As great as silicon is for semiconductor applications, it has one weakness in that using it for lasers isn’t very practical. Never say never though, as it turns out that you can now grow lasers directly on the silicon material. The most optimal material for solid-state lasers in photonics is gallium-arsenide (GaAs), but due to the misalignment of the crystal lattice between the compound (group III-V) semiconductor and silicon (IV) generally separate dies would be produced and (very carefully) aligned or grafted onto the silicon die.
Naturally, it’s far easier and cheaper if a GaAs laser can be grown directly on the silicon die, which is what researchers from IMEC now have done (preprint). Using standard processes and materials, GaAs lasers were grown on industry-standard 300 mm silicon wafers. The trick was to accept the lattice mismatch and instead focus on confining the resulting flaws through a layer of silicon dioxide on top of the wafer. In this layer trenches are created (see top image), which means that when the GaAs is deposited it only contacts the Si inside these grooves, thus limiting the effect of the mismatch and confining it to within these trenches.
There are still a few issues to resolve before this technique can be prepared for mass-production, of course. The produced lasers work at 1,020 nm, which is a shorter wavelength than typically used, and there still some durability issues due to the manufacturing process that have to be addressed.
In studio Deca e Simone, regia Massimo. Ascolteremo Analog Africa, Crystal Phoenix, Jamaican Jazz Orchestra, Distant Relatives e molto altro!! @Radio Unitoo
Frontiere Sonore Radio Show #13 - In studio Deca e Simone, regia Massimo. Ascolteremo Analog Africa, Crystal Phoenix, Jamaican Jazz Orchestra, Distant Relatives e molto altro!! -
Whenever I play an RPG, whether it’s Fallout or Cyberpunk 2077, I complete every single quest available to me. The quests grab my attention in an unprecedented way – doesn’t hurt that there’s rewards and progression markers attached. Of course, these systems are meticulously designed to grab attention, making sure you can enjoy the entirety of the game’s content.
Does quest progression in an RPG tangibly impact my life? No. Do they have control over my attention? Yes, for sure. My day-to-day existence is the opposite – my real-life decisions impact me significantly, and yet, keeping attention on them is a struggle. Puzzling, disturbing – and curious. I feel like I’ll never forgive myself if I ignore this problem any longer.
So, I wrote a simple quest system prototype. As usual, it worked, it failed, and it taught me things. Here’s how I did it.
Adjusted To Self First
Quick prototyping is a bane of mine, and I’m forced to study it – I can only spend so much time on any given topic before I can barely pay attention to it. So, no fancy UIs, no roadmaps, I’m writing software that has the lowest interaction resistance possible for me specifically.
My laptop remains my platform of choice – I’m no phone app developer, really, I hate developing for smartphones. Modern smartphones are content consumption machines first, everything else second, and it feels like the user’s actual wellbeing is barely in the top 10. Besides, typing on a physical keyboard is the fastest prototyping and hardware interaction method I know. Smartphones no longer have physical keyboards, you know, the focus on content consumption means that screen real estate is king.
Oh, and I do have Notepad++ constantly open on my laptop! What about storing my quests in a text file, say, quests.txt, in a somewhat computer-friendly format? Then, a constantly running program could reads changes from this file, rewriting it when appropriate. Sounds simple enough, and so the parser.py was born.
I had a few wishes for this program. The main one was: never deleting any file contents by mistake or to enforce structure; everything I type into the file is important and can’t be lost. Aside from that, leaving comments on tasks and quests felt paramount, too – the text file isn’t just a data storage, it’s a user interface, and it needs human-friendly features. At the same time, I needed to make it software-friendly – always parseable and modifiable, letting me do things like automatically marking quest tasks as complete or incomplete, or tying task completion into each other, or auto-marking them, or tying them to real-world events. This resulted in two main features: a rigid-ish structure for quest formatting, and auto-adding machine-parseable quest IDs. Still, I made sure it was easy for me to edit quests and tasks, and put the IDs somewhere they wouldn’t get in the way!
Built, Tweaked, Working
A day-two was spent intensely building parser.py into a self-sufficient prototype, and it grew from 20 lines of parsing code experiment into a full program, left to constantly run in the background monitoring for quests.txt file changes. Then, I split my Notepad++ window into two panes, and put the quests.txt document into one of them, open semi-permanently – thankfully, my laptop screen is wide enough for that.
Easy enough to use day to day, always at my fingertips, collecting data – this script satisfied a few of my human-friendly device design guidelines. I went on making new quests and adding tasks as I remembered them, as well as updating the script itself, adding features and fixing bugs as needed. For brevity, I’ll call this whole process “questing”. The most useful feature, without a doubt, was auto-sorting quest tasks, so that completed tasks would immediately go to the bottom of the quest’s task list – way easier on the eyes. Another feature was task completion/clear logging, as usual, JSON separated by newlines – which unexpectedly gave me timestamps that helped me remember and track time-sensitive medication.
Some features were less expected but still necessary. I am intimately familiar with data loss, so I wrote a quick quests.txt backup script, and added a daily task for myself – do backups. As luck would have it, I accidentally deleted half of the quests.txt file contents, just as I was about to back it up. So, I had to spend about an hour restoring the file state from the day-old backup file and task log items – those really came in handy!
I’ve used the script for about a month – quite a jump from the “two weeks constant”. A lot of smaller hack-on-self projects stay in my life for two weeks at most – any longer than that, and I struggle to pay attention to them. This one worked for longer – a very good sign. Most importantly, even though I’m currently not using this questing system, I keep mentally coming back to it throughout my days, and my main thought is “wish it worked better for me right now”.
A Focus Point
The best thing about this questing system, I started building habits at a surprisingly fast rate. This was genuinely shocking, in all of the good ways, and seriously reassuring. The questing system helped me find some extra focus – as long as I stayed within the “dailies” quest, that is. One thing about .txt file as frontend – to have the file be processed, I need to Ctrl+S, alt-tab to other program, alt-tab back, and click “Yes” in this box. The “Dailies” quest was the only one that actually worked all throughout. As I’ve added quests and tasks, the file grew a ton, currently sitting at 530 lines. Well, my screen fits 40 lines at a time, so most quests stayed always out of reach, easy to forget – just the Dailies quest has 80 lines. There was no ability to highlight tasks I wanted to suggest to myself, or to make a task stand out as more important.
The main limiter this questing system was definitely the UI – the more it grew, the harder it was for me to scroll through the text file and notice the tasks I needed to do. In a way, the system was a good augment, helping me overcome my struggles with Doing All The Things I Want Done, until it grew to the point where it no longer gave me a consistent single point of focus, an always-accessible line in the .txt file that I could look at to spot my daily-tasks-to-do. It’s a predictable limitation of the text file UI, and I could only push it so much.
There was another fun failure mode: the more I used the script, the more I did things in the real world, the less I’d be spending next to my laptop. On days where I wasn’t next to my laptop, the script’s powers would break completely, of course. Basically, the more off-my-laptop tasks I was doing, the less my script would work – so much for helping me exercise, move, and get out more!
“Dailies” were the most fun part of the system, still – as I’m writing this, I’m becoming more and more certain that this UI could work well for me again if I did a few more upgrades to it and limited it to the “Dailies” quest. So, same interface but less overwhelming, a tighter focus, and a few more most-needed ease of use features – feels like I should try that out sometime soon!
Lessons
A lot of fruit lays unpicked on the parser.py field, even with the current text-file UI. Automatically marking all of the “Dailies” tasks completed on a “start of day” trigger, for one! Reminders for medication. Tracking ‘underappreciated’ daily tasks, giving me summaries or notifications that point out ‘daily’ tasks I’ve been neglecting but might still want to do. Quick action keybinds for common actions, just like I do with my anti-crash and anti-distraction scripts, so that I can quickly mark common tasks as completed – without having to unlock my laptop, find the task in the file, and mark it as complete. Graphing of my activity, too, of course it always feels like graphing my data will give some good insights, but it’s not easy for me to do just yet – hopefully it will be easy soon!
No regrets on picking text file as the UI&backend for the initial prototype, though! I’d do it the same all over again – the flexibility has really helped. I even think that a text file format is a great UI for desktop using the quest system – as long as it’s not the backend, so, the quests are actually stored somewhere else. Basically, an editing option, or a human-readable backup format, we could always use more of those.
What about features I could implement given a different UI and backend? More context sensitivity, for one. For example, suggestions on tasks to do depending on how long I’ve been awake, where I am physically right now (home/work/travel/etc), and other context that’s relatively easy to get but still missing. Cross-device task control and sync. Perhaps, the most fun aspect – a “points”/”levels” score keeping system, maybe even with “streak” features!
The concept works, even if it struggles to scale. It needs a better UI, a way more well-suited backend, tighter integration into my day-to-day life, influencing me in a more context-aware and kind way. Quests are good, the current system is good, and it will work better after an upgrade. In particular, you are soon to see a way more suitable and flashy user interface – as always, stay tuned!
The answer is: Elliot Williams, Al Williams, and a dozen or so great hacks. The question? What do you get this week on the Hackaday podcast? This week’s hacks ran from smart ring hacking, to computerized tattoos. Keyboards, PCBs, and bicycles all make appearances, too.
Be sure to try to guess the “What’s that sound?” You could score a cool Hackaday Podcast T.
For the can’t miss this week, Hackaday talks about how to dispose of the body in outer space and when setting your ship’s clock involved watching a ball drop.
Il CISA avverte sulla necessità di aggiornare una grave vulnerabilità di Microsoft, che è già sfruttata dagli aggressori in attacchi attivi. L’avvertimento vale in particolar modo per le agenzie federali.
La VulnerabilitàCVE-2024-21413 consente l’esecuzione di codice arbitrario su sistemi remoti, aggirando i meccanismi di sicurezza di Outlook.
L’errore è stato scoperto dai ricercatori di Check Point ed è correlato alla convalida errata degli input durante l’apertura di e-mail con link dannosi nelle versioni vulnerabili di Outlook.
Sfruttando il bug, gli aggressori possono eludere la Visualizzazione protetta, progettata per bloccare i contenuti pericolosi. Ciò fa sì che i file di Office dannosi vengano aperti in modalità modifica, consentendo il download e l’esecuzione di codice dannoso.
Microsoft lo ha risolto il CVE-2024-21413 ma ha avvisato che la vulnerabilità rimane attiva anche in modalità anteprima documento. Il report di Check Point afferma che gli aggressori utilizzano una soluzione alternativa aggiungendo un punto esclamativo e testo casuale dopo l’estensione del file ai link con il protocollo.
Questo approccio consente di aggirare le difese di Outlook e scaricare contenuti dannosi.
Sono a rischio diverse versioni dei prodotti Microsoft:
Microsoft Office LTSC 2021;
App Microsoft 365 per le aziende;
Microsoft Outlook 2016;
Microsoft Office 2019.
Lo sfruttamento riuscito della vulnerabilità potrebbe portare al furto delle credenziali NTLM e all’esecuzione di codice arbitrario.
Le agenzie federali devono correggere l’errore entro il 27 febbraio, in conformità con la direttiva BOD 22-01.
Il CISA sottolinea che tali vulnerabilità sono spesso prese di mira dagli hacker e rappresentano una seria minaccia per le infrastrutture governative. Sebbene l’ordinanza si applichi alle agenzie governative, gli esperti raccomandano vivamente a tutte le organizzazioni di installare urgentemente aggiornamenti di sicurezza per prevenire possibili attacchi.
Nonostante il consenso unanime sull’importanza di rafforzare la difesa europea, le divergenze tra gli Stati membri dell’Ue restano profonde. In questo scenario arriva da Danzica l’appello, che suona come un monito, della presidente della Commissione europea, Ursula von der Leyen:
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Una delle prime mosse della nuova amministrazione Trump punta a ridefinire i confini tra moderazione online, ruolo del governo e rischi di polarizzazione. Ecco le conseguenze della battaglia sulla libertà di espressione
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale Caso Paragon: cosa sappiamo finora sullo spionaggio ai danni del giornalista Francesco Cancellato e dell’attivista Luca Casarini Il giornalista italiano Francesco Cancellato, direttore di Fanpage, è tra le circa 90
Se non sei portata per comandare, fai la direttrice d'orchestra. È la stessa cosa, però più gratificante. In un caso ti sparlano dietro, nell'altro senti la musica.
Bluesky’s public launch was one year ago today, and here you can see how the network has grown and changed over this first year. In that year, Bluesky has managed to find a serious role in the larger media ecosystem. The media ecosystem itself has shifted rapidly as well: outlets like Wired and 404 Media, and independent reporters like Marisa Kabas and Nathan Tankus at the forefront of reporting what is happening in the US. I do not think it is an accident that they are all active on Bluesky
Note: I’ve been sick for the past few days, so this edition is a bit shorter and a day late, apologies. Next week’s edition will be focused again on the more technical side of AT Protocol (ATProto).
Credible exit
One of the core concepts why Bluesky is build on the open ATProto is to give users ‘credible exit’. The Bluesky company (Bluesky PBC) is mindful of how companies turn bad over time, and CTO Paul Frazee explicitly talks about how he sees his own company as a ‘future adversary‘. The idea is that in a future where Bluesky has become an adversary to its users, people can have a ‘credible exit’ away from Bluesky towards another microblogging app. People can take their digital identity (the DID, in ATProto terms), social graph and posts with them, and seamlessly continue microblogging on ATProto using another app. Such another competitor microblogging app on ATProto currently does not exist, and an important factor in that is the incentives to build such an app currently are not there. Bluesky is currently not an adversary, has a well-designed app and some significant funding, and it is hard to compete with that. Still, the assumption made by Bluesky PBC is that over the years, Bluesky PBC will gradually turn ‘bad’ in some way, and at some point the incentives are such that another company will build a microblogging competitor on ATProto, and people will have the option to have a credible exit.
The ongoing coup in America changes the dynamic however. Autocratic regimes are not particularly compatible with platforms that allow for free speech by people that oppose the regime. This creates a possibility that either the Musk or the US government will force Bluesky to censor speech or ban accounts that they don’t like, or that either party will come after Bluesky directly. Musk has called Bluesky ‘pedosky’ multiple times, indicating his feelings of contempt for the network that rivals his X platform. Such actions would likely be wildly illegal and should be fought in court, but in a world where an unelected private citizen can decide to shut down entire US government departments, it is prudent to account for the possibility that other illegal stuff might happen as well.
This new political environment changes the understanding of Bluesky having a credible exit as well. So far, Bluesky PBC frames credible exit as a way for people to move to a different app on the same network when the company becomes an ‘adversary’. But in the current political climate, it might just be that the US government becomes an adversary which prompts a need for a credible exit.
Bluesky clients
Bluescreen is the latest video app for Bluesky, made by the creator of the popular Bluesky client Skeets. It is similar to apps like Skylight and Videos for Bluesky, all three apps provide a TikTok-like interface to watch videos that are posted on Bluesky. Over at TechCrunch, Sarah Perez wrote an overview of all the video apps for ATProto that are currently being developed.
Now that I’ve gotten to play around with all three video apps for Bluesky, I am not convinced that Bluesky video clients are the way forward to build a ‘TikTok for Bluesky’. Bluesky’s recent update for video feeds have turned the official Bluesky app into a suitable video client as well, and I find that the video watching experience on the official Bluesky app is better than on any of these three apps. Part of it is that the competitor client apps are all still early in development, and this may change over time. But more importantly, videos on Bluesky get posted in an environment where there are lots of non-video content as well. If I watch a video on Bluesky and I want to see that account’s profile, I’m want to be able to see all of their posts, not just their videos. I can do this with the official Bluesky app, but not with any of the Bluesky video-focused clients.
There are now multiple image-focused Bluesky clients as well. Pinksky was recently released with an interface that is heavily inspired by Instagram. Bluescreen also now has a Bluesky client specifically for photo-sharing, Flashes, that entered open beta this week. Atlas is a Bluesky client for images that has collections similar to Pinboard. These image-focused Bluesky clients all bring something to the table that the official Bluesky client does not have, by restructuring the interface around images. But just with video, I’m wondering if it is enough to build a steady user base.
The Links
Two RSS readers added Bluesky support this week: Feedly and Inoreader.
handles.net allows for large-scale managing of Bluesky handles, similar to other services like Aviary.
Another way to add bookmarks to Bluesky, this time with a separate app.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online.
FOSDEM and the fediverse match well together, some issues regarding data privacy and consent, and multi-network client Openvibe gets 800k in funding.
The News
FOSDEM, the free event for open source software was this weekend in Brussels, with a large presence for the fediverse and the social web. There were three events, presentations by various fediverse software developers in the SocialWeb Devroom, an extra smaller event on Sunday for more presentations, and a more casual event on Sunday evening at Brussels Hackerspace. All the events were fully packed, showing the large amount of interest from the community for the fediverse and the social web. The Social Web Foundation has been the main initiator of these events.
Some thoughts and observations:
Fediverse Enhancement Proposals (FEP) are documents with the goal to improve applications on the fediverse. People can write proposals, and developers can decide to support and implement proposals as they see fit. There are some great technical FEPs, but one of the challenges of such a grassroots system is getting buy-in from developers to support specific FEPs. NodeBB developer Julian Lam held a presentation ‘The Fediverse is Quiet — Let’s Fix That!’ as an advocacy for a specific FEP. The proposal Lam talks about is about fixing the problem of missing replies, where people do not see all replies on a post. What I think is noteworthy about Lam’s presentation is that it frames a FEP not only as a technical document, but as a process that needs community buy-in for other developers to support and implement a FEP. Hopefully, more of such advocacy might help see more FEPs implemented as well.
Mastodon presented the progress on their Fediverse Discovery Provider project. The project builds an opt-in decentralised service for better discovery and search. In the presentation (and on the website), Mastodon stressed that the project is not only a Mastodon project, but is intended to be used by the entire fediverse. Mastodon developer David Roetzel said that he hoped that the goal is that many servers will run a “Fediverse Auxillary Service Provider”. Personally I think that it is instructive to look at Bluesky here. While the AT Protocol is decentralised, in practice everyone uses infrastructure owned by the Bluesky company. I’m not convinced yet that the Fediverse Discovery Provider project will not run into the same problem, as I’m unclear on what the incentives are for people to run competing Fediverse Discovery Provider projects.
Some of the more interesting presentations I saw were about the integration of different types of protocols with ActivityPub. The ActivityPods project combines ActivityPub with Solid Pods, which shows quite some similarities with how the PDS system of ATProto works. All your data is stored on your Pod, multiple types of apps can connect to your Pod, and communicate via ActivityPub. It allows you to have a single account that is used for multiple platforms, similar with how your ATProto account can be used for multiple types of apps.
One of the most valuable parts of a conference like FOSDEM is getting developers together in a room to meet and build relationships. Fediforum has provided such a place for people to gather digitally, but meeting people in real life remains one of the best ways to build trust and relationships. Some practical ways this was visible this FOSDEM was by getting the NodeBB, WordPress ActivityPub plugin, WriteFreely and Ghost developers together and recognising themselves as the ‘longform’ people. This group of developers getting together this way helps with the various projects becoming more interoperable, and better support for longform content in the fediverse.
Two issues regarding consent and data processing this week. The first is with GoToSocial and fediverse statistics sites like fedidb.org and fediverse.observer. Some GoToSocial servers have blocked statistics sites from indexing their platforms via robots.txt, but the crawlers of fedidb.org and fediverse.observer ignore those. In response, the main GoToSocial server decided to serve up randomised numbers, messing up the statistics of these sites. Fedidb developer Daniel Supernault removed GoToSocial altogether from the statistics site, but does not seem to be willing to respect the opting out of crawling via robots.txt. The second is regarding the shutdown of FediOnFire, that displayed public posts from a relay in a format similar to one of Bluesky’s firehose visualisation tools.
How the fediverse treats consent for public posts is unusual, and make it stand out from other networks. For a significant group of people, consent for processing other people’s ‘Public’ ActivityPub posts is done on an opt-out bases if the service doing the processing is vaguely shaped like a full 2-way interacting fediverse server. In contrast, consent for processing other people’s ‘Public’ ActivityPub posts is done on an opt-in basis if the service doing the processing is vaguely shaped like a crawler. The line between these two situations is hard to draw, even more so in an internally coherent way. Still, this line clearly exists, and ignoring it leads to high-profile blowups such as with Searchtodon and Bridgy Fed. Defining the permissions clearly for posts would help here, and it is frustrated to see that the situation has not meaningfully improved in years. Furthermore, that fediverse stats sites have ignored the opt-out on a server level via robots.txt indicates that servers setting permissions is not a panacea either.
The Pixelfed Kickstarter has seen some updates this week. First was the update that setting up a Pixelfed Foundation is now moved to the stretch goal of $200k CAD, and that for $300k CAD the stretch goal is to expand the team to hire additional developers. A few days later, developer Daniel Supernault said that the $300k CAD stretch goal is now to build a Tumblr alternative. That brings the goal of the Pixelfed Kickstarter to build four platforms: Pixelfed, Loops, Sup (an encrypted messaging platform) and an unnamed Tumblr alternative, as well as building a foundation and a developer testing kit with Pubkit. Moving the foundation to a stretch goal that has not been met yet does not feel great to me, as good governance of such large platforms is highly important. Adding a Tumblr alternative to another later stretch goal also makes me concerned that Supernault is taking on too much here, as that is a lot of products to build and maintain.
Openvibe, a client that combines your Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr and Threads account into a single feed, has raised 800k USD in outside investment, with Automattic among the investors. Openvibe is an early mover in the space, and it’s a name I regularly see pop up when people recommend clients. However, open networks and open APIs means that it is hard to build a competitive moat. Still, most apps are hobby projects, and I’m curious how far Openvibe can push their app with the new funding.
For the past two years, Radio Free Fedi has held a special place in my heart. The community operation started as a small experiment, but quickly grew into a Fediverse institution. In the time that it
Its another massive week for Pixelfed, growing by another 100k active users and doubling their Kickstarter goal, raising over 100k CAD. Tumblr confirms they still intend to join the fediverse.
Its another massive week for Pixelfed, growing by another 100k active users and doubling their Kickstarter goal, raising over 100k CAD.
The News
Pixelfed continues to grow rapidly, adding almost 100k monthly active users in a week, and has now almost 300k monthly active users. Just over a month ago, Pixelfed had around 20k monthly active users. Developer Daniel Supernault launched a Kickstarter this week for Pixelfed,Loops and Sup. The Kickstarter proved popular, raising 100k CAD, double its 50k CAD goal. The Kickstarter is mainly for to fund the continuous development of the platforms, with the primary goals listed as ‘acceleration development’ for Pixelfed and Loops, and starting the development of messaging platform Sup. Sup is a planned encrypted messaging app that is supposed to compete with WhatsApp and Snapchat. Supernault has mentioned working on the project in the past, but it is unclear how far along the project is.
Supernault says that the operational costs for running all of his projects is now over 4000 USD per month. The large majority of people joining the flagship servers pixelfed.social and loops.video, which are both run by Supernault. Still, it seems like Supernault is not particularly interested in sharing out the load of users to other servers, saying that people unfamiliar with the fediverse want to join a a flagship instance. He also says that “using random servers to register on is very dangerous, because not all of them are as dedicated to this as I am, some of them don’t update frequently or handle mod reports as fast as we do.” Supernault is currently the only moderator for both the pixelfed.social server as well as the pixelfed.art server. He also says that Pixelfed.social needs to establish a mod team. One barrier to adding extra moderators is that Pixelfed does not have a specific ‘moderator’ role in the software, there is only the possibility to give someone full admin rights. Supernault says that he is working on adding such a feature.
The Pixelfed Kickstarter also lists a Pixelfed Foundation as its stretch goal. It is not particularly clear what such a Foundation would entail: the Kickstarter describes it as both a foundation and a corporation, as says that it “hopefully” would be a not-for-profit. Some of the potential work of the Pixelfed foundation would be to grow the Pixelfed and Loops social networks, and also support other developers in the wider fediverse ecosystem.
Tumblr has reconfirmed that it is working on connecting to the fediverse. In late 2022, Automatic CEO Matt Mullenweg said that the site was going to add ActivityPub support ‘soon’. Plans changed for Tumblr, including staff layoffs, and for a long time it was unclear if this plan was actually going to happen. In summer 2024, Tumblr announced that they would be working on moving the backend of Tumblr to WordPress. In an AMA this week, the company said that this migration of Tumblr to WordPress means that Tumblr can also use the plugins of WordPress, including the ActivityPub plugin. This means that people will be able to add ActivityPub to their Tumblr blogs. Not much is known about how this would work in practice.
The Analysis
Editor’s note: I wrote the section below before Supernault published his latest update on Kickstarter a few hours ago. In the latest update the Pixelfed Foundation is now moved towards a new stretch goal of 200k CAD. This changes my analysis, but I currently do not have the time to properly analyse and write about it before this newsletter will go out. I’ll write more about this next week.
Some more thoughts on Pixelfed:
I worry about the moderation side for Pixelfed, and specificially the flagship pixelfed.social. Pixelfed.social is now a server with over 200.000 monthly active users, and Supernault is the only moderator for the server. 1 moderator for over 200k active accounts is not a whole lot, to put it mildly. One of the main goals of the Kickstarter is to “expand the moderation, security, privacy and safety platforms”, and my hope is that the financial success of the Kickstarter can help get a bigger moderation team for the servers as quickly as possible.
One of the consistently most difficult aspects of fediverse platforms is the governance of the software. Mastodon has gotten a lot of pushback for its ‘Benevolent-Dictator-For-Life‘, and correspondingly, a lot of praise when Mastodon recently moved away from this model. For Pixelfed and Loops the power concentration into a single person is even more pronounced, with a single developer running two different platforms, two flagship servers as well as various other prominent fediverse projects such as fedidb. It shows the incredible amount of work that Supernault has contributed to the fediverse, but it also indicates the centralisation of power that has resulted from this. The Kickstarter promises a Pixelfed Foundation, but it does not say anything about how the Foundation will deal with governance. The short description of the Foundation mainly seems to be focused on financial sustainability and growth of fediverse projects. The section on the Pixelfed Foundation ends with a quote from Mastodon’s blog post: “The people should own the town square”, but it does not explain in any way how “the people” will get to “own the town square”.
Over on Bluesky, the short-lived TikTok ban in the US has put video front-and-center. As a response, people are starting to take Bluesky posts that contain video, and build a TikTok-like UI around it. Bluesky launched video feeds in their app last week, and SkyLight is a high-profile project to build a video-only UI for Bluesky posts. I’m curious if Pixelfed’s renewed prominence will lead to more interest in similar image-viewing fediverse clients that less bound to server platforms, whether that is Pixelfed, Mastodon or other fediverse platforms.
The dominance of Mastodon and microblogging over the wider fediverse has led to a situation where Mastodon and the fediverse get equated as mostly the same in coverage of larger news outlets. The growth of Pixelfed, and the mainstream attention that it brings now changes this dynamic. This Forbes article about Pixelfed is a good example, where the fediverse gets introduced from the perspective of Pixelfed instead of from a perspective of Mastodon.
The Kickstarter states an “Commitment to open source and open principles”, and says that “all of the source code for Pixelfed is licensed under the AGPL license and is publicly available on GitHub”. I am not clear why Loops is not mentioned here for a commitment to open source. Loops is not currently neither open source nor federating, according to the official Pixelfed account. While Supernault also says that he is “working on that”, I find it strange that Loops is not mentioned under the commitment to open source.
Building an encrypted messaging app is difficult, to put things mildly. Building an encrypted messaging as a solo developer, while also building an Instagram competitor as well as a TikTok competitor is just wildly optimistic. I fear that Supernault is spreading himself too thin here, committed to too many different products. Supernault’s shifting attention makes it difficult for him to ship features he has promised. Notable example of this is the Groups feature for Pixelfed, which Supernault has promised as coming “very soon” since summer 2023. His latest estimation for groups is now for Q2 2025.
Tumblr saying that they are working on their fediverse integration is great news for the fediverse. For a quite a while it seemed that Tumblr would not actually follow through on early announcements by CEO Mullenweg. The answer by Tumblr that ActivityPub support will depend on a plugin makes it plausible to me that Tumblr blogs will likely have to opt-in to connecting themselves to the fediverse by adding the plugin. So based on the limited information available it seems likely to me it will not be a situation where the fediverse instantly grows by millions of active users.
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Campi profughi sotto attacco. E nell’ospedale governativo di assediato di Jenin arrivano «solo civili, gente innocente». L'articolo Morti, sfollati e demolizioni. Tulkarem e Jenin come Gaza pagineesteri.it/2025/02/07/med…
A San Valentino mi piazzo con il mio ukulele sul bel palchetto del Don Pepe di Ostia (RM) e mentre le coppie di piccioncini tubano e sbocconcellano paella e gustano sangria io mi chiuderò a cantare tutte le più belle canzoni d'amore della storia della musica giamaicana, da Come Back Liza a Big Bamboo, da Tide Is High a Cherry Oh Baby, da Wait In Vain a Stir It Up, da Willow Tree fino a Girl I Got A Date...anzi no, quest'ultima meglio di no perché non è per niente romantica, parla di uno che dice alla ragazza con cui sta: "Purtroppo devo andare perché ho un altro appuntamento", sto rattuso 🤣
Prenotate con fiducia, ci sarà da divertirsi! ❤
Ristorante Don Pepe L.mare Paolo toscanelli 125 Ostia Lido per info e prenotazioni 3409922150 / 065672408
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale Se ne discute da decenni a Bologna. Stiamo parlando del Passante, l’opera del nodo bolognese che prevede l’allargamento di tangenziale e autostrada. Un nodo strategico che però è ancora in stallo, tra liti politiche, governi e amministrazioni locali di
Ho un libro autopubblicato nel 2023. Da cinque minuti ho modificato il contratto di distribuzione cancellando gli store di Amazon di qualunque paese. Non è un gran gesto, e al di là del piano simbolico è ovvio che non recherà alcun danno a Jeff Bezos. Ma per conto mio andava fatto. Vi racconterò meglio.
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale Quale posizione deve tenere l’Unione europea di fronte al generale atteggiamento di rottura del neo-presidente degli Stati Uniti Donald Trump? I 720 deputati dell’Europarlamento ne discuteranno da lunedì 10 a giovedì 13 febbraio in occasione della
Vedete questa?! È una piccola foresta di Malva Sylvestris 🌿😋
Questa pianta selvatica è considerata fin dall'antichità un alimento addirittura miracoloso per la nostra salute 😚👌
"Sin dall’VIII secolo a.C. abbiamo fonti che attestano che è stata usata come ortaggio e come rimedio medicamentoso, soprattutto le foglie tenere della pianta. Gli antichi Greci consideravano la malva un potente rimedio contro qualsiasi male e tale credenza si è tramandata fino ai giorni nostri, rimanendo radicata in molte culture popolari. I Romani la mangiavano cruda o cotta ben condita con olio e aceto. Cicerone ne era molto ghiotto e Marziale la usava come cura riparatrice. Dioscoride la menziona come rimedio specifico per l’apparato digerente e per uso esterno per diversi problemi alla pelle. Secondo Plinio il Vecchio una pozione a base di succo di malva evitava malesseri per tutta la giornata perciò ripeteva: malva, da ogni male salva, decantandone le sue proprietà"
L'altro giorno mentre ero al parco col cane ne ho raccolta un po', già che ci stavo e me la sono ritrovata tra i piedi insieme anche a un po' di piantaggine (aka Plantago Lanceolata) e di Rumex Pulcher (aka Romice Comune). A casa poi ho lavato tutto bene con acqua e un poco di aceto, e poi ci ho fatto una fantastica insalatona mischiandola con ceci e carote.
Da quando pochi giorni fa ho scoperto che le piante selvatiche con soltanto un po' di spirito di osservazione e di confronto fotografico non è così difficile riconoscerle, be' , confesso che guardo ai pratoni con occhi diversi. Prima erano un ammasso insignificante di materia organica verde, adesso invece ci vedo un firmamento pieno di varietà e di meravigliose cose tutte da scoprire 😅 Un'illuminazione simile a quando da ragazzo ho cominciato a suonicchiare e quindi anche a saper distinguere dentro una musica qualsiasi il suono di ogni singolo strumento dall'insieme magmatico. Una rivelazione insomma, un'epifania. Del resto siamo nati raccoglitori, ce l'abbiamo dentro, nel dna più profondo. Qualcuno penserà: ma raccogliere le erbe selvatiche non è sexy per niente, è una roba da vecchie signore chine sui pratoni e dei loro mariti burini vestiti da nonnetti. Ma non è affatto vero, anzi, da ora in poi la mia missione sarà dimostrare che cogliere le erbe selvatiche è super cool. Oggi lancio il movimento MGCA, Make Gathering Cool Again. Lo slogan sarà: abbasso la rucola nelle buste di plastica viva le erbe selvatiche contro il consumismo! Chi è con me in questa lotta?! 🌿✊😅
L’evoluzione tecnologica impone nuove sfide alla resilienza del sistema Paese, soprattutto in un contesto in cui la sicurezza digitale è sempre più strategica. L’Italia dovrebbe riflettere sulla necessità di dotarsi di strumenti adeguati a proteggere infrastrutture critiche, imprese e
ma come è possibile che per una destra moderna e pragmatica Trump non sia un imbarazzo. ma esiste ancora una destra liberale nel mondo? che poi chiariamo un concetto essenziale: la destra non è quella della libertà e la sinistra quella delle restrizioni. di fatto direi l'esatto contrario. visto che oggigiorno chi vota destra non sa neppure cosa sia la destra. intendo una destra non necessariamente fascista. io rimango dell'idea che è un vero peccato che dio abbia promesso di impedire un secondo diluvio universale. magari fallisce. una speranza c'è. visto lo schifo fatto direi che dio se esiste non è perfetto. magari qualche asteroide ci aiuta. o un super vulcano. o l'inversione magnetica dei poli. dispiace un po' per tutti gli innocenti non umani che ci andranno di mezzo.
Il problema, e lo dico da persona di sinistra, e che la destra presentabile non attira l'elettorato di destra.
Guarda cos'è successo in questo paese: è passato Mario Monti, una persona di destra e per bene, non se lo sono filato. E' passato Mario Draghi, altra persona di destra e per bene, e non si sono filati neanche lui (ha dovuto governare con la "sinistra"...).
Da noi se vuoi prendere i voti degli elettori di destra devi essere razzista, xenofobo, omofobo, populista, maschilista, catto-bugiardo (perché la sincerità della loro adesione al cristianesimo è sotto gli occhi di tutti...) e chi più ne ha più ne metta.
E' un problema anche per noi persone di sinistra, perché questo ha prodotto una sinistra che vive di rendita, campa sul "loro sono peggio di noi, per quanto vi facciamo schifo dovete votare noi lo stesso, altrimenti vincono loro" e così facendo prendono voti senza doversi preoccupare di dover essere davvero alternativi alla destra, gli basta essere solo un pelino meglio.
E infatti, la precarietà nel lavoro chi l'ha introdotta? Il PD (o come si chiamava all'epoca) con il pacchetto Treu. La guerra alle ONG chi l'ha iniziata? Il PD con Minniti e il suo protocollo che le ONG avrebbero dovuto sottoscrivere per fare soccorsi in mare. Gli accordi con la Libia chi li ha fatti? il PD con il governo Gentiloni. Ecc. ecc.
@Massimiliano Polito ahimé triste verità 🙁 ma non ci si può aspettare che governi e rappresentanti siano migliori dei loro elettori. se gli elettori sono dei buffoni a loro piacerà vedere altri buffoni. trump docet. ma è un problema chiaramente generalizzato. l'umanità non ha futuro. ed è un peccato.
c'è una regola che invita a cercare la risposta più semplice. e la risposta da immaginare è che semplicemente la russia abbia impiegato tutto quello che poteva usare e che quello che non ha usato o non funziona o potrebbe non funzionare e far fare una figura peggiore. sostenere che la russia sia ancora una super-potenza è senza senso. certo andrà impedito in futuro un riarmo. io non sento la nostalgia della buon "vecchia e cara" URSS. con metà europa invasa per 50 anni dalla russia sarebbe insensato. abbiamo avuto il problema del fascismo e delle dittature in europa. speriamo che l'ucraina riesca a salvarsi.
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale Anziché citare in apertura il solito Fukuyama, il politologo che prima si è inventato la «fine della storia», in nome del sereno vento dell’Ovest che avrebbe spirato sul mondo una volta abbattuto il Muro di Berlino, e poi, qualche decennio dopo, si è messo a parlare di «identità», avendo capito di aver sbagliato completamente
Secondo i retroscena, i funzionari di via Arenula si erano messi al lavoro per sanare il presunto vizio di forma dell'arresto, preparando una bozza da inviare alla Corte d'Appello. Ma il ministro ha scelto un'altra strada
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale C’erano l’elegante moglie di Andrea Bocelli, un giovane scapigliato in scarpe da ginnastica e un signore alto e magro con un cappello da cow boy, pronti a essere ricevuti dalla presidente del Consiglio a Palazzo Chigi. La scena era talmente bizzarra che sembrava di stare sul set di un film
avevo capito come era ma non pensavo a questi livelli. quanto siamo caduti in basso. e il bello è che la gente la preferisce a draghi. come se oltretutto draghi fosse di sinistra. una destra seria moderna avrebbe confermato draghi. non questi dilettanti assurdi incapaci e con alamasi pure criminali. bel modo do iniziare con una premier donna. una che rimpiange mussolini. con tutto quello che ha fatto. rimanggo comunque dell'idea che le dittature hanno unaa debolezza: i quadri dirigenti sono scelti in base a regole di fedeltà al regime e qundi non si può scegliere in base a competenza. riguarda la meloni, riguarda putin, riguarda tutte le persone di questo genere. in democrazia se corrotta si possono comunque sceglire gli "amici", ma almaeno non ci sono persone da evitare come la peste solo per motivi ideologici. voglio dire che anche solo per caso ogni tanto qualche persona competente ci può comunque finire.
I nuovi leak dalla chat del partito della premier. Gli insulti a Berlusconi e gli elogi a Mussolini. E il complottismo della premier. Che va anche contro Forza Nuova. Oltre a prendersela con infami e traditori
Il #7febbraio è la Giornata contro il #bullismo e il #cyberbullismo. Istituita nel 2017 dal Ministero, la giornata è un'occasione per riflettere su questa piaga sociale e sugli strumenti utili a combatterla.
Il #7febbraio è la Giornata contro il #bullismo e il #cyberbullismo. Istituita nel 2017 dal Ministero, la giornata è un'occasione per riflettere su questa piaga sociale e sugli strumenti utili a combatterla.
Sabahattin Ali – Il demone in noi freezonemagazine.com/articoli/… La copertina di questo libro è stata ipnotica per me. Leggere nel risvolto di copertina, poi, che si tratta di un romanzo ambientato ad Istanbul negli anni trenta di Atatürk, scritto da un autore più volte arrestato per il suo credo politico e morto assassinato più o meno misteriosamente, me lo ha fatto subito scegliere […] L'articolo Sabahattin Ali – Il demone in noi proviene da FREE ZONE
Chip Taylor esce un triplo album freezonemagazine.com/news/chip… Chip Taylor, inserito nella Songwriters Hall of Fame, scrive e si esibisce da oltre 60 anni e torna con quello che potrebbe essere il suo ultimo epico album, The Truth And Other Things. Il New York Times dice: “Se lo conoscete solo come colui che ha scritto Wild Thing e Angel of the Morning, non […] L'articolo Chip Taylor esce un triplo album proviene da FREE ZONE MAGAZINE.
Il seme del fico sacro, nuovo lavoro del regista iraniano, Mohammad Rasoulof, guarda alle proteste delle giovani generazioni, per affrontare i propri oppressori. Il film è ambientato a Teheran.
Il ritorno di Trump alla Casa Bianca e l’insostenibilità della posizione del Regno Unito di fronte al diritto internazionale stanno mettendo in seria crisi il governo laburista del primo ministro, Keir Starmer, sulla questione del ritorno delle isole…
A parte che determinate cose non si dovrebbero nemmeno dire, soprattutto in questo preciso momento visto che nella guerra per procura in Ucraina sembra si stia giungendo a un accordo. Quindi le parole di Mattarella, a mio avviso, non sono per nulla parole di pace perché non fanno altro che alimentare tensioni con la Russia. C'è anche da rilevare la lestezza di Mattarella nel continuare a demonizzare la Russia mentre per quanto riguarda isrl, imputato per genocidio dai tribunali internazionali, tutta questa decisione, nettezza e "autorevolezza" è totalmente assente. Se paragona Putin a Hitler, cosa dovrebbe dire di Netanyahu? Non credo serva aggiungere altro, anche perché credo sia evidente a tutti quanto la situazione sia veramente ridicola e quanto l'Italia si sia piazzata in una posizione che, da italiano, mi fa profondamente vergognare!
(Vito Mancuso "Giovani senza orientamento", LaStampa 4 dic 2023)
L'educazione è orientamento. Oggi non mancano i calcoli, mancano gli ideali. Ma sono gli ideali che motivano e orientano. Ciò di cui ha bisogno un essere umano, soprattutto quando è giovane, è la motivazione e l'orientamento.
Una sala d’aspetto. Persone annoiate. Qualcuno, prendendo spunto dalla copertina di un settimanale poggiato su un tavolinetto, comincia a parlare in modo
pdfhost.io/v/AD4IOA13g_Domenik… Famelike è nata così, come un rifugio per chi, come te, sente il richiamo della conoscenza. È un luogo dove ogni lettura è un'avventura, ogni curiosità è un'opportunità per ampliare i propri orizzonti e ogni storia è una porta aperta su mondi nuovi.
La tecnologia è ormai fattore abilitante in un mondo che attraversa profondi mutamenti economici e geopolitici. Per tenere il passo e competere con i grandi player del settore, l’Italia ha bisogno di puntare su realtà innovative, capaci di dare
The current Archivist of the United States held an all-hands this week in which she still seemed to be in charge, 404 Media has learned.#archives #DonaldTrump
@Privacy Pride Il post completo di Christian Bernieri è sul suo blog: garantepiracy.it/blog/lader/ Parto dalla fine: poca privacy per i criminali. Spesso sento dire che "la privacy non serve alle persone per bene" e che "chi non ha nulla da nascondere non ha nulla da temere". Deiezioni bovine!
Attraverso Replicator, l’iniziativa lanciata nell’agosto del 2023 dal sottosegretario alla difesa statunitense Kathleen Hicks, il Pentagono e la Casa Bianca mirano a dotarsi di un ampio network di arme autonome e interconnesse capace di incrementare esponenzialmente
Ieri mattina, alla Camera, ho sostenuto l’opportunità del ripristino dell’immunità parlamentare e per certi aspetti è stato un déjà-vu. Riavvolgo il nastro. Quando, cinque anni fa, assieme ai colleghi Nazario Pagano e Tommaso Nannicini iniziammo a raccogliere le firme tra i senatori affinché potesse
Max 🇪🇺🇮🇹
in reply to Massimo Max Giuliani • •@Massimo Max Giuliani ma sai alla fine non è che facciamo cose solo per punire i cattivi, a volte le facciamo per mantenere una nostra integrità.
Zuckerberg non si accorgerà mai della mia partenza da Facebook ma io sì! Mi sento più integro, più in linea con i miei principi.
Alla fine la motivazione è anche questa, un semplice volersi allontanare da persone, sistemi, situazioni che non ci piacciono.
like this
Massimo Max Giuliani e aimee80 like this.
Massimo Max Giuliani
in reply to Max 🇪🇺🇮🇹 • •Ci faccio il terzo articolo e chiudo la trilogia.
aimee80 likes this.
Massimo Max Giuliani
in reply to Massimo Max Giuliani • •