Matt Cengia 🏳️‍🌈 @mattcen@aus.social

Oh you know just a video of some birds playing basketball

In an upcoming @ieeesoftware #paper I've conducted a longitudinal #genderstudy of authors of #publiccode commits from @swheritage, analyzing 1.6 billion commits contributed by 33 million distinct authors over a period of 50 years. Short thread w/ links at the end 👇 #FOSS [1/6]

If you’re wondering why rickrolls are suddenly in disconcertingly high quality, it’s because someone used an AI to remaster the original video in 4K 60fps quality 😂

https://youtu.be/2ocykBzWDiM

parent: get out, it's time to go
kid: but i am out

This is an incredibly well presented talk, and my current #lca2021 favourite. Kudos to @TheMartianLife@twitter.com!

"Radio Astronomy for Programmers" https://youtu.be/P4UiWbUVaaM

Indeed, if things are so dire, why are any of us even sticking around? The problem is:

* Network effects (the more people there are on a platform, the more reason there is to join)

* High switching costs (if you leave, you give up all those people)

And those lead to:

* Lock in (you don't leave because you don't want to give up everyone else, and they don't leave for the same reason - we're all holding each other hostage)

3/

`
It's been more than a year since Jack Dorsey announced Project Blue Sky, inspired by Mike Masnick's "Protocols, Not Platforms," paper - a critical work explaining how walled gardens can be transformed into open protocols.

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech

There hasn't been much (visible) progress on Blue Sky since the 2019 announcement, but Twitter just published an "ecosystem review" analyzing the distributed systems out there as a kind of lay of the land.

https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/r0/download/twitter.modular.im/981b258141aa0b197804127cd2f7d298757bad20

1/

I guess this might be relevant to #Telegram users. Or not.

>Security researcher Ahmed Hassan has shown that spoofing the Android’s “People Nearby” feature allows him to pinpoint the physical location of Telegram users

#BruceSchneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/01/finding-the-location-of-telegram-users.html

A £320,000 #bicycle lane in #London was used by 4000 cyclists a day. About 300 people complained so council ripped it off to ease congestion.

The result?

The lane is blocked by parked cars 80% of the time, and congestion... has increased.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/01/removed-london-bike-lane-blocked-by-parked-cars-most-of-the-time-study-kensington-and-chelsea-council

There will always be (loud) complaints from motorists when infrastructure makes it safer and easier for people wanting to use active transport. Here’s another example of _everyone_ being worse off when a council listens to them only.

only once every part of DAFTMANGO* is broken up and/or dissolved will i breathe a bit easier

* Disney-Apple-Facebook-Twitter-Microsoft-Amazon-Netflix-Google-Oracle

dentist: open up please

me: I still haven't come out to my dad, not because I'm afraid he won't accept me, but because I'm afraid of all intimacy with him

dentist: damn, you're valid for not wanting to talk to him, but thats really not what i meant,

Headline: dad designs "bi chair" for daughter who can't sit normally

A good table in here on Mastodon app accessibility features

https://firewally.net/post/mastodon-client-accessibility-comparison/

Looks like Amazon is retiring the Goodreads API, which just another step towards basically abandoning Goodreads and folding it into some other Amazon service I guess: https://joealcorn.co.uk/blog/2020/goodreads-retiring-API

My advice? Get off Goodreads while you still can (ie export your content) and move over to StoryGraph: https://beta.thestorygraph.com

A black-owned startup finally developing a viable alternative to Goodreads. Fuck yeah!

(Why not LibraryThings? Because, guess what.. it’s also owned by Amazon!)