DoeNietZoMoeilijk 🥔 @doenietzomoeilijk@mastodon.nl

For most people the #smartphone is the most used tech item. For many is the only way to connect to the #internet.
Saying that, would you justify to spent a months worth of YOUR salary for a #phone?

A number of organisations, among which the @fsfe started a #Petition to the #Dutch government to introduce alternatives to proprietary #privacy-infringing #education software that children and #teachers are forced to use.

Right now the situation is just horrible.

Living in the #Netherlands? Sign the petition!

https://fsfe.org/news/2022/news-20220520-01.en.html

This is a global problem and also affects higher education and universities. Let's all join the fight to help bring improvement.

Spread the msg. Boosts welcome

Uh I just got DMed by the COO of Tumblr asking about hiring contractors to make us fully #indieweb compliant, and possibly even #fediverse integration. Anyone out there looking for work?

Please reply without looking it up - Dublin Core refers to:

(Boost appreciated for sample size.)

I did it. Most likely.

After nearly five years of running it on the precipice of terminal collapse, my homelab has reached a state where I do not consider it worth the effort to keep the current installation alive and running.

Time to apply the lessons learned in those five years. Time to choose a decent distro. Time to go with virtualization. Time to go with a modern filesystem that supports snapshots.

Nuke and pave, my friend, nuke and pave.

🆕 We have selected the new release managers for PHP 8.2!

➡️ @adoyy@twitter.com (Pierrick Charron)
➡️ @sergey (Sergey Panteleev)

👴 The mentor (grandpa ;-)) RM is @ramsey (Ben Ramsey).

🥳 Congrats, and good luck!

Living in the #Netherlands?

Sign this #petition to the #Dutch Government with a plea for fair #education in the classroom and to keep children away from #privacy-infringing #SurveillanceCapitalism platforms they (and their teachers) are forced to use.

https://eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.petities.nl/?locale=en

Kmonad appears to be very promissing! I am going to run a few tests later Today. At the moment I just copied and pasted the "home row" configuration (https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods) and it is working fine. :)

Thanks for the tips, @doenietzomoeilijk!

BTW, #Framework is also looking for an open source firmware engineer, if you know anyone who might be looking for a pretty cool job. https://jobs.lever.co/framework/4c33ea5e-5580-4eaa-ac84-0b2651caf76b

I have setup a Trunk instance for the #Dutch speakers.

Voor de Nederlands-taligen onder ons: de Trunk is bijna klaar. Suggesties voor lijsten hoor ik graag. Ook als je op de lijsten wilt.
https://trunk-mastodon.nl

Als je Trunk niet kent: het is een tool waar je mensen kunt zoeken om te volgen op de Fediverse.

Graag boosten als je NL-talige volgers hebt ;-)

Goed initiatief: Maak basis- en het voortgezet onderwijs vrij van Big Tech. Geen Google of Meta in de klas graag! https://eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.petities.nl/

Short movie by #FreedomInternet with a call to sign the manifesto by the coalition for an honest digital education system:
https://eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.petities.nl/
#cedo2022 #pubconf2022

#Spotify officially joins the ranks of evil companies whose sole purpose is to control the whole user experience within their walled gardens and make the life of #developers who build stuff against their sh*t miserable.

libspotify was a way to get Spotify streams into your own application. After all, if you have a premium account, then you should also have a way to play music wherever you like - and that was exactly the job of libspotify.

Except that, if you can play content from whatever device or client you like, then Spotify can't track you that well. They can't force you to swallow whichever "customized content" they created for you. On your client you won't be able to see that horrible "Top 100 Hits" playlist again and again.

So they decided to deprecate libspotify 7 years ago, stopped any active developments and didn't fix it when things were getting broken. Luckily, basic features were *mostly* still working in spite of the deprecation - until now.

About a year ago (https://twitter.com/BlackLight01/status/1407699475435491328) I complained about libspotify getting regularly broken. They responded with "oh, but libspotify has been deprecated for 6 years". I asked them "then please tell me what are the alternatives". They responded with "good question - we don't have any". 6 years after deprecating their only official supported way to stream content in other clients, they didn't have an official alternative.

Now, apparently, they do. The alternative to libspotify is the Web Playback SDK. In other words, they replaced a stand-alone library with a web-based JavaScript framework that only allows you to stream from a browser. Because, of course, things are much easier to control and users much easier to track in a browser.

Do you still have a use-case where you want to play music from your Spotify account in a custom application, or on a custom device - ranging from a Raspberry Pi to a Snapcast server that can be used for multi-room streaming? Well, quote: "Device makers who are interested in integrating Spotify with a commercially available speaker can learn more about integrating Spotify Connect here". In other words, you need to contact them directly and discuss a business deal. Because they treat any use-case that doesn't fall into the web client category as a "custom commercial hardware implementation".

I'm sick of these evil companies treating open-source developers like sh*t. WE are the ones pushing the envelop. WE are the ones expanding their ecosystem. WE are the ones that make sure that Spotify doesn't work only within a walled garden, but that you can stream music from any device you like. WE are the ones implementing stuff that they should have implemented themselves. WE deserve more respect.

Instead, the degenerated oligopoly that rules today's tech world is only interested in making our lives harder, adding more and more barriers, and ensuring that all the interactions with their product only happen within a small garden that they can control.

Spotify, just like Google and Microsoft, now deserves to die and burn in a ball of fire. Piracy should not only be tolerated, but encouraged when these companies behave like jerky gatekeepers.

https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2022/04/12/libspotify-sunset/

Homemade burgers can be a really good end to a calm and pleasant sunday. 🍔 😊

#sunday #burgers #veggie

Tweet as if you’re on a stage, yelling to a loud and raunchy crowd. Toot as if you’re on a picknick, where you can look everyone in the eye. It’s that simple :)

You can now read and engage with news and information about 🇪🇺 EU policies, in a privacy-focused environment and with no transfer of data outside the EU.

This initiative is part of an EU pilot for supporting and using social media platforms based on open-source software.

Follow us! 🙌

#EuropeanUnion #Mastodon #Fediverse

I once again need volunteers who would be okay with appearing in App Store screenshots.