"we are cancelling the free open source project tier you've been using for years, to be considered for the replacement tier you will need to post the following statement of partnership on your website about that is focused on how great our new AI features are"
Oh...we're in *that* stage of the hype decline.
Not sure where #Google asked for feedback about their developer verification program, but they surely didn't talk with #FLOSS devs, civil society, privacy organisations or their #Android users
#FDroid did since September, and interacted with folks in the Fediverse, forum, email and in person
They all voiced one opinion: "developer verification must be stopped"
@marcprux has written an open letter, signed by likeminded organisations who want to #keepandroidopen
Click: https://f-droid.org/2026/02/24/open-letter-opposing-developer-verification.html
A Welshman walks into a ‘Spoons.
Tells the barman he's got a great joke about Reform voters.
The barman tells him that he's a Reform voter, so are the 3 big guys at the end of the bar and the 2 woman sat next to him.
'So do you still want to tell it', the barman taunts him.
The man says. 'No. Not if I'm going to have to explain it 6 times"...
RE: https://mas.to/@zzt/116045651572809856
As angry as OP is, I don't think they're nearly as angry as they could be. Allow me to stoke the fire a little bit.
I have used damn near every single mainstream communications medium on the Internet since about the early 2000's. You know how Discord managed to establish dominance?
By being the *least fucking awful*.
By *giving a shit about the user experience*.
By not having their contributors/community shit all over things users like and refuse to implement because they personally don't want color, bold, italic, or underlines, in _their_ text, and adding options to turn those off just for them would just be _too hard_. So as a result, users still get those things by abusing Unicode characters (esp. for math), which produces a usability fucking nightmare for screen readers, which prompts other assholes to say "well the screen readers need to adapt and start trying to read text like that as normal text" when the entire point of having special characters is they have dedicated semantic meaning.
By having the first voice chat I've experienced reliably working basically every single time I click it. For me, Skype was never that good. The closest/best other thing for voice chat was fucking IParty.
By doing the logical thing and putting all the various big groups you might want to communicate in into one window, and by holding onto transcripts and making them searchable in-app so I don't have to (1) worry about whether my backups are okay and (2) `grep` through a bunch of big-ass files for the one thing I need to remember.
I've seen criticisms about something being an "everything app" or "not everything should be in one place" but what those criticisms UNIVERSALLY fail to address is that this one place beats every. single. other. *specific.* place. on their *home. fucking. turf.* In practically every way that matters.
And that's how we fucking got here.
Last year's shutdown of @glitchdotcom was a blow to my pedagogy. Glitch was ideal for creative coding classes and workshops. I looked around for alternatives. But there was nothing that was open, decentralized, and not at the mercy of VCs or Big Tech.
So I built my own. Here's Glitchlet.
Glitchlet runs on any shared hosting service (e.g., Reclaim Hosting). If you can run WordPress, you can run Glitchlet. Projects-in-progress are stored in the browser's local storage, but you can also one-click publish to make them public and remixable. Glitchlet is designed with educators in mind.
There's no single, primary Glitchlet that everyone uses. The idea is that every instructor installs their own Glitchlet and manages their own classes/workshops/projects. You can seed your instance with template files, or Glitchlet can easily import projects (including archived Glitch .tgz files).
Making something so easy to install and host has trade-offs, of course. No fancy pants Node or React projects, but Glitchlet works beautifully with HTML/JavaScript/CSS. No live collaboration, but you can still remix published projects.
Best of all—you're in control and not subject to the whims of some startup that suddenly decides to "sunset" a key pedagogical tool.
Glitchlet is alpha now, but its code will available to all very soon!
RE: https://mastodon.social/@FeralRobots/116052828028311024
Yeah, this is the most parsimonious explanation:
Hegseth is an utter fool who thinks the military is about "fighting wars" and wishy-washy libtard stuff like keeping the civil authorities in the loop is useless fluff, so he axed the civilian liaison roles. And FAA runs on the precautionary principle ("avoid putting airliners at risk"). So the shutdown only got rolled back when it was escalated to Kegbreath's desk and he said "WTF? Not Like that!!"
Sarah Jamie Lewis
whyrlpool
F-Droid
Wen
FxChiP
Lars Wirzenius
A.R. Moxon
Mark Sample
Charlie Stross