Kind: Notes

So there I was thinking, I wonder how I can get all my listening history out of last.fm? Quick duckgo, and here we are: https://benjaminbenben.com/lastfm-to-csv/ . Kudos to companies with open data APIs and the hackers who hack on them.

Coming towards the end of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Thoroughly enjoying it. It does a great job of presenting an alternative to our present, dominant system. From an outsider’s perspective. It shows how inconceivable some of its characteristics and excesses would seem if you hadn’t grown up immersed in them. Fantastically written, too.

Great Homebrew Website Club London this eve, with a great turnout and lots of interesting discussion.

Thinking I should document my website setup a little. (Mainly as I can’t remember/don’t know how some of the indieweb parts of it work…)

#MozFest 2017 is going to be totally rad – even has a whole space dedicated to #decentralization this year https://mozillafestival.org/

This weekend we hosted the first international gathering of community repair – http://fixfest.org/ . It was absolutely brilliant, so enthused after speaking to repair activists from around the world.

“earn a living” <- strange phrase.

Innovation is overrated. "Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations." https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more

Welcome to the freedoms of capitalism, where you have to fight for the right to maintain the lifespan of your own belongings. https://www.economist.com/news/business/21729744-tractors-smartphones-mending-things-getting-ever-harder-right-repair-movement

I think what I like about notifications of app updates from F-Droid is that, behind that little notification is a whole cycle of ideas, discussion, coding, building, testing, packaging, releasing. It’s a little reminder that a whole bunch of open source just took place somewhere.