Mastodawn

Chris Adamson Apr 10, 2025

Ambassador Spock modeling the proper “fuck you, make me” response to intimidation tactics. Our current-day institutions could learn a lot from him.

randomhappening Mar 11

Mullvad VPN Mar 10

Mass surveillance and censorship are escalating in many countries right now. There is a global attack on secure encrypted communication. Often, authorities, politicians, and tech companies work together to push for new laws. One example: when Ashton Kutcher (yes, the actor), through his tech company Thorn, tried to introduce total surveillance of all EU citizens through undemocratic and corrupt methods.

randomhappening Mar 6

MostlyHarmless Mar 6

Adulthood is realizing Superman comics aren’t fantasy about how good it would be to have power; they’re a fantasy about what it would be like if someone with power was good.

randomhappening Mar 5

decryption Mar 4

because the macbook neo has an A18 Pro SoC & 8GB of RAM in it, apple should let me plug an iPhone Pro with the A19 Pro SoC and 12GB of RAM into a USB-C/Thunderbolt monitor and use it as a Mac - charge me a $200 Mac enablement fee if you have to

randomhappening Feb 27

Glyph Feb 27

RE: https://floss.social/@soller/116140507259407230

if you actually give a shit about the circumstances where children cannot or will not be served by the care of their parents, vote for candidates who will implement UBI, the child tax credit, massively increase the budget of child protective services, and single-payer healthcare, all of which will improve those kids’ lives a million times more than some surveillance state horseshit

randomhappening Feb 15

Aral Balkan Feb 14

This is the only correct action to take when a web site asks you for age verification.

Tell all your friends.

randomhappening Feb 14

AJ Sadauskas Feb 14

Recently, there was a question by @taylorlorenz about how you explain the Fediverse to someone who doesn't use it.

And usually, what we tend to do is we talk about servers and decentralisation and federation and ActivityPub and all these highly technical concepts.

I've been thinking about it, and all that technical stuff is really impressive work by people far more clever than I'll ever be.

But for me, that technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.

Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.

Which is increasingly a rare thing online.

Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.

What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.

And I suspect if you're trying to persuade someone to try Mastodon (or Lemmy, or Pixelfed, or GtS, etc), you'll get a lot further explaining it as algorithm-free, ad-free, AI-free conversations, rather than trying to describe a decentralised protocol.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub

randomhappening Feb 12

Alex Russell Feb 12

If you're a technologist in the US, I think it's worth sitting with the reality that the government's current abuses against the population are playing out almost every single *"if we allow databases of X, bad thing Y will be possible"* warning.

Performative privacy protections were never enough; we have to make them structural (in law), toothsome (right-of-action for individuals), and national. Nothing else will do.

randomhappening Feb 9