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I had to explain to a 12yo that not long before she was born, you made a computer display by sucking all the air out of an enormous glass box and then painting one side of it with special paint that sometimes glowed and then applying 2000V to a little bit of hot wire so you ripped electrons out of it and using electromagnets to steer the electrons to hit the special paint so that it glowed, and she seemed increasingly suspicious that I was pulling her leg and at the end she just said “that seems.. ..very inefficient?” and now I feel like a walking exhibit at a mediaeval blacksmithing museum

—@doop

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At the dawn of computers, newsrooms thought their “content” is what made them valued, so they each needed special “systems” to “manage” it. They commodified content until it lost value; so did their CMSes. Here is word that Vox, which made a big deal of creating its own CMS–licensing it to other news organizations–is dropping it for WordPress. Newsrooms are not each so special after all.

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/18/vox-media-chorus

—@jeffjarvis

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Sometimes Elon stans call me out on Twitter when people post the “cars and rockets” post, demanding to know what stupid things Elon says about software.

Here’s a primo example.

In this exchange, Elon thinks Adam Mosseri is adding rate limits to Threads just like he added them to Twitter, and that he “copied” Elon.

Anyone who understands software knows Adam is talking about WRITE rate limits to curb spam posts. Elon implemented READ rate limits in an application that relies on ad impressions.

—@rodhilton

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Dear people who don’t understand chronic illness/invisible disabilities –
* believe me when I say I’m too exhausted to absorb what you are saying or discuss something complex
* believe me when I say I’m too tired to put away groceries or walk to something a block away
* understand that things that take you trivial amounts of energy can be exhausting for me
* BELIEVE ME

#disability #fibromyalgia

—@meredithw

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Hey. So as major platforms start to fall apart, don’t necessarily look for the next big one.

Dust off your blog.

Go back to establishing web-rings.

RSS feeds. Remember those?

This is the way to share good stuff. You don’t need a centralized platform for that.

As hams, we should know that.

—@KC8JC

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I strongly encourage you to demand your Mastodon instance use AUTHORIZED_FETCH.

The basic story is this:
If you block someone, you can’t see them & their posts, etc. BUT without AF, they can still see you & your posts.

What does AUTHORIZED_FETCH actually do?
https://hub.sunny.garden/2023/06/28/what-does-authorized_fetch-actually-do/

Why AUTHORIZED_FETCH isn’t defaulted on… Knowing what I now know, I would move to a new instance if my admin would not turn AF on. It’s a huge security issue.

It’s a stalkers field day without AUTHORIZED_FETCH.

—@Yehuda