James Fenn @james@is.a.horrific.dev
- Website
- https://jfenn.me/
- Horrific Dev
- https://horrific.dev/
- Unicorn Utterances
- https://unicorn-utterances.com/
Admin
Enjoys talking about software with other people that enjoy talking about software. Skeptical of blockchain, cryptocurrency, AI, and technological utopianism. he/him
Joined Jun 2020
James Fenn
boosted
If you don't want vendor lock-in, stop using companies that have over 30 years history of locking you in!!!! It's actually not that hard!!!!!! There are at least 5 other popular versions of Github!!!! And most other things!!
James Fenn
boosted
Having led a few teams in my day, I can say for a fact Pleroma's attitude is an extension of who leads that project. As the saying goes, attitude reflects leadership.
It's not magic Pleroma is so friendly with Gab aligned instances. Bigots feel comfortable using and contributing too that project.
And that's intentional. I don't give a shit how well built it may or may not be.
It has been used to make not only fedi and the world in general an unsafer and more hateful place.
James Fenn
boosted
So Facebook took down the group that ORGANIZED the group of white terrorists that came specifically to Kenosho to kill people.
How long have we been SHOUTING about the the lack of responsibility these social media platforms have been showing has DIRECTLY lead to violence against targeted communities?
We keep telling you what the problem is but white people don't want to listen. And these terrorists take advantage of it.
We're seeing time and time and time and time again.
James Fenn
boosted
Imagine living in fear that on any given day, government agents could shoot you for any reason and face little to no repercussions.
Many don’t have to imagine it. It’s their reality.
When our actions aren’t enough to alleviate that reality and the fear it carries with it, we cannot respond by giving up or demanding approval.
Instead, we listen and learn to see the vision of a world without that fear.
And we hold that vision and take what actions we safely can to make that vision a reality.
James Fenn
boosted
Microsoft should not buy Mozilla. That's nuts. If we live in a world where it is inevitable that big tech companies buy independent open-source projects, then we are living in an unhealthy system. (which we are, but still)
James Fenn
boosted
Everyone clamors around GitHub because it feels nice (for now). But when (and it will happen, companies move against people and community by design) they move away from people, so many tools and components of the ‘community’ will be stuck behind those doors. (https://v2.jacky.wtf/post/85740de7-cbda-4f4e-a1c0-2f5df580b7ca)
James Fenn
boosted
Wow, ouch. I feel seen, and not in a good way. via https://diff.substack.com/p/working-in-public-and-the-economics
James Fenn
boosted
Technology doesn’t solve anything. It’s a mechanism for leverage.
When we grant that power freely, without thought to the way that leverage will be applied by we abdicate our responsibility as technologists.
Sometimes this is done due to coercion (We gotta eat!) but sometimes it is done for ego (People won’t adopt my project if it’s not MIT!)
FYI, the response codes listed at the bottom of the page are links to https://http.cat/ - the best HTTP status code resource.
I've been working on an inline API documentation library for use with Ktor (a Kotlin/JVM server framework) recently - just published its first version!
It was a lot of fun to write - it benefits from a lot of Kotlin's language features - and using kotlinx.html to create the UI was a fairly good experience.
James Fenn
boosted
I'm enjoying @1br0wn's paper, "Interoperability as a tool for competition regulation", explaining how governments can use open standards like ActivityPub to break up Big Tech monopolies. Really interesting reading, and it cites Mastodon specifically as a place where interoperability has benefits to content moderation (which is something I've been saying for years!)
https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/fbvxd
(h/t @doctorow for linking this!)
cc @cwebber
James Fenn
boosted
I wrote a small entry (which, tbh, I should have written on my blog first - think I’ll [PESOS][] that) that’s like a small rant and - I don’t know, tbh. https://buttondown.email/jackyalcine/archive/should-i-just-give-in-like-it-doesnt-get-any/ (https://v2.jacky.wtf/post/52a28537-7535-4ecb-9d9c-27c1af4b85ba)
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
James Fenn
boosted
The Twitter hack is the latest in a long line of failures of centralised platforms. Regardless, the decentralised community underestimates resilience of these platforms and remains dangerously unprepared for the wolves that howl at the door of our users.
"This is Fine": Optimism and Emergency in the Decentralised Network.
Just to be thorough, I'll point out - if they really wanted to preserve open source, they could:
- create a better environment in their own company, let alone open source as a whole
- discount the notion that "code is apolitical" and treat their product as what it really is (a social network)
- stop centering the entire software ecosystem exclusively around themselves, and allow alternatives to become practical and interoperable with their services
- form a co-op that better serves the needs of maintainers & provides a fair exchange of labor, rather than enabling companies to exploit it
- drop ICE
...buuuut they won't do any of these things, because most of them contradict their own existence. A significant amount of open source work might inevitably grind to a halt from burnout, funding issues, and lack of contributors (due to their politics driving all the reasonable ones away) - and how will their fancy code vault help then?
There's nothing quite like a massive tech company taking something that an entire field is already dedicated to and executing it poorly, with questionable ethics, for seemingly meaningless purpose and gain outside of PR and ego.
(yes, I'm talking about the dumb arctic code vault)
Sure, this company wants to "preserve open source for future generations." As if that's supposed to somehow make up for that other ice-related thing they're involved in.
James Fenn
boosted
A lot of the problems of centralization comes from the fact that it’s centralized. (https://v2.jacky.wtf/post/ac059ff6-ebb3-490a-8c93-f9d5459a7a41)
James Fenn
boosted
I like this new feature on @GitHub! (https://v2.jacky.wtf/post/177d6d55-5303-45ba-931d-acc8ac184697)
@jalcine IIRC any public work on it has stopped; I haven't seen any updates since last year. There might still be work being done in private, but I don't know any more than that :P
They have a community discord which is similarly absent, but seems to confirm the above: https://discord.gg/AdT27as
I also vaguely remember @ceejbot posting about economics / burnout related to entropic & open source a while ago... which could be part of the reason behind this. I wouldn't expect them to work countless hours on this for nothing in return. Still, it feels a bit sad if that is the case; I would've liked the chance to get involved & mess around with it if I'd known about it / had the time to spend on it before.
- Website
- https://jfenn.me/
- Horrific Dev
- https://horrific.dev/
- Unicorn Utterances
- https://unicorn-utterances.com/
Admin
Enjoys talking about software with other people that enjoy talking about software. Skeptical of blockchain, cryptocurrency, AI, and technological utopianism. he/him
Joined Jun 2020
