Notices by Dan York (danyork@mastodon.social), page 2

@mmasnick Please do post more here! I very much enjoy and appreciate your take on things.

@pfefferle Cool! Clearly I just missed that. 🤦♂️

@pfefferle Excellent news! Thank you for all the work on this.

Are the Blocks new? (Follow me on Fediverse, and Fediverse Followers) Those are a nice addition.

If they have been there before, then I guess I just missed them.

@photomatt Glad you are here, Matt! There is some good #WordPress discussion that happens here.

For ppl in the USA still thinking about making tax-deductible contributions before midnight tonight, here are my entirely-subjective suggestions for US organizations to consider who are working to make the #Internet better in some way:

- The Internet Society - (Yes, this is my employer!) There are still 3 billion people with no Internet access - and governments around the world are seeking to restrict what we can see and do. We need your help to defend the Internet! https://www.internetsociety.org/donate/

1/

“Hope begins with the ability to imagine alternatives. And there is always an alternative.” - part of a brilliant graduation address by Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic ) to York University.

A great piece about science fiction, optimism, pessimism, fatalism, humane agency, Luddites, tech bros, inevitability, and the need to always seek alternatives… and to find hope.

Read the whole thing: https://doctorow.medium.com/there-is-always-an-alternative-e55fd414d1fd

#hope #scifi #sciencefiction

@evan @darius @noracodes I agree! That’s why I am here.

I am just saying we need to look at WHY centralized systems keep winning (even in email).

- They make *discovery* of other people and content easy.

- They remove friction from creating content to make that as easy as possible.

- They remove friction from *running* a server.

They make it easy for people to connect, communicate, collaborate.

We have to do the same. And we are in many ways!

@darius @evan @noracodes And that’s certainly a valid concern. Attempting to run your own email server in 2023 is an exercise in frustration. (And yet I know a good number of people who still do.)

@evan @darius @noracodes A challenge is that the VAST majority of users don’t want to run servers or do anything technical like that. They just want to connect and communicate with their friends, discover new interesting people, catch up on news, follow celebrities, learn new things, etc.

They don’t care about centralized vs decentralized. They just want to connect with the people they care about.

Centralized systems made this easy, removed friction.

@darius @evan @noracodes I am having such MAJOR flashbacks to the early 1990s when I seem to recall that some number of SMTP administrators were adamant that they were not going to send or receive email from aol.com, because it had all these “newbies” who didn’t understand how the Internet worked and who were going to pollute all the messaging of SMTP-based email, particularly because they came from a commercialized, advertising-supported system…

Advocates for #ActivityPub - IF YOU HAVE A #WORDPRESS SITE, have you installed the ActivityPub plugin? https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

At the State of the Word address this week, Matt Mullenweg was asked about support for the plugin, and he commented that less than 5,000 sites had installed it. So he wasn't sure how interested people are in it.

So... if you have a WP site, let's start installing that plugin and making more sites available via ActivityPub! 😀

#StateOfTheWord #SotW

It's great to see that #Threads is getting serious about offering #ActivityPub integration so that communication can happen with #Mastodon and the broader #Fediverse.

We NEED open, interoperable protocols that for this kind of communication and interaction. It's a key way to unlock the walled gardens that control so much of messaging.

And it's great to see a company the size of Meta getting behind ActivityPub. Kudos to the teams involved.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon

tip @Techmeme

Way back in 1990, I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks as a field worker for an ice drilling project on the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet. The researchers were drilling to retrieve an ice core to study climate change.

When my time at the camp was over, I had the chance to hike to the edge of a glacier before leaving. It was all an amazing experience!

Ever since, I have paid attention to news out of #Greenland … and it’s not good🙁

From: @kim_harding
https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/111402991983029673

@evan I want to hear more about Wingspan! I have never heard of a birdwatching board game before. What did you like about it? Was it fun to play?

@mmasnick Somewhat ironic that you launched this a day after that VC billionaire published his "manifesto" indicating that the ideas of trust and safety are ENEMIES!

Great piece from @pluralistic One part:

“Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.”

From: @shimon
https://kolektiva.social/@shimon/111025766699364713

How To Opt-In to Mastodon Search - a quick screenshot.

If you, like me, were trying to figure out the exact steps in the web interface, maybe this screenshot will help.

You start by going to your "Getting started" view and choose "Preferences" in the right column.

[This ONLY works if your Mastodon instance is running at least v4.2.0.]

Then, as shown in the image, you go to:
- Public profile
- Privacy and reach tab
- Check "Include public posts in search results"
- Save changes

This is important as the @w3c plays a critical role in #standards for the #Web - and given that the Web is such a huge part of the broader #Internet, this work is vital. Yet I’m not sure that the W3C as an organization is widely understood. This kind of document is useful in helping explain what the W3C is all about!

From: @w3cdevs
https://w3c.social/@w3cdevs/110774049245100328

A great piece from @mmasnick that includes this:
----
So, I’m personally not that excited about #Threads as a product, nor am I all that worried about it doing something bad for the #fediverse. I am excited that it shows how big companies can make use of open protocols in a manner that keeps the #internet more open, enabling communication not just within a single silo, but where the users have more control, rather than a single centralized company.
---
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/06/meta-launches-threads-and-its-important-for-reasons-that-most-people-wont-care-about/

tip @Techmeme

@goatsarah Yikes!!! Yeah, my neighbors wouldn’t be too keen on that! 😃 Very cool, though!