Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)

A bit coarse, but spot on: https://www.otherstrangeness.com/2026/03/14/have-a-fucking-website/

This is POSSE <- to which we should all aspire. https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Wow, serious rite of passage: my younger son playing his first lp... On our turntable unused for a decade or two, with a just-replaced cartridge... These speakers are also getting their first airing despite me having had them for years (gifted by a mate as excess to requirements)...

Huh, cool. A #Fediverse professional network: https://nolto.social/ 🤞🏻 that it makes progress. The current sway of a shit platform like LinkedIn sorta makes me puke in my mouth regularly.

Superb. "For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have employed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty." Boom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFsgXwn9SEI
#Mamdani #NYCMayor

Ok, doing Drupal updates while a wee bit snookered, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

Does anyone in the EU (or elsewhere?!) have links to any case studies about migrating from Microsoft to #opensource / #libre / #FOSS that include actual financial figures?

@geerlingguy they're way too late - I switched happily to Linux **checks watch** 31 years ago, almost to the day. But yeah, it'd be very cool if the rest of the digital world realised what they're missing, though, and made the switch. The world would be far better without Microsoft in it.

@gang0lf @geerlingguy There're always the BSDs

Yeah, folks getting locked out of bigtech socials is too bad... https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/571326/musician-pacific-leader-northland-grandmother-dozens-of-kiwis-social-accounts-banned but it's entirely predictable. If your livelihood depends on a 3rd party you don't control, you're a subsidiary to their business, not stand-alone... I explain it here: https://davelane.nz/mshostage - the moral of the story: distribute your risk. Having an credible foothold in the Fediverse is probably a very good idea, even if 'your numbers' are initially underwhelming, because it's *fundamentally* different.

Here's how it's different: https://phillipjreese.com/the-social-network-that-cant-sell-out-understanding-mastodon-vs-bluesky/

@ensslen oddly enough, I quite like Mozilla Thunderbird... and harbour a strong disrespect for MS Outlook and its wannabes (like Evolution). In my experience search is a function of the IMAP server that its connected to (assuming you use IMAP)... mine implements a nice search database and I've found it to be quite effective... Not sure about the pre-configuration stuff, as I don't seem to miss it...

My wife is working from home, and I'm listening to her and her colleagues having an online meeting via MS Teams - everything is "Teams" this or "Teams" that. 🤢 🤮 Poor folks being forced by their *gov't funded institution* to contend with such rubbish, poorly conceived, elitist (overpriced) digital technology, created by such an unworthy & psychotic entity (the Microsoft Corporation).

@captainepoch Yeah, I agree re Slack (I wrote this: https://davelane.nz/notslack) - but, to be fair, Slack doesn't have that limitation if you're paying for it (a similar amount to what our gov't is paying MIcrosoft for MSO 365, probably). In any case, anyone paying either vendor is getting ripped off in more than one way.

The IT Professionals institute has been wringing its hands: https://www.digitalequity.nz/blog/windows-10-desupport-who-will-be-impacted and pleading with Microsoft to come up with a less exclusionary process. Of course, Microsoft couldn't care less. The problem is that our national edtech system is conceptually flawed from the start & needs a fundamentally different approach. Dependence on 2 US corporations (neither known for honest dealings or 'not being evil') for *all* our schools most basic edtech is ridiculous. So, what approach?
2/n

Unbeknownst to anyone with decision-making power in the MinOfEd, with a bit of leadership & vision, we could create a vastly better edtech landscape for Aotearoa *in* Aotearoa, without any dependence on foreign tech corporations whatsoever. But, yeah, the 'leadership & vision' part is missing entirely. Seems to me, we need a mandate for the MinOfEd to realise that putting all our eggs in those two very precarious MS & GOOG baskets is/was a mistake & they need to invest in a '#ThirdWay'.

3/n

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to start explaining what I think that #ThirdWay should look like, because I don't think we can afford, as a nation, to continue with the duopoly to which the MinOfEd has shackled us.

For the curious, here's a starting point: https://davelane.nz/openschools - in addition to an explainer video, there's an entire book (available for download as a PDF) on there, which explains that better way.

4/n

The #edtech status quo in Aotearoa has huge inertia & plenty of tech support staff who mostly have very narrow expertise, limited to those two US corporate monocultures and a smattering of other things around the edges. So whatever transition is proposed needs to be gradual & carefully-managed. Ultimately, a transition to a #ThirdWay will be mostly political & there'll be a stiff opposition to it from the many vested interests involved. We need to agree the status quo is not acceptable.

5/n

I think we'd all benefit in many ways from an edtech #ThirdWay that is fully run by NZ businesses competing to offer services with a common set of open (#libre) platforms that give us, as a country, the ability to set our pedagogical & practical tech direction. If you want to create tech-savvy kiwi kids, the best way is to give them real experience with open tech, without glass ceilings or steel floors.

I'm certain it would, post transition, cost us all less & offer us far more.

6/n

At the very least, a #ThirdWay would give us a fighting chance of arresting the onslaught of generative LLMs into every aspect of our digital existences. That's in direct opposition to, say, Microsoft, who've been working with the MinOfEd for years for ways to shoehorn 'AI' into every aspect of the curriculum: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/492898/documents-expose-microsoft-s-relationship-with-nz-education-and-hopes-for-ai-in-schools

7/n

Folks in NZ are starting to realise the implications of the impending EOL of Microsoft Windows 10 for our education system. In its finite wisdom, our MinOfEd has effectively locked all schools into either the use of MS Windows or Google ChromeOS. Both have fundamental issues like endless license hassles, EOLing OSs, ending support for Window or ChromeOS on specific computer models, etc. And that doesn't even start to talk about digital colonisation & sovereignty (see https://davelane.nz/explainer-digitech-risks-school-boards) 1/n