On the modern web, however, this presents a problem.
On the World Wide Web of ages long past, otherwise known as the 2000s and 2010s, a bargain was struck with the search engines. They would be allowed to scrape websites, so long as they behaved responsibly and obeyed the rules outlined in each site's robots.txt file.
The robots.txt file declared what was to be considered "private property, no trespassing" – and, in some technical cases, "abandon all hope ye who enter here".
This arrangement was beneficial to the websites because it boosted their visibility in search results, bringing in more views. And it benefitted the search engines by giving them better and more accurate results.
The search engines entrenched themselves as the foundational way to find anything on the internet.
And with so many eyes on them, it was inevitable that they would embrace advertising as their revenue centre. But this blog post isn't about ads. This is about something more recent, and much worse for the Web.
In those bygone days, a major threat for website uptime was the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This most often involved tens of thousands of malware-riddled desktop computers being assembled into a "botnet". All the nodes in the botnet could flood servers with millions of requests, overwhelming them to the point that they crashed. The goal was to prevent people from accessing those servers during and after the attack.
When a website generates thousands of dollars per day, being knocked offline is a direct hit to revenue. The threat of DDoS loomed over the web, like a looming thing. A thing that looms. A loomer.
Some of these botnets & related tools ended up becoming real projects with cool names and business plans, such as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon.
At one point, a variation of this attack emerged.
Instead of sending huge numbers of requests to a server, specially-crafted requests would open connections, but never close them. Servers would exhaust all of their resources waiting for the next phase of the connection.
As per tradition, this attack was also given a memorable name, the Slow Loris attack.
Flash forward to today, and many of these issues have been addressed. At least for large corporations. Tech solutions like CDNs, auto scaling, Kubernetes, load balancing, and other orchestration/infrastructural tools, exist to help administrators withstand these sorts of attacks. Such tools are available to hobbyist developers like myself, but they are often outside of our budgets — or they may have questionable business practices and political aims. And the traditional solution, allowing servers to autoscale when under heavy load, is a recipe for emptying wallets.
Some hobby developers have been surprised by bills of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a project that was launched as a joke and shouldn't have cost more than $10.
Here in the 2026, a new threat has emerged.
Vast networks of automated scraping tools are threshing the Internet for content to feed into large language model training data sets.
These have the same traffic patterns as distributed denial of service botnets, except instead of using infected machines, they use nodes that are owned by the organization gathering the data. Much like a search engine scraper - but with far fewer scruples.
The scraping tools routinely ignore the robot.txt file that was established to allow search engines to responsibly scan for data. They spread their requests out over hundreds of IP addresses in order to disguise what they are doing. Their lack of respect for the websites they are scanning is a direct threat to hobby developers like myself.
Paying for autoscaling and paying for systems that are able to withstand the onslaught of a scraper net or a DDoS is a hefty bill. Large corporations can absorb this cost — though they probably aren't happy about it.
Open source projects are getting slammed from multiple ends. Not only are their servers overwhelmed, but often their source code repositories are also being peppered with useless "AI-powered" contribution attempts.
And for folks like me, running on as little as a single hobby VPS, the server often cannot cope.
In my opinion, this traffic is indistinguishable from an attack. I've even given it a name:
One of my hobby websites is a forum that has been online since 2008. For much of its existence, the robots.txt file has disallowed all search engine and indexing. We don't need the traffic influx that search engine engines were offering as their for-the-greater-good bargain to justify their scraping.
The content that we've posted to this forum, 6 million posts, is for us. No, it's not locked behind a password - it's visible to anybody who wants to go back and read it. But it is for us. It is not intended for random companies to harvest it and snarf it in their own tools.
And it is certainly unwelcome for such companies to scrape it so heavily that it denies access to our community members.
So you can imagine how we felt when some AI-model-scraping botnet glommed onto our forum. It caused the server to grind to a halt. Database records from nearly 20 years ago were being requested at a concerning rate by this malicious actor. But, crucially, not all from the same IP address. Each batch of requests was spread out over hundreds of IPs. This disguised the traffic in the logging tools, making it hard to spot - except for one quirk.
If someone were to reply to posts as old as the ones being requested, it would be considered "Necro posting" - dredging up old conversations for no good reason.
So from my perspective, harvesting all of these old posts is necro-scraping. And much like the Slow Loris attack, this scraping process exhausted my server resources and prevented my users from using the forum.
All that is why I call it the Necro-Loris Attack.
Maybe you've suffered from it as well?
If your projects don't have a clear signal that they are being drained in this way, you might not have noticedthe initial steps of the attack. I didn't at first. The speed at which they were crawling, and the variety of IPs they were using, was within my server's resources to handle — until it wasn't.
If you're a large company that is capable of autoscaling its services, maybe you have noticed the issue - but opted to absorb the cost. Or maybe you've been unable to zero in on the culprit for a spike in costs.
In a way, I was in a lucky position for fixing this issue. I had recently been considering taking the forum completely private and requiring passwords for everything. This attack gave me a fresh angle to consider things from.
Instead of locking down the forum as a whole, I locked down the old posts. Anything older than a specific time frame bounces to the password page. And, if you trigger that bounce too many times, your IP gets flagged for a ban.
Implementing this change was easy.
It cleared the malicious traffic off the board almost immediately.
And it has been working smoothly ever since — with only the occasional accidental (and temporary) ban of a legitimate user.
In the main controller for the site, I added PHP logic to reject the request and log the event:
$twoWeeksAgo = (new \DateTimeImmutable())->modify("-14 days");
$contentAge = $content->getAge();
if ($contentAge < $twoWeeksAgo) {
// Redirect anonymous users to the login page
if (!$loggedIn) {
$logger->error('Redirecting anonymous user', ['content_id' => $content_id]);
return $this->redirect('https://127.1/login/');
}
}
Then, I configured Fail2ban with a regex to scan for that error, in a file called /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/symfony-anon-redir.yml:
[Definition]
failregex = ^.+ERROR: Redirecting anonymous user .*{.*"ip":"<HOST>"
And then I updated the jail file:
[DEFAULT]
banaction = iptables-allports
ignoreip = 127.0.0.1/8 ::1
[symfony-anon-redir]
enabled=true
port=http,https
filter=symfony-anon-redir
maxretry=5
bantime=1d
logpath=/var/www//logs/forum.log
Apart from a few hiccups that I mentioned above, this has greatly helped to tamp down the Necro-Loris behaviour.
To unban those accidental bycatches:
sudo fail2ban-client unban ip <ip-address>
One of the biggest films of 2008, the year I launched my forum, was There Will Be Blood. It was about the oil industry in the southwest of America. A powerful film about greed and gluttony and power and selfishness. And alcoholism, I guess.
In the film, the main character is an oil baron. At one point, he uses a metaphor to describe a process that allows him to steal oil from a nearby oil claim so that he can build his own empire by exploiting the work and claims of others.
He would use a very long straw to drink their milkshake from across the room. He would drink their milkshake! Drink it up!
And I see that as a parallel to what is happening in the world today. Companies that train LLMs are engaging in wholesale theft of data (the milkshake, aka the oil) by using bots and vast numbers of IP addresses to disguise their greedy, disrespectful behaviour (the long straw).
In the attack on my forum, it appeared that over 50% of posts had been ingested by this corporate- or nation-backed botnet. Three million.
I am not happy about that. I'm insulted by it. Enraged, even. Especially because the robots.txt says for ALL robots to ignore ALL content on the site.
Search Engines offered a trade for their scanning: harvesting data in exchange for exposure.
AI harvesting scraper networks serve only their own ends.
That's not the only difference, but it is a crucial one. These scraper bots have stolen our creative works in order to build their product offering, which they alone profit from.
Like Daniel Plainview siphoning from another oil claim: They drank our milkshakes.
They are freeloading parasites.
They want to position themselves as the landlords of knowledge, billing us for the very data they stole from us.
That is why these companies do not deserve the same grace that was granted to search engines.
We should do everything in our power to stop these companies, and to shame them.
They can't be fixed.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, machine-learning, computer-history
]]>A while back, two of the complaints I heard were about the shows "Silo" and "Foundation". Two shows that I have been enjoying immensely - and for which I have not read the source material. At least not yet.
I'm not saying that the people who are saying this are wrong. They are describing their feelings, and their feelings are completely valid.
There was another show that I had heard a similar complaint about. It's called "The Peripheral". In the show, multiple timelines play out, with subordinate timelines being referred to as "stubs".
However, in this case, I have read the source material. It's by one of my favourite authors, William Gibson. And I thoroughly enjoyed the novels.
When this complaint came up, that the show didn't live up to the novels, Mr. Gibson pointed out that adaptations of The Peripheral could be seen to take place in different stubs than those covered in the books.
In other words, the same characters and plot points and set pieces, but rearranged in subtly different ways.
And I think this observation applies to any adaptation.
In Foundation, it sounds to me like entire characters were conceived in order to adapt the story format to television. The genetic dynasty concept, for example, allows them to keep the same extremely talented actors between seasons. Someone who has internalized the source books would probably be able to level much more direct criticisms, but I think they would be better served to view it as just a different stub.
Another show I like, The Expanse, is also adapted from a book series. I have heard vanishingly few complaints about the adaptation, and in fact mostly just praise for how faithful it is to the books.
I didn't read the books until after I had watched series. Thus, in my imagination, the characters in the books are intertwined with the actors playing them in the TV show.
This mixture allows me to see some of the concessions made for television, changes from the character descriptions in the novels. For example, in the books, Amos Burton would have been much more frightening than the television version. And Belters in the book would have looked much different than the television depiction.
Events unfold differently. Certain characters, who are combined together for the TV show, exist as separate characters within the books.
But that does not ruin the books for me. Gives me perspective into a different stub of the story.
Or, in other words, more Expanse for me to enjoy!
I simply wish more people could share this perspective. It's not a bad thing ruining a good thing. It's a different thing that may be merely OK, that is a companion to a good thing.
And sometimes, the series ends up being better than the books. Dexter comes to mind. I've read several of the Dexter novels, and was a huge fan of the TV show for many seasons. I had to stop reading the novels because I simply couldn't stand the direction that author Jeff Lindsay was taking the story. It was too ... weird ... for me. Like a novelization of dream logic or something. So, in my opinion, that TV series — and its various spinoffs and continuations, which I haven't seen yet — was a vast improvement over the books.
I have to imagine that this issue cropped up even before we had books. Oral histories, I am certain, were subject to change over time. Certain things might be jazzed up to please the audience, while other parts of the story might be dropped or reinvented from whole cloth - changing the details, but preserving the overall spirit of the story.
Yes, sometimes adaptations fail miserably. However, given how eminently watchable the examples in this post are, at least to me, I think a case can be made that success (even if only partial success) is more frequent than abject failure. As long as people approach it with an open mind, there is new enjoyment to be had.
Thanks for reading!
(Oh, and as a reminder, another William Gibson story adaptation is arriving shortly on AppleTV: NEUROMANCER. I have high hopes for it.)
]]>A lot of people look at society & government and apply their ideals and life experience to thinking of how they would replace it with something they see as better. Historically, this usually takes the form of revolution and turmoil.
For a brief period of time in human history, the concept of democracy has allowed a slight reduction in the ferocity of that churn. In many cases, long traditions of violent and unpleasant regime change have been replaced by peaceful elections.
But what if I told you that democracy could work in areas outside of government, too?
Enter: The Co-Op.
To quote the International Cooperative Alliance, a cooperative is:
"an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise."
A democratic Enterprise. Not even Star Trek has envisioned that. (sorry, disregard that, moving on ...)
Now, if you have any knowledge of history – or even of contemporary events – you are probably thinking, "but Kevin, democracy isn't always that great ...", and you wouldn't be wrong to think that. Democracy is famously said to be "the least-bad form of government".
However, Democracy practically sparkles when compared to Autocracy, because Democracy contains within it a method for correcting its own mistakes – without having to topple things and start over. At least, this holds true when the elections are not interfered with & foreign governments don't try to install an autocratic dictator. Not looking at anybody in particular. No sir.
Here in Canada, we're taught that Autocracy is a very undesirable state of affairs. Even the Monarchy is considered rather antiquated - we mainly keep it around out of quaintness, I think.
Yet it seems that Autocracy has nevertheless insinuated itself into our daily lives. Often, several autocracies. Modern empires have been built on the back of autocratic principles. We usually don't recognize it as such, but that's because we know this autocracy by another name:
The Corporation.
I could go on a detailed rant about Corporations, but that would be banal and patently obvious to anyone who has lived in western society in this century. Instead, I want to pitch the Cooperative as an alternative to the scourge that the Corporation has mutated into.
I am currently directly involved in three cooperatives. Two of them are established, one at a very small scale and one at a rather large scale. The third is in the very earliest stages of being started. There's also a fourth kind I'm aware of that I'll touch on at the end. It would make the most sense to discuss the one I've been with the longest, so I'll start there.
I have long dreamt of purchasing a sailboat and travelling the Pacific. Unfortunately, my bank account has not shared the same dream. (Donate to my Ko-Fi, or buy my photos, so I can make that dream come true!)
In 2021, I was pleased to discover a stopgap solution: a group of people in a nearby community that owned a sailboat & were looking for members to join their cooperative. For a low initiation fee, and low annual membership dues, this has enabled me to get out sailing whenever time & weather allow.
Since then, I have become the co-op's Membership Director and Webmaster. I've had all kinds of experiences out on the boat. I've lost a hat in a windstorm, anchored overnight under a meteor shower, seen the fata morgana, and been caught in a tidal rip so strong that I ended up sailing in reverse.
And through it all, co-op members have been there with me, helping me gain experience and confidence in sailing and skippering the boat.
In addition to the annual dues, we contribute "sweat equity", generally in the form of boat upkeep. This allows us to reduce our overall maintenance costs and keep the budget under control.
As a nonprofit cooperative, our dues pay for the annual operating costs of the co-op. We're a very "lean" organization, to borrow a corporate buzzword. We're always looking for new members - after all, the more members we onboard, the more boats we can afford - and hopefully we'll be entering a new growth phase next season.
We recently had to swap out our boat for a slightly newer one, and the process included all members of the co-op as equally as possible. Each member had an equal vote for deciding which boats to consider & eventually to purchase. Everything has worked out well so far, and we are doing some final improvements on our new vessel to get everything ship-shape.
Every year, we have an Annual General Meeting where the various directors present reports of how the year went. We discuss plans for the coming year, and members can put forward proposals for a vote.
All of this is a stark contrast to the Yacht Club or Boat Ownership Club experience. Of the clubs I've looked into, few are open and accepting of new (boatless) members. At best, it is a Bring Your Own Boat situation – once you join, though, I'm certain the other club members are wonderful. On the other hand, some clubs seem to be exclusive, nepotistic, and unaccommodating of those who are new to sailing. On top of that, you probably won't be shocked to hear that almost all of them are entirely too expensive. The expense comes with perks, of course. Private marinas and clubhouses with private chefs. Resort islands fully owned by the club. Reciprocal moorage agreements. But if my money is going to that instead of to my sailboat fund, how will I be able to afford my dream?
Thus, the co-op has been a huge factor in gaining experience in an affordable and accommodating way.
Across Canada, there are over 150 small Consumer Co-Ops that have formed around things like grocery shopping, gas purchasing, and other common needs. They are part of an association of Co-Ops providing similar services, and gain access to special branding (Cooperative Retailing System, or CRS) for this category of co-op.
Way back in 1909, in the tiny BC village of Sointula on Malcolm Island, the oldest association in CRS's network was founded. On the CRS network's About page, they note that 70% of their local co-op associations have been operational for over 75 years.
Memberships in these co-op associations are obtained by a single small payment, often less than $30. You generally only buy memberships for the co-ops in the specific areas you frequently shop.
Purchases made through the co-op, at their various locations (each local association has different services and locations available), are tracked by member number in order to provide members with an annual rebate cheque.
These co-ops generally don't rely on "Sweat Equity" - they hire employees and run in much the same way as regular businesses. It's just that the members are the ones who hold the ownership stake for the business.
Here on the south end of Vancouver Island, there are two main co-ops: Peninsula Co-Op, which began by serving the Saanich Peninsula area, and Mid-Island Co-Op, serving north of Duncan up to Port Hardy. There are several smaller co-ops sprinkled around the island, such as the Port Alberni co-op.
My favourite of the smaller ones is the Ucluelet Co-Op Food & Hardware Store. It's always fun to walk into that store and have tons of groceries on one side, and a wide selection of fishing gear and other activities on the other.
For many years, my participation in the Peninsula Co-Op took the form of using the local elementary school's co-op number. This way, the rebate became a contribution to the school's PAC & would benefit the students. In 2025 I decided to join the co-op as a full member. I won't see my first rebate until December of 2026, and I expect it to be a whopping number on the order of, um, $100 or so. But still, not bad for only having a one-time $27 payment to join.
If they end up opening a closer grocery store to me, that rebate number could go WAY up. And since I'm a full member now, I can potentially try to guide the decision-making toward that possibility.
I'm not yet a member of the Mid-Island Co-Op, nor the Ucluelet Co-Op. I can still shop there or purchase gas from them - these aren't exclusive clubs like Costco or Sam's Club - but I won't qualify for a rebate unless I pay the one-time fee for a membership.
Starting any operation on the ground floor is guaranteed to be a challenge. This is as true for a tech startup as it is for a cooperative.
I've spent the fall of 2025 helping in one such effort, and my number one recommendation is to accept all the help you can from (nearly) anyone who is willing to offer it.
We're trying to start a federated video cooperative for social video makers – i.e., YouTubers – to have more control and ownership of their online platform.
Right now, this space has been carved up between Google and Meta and TikTok. They control the horizontal, and the vertical. Their algorithms and moderation decisions can destroy livelihoods, and this gives them the power to put their thumb on global discourse.
Decentralization is one answer to this. Two video projects (PeerTube and Loops.video) aim to bring a YouTube/TikTok-like experience to the decentralized ActivityPub protocol. Traditionally, this has resulted in new topic-based servers coming online
For example, when I went exploring the video situation on Fediverse, I created an account on MakerTube. This is a PeerTube server that caters to the Maker/DIY/Retro-Tech crowd.
Important Note:
The ActivityPub protocol allows all of these servers to "talk" to each other. The videos I post to MakerTube are also available to other PeerTube and Mastodon servers. Instead of a single-service silo, ActivityPub lets us build communities that can all talk to each other: together, they form a network called the Fediverse.
You might think, "But Kevin ... I've never seen you make a Retro-Tech video, or a DIY/Maker video", and again you'd be right. I chose this server because the videos I was working on at the time involved a tiny bit of DIY, in the form of my rowboat dolly project & a sailing repair project.
However, it is not suitable as a permanent home for the kinds of videos I want to make. I need a server that is general-interest, so my channel can be about Whatever Thing that interests me in the moment.
That's where the federated video co-op comes in. The software exists already – PeerTube is an open-source project by FramaSoft, a French company. But a space for general-interest channels doesn't seem to currently exist in the form I'd like it to.
So, myself & others are working to establish a British Columbia-based Federated Video Cooperative that will host videos in Canada. People (not just Canadians) will be able to pay a fee to become a member-owner, which will give them the ability to create an account and post videos. Member-Owners will also be able to aid in planning and decision-making for the future of the co-op.
We haven't sorted out the exact plan for ongoing fees and costs – storage/compute/bandwidth can be expensive – but we're working to iron out those details before we choose a name and launch our service in the new year.
Because this is at such an early stage, things with the Federated Video Co-Op are not yet in balance. Nor are they even fully in place.
For example, it took us a month to decide on a communication system that would be viable going forward. We started out with Signal, but quickly discovered that its adherence to good encryption practices made it a poor choice for building a new group of contributors.
When you're trying to onboard someone to a new organization, having them show up to a chat group and have zero access to any backscroll is not ideal. And while it might be a good idea to solve that with an onboarding document, we also didn't have a good place to create and share such a document.
Arriving to a consensus-backed decision on this proved to be difficult. As anyone remembers from school, group projects can be messy. People have to proactively volunteer their time in order for progress to be made. There can be strong feelings that lead to passionate conversations that only seem to slow things down.
Frequently, it can be advisable to put aside consensus and intentionally make what could be a "wrong" decision. The decision-making progress becomes so much of a blocker that any result is better than more stalling.
We ended up taking a hybrid version of this approach: an offer was put forward for a free three-month trial of a Managed NextCloud service. Rather than continuing to mull options while still using unsuitable tools, we decided to move to that. We will revisit the decision later to see if it was the right one or not.
We still have to establish our legal operating entity as a BC Co-Op. We'll be getting some help with this from a consulting firm that specializes in spinning up cooperatives.
This will involve establishing our operating rules and bylaws, to ensure stable operation of the business. We want it to be self-sustaining. We don't want to have to rely on volunteer efforts to keep it operational – people should be paid for their contributions – though there will definitely be some volunteer work needed in the early days.
We also want the bylaws to enshrine our code of conduct and our vision for the co-op. This will help protect it from the temptations that drag down tech startups.
All of this needs to be sorted out before we choose a name and begin the process of setting up server infrastructure.
Going back to problems with Corporations for a moment, one big issue they have as autocracies is that it is easy to seize power. At least, if you have money. You can buy the company outright, or you can acquire a controlling interest of shares, or you can execute a hostile takeover. If you're a government, you can coerce the company to satisfy your requests by secret orders – or by selectively determining how much cheese you grant or deny to the corporate rats.
Cooperatives are somewhat more resilient to some of those threats. In most co-op structures, a member-owner only ever gets one vote/one equity share. You can't hoard equity and "buy" the co-op the same way you can with a corporation.
Seizing power in such a democracy is still possible, of course. Especially if you know a good hat designer and have a spray tan supplier on speed dial.
This happened to the Mountain Equipment Co-Op. Founded in 1974 in Vancouver as a Co-Op, in 2020 the co-op member-owners were surprised when the bulk of its assets were sold to an American private equity firm. The firm now operates the resulting "Mountain Equipment Company" as a regular corporation. The move was very unpopular with the members, who felt like they had been lied to for a decade & that elections had been manipulated to keep an inner circle of money-losing decision makers and executives in power.
It appears as though the directors and CEO strategically instituted policies that excluded members from decisions and gradually consolidated full power with the executives and the Board of Directors. Simultaneously, they enacted a somewhat aggressive expansion policy & a shift in their core market focus. As this was beginning to unravel, and amidst a bit of a scandal over lack of diversity in advertising materials, the CEO resigned and was replaced by an infamous retail box store's former CFO.
This coincided with an announcement of a net loss in the tens of millions for 2019 – coupled with a large debt to external lenders. From there, it's a hop, skip, and a jump to the sale of the co-op assets in fall of 2020. A sale that completely bypassed the democratic controls that were supposed to keep the member-owners in control of the organization.
Anyone founding a co-op around the ideals of democratic control and empowering member-owners needs to view the MEC story as a case study. It lays bare the perpetual temptations of greed and power and the reckless pursuit of growth over sustainability.
It also has suspicious parallels to the way that certain world powers destabilize countries that are of particular interest to them. I am not sure if that is due to an actual conspiracy (highly doubtful) or just an unfortunate primary effect of North America's approach to conducting business.
Or, in other words, don't let business-brained hudsuckers have an ounce of control. They'll ruin everything on their quest for short-term gains as their grubby hands vie for more and more power.
For a co-op, or indeed any viable long-term business, you want sustainability and stability. Don't hand the reins to people who have an internal drive for growth at all costs in order to score a huge exit.
I dream of a future where the people you do business with are primarily interested in doing right by you. They go into business to provide their services for the customer's success and the health and well-being of their community and the world at large. They want their business to be long-lived and stable.
In short: I dream of a world where the corporate equivalent of property flippers are resolutely unwelcome.
Speaking of property-flippers, the cooperative model has also been used successfully for housing. In many areas that face housing pressures, a co-op approach allows people to get housing that is affordable and delivers greater value than equivalent non-co-op housing.
Housing pressures can have various causes, such as limited land area for development, but most often the cause is a mixture of speculation and greed. This usually includes landlords, developers, property-flippers, and nonresident real estate hoarders (a specific breed of landlord that is particularly responsible for such issues).
Co-op funding models allow a collection of people to have far greater purchasing power for the initial land and development costs. As the property ages, the co-op is attentive to maintenance and collaboratively ensures that everything is taken care of properly.
We live in a world, you and I, where corporations think they can abuse their customers & employees and get away with it because Wall Street pumps up their stock price, while their execs get sky-high bonuses and golden parachutes.
I don't think I can change that. But that doesn't mean we have to tolerate it.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, socialmedia, fediverse, activitypub, sailing, co-ops
]]>Listen, Bill, you don't know me, but I used to be a big fan. That ended some time ago, of course, but it's still something I used to be.
I will admit that I haven't read your latest piece about your new approach to climate change, but I want to you know that some fascist idiots have been using it as justification to slag Harrison Ford.
Have some shame. You've earned it.
Sincerely,
Kevin.
PS: if you could toss a couple million dollars my way, I'd appreciate it.
Additional Context
This was originally posted on my Mastodon account. I was inspired to write it after seeing a quote in a Daily Beast article from WH spokesperson Taylor Rogers:
"Literally no one—not even Bill Gates—still believes that climate change is [a] catastrophic threat [...]"
— White House Spokesperson Taylor Rogers, quoted in The Daily Beast
As you might guess, I do in fact believe that climate change is a catastrophic threat. I think Bill Gates knows it is, too. When he said his piece about his shift in strategy, I don't think he was denying that climate change is real. I do feel that his overall stance is a capitulation, of sorts, but I hope that he is exactly as irked as I am to see his name used this way.
His assertion that some climate change funding has been misplaced rings true for me. Carbon Capture, for instance, is a myth - money dumped into it is only serving the purpose of making people feel that they're working to solve the problem with technology.
But it isn't a problem that can be solved with carbon capture technology. Not today's, and probably not even tomorrow's. Solving Climate Change with carbon capture is indistinguishable from planetary-scale terraforming, and doing that at intentional scale without unanticipated side effects is still very firmly in the realm of science fiction. We're terraforming accidentally, chaotically, by raising greenhouse gas levels, and it's screwing everything up.
A miracle fix that can achieve the necessary scale of effect is not coming soon enough. We need an effective ground game today to stave off the worst of what is coming.
We need to disincentivize the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels. That's it. That's the ballgame.
Easier said than done, of course, because we're talking about forcing companies and entire governments to intentionally increase their cost of doing business. Eating into their own profits is not something that those entities are famous for.
If they want to keep bringing it to market, they need to bear the full cost. As it stands, they're getting a free ride - for which our entire planet is already footing the bill.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, open Letter, climate change
]]>"To keep your face expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up." -- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (June 8, 1949)
To be absolutely clear: your smart devices are spying on you. Your thermostat, your television, your robot vacuum, your smartphone, everything. It's in their nature. They have microphones, they have cameras, they have touchscreens, they have other sensors. They know what you're writing, watching, doing. They know who you're sleeping with. They know the location of the secret military base you work at.
In and of itself, this isn't a bad thing.
Your cat or dog or barber knows most of these things. Your assistant, if you are blessed enough to have one, knows all of that stuff - and much more. The problem begins when those smart devices start gossiping.
Every piece of smart technology you allow into your home is as much a spy as it is a convenience. It observes your behaviour, eavesdrops on your life, and often sends that gossip back to a central server. The device's true owner - its manufacturer - can turn around and sell you, as with all of their customers, to advertisers, as a valuable data product.
They profit not only off your purchase, but also from your daily life, and that of your family. In fact, the profit they earn from selling this data is enough for them to opt NOT to profit from the sale of their technology; they may choose sell it at a loss, simply to get that first data-vampire invitation into your household.
In some cases, if you try and cut off that gossip, the device will entirely stop working. The manufacturer can't tolerate that. They can't monetize it. So they may disallow it entirely.
Furthermore, the onboard software can be coerced into gossiping to other cloud servers, in other countries, for other companies or groups. Sometimes this can be through ads. Other times, it can be due to software vulnerabilities being exploited. Unfortunately, those companies and groups and manufacturers, they gossip too. They often earn a profit from it. And they'll gossip to anyone. Credit card companies. Advertisers. Spy agencies. Or, worst of all, Spotify Wrapped.
The truth is, much of what gets billed as "smart technology" would more accurately be described as "narc technology". Some of it is opt-in, some of it isn't. And like it or not, you really should make an effort to protect yourself.
This is the state of things, and we can't let it go on. We need to resist the data vampires. We need to embrace a tiny bit of discomfort (for now), until those companies and groups start behaving respectfully with our data.
There are a few ways to push back against being exploited this way.
On the personal front, you can make choices that steer away from "smart" technology.
The Television Dilemma
Buying a new TV? Smart TVs are the cheapest options, because their manufacturers subsidize the costs by exploiting your data. A more expensive option is to try and find non-exploitative TVs such as kiosk displays.
The simpler option is to buy the subsidized Smart TV, and then never connect it to the Internet. You'll want to watch streaming services on the TV, of course, so for that you would buy a separate dedicated machine such as an Apple TV or a FireTV Stick or a Roku.
If the streaming device acts up, you can throw it out a window. That's much easier and cheaper than defenestrating an entire TV.
Smart Gadgets
Smart TVs aren't the only smart technology, though. Thermostats, rice cookers, garage door openers, lightbulbs - there are many such devices out there. For these devices, you'll want to explore self-hosting.
Self-hosting with tools like Home Assistant requires more effort than blindly trusting strangers, and has a steeper learning curve. However, once you get into it, you'll find that it's kind of an adventure on its own. And it's empowering to know that you have full control.
Cars. Oh my.
Okay, I don't have a good answer for how to protect yourselves from invasive car computers. Most modern cars, especially electric ones, seem to be hard-wired to talk to Big Brother (regardless of whether it's GMC, Elon Musk, or some HQ in China or Vietnam or South Korea). Maybe, if we're lucky, options like the Slate EV will buck that trend by being too simple to have onboard spyware.
I'm not holding my breath.
My approach has been to hold back on buying a new car: my newest car is 15 years old!
Instead, I purchased an e-bike and have been using that as much as possible. I've ridden over 2500 KM on my e-bike since purchasing it in 2022. Considering I work from home & don't have a commute, I'm quite happy with that number. However, I do use Strava's free version for tracking my rides, which is a whole other discussion for another day.
So, the best I can do for car advice is to explore alternative transportation. I don't like that both of my cars are gas-powered, I definitely want to go PHEV or Full EV, but that's not an option for now.
I think we need to establish some sort of Consumer Protection seal of approval. A certification that companies and their products are not only protecting users, but also ensuring that devices continue to work even if the company happens to go belly-up.
The conversation around Right to Repair is part of this. Consumers should have the right to upgrade their devices' software themselves, to repair their devices and vehicles themselves, and not be beholden to the manufacturer at every turn.
But that's just one part of the problem.
Consumers should actually own the things that they purchase.
If the company can reach in and brick your device, then you're not an owner. You're a renter - a serf.
If the company can tap into the data and use it to nefarious ends, then you're not an owner. You're a victim.
If the company going out of business renders your device useless, then you're not an owner. You're fucked.
This mistreatment of consumers has been going on for too long, and we need to take a stand against it.
We need to boycott the companies and products that perpetuate these issues, until they start behaving more responsibly.
And if they can't get their on their own, then these companies should be forced to have a plan in place to sunset their operations in a more responsible manner. They should be forced to treat customer data responsibly. They should be forced to let people own what they're selling.
Until such time that these problems are solved, here is my advice:
If the company providing your smart device is putting their own needs above yours, and above general ethical behaviour, toss them to the curb.
And so, so many companies are doing that these days.
The future is DUMB.
Catch you on the flip side.
* I was originally going to say "Megacorp" here, but the truth is, megacorporations are only part of the problem. Rough-and-tumble startups, clamouring for runway from VCs and always a moment away from collapse, are also a big issue. They need to have a better framework to follow for responsible consumer treatment, as a baseline for being permitted to do business.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, hardware, smart technology
]]>One such project has a database server that's been chugging along happily for many years.
Tonight, on a whim, I tried SSHing to it to check something (I forget what - probably the uptime), and was surprised to have my connection rejected.
Permission Denied.
What could cause that, I wondered? And of course, I quietly panicked. Had it been compromised? Could it have been corrupted in some way?
I tried several more times, confirmed my SSH agent had all my pubkeys loaded, even tried a few different possible usernames, just in case. Nada.
At this point, my best guess was that the system time had drifted out of sync with Atomic time. I've had similar issues with this in the past, usually related to HTTPS or signed web requests. I suspected that the math that calculates SSH connections might be failing due to the drift.
Before I started messing around with my local system time to try and guess how far the clock had drifted, I had the idea to check the backups. I wanted to look at the file timestamps. If there was a gap from when they were supposed to run and the time that they were written to the backup server, that might give me a hint of how far I'd have to adjust my clock. That is, if my atomic time-drift theory was correct.
Connecting to the backup server proved to be difficult. Signing into it went ... poorly. I used the wrong credentials at first, and then it started throwing captchas at me that were utterly unreadable by anyone's standard.
Eventually, I got the captcha sorted out, and I signed in.
I discovered that the backups hadn't run since SEPTEMBER. Over a month.
YIKES.
Anyway, that avenue of inquiry proved to be a bust. I spent a few minutes guessing at the time-drift theory by hand, and trying to connect from other servers to see if I'd set them up with access (I hadn't). No success.
Then I realized ... well, damn. I need to get a fresh backup. Kind of urgently.
I had another server that was still happily talking to this database, so I connected to that one - thankfully without any issues. I installed a CLI mysql client on it so I could run a mysqldump, and then I spent a few minutes futzing with parameters to get the style of output I wanted. The inter-server credentials are quite locked down, so I used the --single-transaction flag to bypass table locking. The client I was using was also much newer than the server it was talking to. The --column-statistics=0 flag disabled the unsupported column statistics feature. Once that was set, the backup proceeded smoothly. I gzipped it and got it off the intermediate server ASAP. Phew, potential crisis averted.
But I still needed to regain access to the database server. The inter-server credentials were for database access only, they wouldn't help with direct access.
With the potential backup crisis mitigated, I started to speculate about what variable had changed. Which piece of the whole flow had changed most recently?
Then I remembered: I had upgraded MacOS!
Some quick searching revealed that MacOS Ventura and Sonoma's SSH algorithm lists had dropped support for the RSA algorithm that was being used. Oops. I mean, good - clearing out weak algorithms is the right thing to do. But in this case, it caused a bit of a hiccup. Thankfully, I found a link that had a clear explanation of how to bring RSA back into Sonoma's list of SSH algorithms.
I edited my ssh config for that host to add these two flags:
HostkeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
Once I reconfigured it to add that back into the mix, I was able to connect just fine. Like nothing had gone wrong at all.
Then I tried invoking the backup script manually to see why it was failing.
After a few minutes of waiting, I got the result:
ERROR: S3 error: 403 (RequestTimeTooSkewed): The difference between the request time and the current time is too large.
Failed to upload backup to S3!
The backups were failing BECAUSE THE SYSTEM TIME HAD DRIFTED TOO MUCH FROM ATOMIC TIME. Vindication!
I sync'd up to atomic time, re-ran the backup script, and everything went smoothly.
Crisis averted.
Uptime:
2045 days, 12 hours, 59 minutes.
Even for a pet server, that might be a bit absurd.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: command-line, maintenance, backups, administration
]]>It's that little box that websites show at the end of articles. You know the one. It thanks you for reading the article, and then goes on to ask you to subscribe or donate money. Sometimes it pleads, extolling how virtuous the website is for not pursuing advertising revenue or succumbing to corporate ownership.
It's the "please like and subscribe"/"smash that notification button" of the Blogosphere.
I don't know if it has a name already. But that's not going to stop me from giving it one right now.
I'm going to call it: the Busker Box.
That's what it comes down to, when you think about it. A small performance for passersby, followed by an extended hat or tin cup.
The best buskers parlay that growing crowd of donors into larger performances and larger venues. In this increasingly tortured metaphor, that would translate to speaking engagements. Or book deals.
Everyone needs to start somewhere. Only a select few people have the luxury of doing things for free. However, even those people can benefit from the direct remunerative feedback they might get from their patrons.
So if you happen to see a busker box, do not recoil in revulsion. Consider that your contribution is a direct action in support of another person's passions. You're letting them know that you care, and what you care about.
And always remember: the alternative to the busker box is an Internet completely inundated by obnoxious ads.
Nobody wants that.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: fun, opinion, socialmedia
]]>Enter: macOS voice control
This built in accessibility tool is free to use and runs locally* on–Device without sending my audio to a remote server. (* requires Apple silicon)
When I first noticed this feature, many years ago, I completely ignored it. At that time, it required remote server voice analysis in order to operate. So if you're wondering what the Secret Killer Feature actually is here, it's the fact that this is now on-device functionality, at least for Apple Silicon devices.
It's not perfect, but I'm getting used to its quirks and foibles.
To begin with, it's important to note that voice control is completely separate from Siri. You don't have to say something like "Hey Siri" to activate it; when enabled, it is always listening.
It has two modes, dictation mode and command mode. Command mode is always enabled, unless you tell voice control to "go to sleep". Dictation mode is activated by saying "dictation mode". It can be deactivated by saying "Command mode".
Many commands are supported, and you can see the list of commands by saying "show commands" or "show me what to say".
I've been using voice control on macOS and iOS for about two weeks now. I am by no means an expert, but I am getting by. In fact, this blog post was written almost entirely in dictation mode. So far, it is going well. I have only had to make a handful of corrections.
For example, because I work in the photography business, a word that I have said frequently these past few weeks is "prince". I mean, "prints". Or, "SmugMug", which sometimes comes out as "smoke bear" for unknown reasons. Recently, I tried to say "about", and voice control thought I said "up boat".
One benefit of these silly mistakes is that it gives me a chance to learn the various commands to select and manipulate text, and move the cursor.
In order to get the word "prints" identified accurately above, I tried to add it to the special list of vocabulary words. Even then, it often still wants to type "Prince" instead of "prints". So… I'm not sure exactly what the vocabulary list is supposed to do.
Actually, I should point out that I am dictating this post specifically on an iOS device. Navigating around an iOS device with voice control is fairly easy. This is mostly thanks to "overlays", which are available in the form of names, numbers, and grids. I can interact with the device almost as though I was using it normally. Except, of course, more slowly.
Saying "show names" causes little captions to pop up beside interactive elements, showing a name by which I can interact with that element. In Safari, for example, I can say "tap refresh" to refresh the current page. Or "tap show bookmarks" to display my bookmarks, followed by "tap whateverthing" to go to this blog. It is quite a natural way to navigate the system.
Saying "show numbers" shows little number captions beside interactive elements. By saying the number, I can activate that element.
For more granular control I can say "show grid". This divides the screen into columns and rows. I can say the number of one of the resulting squares, and it will zoom in and show a smaller grid for that square. Then, I can say "click five", or similar, to simulate pressing it.
One thing I've noticed is that the level of control is quite different between iOS and macOS. On on macOS, the "show names" feature does not seem to exist. Additionally, many of the text selection features seen on iOS are missing.
Also on macOS, I am seeing a greater number of applications that do not have accessibility integrated into them. Fewer applications have support for the "show numbers" feature - making their interfaces less accessible.
This basically leaves me with grid overlay interaction and mouse cursor pixel manipulation ("move cursor 500 pixels left", "click") as my main options for interacting with macOS. Not great. But, admittedly, not terrible, for being free.
There are some bugs.
Sometimes, on macOS, having voice control enabled can cause weird behaviours in menus. If you click to pull down a menu, it might display for half a second and then vanish. This seems somehow related to the "show numbers" feature. I suspect that the way it scans interfaces to find interactive elements is triggering some kind of menu close event. Saying "hide numbers" can help stop this from happening.
I mentioned that some apps don't seem particularly accessible. When in "show numbers" mode, this manifests as numbers being visible on the window elements (minimize, maximize, close, etc.), but no numbers being visible within the application window itself.
Also, the nature of some gooey interfaces means that multiple scrollable panes are visible at the same time. This can confuse the "scroll down" command, resulting in both panes scrolling at the same time - or neither pane scrolling at all.
Some apps don't even support the "scroll down" command, so for those apps on iOS you have to use "swipe up". Reversing the axis can be a tiny bit confusing. I haven't found a corresponding fix on macOS.
You have to be careful not to have voice control enabled when watching movies or YouTube clips. Or in zoom calls. Or when people walk past while chatting. Or if your house has ghosts. Or if your employer ordered you to Return-To-Office in an open-plan office. Voice control is very eager to turn all of these inputs into commands and dictated text.
Luckily, I'm basically a hermit, so this doesn't affect me very often. But if you're not careful, NoHo Hank might type messages to your coworkers. I've seen it happen.
Voice control can be intense on CPU usage and battery usage. Even if you use the "go to sleep" command to stop it from listening to every single thing. It can use up to 30% of the CPU when idle, from what I've seen.
On iOS, you can easily turn it off by saying "turn off voice control". And more importantly, you can use Siri to reactivate it. On desktop macOS, you can turn it off just as easily, but if you don't have Siri enabled (and I don't, because being unable to change the wake word means that it can't differentiate commands meant for my iPhone), it can be clunky to turn it back on.
Don't make Solomon Epstein's mistake: if you can get by with just using the "go to sleep" command, you'll be better able to recover from problems like the classic "bone-crushing high-G burn" situation.
Overall, it has been a fun experiment. I imagine that superior tooling and a greater need would allow someone to become very adept at navigating interfaces. But inaccessible applications will slow people down quite a bit, so make sure to keep accessibility features in mind when developing your applications.
This has even helped me get more writing done. Unfortunately, evidence suggests it will not help very much with programming, particularly in PHP. (Oh, neat – it recognized the name PHP. However, I had to try five separate times for it to recognize the word "neat". 🙄)
Anyway, that's all for now. If you've got a Mac or an iPhone, give voice control a try. And let me know if you would like to see some video demos of how I am using it.
]]>If you want a chronological timeline that is free from ads, doesn't use algorithms to hide your friends' posts from you, and isn't beholden to the whims of the billionaire techbro class, you want Mastodon.
Hmm, no, I can do better. That's a bit too wordy.
Mastodon: Follow your friends. Fight the algorithms. Fuck the billionaires.
Erm, maybe that's too edgy and uninformative. Let me try again.
Mastodon is a Twitter clone. You create an account, you post shit, people see it, people interact with it, you follow the ones that seem interesting. They'll follow you if you seem interesting. Just like how Twitter used to be - before they ruined it.
Normally I'd throw in a pithy "It's just that simple!" right about now. But it's true that there are some complicated bits. Folks like me love to dwell on the complicated bits, explaining them in too much detail.
Folks like me also love to delve into metaphors and similes to try and create natural comparisons that are easy to understand. We try very hard - too hard - to try and convey the mental image we have in our head. But that's not actually important, that can come later. That's not the message that matters to a new user.
It's a web, it's a hub, it's a witch, it's a lover ... wait, no, I've gone off the rails.
Mastodon gives you more choices than other apps.
When you sign up for most social networks, you're not given the choice of which organization provides that service. The company and the service are the same, and none of the services talk to each other. If you're on Twitter, you can't message someone on Threads. If you're on Instagram, you can't message someone on Flickr. That's because your choice has been made for you: join our service, it's the only service. Our rival company's services are the competition. Maybe even the enemy.
Mastodon is better than that.
Mastodon lets you choose who is providing the service.
You can join a Solarpunk Mastodon community. Your profile will live on that community's server. If you donate to the costs of running that server, perhaps you'll have a say in how things operate. Maybe you can volunteer to help with running it.
After you create your account, you can talk to a Honeybee Mastodon community member. Your profile will be on the Solarpunk community server, but you'll be chatting away with people whose profiles are on the Honeybee community server.
In the old world of startups, that wouldn't be possible. You would only be able to talk to the other Solarpunks, because the Honeybee users would belong to a different company.
Now let's say someone from the Jerkwad community joins the conversation. Whoa! They're terrible! How are they even allowed on the Internet?! This new person is all up in the replies, being their terrible self. What can you do?
On other services, those ones that don't talk to each other, the responses can vary.
Sometimes you'll get a shrug and a poop emoji if you report the user, because the billionaire tech bro who bought the service thinks that stupid babies need the most attention.
Other times, the service will respond rapidly and with great prejudice - banning the jerkwad.
In a few rare cases, sometimes the jerkwad will manage to flip the whole thing the other way and the service will be tricked into banning the perfectly fine user that the jerkwad was harassing.
Mastodon gives you an additional tool for fighting back:
If that jerkwad isn't swiftly dealt with by their own community, it's a sign that their community is perfectly fine with jerkwads running the show.
So the Solarpunk and Honeybee communities can look at that server and go, you know what? Forget all y'all. We're disconnecting from you; none of your jerkwad users are allowed to talk to our users. G'bye!
And I think that's beautiful.
The hardest and most complicated thing about Mastodon is getting started.
And that's weird. And new. Because we've been so mollycoddled by billion-dollar companies that know how to hack hypergrowth and make things feel as smooth as possible.
Creating a blank account and landing on a timeline with zero activity is an uncomfortable experience.
Pretty much any social network with a marketing and growth team will want to avoid that feeling; that's why Twitter and other services recommend a bunch of celebrities and influencers to new folks who sign up. It allows the timeline to fill in like a warm hug (oops! a simile - sorry!). They make it as easy as possible to get people up and running, because for them, every set of eyes is literally money in the bank.
Mastodon will get similar functionality at some point. Maybe community hosts will be able to provide a starter kit of folks to follow. But hypergrowth isn't the goal. It's not the focus. And as a result, the uncomfortable onboarding experience doesn't get as much attention lavished on it as it does at companies with billions of dollars in funding and dozens of investors to satiate.
So where does that leave you, the new user with a blank timeline? How do you build a timeline?
Mastodon's biggest problem right now, even bigger than the onboarding experience, is Search. I know I said that getting started was the hardest and most complicated; Search isn't hard or complicated. No, its problem is that it is dumb.
You've got a blank timeline, you think, "you know what, I want to find some people who talk about knitting", so you go to the search page and type in "knitting" and get a grand total of... zero results.
WHAT? In a population of several million people, across several thousand communities, not one person is talking about KNITTING?
Well, that's confusing. So you try other keywords: purling, crochet, sewing, cross-stitch. Nada.
It makes no sense!
And then someone suggests "use a hashtag". So you try "#knitting". Dozens of results! Hundreds! Now you're getting somewhere!
You can browse through the results and find people to follow. You follow a bunch of them. That's a good start!
When you started the search, you might not have noticed the little "person with a plus" icon. It's not really clear what it means, but it's actually very powerful: it lets you follow the hashtag itself.
Instead of having to periodically go to the search page and search for "#knitting", you can follow it. And then, as if by magic, all of the knitting-related posts that your Mastodon community server can see will show up right on your timeline - as if you were following every knitting enthusiast in the known universe.
So you've followed a bunch of people and hashtags - but over the next few days, none of them follow you back. Was it something you did?
Well, no. It's something that Mastodon failed to help you do.
In order to encourage people to follow you back, you have to let them know who you are and what you're about.
This usually involves writing a little bio about yourself, and then making an intro post to tell people about yourself and your interests. Make sure to include the "#introduction" hashtag - a lot of folks follow that hashtag and are happy to follow people.
This part of Mastodon is a bit hard to understand, and that word "Federated" is the main area where folks like me start to use all kinds of metaphors to make it "easier to understand".
Here's the gist about timelines:
Each of these timelines can be used to find more people to follow, until your Home timeline is full of all the goodness you want to see.
Now you've settled in, you've built a timeline, and you've noticed something. Your local community isn't actually where you want to be. You thought you'd fit as a Solarpunk, but now you want to be part of a MenWhoKnit community.
In the old corporate-dominated world, this wouldn't be a thing. Your Solarpunk account would always be a Solarpunk account. If you wanted to join MenWhoKnit, you'd have to open an account with a different company and build a new timeline from scratch. And maybe the userbase of the MenWhoKnit company would be vanishingly small compared to the Solarpunk company. And maybe their social network software would not be as good as what the Solarpunk company had built.
Mastodon is better than that.
Instead of having to rebuild from scratch, you can transfer your account between Mastodon communities. Your old posts don't move over (at least not yet), but the important part - your carefully-crafted timeline - does move over. You don't have to spend any time rebuilding it from scratch. All of your follows/followers, even the Solarpunks, will automatically re-follow you at your new community.
You can still talk with all the people from before. They can still see your updates. And now you have a new address that is more befitting of your interests.
Mostly, ActivityPub and Fediverse don't matter to new users. I won't go into a ton of detail.
They allow Mastodon communities to talk with other Mastodon communities. They also allow it to talk with other kinds of communities.
Mastodon is a Twitter clone, but it can talk to Pixelfed, which is a photo sharing service similar to Instagram. There are all kinds of Pixelfed communities springing up, with the same cross-communication ability as Mastodon communities.
Both of them can talk to Kbin and Lemmy, which are new link-sharing services similar to Reddit.
And there are dozens of other projects that can talk to all of those services. Too many to list, really.
So your Mastodon timeline can contain not only other Mastodon users in other communities, but it can also contain Pixelfed photographers on Pixelfed communities.
The options are endless.
And as for those companies that are motivated to consider other social network companies the "enemy"? Well, there's not really anything stopping them from joining up with ActivityPub and the Fediverse. They have options, too.
I'm sure there are a lot of questions and budgeting/planning allocations that would need to be resolved, as with any business operation, but some of them are already considering it. Tumblr, WordPress, and Flickr are a few that have come up in that conversation.
HAHAH. NO. The technology has limitations (see: onboarding, search). But more than that, there is the coalition of community servers that all talk to each other. Those are run by humans. And humans can be fighty over the most arbitrary things. Even, sometimes, the most serious things.
There will be growing pains. Communities will most likely get into disagreements that grow into rather large and dramatic fights. All of this has happened before, in IRC, and on Usenet, and inside web forums, and pretty much any place that humans use to talk to each other.
And that's okay.
That's how we learn to set healthy boundaries and learn to coexist.
That's how we grow.
That's how we all become better.
Author's note: I went into too much detail again, didn't I?
Editor's Note: You don't say.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, mastodon, facebook, twitter, socialmedia, fediverse, activitypub
]]>That's the wrong way to use it.
It's understandable. Companies exist to make money, after all. Having a cool tech demo could be the difference between success and failure.
Setting aside the ethical and legal considerations, there are two main reasons why it's dangerous to put AI front and centre in your business:
With this technology expanding at a geometric rate, your AI/ML solution will become outdated almost immediately. Competitors will be able to spin up more powerful replacements with little effort, which you'll have to counter - or your product's value will plummet.
Building a company around a whizzbang AI/ML stage show is not sustainable. It's an arms race.
Instead, focus on using AI/ML tech where it shines: boosting your product's innate value. Make it the cherry on top of an excellent customer experience.
Adobe has helpfully provided two examples for this discussion, one on each side of the argument. Thanks, Adobe!
In one corner, we've got Adobe Firefly.
This product helps users generate imagery from text prompts, or modify existing images according to other instructions. This sort of generative art has led to some neat results, but also to some hilariously disastrous ones.
In the other corner, we have Lightroom's "AI Noise Reduction" feature.
Passing your photo through this filter results in a more effective noise reduction. It's not perfect, it's not going to magically transform your photos into tack-sharp focus - but I've yet to see any major issues with it.
One of these tools invents things from whole cloth.
The other is a nuanced refinement of an existing tool.
One of them takes source data from the creativity of thousands of photographers and stands a very real chance of being party to the destruction of livelihoods.
The other looks at thousands of camera exposures and uses that analysis to subtly enhance the final product by removing sensor defects and lens aberrations.
One of them is a surefire strategy for capturing press attention and (in the case of startups) fresh investment.
The other is a quality of life improvement for photographers and fellow creatives.
Don't be the company that puts AI gimmickry at the forefront of your application & advertising. Don't use it to remove the human element from the creative process. Don't cement yourself into an unwinnable arms race as your company spirals into valueless oblivion.
Use it the way it should be used: making lives easier and more rewarding.
The only thing that should be front and centre is your customers.
Deliver value first.
∞ whateverthing.com by Kevin Boyd Permalink
Tags: opinion, photography, machine-learning
]]>