This was a rather opportunistic capture with a Leica M240 camera, a 35mm lens, and a tabletop tripod on a windowsill, just before a late afternoon thunderstorm.
The light always does most of the work in photography. Sometimes it works especially hard.
🪷 Get ready for a big surprise! The #Sun aligns in perfect conjunction with #Uranus only once a year. And that's this week! Dare to do something daringly new and dramatically audacious! Here's your 10-day #Antinous #MoonMagic #astrology forecast: antinousstars.blogspot.com/202… 🪷
🛠️Organisée par le réseau et la circonscription de Salon avec l'aide de la DRANE PACA, de l'inspection de technologie.
600 élèves attendus toute la journée autour d'activités robotique 🤖 animées par des professeurs, des industriels et souvent par des élèves de collège qui viennent former leurs camarades de CM2
Derniers préparatifs avant livraison de deux Primtux 8, pour une petite école, tout près de Figeac. ✅ les disques durs sont neufs (SSD 240 Go) ✅ Primtux 8 est une distribution libre et soutenue par le ministère de l’éducation nationale.
♻️Une manière facile et à un prix dérisoire pour la Mairie de s’engager dans un numérique sobre, souverain, et respectueux des utilisateurs, sans faire de compromis sur la qualité et la sécurité.
Wurde heute gefragt, was ich als Pro - #Bundeswehr von „fünf Prozent #Verteidigungsausgaben“ halte. Habe geantwortet, dass ich es für #Wahnsinn halte, dass wir weiterhin fossile #Gewaltenergien aus #Russland, #Iran & #Katar importieren & damit die Bedrohungen immer stärker machen… 🔥🤔
Attorney General Brown and a Coalition of Attorneys General Issue Joint Statement on Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Oral Arguments atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/…
SEATTLE — Attorney General Nick Brown and a coalition of attorneys general issued the following statement today after the Supreme Court's hearing on birthright citizenship:
Via Oberdan riaperta e piazza Viani terminata Dopo i disagi dei giorni scorsi sono terminati i lavori di via Oberdan, riaperta in entrambi i sensi di marcia. Conclusa anche la riqualificazione di piazza Viani.
Source: hackers bribed enough Coinbase customer service representatives to achieve effectively on-demand access to Coinbase customer information since January (Bloomberg)
Gentes de Mastodon, firmad esto que es importante: iniciativa ciudadana europea para prohibir las "terapias" de conversión de personas LGTBIQ+. Es oficial de la UE, puede suponer un cambio legal real. Y no lo dejéis para luego, que se acaba el sábado. eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#/… #mastodon #LGBTQ #lgbtqia #importante
No conflict of interest at all... - Of course NOT!!!
"One of Elon Musk’s employees is earning between $100,001 and $1 million annually as a political adviser to his billionaire boss while simultaneously helping to dismantle the federal agency that regulates two of Musk’s biggest companies, according to court records and a financial disclosure report obtained by ProPublica.
Ethics experts said Christopher Young’s dual role — working for a Musk company as well as the Department of Government Efficiency — likely violates federal conflict-of-interest regulations. Musk has publicly called for the elimination of the agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, arguing that it is “duplicative.’’
Government ethics rules bar employees from doing anything that “would cause a reasonable person to question their impartiality” and are designed to prevent even the appearance of using public office for private gain.
Court records show Young, who works for a Musk company called Europa 100 LLC, was involved in the Trump administration’s efforts to unwind the consumer agency’s operations and fire most of its staff in early February.
Young’s arrangement raises questions of where his loyalty lies, experts said. The dynamic is especially concerning, they said, given that the CFPB — which regulates companies that provide financial services — has jurisdiction over Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, which makes auto loans, and his social media site, X, which announced in January that it was partnering with Visa on mobile payments."
Records show that Chris Young is simultaneously working as a political adviser to Musk while serving in the Department of Government Efficiency, helping to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
y'a 1 pétition timide qui tourne pour #gaza, entre la condamnation de #depardieu (on attend aussi 1 procès à venir pour viol en 2018), Cannes... où ce jeudi y'avait la projection du docu de Fatima Hassouna, photographe palestinienne tuée par 1 missile israélien, avec Put your soul on your hand and walk en sélection ➡️ #rappel parce que j'aime remuer le couteau dans la plaie : fin 2023 y'avait la pétition de soutien pour depardieu ... rien pour ce qui s’annonçait comme un génocide à venir à Gaza
Meta's privacy officer was in Europe this week to speak at privacy symposium in Italy and to meet regulators in Ireland. She said the EU needs to address the power of privacy activists such as Noyb, which failed to recognize an opinion by an umbrella group of EU privacy authorities that legitimate interests could be a valid legal basis for companies that train Al models with personal data.
alt text: Quote from a pay walled article reads "Meta's privacy officer was in Europe this week to speak at privacy symposium in Italy and to meet regulators in Ireland. She said the EU needs to address the power of privacy activists such as Noyb, which failed to recognize an opinion by an umbrella group of EU privacy authorities that legitimate interests could be a valid legal basis for companies that train Al models with personal data." With highlight on 'she said... Noyb'
Translated to realtalk: the power to enforce laws should be prohibited. In effect any (democratic) controll of our actions should be prohibited. In lieu of a tyrant who we can bribe like trump.
Ex-DoD contractor working for CyberCommand, Kevin Michelizzi, joins RT to discuss NATO's push to include Ukraine, calling it a strategic mistake that ignores decades of warnings from Moscow
The fifth edition of FediForum has been rescheduled, and will be held on June 5-7. The event was originally planned for early April, but got cancelled at the last-minute after transphobic posts by one of the co-organisers of the event were surfaced. FediForum held two sessions in the meantime with the community on how the event should move forward. One of the outcomes is that there is now an advisory board for FediForum with people from the community. For this edition of FediForum, I will be hosting a session on what’s been going on in the fediverse in 2025. The network is constantly changing and evolving, and this session is intended to get you up to speed on what’s been happening in the last half year. More information on that soon.
Bandwagon talks about monetisation and sustainability
Bandwagon is a fediverse music sharing platform that’s currently in development, where artists can share their music. They are currently working on online album sales, and Bandwagon is committed to making this feature available without taking any transaction fees. In order for the project to be sustainable, Bandwagon is a paid 10$/month paid premium plan which will enable online album sales and higher bitrate streaming. At the same time, creator Ben Pate is also committed to keeping the software open source, and says that the project needs other Bandwagon servers to exist if the project is to be successful. – Bandwagon.fm
Discourse and the fediverse
Forum software Discourse has posted a blog talking about how they have integrated ActivityPub into their forums. They explain how Discourse forums can now select per category if it is federated, and thus followable by other fediverse software. It also shows what Discourse-to-Discourse federation looks like, allowing 2 forums to cooperate with each other. Federated forums require a mindset shift as have to get used to seeing forum posts in their microblogging timelines. Forum software like Discourse and NodeBB have made great strides in the technological capabilities regarding what’s possible with federated forums. Now people have to find out and experience what these technological features enable in practical use cases for people.
Bonfire slowly moves towards a 1.0 release
Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform, with a core functionality of microblogging with a focus on extensibility. In their latest update about how the platform is moving to a 1.0 release, Bonfire talks about the values and intentions of the platform, writing: “In a world of ‘move fast and break things,’ we’ve chosen a different tempo — one rooted in care, deep listening, and collective stewardship. Slow software means building for long-term resilience and meaningful participation, rather than chasing novelty, speed, or scale.”
Bonfire has taken a deliberate and mindful approach to software development, but their own description of “Slow Software” seems fairly accurate as well, as the team has talked about getting ready for a 1.0 release in the next few months since at least September 2023.
FediDB onboarding
Fediverse statistics site FediDB, operated by PixelFed and Loops creator Daniel Supernault, now has an onboarding tool to help people get started with the fediverse. It asks the user a few simple questions: first to select the type of content they are interested in, such as microblogging, video or forums. Based on that choice, it recommends various platforms. Based on the platform choice it asks for a few simple filters, such as region and community size, before presenting the user with a list of servers to choose from for registration.
The onboarding tool is sleekly designed, and streamlines the signup process by boiling it down to a few essential questions that the user needs to answer. However, this also showcases the issues that the fediverse has with onboarding new users: picking a platform and picking a server are meaningful choices that are hard to fully grasp the impact from as a new user. When it comes to picking a platform, the tool lists a few features for each platform, but comparing the relevance of these features is hard to do as an outsider. And when it comes to picking servers, the challenge is that servers themselves often do not publish relevant information that is needed to make an informed choice of which server to pick.
Mastodon: Giving Journalists Options Away From Big Tech
Saskia Welch from Newsmast writes about Mastodon and the fediverse at the recent International Journalism Festival. A consistent challenge remains to put all the lofty ideals about healthy social networks into practice, with Welch noting: “However, joining the platform continues to be a barrier for many users. A group of Italian women who attended the event abandoned their short effort to join the platform half-way into the presentation, confused about where to go and which app to use.” – WeDistribute/Saskia Welch
Owncast turns 5
The fediverse streaming platform Owncast turns 5 years this month, with a new merch store. One of the challenges of FOSS projects such as Owncast is the sustainability, and Owncast creator Gabe Kangas “at one point exhausted his personal savings so he could work on Owncast full-time.” Kangas says that now “people want to be around in meaningful ways. From the newsletter, core code contributions, the Roku app, people answering questions in chat, people brainstorming in GitHub, it’s important for it to be bigger than myself”. – Owncast Newsletter/Kit Rhett Aultman
FediForum will be next month, Discourse talks about their fediverse integration, and an update on Bonfire.
The News
FediForum has a new date and a new board
The fifth edition of FediForum has been rescheduled, and will be held on June 5-7. The event was originally planned for early April, but got cancelled at the last-minute after transphobic posts by one of the co-organisers of the event were surfaced. FediForum held two sessions in the meantime with the community on how the event should move forward. One of the outcomes is that there is now an advisory board for FediForum with people from the community. For this edition of FediForum, I will be hosting a session on what’s been going on in the fediverse in 2025. The network is constantly changing and evolving, and this session is intended to get you up to speed on what’s been happening in the last half year. More information on that soon.
Bandwagon talks about monetisation and sustainability
Bandwagon is a fediverse music sharing platform that’s currently in development, where artists can share their music. They are currently working on online album sales, and Bandwagon is committed to making this feature available without taking any transaction fees. In order for the project to be sustainable, Bandwagon is a paid 10$/month paid premium plan which will enable online album sales and higher bitrate streaming. At the same time, creator Ben Pate is also committed to keeping the software open source, and says that the project needs other Bandwagon servers to exist if the project is to be successful. – Bandwagon.fm
Discourse and the fediverse
Forum software Discourse has posted a blog talking about how they have integrated ActivityPub into their forums. They explain how Discourse forums can now select per category if it is federated, and thus followable by other fediverse software. It also shows what Discourse-to-Discourse federation looks like, allowing 2 forums to cooperate with each other. Federated forums require a mindset shift as have to get used to seeing forum posts in their microblogging timelines. Forum software like Discourse and NodeBB have made great strides in the technological capabilities regarding what’s possible with federated forums. Now people have to find out and experience what these technological features enable in practical use cases for people.
Bonfire slowly moves towards a 1.0 release
Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform, with a core functionality of microblogging with a focus on extensibility. In their latest update about how the platform is moving to a 1.0 release, Bonfire talks about the values and intentions of the platform, writing: “In a world of ‘move fast and break things,’ we’ve chosen a different tempo — one rooted in care, deep listening, and collective stewardship. Slow software means building for long-term resilience and meaningful participation, rather than chasing novelty, speed, or scale.”
Bonfire has taken a deliberate and mindful approach to software development, but their own description of “Slow Software” seems fairly accurate as well, as the team has talked about getting ready for a 1.0 release in the next few months since at least September 2023.
FediDB onboarding
Fediverse statistics site FediDB, operated by PixelFed and Loops creator Daniel Supernault, now has an onboarding tool to help people get started with the fediverse. It asks the user a few simple questions: first to select the type of content they are interested in, such as microblogging, video or forums. Based on that choice, it recommends various platforms. Based on the platform choice it asks for a few simple filters, such as region and community size, before presenting the user with a list of servers to choose from for registration.
The onboarding tool is sleekly designed, and streamlines the signup process by boiling it down to a few essential questions that the user needs to answer. However, this also showcases the issues that the fediverse has with onboarding new users: picking a platform and picking a server are meaningful choices that are hard to fully grasp the impact from as a new user. When it comes to picking a platform, the tool lists a few features for each platform, but comparing the relevance of these features is hard to do as an outsider. And when it comes to picking servers, the challenge is that servers themselves often do not publish relevant information that is needed to make an informed choice of which server to pick.
Mastodon: Giving Journalists Options Away From Big Tech
Saskia Welch from Newsmast writes about Mastodon and the fediverse at the recent International Journalism Festival. A consistent challenge remains to put all the lofty ideals about healthy social networks into practice, with Welch noting: “However, joining the platform continues to be a barrier for many users. A group of Italian women who attended the event abandoned their short effort to join the platform half-way into the presentation, confused about where to go and which app to use.” – WeDistribute/Saskia Welch
Owncast turns 5
The fediverse streaming platform Owncast turns 5 years this month, with a new merch store. One of the challenges of FOSS projects such as Owncast is the sustainability, and Owncast creator Gabe Kangas “at one point exhausted his personal savings so he could work on Owncast full-time.” Kangas says that now “people want to be around in meaningful ways. From the newsletter, core code contributions, the Roku app, people answering questions in chat, people brainstorming in GitHub, it’s important for it to be bigger than myself”. – Owncast Newsletter/Kit Rhett Aultman
The Links
Test your knowledge of ActivityPub with this quiz.
Search engine Kagi now has the option to find and filter for PeerTube videos.
Mastodon’s monthly engineering update, Trunks & Tidbits for April 2025, where the organisation announces that they’ve hired another front-end developer.
Domain blocking and notification improvements for Ghost.
FediAlgo, a self-hosted algorithmic timeline for Mastodon, is now available as a web app as well.
Flohmarkt is a fediverse market place, and Flohra is a new Android app for the platform.
The Social Web Foundation released their first annual report.
An interview with Christine Lemmer-Webber about the future of decentralised networks.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to get all my weekly updates via email, which gets you some interesting extra analysis as a bonus, that is not posted here on the website. You can subscribe below:
Historically speaking, the Fediverse has lacked apps related to money, trade, or commerce. Although there's a growing number of small businesses, services, and contractors within the space, the networ
A group of Italian women who attended the event abandoned their short effort to join the platform half-way into the presentation, confused about where to go and which app to use.
Yeah this one stings but it needs to be brought up, so we can make this way easier.
There's gotta be a way to design this so users can partly skip the process of searching for a good platform. Maybe using a controversial AI solution for recommending a platform based on some Keywords from the user? Maybe just based on a random algorithm for trusted servers? Maybe as you interact we make it easy to switch servers and as soon as you like the feed you can join?
There's gotta be something better. I hope we get there.
If we get to the point where people can overcome the entry barrier, I think this will also increase user retention and the overall fediverse literacy on the platforms themselves.
« Les personnes comme toi mériteraient d'être égorgées. » 👀
C'est la menace qu'aurait proféré l'ex-président de la FNSEA et de la chambre d'agriculture de Loire-Atlantique à l'égard d'une technicienne de l'environnement, selon @mediacites.
La scène rapportée par nos confrères se déroule le 4 février, à Missillac. Venant de réaliser des prélèvements de terre et de prendre des photos sur une parcelle, l'employée du bureau d'étude Hydro Concept s'apprête à reprendre la route. 1/
La technicienne se retrouve alors face à Alain Bernier et son fils Guillaume, qui bloquent la sortie des tracteurs.
Les deux hommes font effacer les photos de la technicienne, fouillent son véhiculent, volent son téléphone et lui arrachent son bonnet.
« Une discussion courtoise, mais tendue », se défend Alain Bernier auprès de nos confrères. Il faut qu'elle apprenne à travailler avec le monde agricole ».
Cette figure du syndicat agricole productiviste en Loire-Atlantique est défendue par le maire de Missillac, également président de la communauté de communes de Pontchâteau.
« Pour moi, il n'y a rien d'anormal à ce qui s'est passé. Il y a des parts de responsabilité des deux côtés. La famille Bernier, quand elle dit non, c'est non », déclare Jean-Louis Mogan.
D'après @OuestFrance, c'est d'ailleurs en mairie que le matériel volé a été restitué.
La nouvelle présidente FNSEA de la chambre d'agriculture, Carmen Suteau, défend son prédécesseur.
« Il n'aurait pas dû élever la voix, mais peut-être qu'il était fatigué, qu'il avait des problèmes personnels, et peut-être qu'aussi c'était une jeune femme un peu sensible. »
Peu de voix osent d'ailleurs dénoncer ces faits, observe Ouest-France, qui parle d'« omerta ».
Craignant une extension des terres protégées, certains agriculteurs, comme les Bernier, ont interdit l'accès à leurs parcelles dans le cadre d'un inventaire des zones humides piloté par le Syndicat du bassin versant du Brivet, chargé de l'animation du Sage.
Une information dont la technicienne n'aurait pas eu connaissance.
Le soleil s’apprête à se coucher à Missillac en cette fin d’après-midi du 4 février. Une technicienne du bureau d’études vendéen Hydro concept vient de terminer son relevé de mesures sur cette parcelle du lieu-dit La Rivière : un prélèvement de terre…
Deutsche und Briten wollen Präzisionswaffe entwickeln
Deutschland und Großbritannien wollen ihre militärische Zusammenarbeit ausbauen und gemeinsam eine weitreichende Präzisionswaffe entwickeln. Sie soll eine Reichweite von mehr als 2.000 Kilometern haben.
dieses Waffensystem wird die Probleme unserer Welt lösen. Fantastische Zeiten kommen auf uns zu. Es wird keine Dürre mehr geben, keine Wetterextreme mehr, die Frauen und Männer werden fruchtbarer den je werden, der Grundwasserspiegel wird endlich wieder steigen, Mikroplastik wird für immer verschwinden, alle Energieprobleme werden gelöst sein und es wird keine Ungerechtigkeit und Hunger mehr auf der Welt geben. Ein hoch auf diese tolle Zusammenarbeit!
Menschen, die solche Meldungen über das Schließen der #Fähigkeitslücke zu 2000km Deep Precision Strike 🚀 💥 auch eher verstörend als aufmunternd empfinden empfehle ich die Show von @sarahbosetti mit @afelia und Ole Nymoen.
Die Sendung gibt der Frage Raum, wie aus der #Aufrüstungsspirale rauszukommen ist.
Antwort von Marina: "... die #UN umstrukturieren!"
Oder anders ausgedrückt: Unsere offensichtlich größte #Fähigkeitslücke ist, Konflikte gewaltfrei und nachhaltig zu lösen.
Ja, das ist schwierig, aber wenn man da ein paar Milliarden investiert (die ja für Marschflugkörper etc auch da sind) ist es vielleicht auch lösbar.
MAME 0.278: L’Attesa Rivoluzione Sonora – Rilascio Posticipato a Giugno La prossima versione di MAME 0.278 rappresenta uno dei più significativi avanzamenti tecnici degli ultimi anni nel campo dell'emulazione audio. Dopo un intenso lavoro di riprogettazione per questo motivo una nuova versione di Mame sarà rilasciata a Giugno ( non sarà pubblicato l'aggiornamento di maggio).Ne gamesandconsoles.net/mame-0-27… #NEWS
La prossima versione di MAME 0.278 rappresenta uno dei più significativi avanzamenti tecnici degli ultimi anni nel campo dell'emulazione audio. Dopo un
Deux fonctionnaires de police adeptes des tatouages de Dorian S. ont témoigné ce mercredi devant la cour criminelle, à Bobigny. Selon eux, l’accusé possède une personnalité empathique et respectueuse.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •This was a rather opportunistic capture with a Leica M240 camera, a 35mm lens, and a tabletop tripod on a windowsill, just before a late afternoon thunderstorm.
The light always does most of the work in photography. Sometimes it works especially hard.