Seb Lee-Delisle @seb_ly@mastodon.social

I'm mighty stoked and excited to let you all know about a new boutique consultancy my partner and I have launched.

It's called Nīkau, and it's got a lot to give. https://nikau.io

To future historians—not just of computing, but of humanity—the current period will be a dark age.

How was Facebook used by students in the 2010s? We cannot show you, that version of Facebook is not hosted anywhere.

How did MySpace look around 2009? We don't really know, the Wayback Machine only shows a limited amount of static content, and there may only be a few surviving screenshots

What correspondence did Vint Cerf have as president of the ACM with other luminaries of computing industry and research? We do not know; Google will not publish his emails.

What was it like playing Angry Birds on an iPhone 3G? We do not know; Apple is no longer distributing signed receipts for that binary.

What did the British cabinet discuss when they first learned of the Coronavirus pandemic? We do not know; they chatted on a private WhatsApp group.

What books were published analysing the aftermath of the Maidan coup in Ukraine? We do not know; we do not have the keys for the Digital Editions DRM.

How was the coup covered in televised news? We do not know; the broadcasters used RealVideo and Windows Media Encoder and we cannot read those files.

We have to ask ourselves how we are going to preserve and transmit knowledge about our age to the next generations. Knowledge about an age where information is produced, consumed and discarded within hours, days or months, or where it's only stored on the server rooms of a handful of corporations, with no guarantees that those businesses will exist in the future, and with no way of accessing that information unless a certain set of regulatory, hardware, software pre-conditions are met.

That's why projects like the Internet Archive deserve more recognition and funding. That's why web scraping should not only be a civic right, but a civic duty to the next generations. Otherwise all the knowledge about the great age of information will be transmitted orally - with all the distortions that such transmission implies.

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-digital-dark-ages/

As if by magic, Penny Mordaunt’s website is being blocked as porn or unsafe for children by
Virginmedia and TalkTalk

I hope UK Conservative leadership candidates can see the problem. The #OnlineSafetyBill is purposely designed to create these disasters.

https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://pm4pm.com

I saw all the Images from the James Webb Space Telescope, and seriously, I had tears in my eyes, I don’t have words to describe how awesome it is to be alive in a time where we can see photos of galaxies in our phone

At the same time I get sad, frustrated actually, that we have access to STELLAR NURSERIES, and people are like “no, I’m gonna hate gays because the bible says bla bla”🙃

Anyway, here the GORGEOUS photos🥹❤️

https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

#nasa
#jameswebb
#galaxy
#nebula

You have not been sued for libel.

https://nitter.net/carolecadwalla/status/1532810357403750402

#libel #CaroleCadwalladr

Alternative Display Technologies And Where To Find Them https://hackaday.com/2022/06/01/alternative-display-technologies-and-where-to-find-them/

Original tweet : https://twitter.com/hackaday/status/1532089800420909056

I'm supporting @opensourceseeds in their crowdfunding campaign to develop an #OpenSource rye variety.

Why do we need open source seeds?

Over the last few decades seed variety has decreased dramatically due to commercial pressure and most are owned by only a handful of companies.

In many countries (including the EU) small farmers are unable to sell or even pass on heritage seeds without obtaining prohibitively expensive paperwork.

A 🧵 1/n

#sustainability #farming #OpenSourceSeeds @plants

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#FediTips #MastoTips #Fediverse #Mastodon #Visibility #Hashtags #Tags