Tom Morris ✅ @tommorris@mastodon.social

I wrote a little blog post pointing to essential reading on the
MIT MediaLab following recent scandals. It is a fascinating, and rather terrifying, vision of techno-utopianism, and an academic venture almost wholly undermined by its corporate partnerships.

https://tommorris.org/posts/essential-reading-on-the-mit-media-lab/

Should I syndicate my tweets here? Or to a separate bot account that I retoot? I'd like to use Mastodon but I'm still not following enough people.

New blog post about how Apple ID's two-factor and app-specific passwords are irritating, confusing and need some #securityUX love.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2019/apple-id-s-two-factor-and-app-specific-passwords-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired/

I wrote a thing about Facebook’s Instant Articles and why they are Bad, and why visible URLs are required for trust and provenance.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2019/facebook-instant-articles-why-hiding-urls-hinders-careful-reading-of-media/

Started learning a new programming language this week: Elixir. I like it. There will be open source code I've written soon.

I wrote a thing about museums and engagement metrics. It is as positive and optimistic as you've come to expect from me.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2018/instamuseums/

I very reluctantly relaunched my personal site. Not because I particularly want to, but because I didn't want it to be totally dead.

I can't promise to write lots, because I'm a bit busy reading.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2018/quietism/

systemd messed up my day.

That’s not a knock on systemd, just things now don’t work.

I'm Tom. I live in London. I'm a recovering software developer. I'm an admin on Wikipedia (and I write a few bits on there about philosophy and law and weird TV programmes).

I used to be a pretty avid supporter of stuff like IndieWeb, but I'm now rather cynical about the internet and social media and generally think we ought to turn it off for everyone's mental health.

#introductions

Today, I cranked out a 30 line Ruby script that automatically checks my university library website and renews any books that are about to become overdue.

Programming is terrible, but occasionally it solves a really fucking annoying problem.

Alright, my personal site is back up. I'm debating whether to setup a Mastodon instance on there, then work out how to tie my old site together with Mastodon.

#whatareyoudoing (reviving the old question from Twitter)

I'm reading about the Glorious Revolution and the 1688 Parliament.

The best thing about being a Mastodon server admin based in the EU is you probably now have obligations to register under your country's data regulator and follow the GDPR.

Federation: more headaches than you think.

Mastodon: you should randomly pick some person's server to hang out on and trust with your data.
No, of course they aren't registered data controllers.

The law is still a thing (especially in Europe), and companies like Twitter are at least somewhat more accountable to the justice system for misuse in a way that the pseudonymous server admin of your favourite queer polyamorous furry art sharing instance can't. Just saying.

Federation: still bad.

https://infosec.exchange/@tinker/100577861169167142

How to use Android without Google.

https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/a-guide-to-using-android-without-selling-your-soul-to-g-1827875582

It is basically a giant faff and probably not worth bothering with given the amount of hassle vs. the cost of buying an iOS device.

Answer from a philosophy student: There is no difference, and I’ve yet to see a good reason to not treat them as synonymous.

https://cybre.space/@uranther/100453204988786204

When Black Mirror first moved from Channel 4 to Netflix, it was kind of sad in a parochial way.

But it ultimately is a great place for it: it stands out as the only Netflix show you can't binge on precisely because you need an hour or so to decompress after each episode.

Poking through the local timeline. Seeing a fair amount of Brazilian Portuguese. This is a good sign of imminent massive network growth (hey, the only successful social network Google ever built was Orkut and they never got around to saying "obrigado" for that).

🇧🇷 Prepare-se para a invasão brasileira! 🇧🇷

Things Mastodon probably needs to grow:

1. a much better "migrate from Twitter" tool (the current tool is a bit slow)

2. better ways to discover people to follow (by interests and language). Currently, the main way I'm finding people is looking through the timelines of people I know. This seems like a recipe for filter bubbles.

3. account migration (I know, it's being worked on!)