Way back when I was on that other service, I had a pinned tweet for a time that concluded with something like the following line:

... when they're handing out "make your own internet policy at home" kits, they should some with a label saying "Adult supervision required."

In a post commemorating Ross Anderson on her blog, Heather Burns (@webdevlaw somewhere, I'm sure) quoted him regarding the same concern. However, compared to my snark, his phrasing is sublime, maybe even divine:

The idea that complex social problems are amenable to cheap technical solutions is the siren song of the software salesman and has lured many a gullible government department on to the rocks.

There is no "easy fix" for online toxicity. Anything that will be effective will be very difficult to put in place and will likely be the result of millions of hours of combined thought, analysis, experimentation and disputation on the part of thousands of experts in the fields being considered.

Something I would say infrequently and irregularly on the only other social service I've ever used, and will translate to the #Fediverse:

All boosts, re-toots or re-posts (or whatever they're called) from this account are to be considered endorsements. If I don't endorse the post, I will either not boost, re-toot or re-post it, *or* it will be clear in my comment accompanying the boost, re-toot or re-post.

I hate Windows 11.

The Task Manager, in particular, is just awful.

(I had a long post prepared to explain myself, but the above sums it up perfectly.)

Advertising Standards Authority partners with Grambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. - Advertising Standards Authority

TIL Grambling is regulated in Ireland. Now I just need to find out what grambling is, and how to gramble.

adstandards.ie/advertising-sta…

Advertising Standards Authority partners with Grambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. - Advertising Standards Authority

Under the new partnership, the Advertising Standards Authority and GRAI will work collaboratively on triaging complaints around marketing communications for gambling in Ireland.

^{Mary (Advertising Standards Authority)}

Final decisions on Syrian asylum applications paused

This is total bollocks.

There is nothing to say that the end result of what's happening in Syria right now will make it safer for those who have applied for asylum. We can hope it will, but Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are examples of how things could turn out, and those seeking protection in Ireland will probably still require it!

RTE News Headlines

2024-12-10 10:10:00

[10:46] Final decisions on Syrian asylum applications paused

Final decisions with respect to international protection applications from Syrian nationals are being temporarily paused, the Department of Justice has said.

rte.ie/news/2024/1210/1485625-…

#Syrian #theDepartmentofJustice

Final decisions on Syrian asylum applications paused

^{Carla O'Brien (RTÉ)}

Unfortunately, Social Gibiris has to go down for a few days in order to debug an issue in the home office that is my data centre.

Look forward to hearing from you when I come back online.

Éibhear

Christ. Is is possible for me to go a full week without having to respond to someone getting the point wrong?!?!

It's not stealing.

It's infringement.

If we want to be taken seriously, we need to use the correct words!

#Copyright

#Copyright #BadCopyrightTake

Éibhear 🔭

2024-06-26 19:15:37

It's not stealing.

It's infringement.

If we want to be taken seriously, we need to use the correct words!

#Copyright

"Uncatched" error

French correspondent found dead in Marseille amid making documentary on Gaza genocide

This is horrific.

I really hope the full truth of how she died comes out, but I fear that if there is the tiniest hint that it wasn't natural causes it'll be covered up by the authorities in France.

Glyn Moody

2024-12-03 09:43:52

French correspondent found dead in Marseille amid making documentary on #Gaza #genocide - presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/02/7… not suspicious at all...

French correspondent found dead in Marseille amid making documentary on Gaza genocide

A French journalist has been found dead at her residence in Marseille amid making a documentary on the genocide in Gaza, reports say.

^PressTV

I don't normally do this, and I know I should to it more, but I want to call out my favourite software project.

Commafeed

It's a #selfhosted #RSS news aggregator that was inspired by Google Reader.

When Google Reader closed down, I moved to feedly, but was never really satisfied with it. After a year or two, I looked at the Awesome-Selfhosted list of options -- I was establishing my own "data centre" at home for self-hosted services at the time -- and I considered the options. The one that stood out to me was #CommaFeed for a number of reasons:

• It had a clean interface
• it was simple to deploy (it comes with the option of an embedded DB, so I didn't need to maintain a separate database engine)
• it came with an extension for the mobile 'phone app I was using for feedly (the name of which escapes me)

I downloaded and installed it, and set it up for me to access from whereever, and I have never looked back. Very shortly after starting to use it, I realised that the mobile app extension was unnecessary, as the UI was very good on mobile as well as on the desktop.

I have been using commafeed since about 2016/2017, without any problem (except for that one occasion where I messed up the database all by myself! but I was able to recover from it, and I learned an important lesson).

You can use it at commafeed.com/ without having to download or install it. If, however, you're interested in starting to host your own service, and if, like me, you believe news needs to come to you via a more stable channel than "social media", then commafeed might be a great way to dip your toe into this wonderful world.

Thanks to Jérémie Panzer (Athou) for the great work he's doing with #commafeed.

#GE2024

There are 20 candidates in my constituency hoping for votes today.

There are 2 or three who, if I met them today, I would say to them: "I really hope you get in."

There's a sizeable crop to whom I would say "Best of luck," and I would leave each of them to gauge my sincerity.

There's a couple (yes, 2) who would hear "If it's going to keep the fash out, I think I'd be OK with you guys getting in" (and, yes Naoise, you didn't call to the door when I asked as you you were canvassing on the street, and your colleague did, so she's gonna get the higher of those 2 preferences).

And then there's a rake of them who I would tell that I would crawl over 100m of red hot coals to try to prevent any of them getting elected.

My ballot paper will reflect this later today.

Please vote.

I'm trying to work through a thought.

I think there's a view among the "mainstream" influenceratti that the social media service that they are currently using is, was, and always shall be.

News organisations and politicians, in particular, seem to have built a huge amount of their "brand" on twitter, assuming that it's not going to go away, y'know.

I could see that was a false assumption: I remember Bebo, MySpace, Identica, USENET; "where are they now?".

But, I don't think those with the 1,000s and 100,000s of followers, captured as much be recommendation algorithms as by their own efforts, ever thought how brittle that gathering was, dependent as it was on the whims of those who operate(d) twitter.

Now that twitter is dying, and that first core assumption is dying with it, they're falling back onto their second core assumption as a means to deal with the cognitive dissonance: with twitter dead, whereever they migrate to must work exactly the same way as twitter did. But, of course it doesn't (whatever it is: mastodon, bluesky, nostr, post, whatever.). Why would it?

The first assumption was wrong, and the second assumption in turn assumes the first, so its death follows.

This is why we see things that I find really irritating: people leaving their many 1000s of followers on twitter behind, coming to the new service they've chosen, and expecting to be treated with the same adulation and faux authority as they had garnered over there, and getting annoyed when it doesn't happen.

This is why we saw so many hit pieces targeting mastodon/ActivityPub over the last 2 years, and why they've been replaced by hit pieces targeting bluesky in the last few months. They can't come to terms that what was handed to them on a plate in terms of an audience is now being taken away from them, and they don't understand why this is happening.

I'm still trying to figure this out, so I'm not really sure I'm totally correct. Right now, it just feels a little more than plausible.

Australian government passes social media ban for children under 16

I continue to hold to the view that when the make-your-own-internet-policy-at-home kits are being handed out to politicians they should come with a label saying "adult supervision required."

Australian government passes social media ban for children under 16

Social media platforms will be given one year to work out how they could implement the ban before penalties are enforced.

^{TheJournal.ie}

#GE2024

I just met a campaigner for the #DublinBayNorth candidate Kevin Coyle (of "National Alliance", whatever that is).

I asked the lady what Kevin's main issue is. "Uncontrolled immigration" she tells me.

What type of immigration is uncontrolled, and what's uncontrolled about it? I asked. She told me that "they" are all coming in with no documentation and the Gardaí aren't stopping them. She told me they're coming in from Belfast.

"And then what do they do?" I asked. "They apply for asylum," was the response.

I told her sure isn't that OK? We have an obligation to consider asylum applications.

"But they're not all fleeing war zones," she assures me (reaching into her pocket, I'm sure, for the facts and figures to support this assertion, but got distracted to try to hand a leaflet out to another passer-by).

"Isn't that for the asylum process to determine? If they are fleeing danger, they need our protection. If not, they'll be removed, surely. That's the current process. What's uncontrolled about that?"

"The office is only open 4 hours/day!"

"But that's a problem of resourcing. I still don't see how this suggests immigration isn't controlled."

At this point she stopped talking to me. I'm happy to think that I served to deny her the opportunity to give his hate-filled flyer to perhaps 4 or 5 other passers by.

Watch: How does Ireland's election voting system work?

The Proportional Representation with a Single Transferrable Vote (PR-STV) electoral system used in Ireland is known as one of the fairest methods of counting votes in an election

[citation needed]

, but it is also one of the most complicated

[citation needed]

.

RTE News Headlines

2024-11-28 10:04:00

[10:51] Watch: How does Ireland's election voting system work?

The Proportional Representation with a Single Transferrable Vote (PR-STV) electoral system used in Ireland is known as one of the fairest methods of counting votes in an election, but it is also one of the most complicated.

rte.ie/news/2024/1128/1483485-…

#TheProportionalRepresentation #Ireland

Watch: How does Ireland's election voting system work?

^{RTÉ News (RTÉ)}

#GE2024

Some poster defacements are disgraceful*, and some are just hilarious!

* Actually, IMO, very few are disgraceful.

Election 2024: Taoiseach urges public to back 'centrist parties'

Actual headline: Fine Gael leader confirms there's no difference between his party and Fianna Fáil

Election 2024: Taoiseach urges public to back 'centrist parties'

Party officials are scrutinising transfers as the final opinion poll before election day puts the three main parties neck and neck

^{Elaine Loughlin, Political Editor (IrishExaminer.com)}