Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

I’m not attending FOSDEM so I would like to contribute this galaxy-brain idea for those who are: everyone in the crowd gets into a loud, disruptive conversation about software licensing with the people sitting nearest to them for the duration of Jack Dorsey’s allotted talk. Do not back down or lower your voice. Your software licensing opinions are correct and this is your chance to convince everyone.

Some quality lichens shot on Harman Phoenix film :3

It was my first time trying out this film and I'm really happy with how some of the shots came out! It's definitely not the best tool for every job, but it's got a really cool aesthetic; I'm excited to pick up some more now that I have a better understanding of how it behaves

#lichensubscribe #photography #film #harmanphoenix

Amongst other things, arguing against gatekeeping by asserting that HTML is a programming language just lets the gatekeeper shift the goal posts. "Writing documentation isn't programming," "triaging issues isn't programming," "project management isn't programming," "UI design isn't programming," and so forth.

I fairly strongly believe that challenging the core assumption is an effective way of cutting that line of gatekeeping off entirely.

I vastly prefer the second approach, as the first one doesn't actually challenge the core assumption that gives the threat of gatekeeping its teeth.

Also the differentiation between writing a program (very *very* roughly, an executable sequence of instructions) and markup (very *very* roughly the declaration of some data upon which a program acts) is an important one, and I don't think we should let gatekeepers co-opt that distinction to be assholes.

It's been a few days, with a lot of misunderstanding in replies. That's on me for not communicating my point effectively, so let me expand on and clarify.

Suppose you encounter "HTML isn't a real programming language" as an example of gatekeeping people out of tech. It's a real and really awful canard that techbros use, even now.

Very roughly, you can respond in one of two ways:

• Expand the definition of "programming language"
• Challenge the idea that programming is necessary to be in tech

Hot take: "HTML is a programming language" is gatekeeping in effect, if not in intent.

That is, something need not be a programming language to be a the subject of highly useful and important technical skills — viewing all of computing through the lens of programming languages is inherently limiting.

One of the better ways I found to solve programming problems is writing the high level code as if I have all the other parts already in place.

It is a bit like TDD or Tracer Bullet dev, but I don't write any runing code until I feel fine with the phantasy-code I have written (but then I can continue with tests and tracer bullet mocks)

wait, so they rearchitected the whole thing to not suck and rewrote it in rust to reduce overhead and instead of letting everyone benefit from this, they're designating it "Synapse Pro" and will continue to maintain *two* codebases now just to have a product they can sell?

all while even small Synapse deployments can be slow and rickety?

what the fuck

someone has got to create a polyglot filesystem. a filesystem that can be read by two completely different filesystem drivers

One of my favourite hashtags here, highly recommend: #CarryShitOlympics. It's people carrying loads of stuff on their bikes. I hope to participate some day.

How can I get a skirt with a custom printed pattern?

Imagine I have an image, and I want that on a skirt. Is there any company where I can order that?

If these nerds weren't so hell-bent on becoming the God Emperors of My Twitter Alternative and instead actually considered people's social and safety needs and their technically ability while building decentralised social media platforms the whole thing becomes a non-issue very quickly

The ad read 'Five days for £5!'. It didn't say what for. The website, Aeternitas Solutions, had no more info; just a purchase form.

Curiosity itched. Probably a scam but for a fiver, they'd risk it. They filled in the form, hit 'Buy'.

The confirmation was just as vague; 'Thank you for your purchase. Your order will be dispatched.'

They'd forgotten all about it by the next morning until, crossing out a day on the calendar, noticed the new five blank days shoved into the middle.

#MicroFiction

oh cool, Gnome has no automatic dark mode anymore because Mozilla (the advertisement and AI company) thought it was financially not worthwhile to keep their daytime and location API alive https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/2959#note_2053491

Hang on, why is FOSDEM worried about Dorsey's talk being disrupted?

Dorsey is from the generation of tech disruption.

Surely he'd welcome some disruption to the marketplace of free speech?

Like ours to not have a billionaire at a FOSS event.

Surely Davos is more his speed. The man's looking for a smaller pond as all his mates are at the Trump party.

If you're that worried about FOSDEM breaking maybe don't invite one of the "move fast and break things" allumini?

And since my Vestibular Neuronitis is playing up today, I'd like to remind everyone -- no matter how much a #TTRPG game, night out, trip or whatever means to you, if you're sick, stay in.

Getting on for 10 years ago, someone came out to a game session with a very bad cold. Not flu, but a bad cold.

They decided to come anyway and spent 5 hours coughing on me.

That cold, just a cold, permanently damaged my vestibular system, affected my hearing, and still affects me today.

Stay. The Fuck. Home