வணக்கம் 🙏
FOSS Hacktivist & Digital Commons advocate who also happens to be a software developer.
Cofounded PuduvaiGLUG (2011) which started as an informal group to advocate and promote FOSS among college students in Puducherry got evolved into FSHM, a formal tech community in Puducherry.
I actively contribute to #OpenStreetMap, localizing to #Tamil, educate people about Digital #Privacy, self-hosting and help others to start their journey into #FreeSoftware.
| Blog | https://prasannavenkadesh.github.io/blog |
| Languages | Tamil & English |
| Organizations | FSMI, FSFTN, FSHMP, FSMK |
| Openstreetmap | https://openstreetmap.org/user/Prashere |
Abstraction is a powerful tool in the hands of people who understand what's lying underneath it, but it can be deceiving for those ignorant about it. This is true in any domain, be it programming; politics; philosophy; economy, etc. I have realized this in two instances.
1. While reading how computers work at low level &
2. While reading #Marxist works.
Government of #Tamilnadu has started distributing govt. sponsored laptops to final year students graduating from Govt. colleges. The scheme is named as "Ulagam Ungal Kaiyil" which means the world in your hands.
Regarding the implementation of the scheme, @fsftn calls for an alternative approach that fosters #TechSovereignty. We have highlighted such sovereign initiatives from #Kerala and #Karnataka
You can read our statement here
https://blog.fsftn.org/tn-laptop-2026/
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has rolled out a govt. sponsored laptop scheme named "Ulagam Ungal Kaiyil" targeted at students from government schools & colleges. Here is what we think about it. No, it's not about the labels & stickers.
Our site is multilingual to the core: once a language is enabled, it can be used for any text you write anywhere on the site -- reviews, user bios, subject descriptions, you name it. Any text you write can have as many translations as you want.
Right now, you have to change the UI language to write text in a different language -- we'll decouple that soon.
Now might be a good time for another #introduction :). https://lib.reviews/ is a free and open source site to review anything (other than human beings), in any language, under a free license.
We've recently finished a round of code modernization and have started adding site features again. For starters, if you'd like to request an account to try the site, you can do so here:
https://lib.reviews/actions/request-account
We vet new account requests to grow the community carefully. Hope to see you on the site!
The U.S. quest to "kill" Huawei was a masterclass in self-sabotage. After all the "crippling" sanctions, Huawei's market share... went up. Meanwhile, US firms lost $33B, and Huawei, backed by China and 10+ years of prep, just launched its own OS to fight Android. A truly "hubristic" own-goal.
https://itif.org/publications/2025/10/27/backfire-export-controls-helped-huawei-and-hurt-us-firms/
Huawei is a more innovative company today than it was before the U.S. government sought to choke its supply chain. This case should serve as a lesson: U.S. techno-economic power is weaker than most think, and sanctions often hurt U.S. competitiveness more than China’s.
Today, I spent sometime building a web prototype of the #Tamilchol classifier. If you remember, I shared my progress on building a Python library to process #Tamil words (https://mastodon.social/@prashere/114056949176728645), this is a web version utilizing it.
I will share the link to the web version once I complete the prototype. I also took this opportunity to explore #Hyperdiv in #Python
SuperTuxKart 1.5 is here for your karting fix! 🎮🐧
It's FOSS
:barend:
FSMK
lib.reviews
Yogthos