Kind: Notes

In general MozFest is a mixture of super exciting and depressing.

Exciting to learn meet people working on so many great projects. Depressing to learn about the havoc being wreaked by the Silicon Valley consensus and capitalism. Depressing to learn about the struggles of brothers and sisters around the world. Exciting again to learn how strong they are in their resistance.

#mozfest

On a more positive note, that Bahrainian techno is, apparently, better than anything you will find in Berlin.

I think Esra’a is probably biased ?
But still, I want to check out some Bahrainian techno.

Then caught a panel discussion with Esra’a Al-Shafei and Mahsa Alimardani about data in oppressive regimes, how citizens can operate online when surveillance is routine and dissent is dangerous.

Learned that in Iran the state had taken the source of Telegram (which is used as both messenger and a social network) and set up it’s own replacement. And to not use it was a mark of dissent.

Source alone will not change the world, and can sometimes enable repression. Politics and ethics are vital.

Good take by Cory Doctorow. Apple will only ever do what they see as profitable. It could be that with declining sales and changing public perception they are seeing repair as a service as one alternative avenue for profit. Unfortunately they will do it as a form of rent-collection, not an open ecosystem of repair. So it may be Apple’s goal that Apple devices will become more repairable, but only by Apple. And only if and for so long as it is profitable.

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/04/how-about-no-monopolies.html

Went to a great afternoon session run by @dajbelshaw@mastodon.social and @mayel@pub.mayel.space on decentralisation and ActivityPub, and how they’re harnessing it to enable sharing of educational resources on MoodleNet.

To begin we shared what each of us understood decentralisation/federation/distribution to mean. Some peeps very experienced in ActivityPub were there, including @sandro@w3c.social.

Also interesting to learn of the existence of CommonsPub – https://gitlab.com/OpenCoop/CommonsPub/Server – a generic ActivityPub server.

#mozfest #activitypub

Saturday lunchtime Tim BL gave a talk on Solid. People were queueing out the door to get in. I caught some of it on screen but not loads. When Tim talks about it it sounds pretty exciting and positive. If you go to the Inrupt website it sounds like corporate newspeak. I fear that venture capital will never truly want what is best for the world on general, just whatever lines the pockets of the investors.

#mozfest #solid

Went to a session on Scuttlebutt with Soapdog and crew. Decentralised and offline messaging. We role played in grouos as Earth and Mars, each with our own network that synced when our Mars envoy went to Earth and brought the messages back. Fun demo of ssb and I finally got an account, though I’m not using it actively yet.

Wonder is there any possible ssb/indieweb bridge?

#mozfest #scuttlebutt

I met someone working with Purism on the Librem 5 phone. The libre phone that’s free all the way down the stack. Built on Debian and GTK. They have a very strong focus on privacy. Also interested to discuss how they could make their phone repairable and long-lasting.

#mozfest

First session on the Saturday was thinking about smart homes and IoT devices and how they can unfortunately often be used as tools of control and domestic abuse. We brainstormed ways in which they could be produced to stop that from happening.

#mozfest