Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town
- Future new account
- @joepie91@slightly.tech
- Matrix
- @joepie91:pixie.town
- Pronouns
- they/them, he/him, whatever, it's not like I have any idea either 🙃
In the process of moving to @joepie91. This account will stay active for the foreseeable future! But please also follow the other one.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
- No alt text (request) = no boost.
- Boosts OK for all boostable posts.
- DMs are open.
- Flirting welcome, but be explicit if you want something out of it!
- The devil doesn't need an advocate; no combative arguing in my mentions.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.
Joined Aug 2019
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
anti-bigotry, harassment, personal example
re: @Are0h's "Bigots should feel unsafe around you" https://ubiqueros.com/notes/9ed3kmw5x4 - when Eris from Disqordia [violent remarks redacted], it was because we were clear, specific, detailed, and critical about the then-latest example of racism from her.
I don't know how many people saw Ro's post and thought, "but I can't punch Nazis, I don't know how!" - which, fair, we don't either - ...
...but I can assure you from multiple experiences that racists are terrified of being ostracized.
And the thing about telling the truth in a way that makes sense? Is that people who *don't* want to be racists are liable to listen, understand, and stop putting up with racism.
That's why it gets so much backlash. That's why it gets such *violent* backlash. Because racists - from the fashy to the merely fash-supporting - are scared that you, we, all of us? Might start living up to the ideals we put in our codes of conduct.
And they should be. If we meant them.
- 🎒
long, the Core Team governance problem 
So for "open" projects, specifications in particular, there is a very common governance structure: the Core Team.
The idea is that feedback is taken from all over the community, and there is a small Core Team of dedicated "full-time volunteers" who ultimately make the decisions and are responsible for resolving issues.
This is extremely common; in this post I'm going to mainly take Matrix as an example, but it applies the same way to almost every other 'open specification' project.
Now, while this model sounds great on paper, it has some serious issues that lead to poor community representation, and a specification that is ultimately not truly open. Not through any malice, but as a consequence of the practicalities of governance.
The biggest issue that I want to talk about here, is the "full-time volunteer" thing. The assumption is that there must be a few people who can keep an overview of the whole thing, the 'big picture', and who have a lot of time to spend on that.
Just one problem: almost nobody can afford to volunteer full-time. It's virtually impossible to combine such a task with the full-time job that one needs to live... unless the 'volunteering' is on company time, and that's where it goes wrong.
Because of the high time demands placed by the core governance role, the end result is that Core Teams are almost always made up of people representing their employers. If not explicitly, then implicitly - because if you don't make your boss happy, you might not get to continue working on this on the clock.
Which, in turn, means that the only representation in such an "open" specification is corporate representation, and there's no real way for the community to be represented. Even someone who *wants* to represent the community, is still beholden to their funder's priorities and expectations.
This, in turn, can have disastrous consequences; in the case of Matrix, for example, the spec process often blocks on invisible internal discussions among Element employees! This is very unlikely to be intentional sabotage; it is just the logical practical outcome of this governance model.
That then makes it even more difficult for 'outsiders' from the community to participate, because they don't even get to see much of the discussion, they're essentially flying blind and can't afford the time to untangle all the internal discussions.
The Core Team becomes ever more centralized, ever less transparent, and the community is ever less represented. This is how an open spec dies.
(I want to emphasize again that this criticism is *not* specific to Matrix; it is a widespread problem.)
So... how to solve this? Well, let's start by identifying the root of the problem: the "heavy Core Team" approach. Appointing a 'responsible team' makes a lot of sense in a corporate environment, but not in a community process. It is a hierarchical construct that will lead to hierarchical outcomes.
What you want is a more decentralized model; specific people overseeing individual proposals/categories, for example, without a "top-level Core Team" that calls the shots. Instead, focus on mutual cooperation.
Likewise, you want to ensure that 100% of spec discussion is public, in an easy-to-find location, well-referenced. It should take almost no effort to find the whole history of a proposal.
Be wary of implicit Core Teams; even without appointing one explicitly, make sure that it doesn't become de-facto governed by those who have the most time to spend.
Expect those with a lot of time to spend some of it to make participation easier for those with less time, instead of doing spec work directly.
I'm sure that there are many more approaches that can work here, but hopefully these are some useful pointers to identify and avoid the problem!
And if we're lucky, maybe we can use these principles to pull some existing "open" specs back from the cliff edge.
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
"Oh no it's bad that people defederate servers"
No it's bad that people who don't understand running communities keep trying to run communities and need to be defederated
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
All of these “defederation is bad” takes are, in essence, saying that instance administrators exist to be vanity domain names and that a single contiguous fediverse is both possible and desired.
I reject both of these premises. Defederate early, defederate often, build the anarchic consensus you want to see.
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
This is big. No #embargoes. No #APCs.
"The #EU is ready to agree that immediate #OpenAccess to papers reporting publicly funded research should become the norm, w/o authors having to pay fees & that the bloc should support #nonprofit scholarly publishing models.
In a move that could send shockwaves through commercial scholarly #publishing, the positions are due to be adopted by the Council of the EU member state governments later this month."
https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-infrastructure-2023-5-eu-ready-to-back-immediate-open-access-without-author-fees/
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
I dream of a world where drag queens are accepted but Nazis are not.
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
"Come out," the knight called, "and marry me!"
The dragon emerged from his lair. "Pardon?"
"You wrote a proclamation, saying that whoever rid the kingdom of its king would gain your, er, paw in marriage and half the kingdom."
"That was a jo- Wait, you did?"
"Yes!"
"Very well."
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories
Oops it's accidentally the third fastest homeserver in the pingroom now
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Update: the Apothecary homeserver is provisionally back up! Current status:
- It'll be slow until everything catches up, but client connections do seem to be stable
- Old uploads do not currently work, still working on this; new uploads work fine
- Webchat is not available yet, that'll be set back up soon
- Any missing history should reappear automatically over time, but it may take a while
tech, rant, SQL
It frustrates me how "SQL" has become synonymous with "serious database work".
SQL is a terrible and inaccessible language, it doesn't compose, it's easy to misuse, it hasn't actually been standardized for decades, it's impossible to abstract over. It's full of obvious language design errors that wouldn't be considered acceptable in any other context.
Yes, relational databases are important as a concept. Yes, database reliability is important. Neither of these points require *or* imply SQL, and frankly SQL is holding society back in building good systems.
We need and deserve something better.
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Hey lawyers, I'm trying to help this person get in touch with pro Bono help. Please read below and boost
M needs housing law help. M has been reaching out to legal orgs for months, but of those that have responded, only a few have actually been helpful, and even those ones have made it clear that they can only do so much. But as a high-risk disabled person, this situation is life-or-death for M, and time is ticking. More info upon request, please DM @bun #LawFedi #FediLaw
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Don't forget: Giving a musician $10 is worth as much as streaming their song 1,000 times on Apple Music and 2,500 times on Spotify.
Update: the Apothecary homeserver is provisionally back up! Current status:
- It'll be slow until everything catches up, but client connections do seem to be stable
- Old uploads do not currently work, still working on this; new uploads work fine
- Webchat is not available yet, that'll be set back up soon
- Any missing history should reappear automatically over time, but it may take a while
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Θ
"he or she" dear avation youtuber please just use "they" thank you
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
why you want a cane (longpost)
i bought a cane two years ago. in retrospect i wish i had had a cane around when i was 14 years old. hear me out. there are many reasons to love cane. Here's some times canes help me. maybe u want one too! (pls be careful tho if u get one u gotta learn how to use it right so u dont hurt yrself with it)
- ever pull a muscle or stub your toe real bad and now putting weight on that foot hurts? you'll be very happy that you already have a cane to help take some of the weight off.
- filled with dread any time you need to lean/squat down to clean items up off the floor? cane makes this way easier, because now your arm muscles can help lower you down and push you back up. this is why i vacuum with any regularity instead of declaring floor bankruptcy.
- frequently feel the need to sit down while standing in line? cane makes it easier to stand longer without feeling this, also makes it easier to sit down and get back up if you need to.
- seriously, sitting down and getting up from sitting is so much easier with a cane
- have trouble climbing stairs? cane in one hand, railing in the other hand, now you are dual-wielding climbing assistance
- getting in/out of cars a struggle? cane helped me.
- good for climbing hills
- good for descending hills
- scared of falling down on an escalator? cane helps.
- have trouble getting on and off a bus when its high up from the ground? cane can help you gradually lower yourself to reduce the work your knees put in. same thing for curbs without curb cuts
- if u need it, now u can sit in the front of the bus without people looking at u funny because lmao it turns out that visually indicating a disability is way more effective than telling people that many disabilities are invisible unfortunately.
- do u lose your balance a lot? cane is very good for regaining balance, or not losing it in the first places. good for progesterone dizzy spells!
- its a stim toy tbh
- u can put stickers on your cane like putting stickers on a laptop
if yr worried about social impact, my experience has been that people i already knew asked me "what happened" when i first got it and i just said i got it to help me get around and then they didnt care. i have never had a stranger ask me why i have a cane. most people dont rly seem to notice or care.
fyi the most natural way to walk with a cane tends to be to move it forward with the arm opposite the leg you're moving forward. so if its in your right hand, you move your right hand and your left leg together. then you move your right leg on its own. you can switch hands! i do this constantly. it takes practice. practice with yr cane.
u also gotta dial the height of the cane in properly or it can mess yr posture up. seriously, take some time on that one, get someone who knows to help u if u can.
canes are based
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Thank you for contacting the abyss.
Your scream is very important to us.
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
the advice of "change your password every 60 days" is akin to saying "change the locks on your house every 60 days"
Heads-up for the Apothecary users; recovery is being worked on, and the server should be back up soon(tm) if all goes according to plan!
chatgpt shit
Today's "having to deal with ChatGPT bullshit" counter: 2, so far
Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated)
boosted
Why do people enter a room with a closed door, get something and immediately leave and then NOT close the door?
- Future new account
- @joepie91@slightly.tech
- Matrix
- @joepie91:pixie.town
- Pronouns
- they/them, he/him, whatever, it's not like I have any idea either 🙃
In the process of moving to @joepie91. This account will stay active for the foreseeable future! But please also follow the other one.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
- No alt text (request) = no boost.
- Boosts OK for all boostable posts.
- DMs are open.
- Flirting welcome, but be explicit if you want something out of it!
- The devil doesn't need an advocate; no combative arguing in my mentions.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.
Joined Aug 2019
