alxd writes @alxd@writing.exchange
Programmer, hacker, educator, activist and a wannabe writer fascinated by how technology is portrayed in culture - and how that affects human lives.
Joined Nov 2018
An idea for my #solarpunk / #cyberpunk Technology Narratives talk at re:publica:
Four drawings with the exact same characters and composition, but:
1. Realistic, modern day with Elon Musk on the screen and people looking at their phones.
2. Superheroes fighting in futuristic armors / with lasers.
3. Grim'n'gritty cyberpunk with people shooting each other.
4. Solarpunk, where the characters work together on something. No visible hierarchy.
Loop back to 1 to show the contrast.
My talk "Solarpunk, cyberpunk and popculture: Technological narratives tl;dr" was accepted at the re:publica conference happening this May 6-8 in Berlin!
https://19.re-publica.com/en/session/solarpunk-cyberpunk-popculture-technological-narratives-tldr
#Solarpunk people:
Do you know any popculture / fictional stories / comics / graphic novels about #Wikipedia and the #Wikimedia movement?
With all its problems I think it's one of the most utopian movements out there, giving free knowledge to everyone on the planet. I don't understand why it's so absent in the popular culture.
Idea: a local #Solarpunk meetup, once a week, on Sundays.
Not just a lecture & goodbye, but a place to spend the day, play boardgames, meet new people, discuss different things and give each other hope.
We could start with a talk and / or some workshop, but for the next few hours everybody could work on their project or just hang out.
A proper, hopeful, common space.
Similar to #leReset , https://lereset.org/charte-en.html
alxd writes
boosted
Fellas... I can't believe it works... I created a DigitalOcean snapshot where you get asked a few things on first boot, and it gives you a working Mastodon installation, with SSL and everything. Holy shit
alxd writes
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Someone responded:
"As an artist that stores their art on twitter and a lot of art related sites. This troubles me deeply. Imagine if Twitter or even Youtube did this. Every video gone forever."
And just holy yikes, y'all. This gave me palpitations.
Please don't think of uploading/sharing stuff as "storing" it on any of these sites--twitter/tumblr/etc. There's no good retrieval process, you don't control compression, etc. It's nice to access stuff one's shared for resharing but not storage.
https://elephantinthelab.org/open-science-in-africa/ more on that.
Look into that, not just the Black Panther :P
#SolarpunkReporting #solarpunk
Do you know ArXiv, the open pre-print database of scientific articles?
Well, there's also https://info.africarxiv.org/ for African research:
AfricArxiv is a free, open source and community-led digital archive for African research. We provide a non-profit platform for African scietists to upload their working papers, pre-prints, accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and published papers. We also provide options to link data and code, and for article versioning.
alxd writes
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@alxd No to Fedbook, we really need to stop accepting it as a necessary evil for organizing before it's used against us
As for a logo, have you seen 
? I made it to be a solarpunk symbol, and it's 
so you're free to use and modify it as you please. Larger version and variations here: https://wiki.sunbeam.city/doku.php?id=solarpunk#unofficial_flags_symbols_-_add_as_you_please
I'm thinking about starting #solarpunk meetup in Warsaw. Starting with a talk on what is solarpunk both within the ecological and societal dimension.
I think we'd need a logo.
Do you think we should have a Facebook group?
alxd writes
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Microsoft up to their old tricks.
Assholes.
Microsoft’s New Skype for Web Doesn’t Support Linux and Mozilla Firefox
https://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-s-new-skype-for-web-doesn-t-support-linux-and-mozilla-firefox-525238.shtml
I realized I don't know any common / public spaces to hang out with people in my city. Everything is commercialized or closed. I don't mean a cafe where I go see a specific person. I mean a community where you go to have a conversation, do something together.
Maybe a squat? I have heard a lot of bad things about squats in Warsaw ._.
In the end re:publica 2019 decided not to give me a slot. Well, I'll make it a #solarpunk blogpost then.
alxd writes
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Whenever some venture capitalist or Singularity University lobbyist or Silicon Valley tech bro mentions “exponential growth” or “accelerating growth” just look them straight in the eye, say “tumour”, and walk away.
alxd writes
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RT @jeremyburge
For years Facebook claimed the adding a phone number for 2FA was only for security. Now it can be searched and there's no way to disable that.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/jeremyburge/status/1101402001907372032
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtUAAXe_0VI
Kurzgesagt decided to delete two of their most controversial videos and redo one of them so that it matches their current standards.
They allow reuploads, as long as theyre not monetized (not FB, YT).
I respect that.
From my blogpost on hackers in popular culture:
Seeing "computeromancy" as an aesthetics makes the true hacking much more tame and hackers' criticism of our capitalist culture - toothless. They're dangerous because they're skilled / criminals / geniuses, not because they see more than us or raise valid points against how we use technology.
A University is inviting me as a speaker to their conference. They don't want to pay my regular rate, so I offer: I can do it for free if you guarantee that students will not pay for access to my talk in the conference.
They reply that they need the money and can allow _some_ of the students to come for free, but the first rows will be ticketed.
I don't know how to feel about it.
@carlchenet I just found your text - https://carlchenet.com/you-think-the-visual-studio-code-binary-you-use-is-a-free-software-think-again/
Thank you for that! I was extremely wary of VSCode before, but not knowing you can not even analyze the binary... it's bad.
Programmer, hacker, educator, activist and a wannabe writer fascinated by how technology is portrayed in culture - and how that affects human lives.
Joined Nov 2018
