Notices by Terence Eden (edent@mastodon.social)

Young folks: Please can we contribute using modern git-based workflow rather than email?
Old farts: No.

👶: OK, but can we at least use modern memory-safe languages?
👴: Also no.

👶: Perhaps we could modernise our language & attitudes to be more inclusive?
👴: LOL! No.

👶: Could we at least consider addressing some long-standing community issues?
👴: What part of "no" are you having trouble understanding?

⏳ ⌛

👴: Why aren't there any new people contributing to our project? Truly a mystery. 🙃

Kobo will price match Amazon - refunding the difference + 10% of the competitor's price.

I found a Kobo book which was £4.99. Kindle was £4.31.

So that would get me a credit of £1.11. Nice!

Or, I can join the Kobo VIP scheme for £6/year. That comes with reward points and price discount.

The VIP discount for that book takes it to £4.31. Same as Amazon.

So, I *think* I'm better off getting the £1.11 discount (effective price £3.88).

Anyone else done the maths on this?

It looks like Amazon are going to prevent Kindle users from downloading purchased books to transfer over USB.

I assume this is to stop people stripping the DRM from the files.

So now I'm looking at Kobo and trying to work out if their price-matching or VIP scheme is worth it.

(No need to reply to me saying how evil Amazon are, thanks.)

#Kindle #DRM #Kobo

To summarise:

💶 Kobo will undercut Amazon Kindle pricing by 10%.
📖 You can download regular ePubs from them; you don't need to use a Kobo device or app.
🔓 DRM is trivial to strip.
🔃 Calibre will convert to any other format if you want to read on a Kindle, Palm Pilot, or whatever.
🧮 There is a loyalty point / discount scheme. But I'm not entirely sure it is worth it.

Fair play, a few hours after I submitted the price match, Kobo credited my account.

Looks like I'm switching my book buying!

@dansup Facebook had this problem back in the day.
Angsty teens would rage delete their account, and then regretfully demand it back.
So they implemented a time-out before proper deletion.
I guess you technically could still do the "your account will be recoverable for X business days" and still be GDPR compliant if you really wanted.

🆕 blog! “FOSDEM - The Good Parts and the Not-So-Good Parts”

I'm just back from my first ever FOSDEM - a megaconference dedicated to Free and Open Source technology and culture. It was epic. I'm still ruminating on the experience, but here are my first impressions of what did and didn't work.

The Good Bits

Really, it is a dozen conferences squeezed into one. Over …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/02/fosdem-the-good-parts-and-the-not-so-good-parts/
⸻
#conference #fosdem

@evan cheers!
Were the BOF talks recorded? I'd love to know if what I said made any kind of sense 😄

Exhausted from my first #FOSDEM.
Huge thanks to everyone who said "hi" - and special thanks to those folk who let me fanboi at them 🤭
Right, time for a cheeky beer - once I figure out the Metro.

Which idiot decided doing two #FOSDEM talks in a day was a good idea?

*This* idiot 🫠

Come along to AW 1.121 at 1200 to hear my talk about ActivityBot.

And 1400 in Janson to hear how we open sourced the UK's Covid tracing app.

See you there!

Celebrity spotting at #FOSDEM!
Can't believe I got to meet the #Plushtodon 😍
(And some other bearded guy who photo-bombed us.)

@Gargron ah, that makes sense. Ta.

Is there a way to stop search engines crawling a site but still let rich previews work?

My robots.txt was:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

But when I shared a link on Facebook & other sites, it often wouldn't show the OGP image & description even though the metatags are in there.

I want a site which is hidden from search engines, but still shareable on social networks.

Any tips?

@stefan @_elena @nacly @nclm
Done! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse#Further_reading

Hey gang. In one week's time, I'll be taking to the Janson stage at #FOSDEM to talk about how #OpenSource helped the UK's Covid tracing app.

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4411-lessons-learned-open-sourcing-the-uk-s-covid-tracing-app/

I'd love to see you all there. It's a big room, so please bring a friend!

HTML has the concept of "elements".
For example <a>, <h1>, <audio>, etc.

They're called elements because, like hydrogen, helium, uranium, etc they are fundamental units which cannot be broken down anything further.

Except, of course, elements like gold are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

What are the "subatomic" components of an HTML element?

Lunchtime Q&A Session with Ofcom for people who run low-risk community websites and want to find out more about their responsibilities once the Online Safety Act comes into force in March https://lu.ma/qijpvfnl - please share!

#OnlineSafetyAct

Boost if you remember, regret, or resent using "hashbang" URls!

Sadly Vicky Teinaki (@vickytnz) died recently.

You can add photos and memories of her at https://vickyteinaki.muchloved.com/

The website also contains details of her funeral (in person or online).

🆕 blog! “Book Review: Rules for Radicals- A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky”
★★★★☆

My good friend Suw alerted me to this venerable book by repeatedly ranting "What is your theory of change???" online.

If ever there was a moment to yell "WHAT IS YOUR THEORY OF CHANGE???" that moment is now and we…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/01/book-review-rules-for-radicals-a-pragmatic-primer-for-realistic-radicals-by-saul-alinsky/
⸻
#BookReview #politics