This is likely to increase reliance on foreign news services and lower-quality services at the precise time that concerns over misinformation continue to grow.

(emphasis mine)

Previous post by Michael Geist: Media Chaos

[–] boris@news.cosocial.ca 9 points 2 years ago

There are a number of licenses that do this. And yes, many of them are not OSI approved and people will say mean things about not using the word open source. Which you should ignore and instead perhaps say fair source instead if you care.

A couple to look at:

Big Time License

a public LICENSE that makes software free for noncommercial and small-business use, with a guarantee that fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory paid-license terms will be available for everyone else

Prosperity License

Prosperity is a public LICENSE for software that makes work free for noncommercial use, with a built-in free trial for commercial users.

I also recommend going through the back log of posts by Kyle Mitchell, an engineer - lawyer who has authored a number of great software licenses, including the two I listed.

 

I just went to see the current exhibition at the New Media Gallery, DUST:

Search and you will find dust woven through the universe; swept up, dispersed and deposited across the globe; collecting in every corner of our lives. All of humanity lives on a fragment of cosmic dust…and we are dust. Visible, invisible, meaningful, reviled; dust has been exploited by artists as material, subject, ontology and here as landscape…full of properties, concepts and relationships and the potential to convey expansive ideas, Dust has been handed down to us through histories, words and images. In this exhibition it is interpreted through complex technologies, data collection, augmented videography and sound. DUST brings together three award-winning artists who have created extraordinary, populated landscapes, each underscored with striking aggregations of sound.

Features 3 artists:

  • Denis Beaubois, No longer Adrift (2013, updated 2023)
  • Herman Kolgen, Dust Surface (2010)
  • Michael Saup, DustVR (2018-2023)

All three are amazing. GO SEE THIS SHOW

Also shout out to Director/Curator Gordan Duggan who was our guide for the show. We try and catch all the shows here and he's very often the person there, and he's a great guide and personally excited about all the pieces and artists.

 

cross-posted from: https://news.cosocial.ca/post/3451

Takahē is a Python ActivityPub server whose original goal was supporting multiple domains from one install:

When I started the project, my main goal was to show that multi-domain support for a single ActivityPub server was possible; once I had achieved that relatively early on, I sort of fell down the default path of implementing a lightweight clone of Mastodon/Twitter.

I love the new direction, focusing on identity:

So, my new design goal is now to really take advantage of the multi-domain support and provide an experience that lets a diverse set of people, projects or companies, with a set of different domain names, logos and design ideas, all exist on the same server but still have their own profiles and identities that they can shape more in line with what they want.

Will support microblogging, but be focused on a sort of homepage functionality.

 

TechDirt’s Mike Masnick gets it exactly right in covering Canada’s C-18 bill:

If you believe in the open web, if you believe that you should never have to pay to link to something, if you believe that no one should have to pay to provide you a benefit, then you should support Meta’s stance here. Yes, it’s self-serving for Meta. Of course it is. But, even if it’s by accident, or a side-effect, it’s helping to defend the open web, against a ridiculous attack from an astoundingly ignorant and foolish set of Canadian politicians.

And just generally points out the huge holes in Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez understanding from the Power & Politics Interview.

[–] boris@news.cosocial.ca 3 points 2 years ago

My wishlist would be to be able to link Mastodon accounts to Lemmy accounts, so the Lemmy system "knows" it's the same person. Including being able to edit the posts that come in from Mastodon, which right now is the biggest issue.

This post as an example, I was framing it as a Masto post, and it's pretty terrible on Lemmy. I'd focus on optimizing favourite/boost/comment from Mastodon as that is I think going to work best - comments don't need first class titles, links, and feature images.

For OPs, wouldn't it be amazing if I could DM some links and images and stuff, and then login to Lemmy/kbin and have it appear as a draft, and then publish it natively with rich text tools on the Lemmy/kbin side.

Subscribing via Mastodon works much better for me, even if I then go over and interact with my Lemmy account. I want both OPs and comments, and it's easy enough to put in a list or otherwise manage notifications from my clients. Micro-blog native vs Thread native people are going to differ in their opinions here :)

[–] boris@news.cosocial.ca 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's literally a quick test with me filling out two, and @waglo@jasette.facil.services submitting one. Can you dump a link to a CSV or source into an issue there of the stuff you're gathering please -- I need examples to build out the schema, so I can actually display that rather than just the blog post stuff. Well, and the JSON file underneath that is meant to be used as an API.

[–] boris@news.cosocial.ca -1 points 2 years ago

I was with TekSavvy for a long time but they were getting worse. I Switched to Oxio https://oxio.ca which is cheaper and faster than TS was. It’s a brand for Cogeco.

[–] boris@news.cosocial.ca 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hey @wakest@lemmy.ml thanks for sharing. This was a quick weekend hack. Mostly need some feedback and discussion on good ways of presenting the info and and what info to gather.