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With notes on how to deal with an industry that is very dependent on proprietary software and formats, using only free software



A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to get a small branch of bamboo, and of course I did.

Yesterday I found the 10 minutes to try to cut it into a couple of pens, following the instructions on static1.squarespace.com/static… : I think that the branch was probably thinner than what is usually recommended, but the pens seem to work just fine, in the picture there are a couple of lines written with the two pens, and they aren't significantly harder to use than regular metal nibs.

There is also a closeup of the points: I tried to make the cut more or less perpendicular, as they are going to be used for western-style calligraphy and I'm used to nibs with just a bit of slant.

And yes, the slit on one of the pens is definitely off center: I'll fix it when it will have worn down and I'll need to trim it.





I was working on #3dprinted #enclosure for @olimex #Lime2

The SATA port does not fit as neatly as it could and the board is actually attached to the box with just one screw, but it works. 🙂

If anyone would like to print their own box or even better improve it, move the holes for ports and screws by a few milliliters, so they will fit more tightly, let me know and I will upload the #STL and #OpenSCAD files on GitLab, FramaGit or somewhere. :openhardware:
Costumed made 3D printed enclosure for Olimex Lime2
Costumed made 3D printed enclosure for Olimex Lime2
Costumed made 3D printed enclosure for Olimex Lime2
Costumed made 3D printed enclosure for Olimex Lime2

@Gruppo Linux Como @LIFO

in reply to ∿ und̷e̷l̷ě̷t̷e̷d̷

mostly yes: it is using an A20 SoC, for which support is almost complete: linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlini…

(it is missing e.g. HDMI audio, but HDMI video does work)

The ones I have around all run standard debian, from the official installer (not a precooked image), and that must be able to run from the upstream kernel.





we live in an age of surveillance, tracking, targeted ads and the whole dystopia

and sites STILL show me temperature in Fahrenheit!

come on people, use all this data for something useful for once! I know you know who I am!






Bye, bye, HuffPost.
I can't be bothered reading your stuff if I have to jump through hoops first.
When clicking a link to a HuffPost article I was presented with this overlay where I had to agree to their terms or "manage my options". No, thanks!

The comments to that post are also worth reading

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

couldn't find the link to the thread so I had to dig it out here: mstdn.io/@fitheach/10285925211…; only applies to huffingtonpost.com, not huffingtonpost.it; latter is operated by HuffingtonPost Italia s.r.l. which is a JV between Oath and GEDI s.p.a. so they are less scared by the GDPR
in reply to Reply Guy

the link to the thread is indeed that one, and it is linked from the date of the post, below the author.

Not very visible, I agree.



in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

The same petition, in German:

openpetition.eu/it/petition/on…

The TooItalian;Didn'tRead is that the province of Bolzano has decided to stop paying to develop FUSS, a Debian based system¹ that has been used since 2005 in the italian language schools of the province and move towards a microsoft-based solution.

¹ not just a distribution, the project also includes tools for both classroom management and teaching.





Strategies for sustainable phones


On the Tinkerphones mailing list, Paul Boddie expressed some interesting thoughs about (lack of) sustainability of modern mobile phones. Things got worse lately, it seems.

It's a longer text, but we are on Diaspora, not Twitter. Our attention span is not limited to 280 characters. So here is the complete text.

Hello again,

Recently, having found myself needing to buy a fairly cheap Android smartphone
to keep communicating with the rest of the world, I found myself reviewing
what the options really were for buying something that would be (amongst other
things)...

  • Viable for a reasonable amount of time: the featurephone I retired lasted
    15 years but was wearing out and obviously couldn't do smartphone things.
  • Designed not to become obsolete purely because of cynical corporate
    decisions: for example, having a removable battery instead of something
    sealed in that may either spontaneously decide that it wants to burst out
    of the phone or that will eventually fail to hold a decent amount of
    charge, making the whole device useless.
  • Running Free Software under my control as an end-user.


Obviously, the phone I ended up getting doesn't fully satisfy (3) even though
the manufacturer does provide something claiming to be the source code. It
does satisfy (2), being something of a rarity now. Time will tell how
successful it will satisfy (1).

Being aware of various initiatives, it was therefore interesting to read the
following review of Fairphone 3:

"Fairphone 3 review: the most ethical and repairable phone you can buy"
theguardian.com/technology/201…

I dislike the tone of technology reviews, especially when they talk of "last
year's" technology. They start to sound like fashion industry gossip ("last
season's collection") with largely the same implied level of regard for the
planet, workers' rights, and so on, unless carefully worded and qualified.

Fairphone have clearly refined their process of getting products to market
that satisfy their ethical goals, and they appear to be improving with regard
to software support, but even with their resources it appears difficult to
convince others that their premium (£200 according to the article) is worth
paying or that their longevity goals can be realised. Will the phone still be
usable in five years?

Coincidentally, another article approaches this latter problem from a
different angle:

"To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution"
theguardian.com/technology/201…

Although it is perhaps not a central observation of the article, one reason
why something like the Fairphone might not be usable in five years is down to
the ongoing escalation of end-user hardware requirements by software and
services. This is rather like the way Microsoft and Intel worked in concert to
make people upgrade their computers every few years, but now things like
"bloat" in Web and online services are factors, too.

Making a top-end device can mitigate obsolescence to an extent, but this
raises some worthwhile questions about where less well-resourced efforts for
making genuinely open phones might be best directed. Smaller initiatives
cannot hope to be using the latest chipsets because these are all exclusive
things for the largest companies. And sadly, "consumers" are programmed to
obsess about specifications and how new the technology is.

I wonder, and think that others have also wondered before, whether it isn't
worth concentrating on making more modest devices instead of supposedly
competitive smartphones where openness is the differentiator. I recall
discussions of the Fernvale kit, the Zerophone, and maybe Nikolaus considered
a featurephone design at one point.

One aspect that will always detract from considerations of featurephones is
that their capabilities are maybe limited and do not appeal to all kinds of
users. That some Web sites or services may be too demanding, for instance, and
that the hardware just cannot deal with modern things.

It certainly seems to be the case that there are systemic issues involved
here: the people writing software and deploying platforms need to stop and
consider their effect on the end-user, on device longevity, and on the planet.
But there must still be a core region of functionality that could
satisfactorily be addressed by a featurephone design (or something relegated
to that category by whatever it is that passes for a "proper" smartphone these
days).

Anyway, I think I have now written enough on this topic, but I hope that it is
worthwhile to air these thoughts in the hope that they help to inform any
future directions of the efforts undertaken in this community.

Paul


#tinkerphones #letuxos #sustainability #openhardware #freesoftware #fairphone #smartphone #featurephone



We (my SO and me) made a first attempt at firing some #clay objects in a fireplace.


To reach the fireplace they had to be carried for a bit of a walk, so for the first attempt we only brought 3 different whorls, one tiny vase and a round sample bit; one of the whorls (the thickest one) broke near the beginning (and we could only find one piece), but the rest came out decently, even if we accidentally let the fire slow down earlier than planned (they remained at temperature for something like a hour and a half).

The mini-vase is currently sitting on my kitchen sink, half-full of water and at 5 °C less than its surroundings. Before the next summer I want to make one of those refrigerating flasks…

#clay



(since the preview on friendica isn't working, the article talks about the lack of a need for a new leader for the Free Software Movement)
Questa voce è stata modificata (5 anni fa)
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Just to clarify: the preview in Friendica works. It adds corretly the iframe to embed the preview. But the url is http, while friendica is almost always https. and browsers block http content in https pages nowadays... :)
in reply to Fabio

whooops, you're right

(I still don't understand when friendica uses the iframe preview and when it uses the snippet of text from the description in the editing window, but it's not like I've ever made an effort to understand it).

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

it depends on what the site offer as data. It this case the oembed endpoint offer html code to use as embed which contains the iframe (see here). Note that the blockquote with title and link is also in oembed reply.

If the site don't support oembed, friendica tries other systems: opengraph meta tags, "description" meta and title tag. As a fallback, it tries to extract first lines of body text... (I'm describing this from memory.. I could be wrong)

in reply to Fabio

the site has no favicon and no opengraph meta tags so it's not really social-friendly; this is how it looks like in Mastodon:
in reply to Reply Guy

yup. the site lacks the favicon. but Mastodon lacks support for oEmbed, so also Mastodon is not really social-friendly :-P
in reply to Fabio

In general Mastodon supports oEmbed; but I tried with another WP site served over https and it gave the same result as deblanc.net; whereas the oEmbed-from-WP example from oembed.com with type=link is better (but still no excerpt); the issue could be lack of support for type=rich oEmbeds:
github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/… ... in any case, homework for both deblanc.net and wp.libpf.com: install WP opengraph plugin
in reply to Reply Guy

uh, my edit didn't appear on mastodon? when I realized that the preview looked pretty empty I added a short description.

ouch





The fight for diversity, equality and inclusion is the fight for software freedom. Our movement will only be successful if it includes everyone. RMS does not speak for these values.
sfconservancy.org/news/2019/se…

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

he makes a good point but the link preview could be improved. Matthew should do his homework and implement ogp.me/. I wonder if he’s @mjg59 here ? That account seems dead ...


TFW you are on a commuter train between Varese (Italy) and Como (Italy) and an announcement warns you that you are now leaving the European Union!!1ONE!!! (and if you are carrying about a truckload of money or valuables you should leave the train at the next station to declare them)

(I knew I was going to leave Italy for part of the trip, I just didn't expect the EU bit)

tilo.ch/en/Collegamenti/Colleg… ---> this is the line, going through Switzerland.



Filed under: reality oversteampunking fiction.

Today I saw a flogo-pneumatic gun (wikipedia article in italian only, but it has a picture) built by Volta in 1776. The museum guidebook mentions that he commented “feel free to laugh, but don't be afraid of that word”. There is no mention whether the phrase continued with “you fools! BUAHAHAHAH”.

Oh, and it was inside the Volta Temple, which was designed to be a (small) museum, but it's in the shape of a temple, inspired by the Pantheon (so, if this was the discworld, there would now be a god called Volta)

#steampunk #flogiston #flogoPneumatic

in reply to Fabio

I think it is worth visiting, but you should either read up on Volta's activities (beyond the battery) in advance the visit or buy the guide when you get there and plan to have time to read it while you visit the museum.

It's full of interesting-looking devices, but the descriptions in the museum only give you their names, with very little hints on what they do. You can probably guess a lot (we did), but deeper explanations would be better.





Vanilla @debian is installed/running on my @olimex TERES-I laptop via debian-installer. If you experience a black screen upon bootup, there is a workaround: remove the installation media at the debian-installer boot select menu. What does this mean? You can easily create your own installer media (a ~90MB image) to install the operating system the way it was designed to be installed. You don't need a custom image sourced from a vendor.

wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebi…

@Gruppo Linux Como



The aim for today is either discovering that oil lamps are a pretty good source of light that produces little soot, or making my own writing ink (some bought gum arabic required).
Questa voce è stata modificata (5 anni fa)
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

He does grow enough basil for all of our pesto needs

So the basic needs are covered, I would say...

in reply to Fabio

We only grow the basil, we don't have the trees (pine and olive) nor the right weather to grow them. We're not growing the garlic either, but that we could probably do.

Plenty of things missing from the basic needs :D





Coucou! C’est la rentrée et donc voici l’épisode qui m’a tenu compagnie cette été:

peppercarrot.com/fr/article463…

Étant l’épisode 30, c’est un épisode silencieux (comme tous les épisodes multiples de cinq, comme le 5,10,15,20 et 25…une tradition et une contrainte artistique). C’est aussi un épisode qui zoom un peu sur les préoccupations de Carrot et fait un tour sur la vie studieuse à présent de tous les jours dans la maison de Pepper. J’espère que ça vous plaira! Merci encore!

Entrer une description pour l'image ici



For some reasons, when I saw this at the egyptian museum in Turin I thought about mastodon :D

It's the report of a strike by the (relatively elite) workers from Deir el-Medina who were building the current pharaoh's tomb, when they stopped receiving payments/food rations.

bad picture is bad, but this is the first result I found with a quick search and it has another picture and a lot of information dianabuja.wordpress.com/2012/0…





Primo incontro Rizoma


Hai poco tempo, il capitalismo estrattivo te lo ruba, al lavoro e quando produci valore nel
tempo libero.
I partiti non ti attirano, parlano di problemi di 20 anni fa proponendo soluzioni di 50 anni
prima.
Se sommi tutto il tempo che passi sui social ( Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook ), a guardare,
leggere e scrivere cose che dimenticherai dopo tre giorni, e pensi che avresti potuto impiegarlo
meglio organizzando una rivoluzione, allora sei nelle vicinanze del Rizoma.
Il rizoma non è unico, ce ne sono molti ma sono difficili da trovare perché sono radici
sotterranee. Spesso pensi di non averne bisogno, hai cose più urgenti da fare. Per esempio
sopravvivere.
Oltre alla sopravvivenza, per chi può, c'è l'azione. Rizoma è una unità minima dell'azione, una
organizzazione senza struttura, in comunicazione con le altre organizzazioni in un ecosistema.
Hai dei desideri? A chi li affidi?
Nel Rizoma puoi attivarti per realizzarli assieme a con chi respira assieme a te. Usando la
tecnologia a tuo vantaggio, per produrre valore sociale nella comunità senza diventare una
appendice della macchina e una merce in vendita.
Andremo a formare una delle componenti dell'ecosistema di organizzazioni, una soluzione
frammentaria ai desideri di appartenenza a comunità aperte, accoglienti e solidali.
Le caratteristiche minime saranno l'assenza di delega, il confronto dialettico, l'apertura a
molteplici identità, l'interesse per le tematiche legate alla tecnologia e alla trasformazione
sociale.
Ci vediamo a Spin Time Labs alle h 10:00 sala X - Domenica 13 ottobre 2019.
Via S. Croce in Gerusalemme, 55, Roma.
Programma:
Domenica 13 Ottobre.
H 10:00 Benvenuto di Spin Time Labs - Introduzione a Rizoma
H 11:00 Discussione delle proposte costituenti.
H 12:00 Proposte di azione dai partecipanti.
H 13:30 Pranzo sociale 15€
H 14:30 Il social network federato come ambiente per l'ecosistema di organizzazioni.
H 16:00 Crowdfounding e bandi per finanziare le infrastrutture emancipative. La campagna
#facciamoluce come esempio di ecosistema.
H 18:00 Saluti - workshop social federati (Friendica e Matrix). Scambio contatti.
friendica.feneas.org/profile/r… rizoma@tuta.io
#fediverso #politica #roma #friendica #rizoma #facciamoluce #spintimelabs
!Rizoma !Gruppo Linux Como


this. this. this.

A step in the wrong direction is "locking firmware", where a loadable firmware is made read-only by storing it to a ROM. (…) This is madness that needs to stop.
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

I'm not sure I understand what is going on - did Raspberry Pi try to lock the firmware of the GPU to a ROM and FSF supported that in 2012? What is the situation now?
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Back in 2012 Raspberry Pi announced that they were the first arm board with FLOSS GPU drivers, when they in fact only had a shim that called the real drivers from the proprietary GPU firmware. Since then their situation has afaik improved a lot.

I don't know if the FSF ever dealt with Raspberry Pi, but they have suggested multiple times that putting a proprietary firmware on a ROM would make it part of the hardware and thus not a/their problem; I know it has happened with the GTA04 and with wifi card.

IMHO this policy is horribly misguided, does not improve the practical freedom of the user and reduces their potential freedom.





I've tried to make an oil lamp with a small jar, a slice of cork covered with foil and a wick made with thread plied a few times.

The bottom of the jar is filled with water, with rice oil (i.e. an old and slightely rancid oil I had around the house) on top.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

That's definitely one of the better ways I've seen of using up otherwise-unpalatable oil!
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

btw, the jar of course had some food products in it, the wick is made from used basting thread, the cork came from a bottle of wine and the foil is a leftover from a solar panel.

I guess that the only “new” thing is the tap water at the bottom :)




apparently, coming with superior numbers and conquering their cities is not something you're supposed to do to your SO.

I don't really understand why :D

#carcassonne #board-games


in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Thank you, thank you for sharing this. There is so much I'd like to express about this...

But won't be able to state that clearly in a comment - this needs a proper post.

For now I just say this - I think we really need to keep the web more KISS, really. There is a lot of trendy stuff happening and it is dangerous when we start treating these trendy things as "best-practice" and copying them everywhere, when in fact they are counter-productive and even toxic at times. A great example of this is infinite scroll (diaspora's frontend has this same antipattern) - no way to link to a specific point in the list of items, no way to know what is the total number of them, and the back button is (usually) broken.

I'm trying to treat JS as an optional add-on with the stuff that I build, as much as I can. In one of my projects I did implement a page that would load parts of it via JS when the user selects an item in a list, but if the user did just visit the url directly, the server sends full HTML instead. I don't think this would be a performance difference, but rather a way to avoid full page reload when only part of it actually changes.





AMP's rewriting of stuff to be hosted by Google specifically in a way that increases their surveillance, with *pressure* to do so in exchange for a boost in traffic that will absolutely go away anyway once they've forced the entire ecosystem to move over to it, is a sure sign of monopolistic behavior that Google deserves to get hit with an antitrust lawsuit for more than anything else I've seen so far.





Image

DebianDay/2019 - Debian Wiki


wiki.debian.org/DebianDay/2019

#Debian Day will be on Friday, August 16th in 2019. It is celebrated each year on August 16th.

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