I watched this excellent speech today, though it was made in 2019:

Aral Balkan

The Future of Internet Regulation at the European Parliament

A brief write-up of my talk at the EU Parliament last week with embedded videos of my talk and a link to my slides.

In it, @Aral Balkan makes the case in favour of smaller, more federated communication infrastructure within Europe, making use of p2p protocols like ActivityPub (which mastodon uses). He's talking to representatives within the EU parliament, on the issue of how best to fund investment in communication technology, warning against funding companies like FaceBook. The points he makes there are still true in 2024.

Saw this meme the other day and thought it was amusing. And accurate.

Posted on IRC earlier and I'm repeating here: <leah> i have a vision for america <leah> land of the free, home of the gay <leah> make america gay again We were saying how much of a jackass Trump is, and I pictured an alternative reality where America's politicians defend LGBT rights, instead of A) attacking it directly like the republicans do or B) paying weak lip service to it like the democrats do (while passing KOSA which will censor LGBT info on the internet) american politicians are lame

I was telling a Mac user something, which I realised was profound: Linux/BSD is easier to use than any Windows or Mac system, because the underlying software is simpler; the terminal seems more complicated to novices, but you can do on sh in 5 seconds what would take about a minute of clicking in a GUI. With a unix shell, unix utilities, and especially a good C compiler, you can do 100% of things. The UI does 2%. And MacOS is unix too but in practise you don't use the terminal for most things.

I've sorted through the lab and realised I have 240GB SATA SSDs I'm not using. For a limited time while I have them, I'm offering a cheaper version of the Libreboot 9020, as seen here:

Minifree Ltd – Libreboot T480 with 4-core i5-8250u, Intel UHD 630 graphics, 32GB/64GB DDR4 RAM, Intel AX210 WiFi, 1TB/2TB NVMe SSD and Debian Linux

Minifree Ltd – Libreboot T480 with 4-core i5-8250u, Intel UHD 630 graphics, 32GB/64GB DDR4 RAM, Intel AX210 WiFi, 1TB/2TB NVMe SSD and Debian Linux

Minifree Ltd – Libreboot T480 with 4-core i5-8250u, Intel UHD 630 graphics, 32GB/64GB DDR4 RAM, Intel AX210 WiFi, 1TB/2TB NVMe SSD and Debian Linux

I normally ship 1TB NVMe or 2TB NVMe. These are still available. For a lower price, you can choose 240GB *SATA* SSD; the lowest spec with this is currently £158. Libreboot replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI. Your choice of Debian, other distro or BSD. EDIT: 240GB now available on laptops.