@benjaoming@social.data.coop cover
@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar

benjaoming

@[email protected]

❤️ing computer reuse, repair and Open Source
🤜️ing tech solutionism and colonialism
🦫ing as an open source consultant/activist (currently on fulltime, so less activism)

Part of https://data.coop, https://django-denmark.org, https://fairdanmark.dk, co-organizer of Django Day Copenhagen 2018-2024, DjangoCon Europe 2019, Malawi Data Science Bootcamp 2021 (https://mwdata.science)

Works with Django and Python in https://tinytechbureau.com

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@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

No fun being an immigrant in ungrateful Sweden that has its entire welfare system fueled by cheap labor. That poor guy went pretty quickly from hopeful to disillusioned.

[1] https://www.norran.se/english/engelska/artikel/abhi-30-grows-greens-and-dreams-of-outer-space/r4p5vq1r
[2] https://www.norran.se/english/engelska/artikel/gronsaksodlare-utvisas-fran-skelleftea-till-indien/rmpwpgmr

Headline in the exact same newspaper and format: Abhi sells startup and leaves Sweden: “Never coming back”

Headline in the exact same newspaper and format: Abhi sells startup and leaves Sweden: “Never coming back”
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@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random Danish

Mød ratsit.se: Dataleverandør til stalking og crime-as-a-service. Deres slogan:

»Kolla upp vem som helst helt anonymt!«

Selvfølgelig er det ikke forbudt, fordi øøh ja det er jo beskyttet af YTRINGSFRIHEDEN... 🤷 (og ih nej, vi har jo slet ikke EU-direktiver som GDPR, man kunne anvende her...)

Et skærmbillede, som viser ratsit.se's oversigt over "Mest eftersökta igår", dvs. hvilke personer, der blev vist flest gange igår.
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benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue ufedt, at en arbejdsgiver kan se, hvad man fik i løn på sit tidligere job.

Offentlighedsprincippet i Sverige handler om, at folk kan sidde derhjemme og være bange og misundelige og overvåge deres naboer, som de så ikke snakker med. Sverige er segregeret, jeg kan forestille mig, at det her er en faktor.

Lønstatistikker skal føres af fagforeningen. Man behøver ikke kunne slå individer op for at kunne fremvise en statistik til en lønforhandling.

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue men du kan jo bare sige, hvad du tjente før / vise ansættelseskontrakt... behøver ikke at have dine data offentlige.

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue "those with nothing to hide, have nothing to fear".. som Zuckerberg sagde. Synes det er dybt problematisk (og usolidarisk), at man skal have data om individer tilgængeligt, uanset om det er centralt eller på en blockchain. Ikke Utopia, men Dystopia.

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue jeg synes der er uendelig forskel på gennemsigtighed for personer, virksomheder og folk med magt / privilegier.

Det er forkert at forlange og tvinge gennemsigtighed for arbejderklassen. Den slags kan bruges til at fastlåse arbejdere og f.eks. udøve statskontrol og indre grænser.

Og hvor er grænsen? Er det bare på indtægt? Eller også på sygefravær og feriedage? Det ville jo være meget fedt, hvis man kan se om direktøren rent faktisk arbejder...

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue "hvis alles data er offentlige, behøver man ikke vise ansættelseskontrakt ved job interview" - hvad mener du med det?

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue præcis denne "indkomstkontekst" har jeg adresseret: Jeg synes det er unødvendigt for lønforhandlingen, og det rejser vildt mange problemstillinger for hvor grænsen for datadeling går.

Oven i købet, så fungerer det ikke i virkelighedens verden, hvor kapitalister udbytter arbejder OG deres data. Sådan udspiller det sig lige nu og her.

Zuckerberg ville foresten fråde over tanken om at få tænderne i alles indkomstdata. Men nu skal jeg nok styre mig med stråpersonerne :D

benjaoming OP ,
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@fanden @snue lyder mums! bonnes appetit!

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random Danish

Den nye Nokia/HMD 3210 er tæt på ubrugelig i praksis pga. softwarefejl, og jeg skal nok komme med en opsummering af alle fejlene... men jeg opdager stadig nye fejl hver dag.

Oversættelsen er sjov, men helt sikkert resultatet af, at en dansk-talende person aldrig har testet det:

Snake: Slange
Flashlight: Fakkel
Bluetooth: Blåtand

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

An outstanding 15-year old interviewed me for a school project today - about open source!

So many insights, and great questions from such a young person. I asked how he got into open source, and the answer was: At 13, someone had shown him Linux and installed it on his laptop. That was the spark.

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

DuckDuckGo recently polled people and showcased an AI-free alternative [1]
Firefox has announced a single switch to disable all AI features in 2026 Q1 [2]
PyCharm has a guide to switch off AI features [3]

More of such? Please share 🙏

[1] https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
[2] https://9to5linux.com/firefox-will-ship-with-an-ai-kill-switch-to-completely-disable-all-ai-features
[3] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/disable-ai-assistant.html?ai.assistant.settings.disable

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

EU citizens initiative to suspend the "EU-Israel association agreement"
330 000 signatures in 9 days:

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#/screen/home

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

Soon!

A map of the future republic of Greenland, symbolized by a Greenlanding flag in the shape of the countries currently referred to as "USA"
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@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

Sooooo many laws under which looting Venezuelan oil is a crime.

»The US Naval Handbook (1995) states: “The following acts are representative war crimes: … plunder and pillage of public or private property.”«

»Article 44 of the 1863 Lieber Code provides: “[A]ll robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force … are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.”«

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule52

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

It feels 100% predictable that 2026 would start with some fascist imperialist kleptocrat setting the narrative by launching a new illegal war.

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

Göteborg Main Library must surely get a lot of compliments on their 0-indexed numbering, starting with "000" for computer science.

A photo of a library section "Data- och informationsveteskap" with number "000"
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@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

The sign 😇 vs. the actual camera 😈

Notice how the street light itself can barely shine, 'cause it's all covered up in a wall of surveillance technology.

Fun fact: Someone complained, and since Polisen installed the whole camera in advance of getting a permit and putting up signs, their own official log shows that they correctly had everything installed and operating... 30 minutes after getting the permit 🤪

Two juxtaposed photos. Left photo is of a sign with a tiny classic or cartoon-like surveillance camera, and the right photo shows two cameras, and on top of them a big metal box for cables, and on top of the box a plastic suitcase strapped on. A few centimeters above the setup is a small round lampshade that is a street lamp.
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@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

Gnome Shell Extension reviewers had enough of sloppy AI contributions taking up their time:

»New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI Generated Code«

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Extensions-Block-AI

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

The Zig Software Foundation has left GitHub for Codeberg and shares their reasoning and migration plan for their 40k stars repo:

https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/

(it seems like AI enshittification was the final straw)

benjaoming ,
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@mj-j@forum.fedi.dk avatar mj-j det er nu 10% af omsætningen (der står "revenue", som betyder omsætning). Indtægt er for det meste også det samme som omsætning, mens at "overskud" eller "profit" er fratrukket udgifterne.

@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar mekkaokereke , to random

Y'all are really pushing all of the Black journalists out of the industry, so that you can ask trash questions like this?

Embarrassing.

Some questions are harmful in and of themselves. It doesn't matter what's said in the debate, or who "wins."

Pretending that this is not trash, is weakness.

A NYT video asking "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" And can conservative feminism fix it?
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benjaoming ,
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@mekkaokereke hahaha, is this reverse click-bait? Like they put something on the website that immediately makes the visitor close the browser tab, close the laptop lid, throw the laptop into the trash bin and cancel their internet subscription? 😂

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

Newsletter: Faced with blowback over his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, President Trump has offered a curious defense: he doesn’t even know the guy.

https://www.citationneeded.news/trump-binance-changpeng-zhao-pardon/

benjaoming ,
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@molly0xfff Thanks for your wonderful work 🙏

Question: Isn't/wasn't Binance (and all the other crypto shit) a HUGE reason for the all that drug trafficking that Trump is claiming to fight?

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

On a website, how do you communicate a Fediverse presence to a wider audience (that may not be entirely familiar)?

"Follow [organization/person] in the Fediverse"
"Follow [organization/person] on Mastodon"
"Follow [organization/person] on social.domain.tld"

Or a mix? I'm currently leaning towards "Follow [organization/person] in the Fediverse (social.domain.tld) 🐘"

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

You know what’s worse than linking to a Nazi bar called X on your web site? Linking to it with a cutesy bird icon or labelling it “Twitter” because it makes you feel better about linking to a Nazi bar called X.

benjaoming ,
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@aral it's a very good point. In the beginning, the protest had some meaning. But now, it just feels like a deliberate way to keep participating = complicity in giving the platform legitimacy and an audience.

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random Danish

Hvad er det for noget med at Mellemrummet på Nørrebro lukker permanent d. 31. oktober og ikke har skrevet så meget som et ord om, at det sker eller hvorfor?

Ved nogen noget?

Det er jo en decideret katastrofe!

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

Ubuntu servers are completely overloaded after several days of intermittent outages.

https://status.canonical.com/

Installing Linux firmware of 537 MB: Done in "9h 12min 38s" 😖

Also they (Canonical?) stopped serving the list of mirrors, just replaced it with 1 entry, the site that's down 😖

➜ ~ curl <http://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt>  
<http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/>
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates/main amd64 linux-firmware amd64 20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.17 [537 MB] 46% [1 linux-firmware 7,648 kB/537 MB 1%] 16.0 kB/s 9h 12min 38s
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benjaoming OP ,
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@simonjust using archive.ubuntu.com is the default! There's no attempt to change to local mirrors, nor questions in setup AFAIK?

@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar gerrymcgovern , to random

An organization I know has a million photos who it expects it users will download.

1.3% of these photos have ever been downloaded by users

There are over 10 trillion photos stored in the Cloud.

The vast majority of them will never be accessed again (by a human)

We are destroying life on earth for digital trash.

benjaoming ,
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@gerrymcgovern while I was studying, a fellow group of students made a small project about what to do with all the "digital waste" - and that was around ~2010.

@benjaoming@social.data.coop avatar benjaoming , to random

People in : Don't miss »Leaving Meta - A practical field guide« tomorrow (Monday) with @maiathecyberwitch 📝

https://dukop.dk/en/event/leaving-meta-a-practical-field-guide/7838/

@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu avatar EUCommission , to random

There is no space for racism in the EU. Or anywhere.

No one should be denied a job, home, or opportunity because of their race or ethnic background.

The EU stands united against racism, for a fairer Union where inclusion and equality are at the centre.

Today, on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and every day.

An image shows two firefighters with shovels on top of a torn-down building. One is overlayed in yellow, the other in blue. The words "United in diversity" are at the top left corner, and the European Commission logo is in the bottom right corner.
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benjaoming ,
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@EUCommission nice post, nice message, thank you! Enjoy how nice and friendly the Fediverse is 🧡 💛 💚 (supposing this post is not going so well on hellsite)

@marcel@waldvogel.family avatar marcel , to random

@molly0xfff on AI vs. scraping vs. copyright protection vs. openness. Very thoughtful (as usual) and worth reading.

Also included, this gem (together with other thoughts about sustainable business models):
«Many AI “visionaries” seem perfectly content to promise that artificial superintelligence is just around the corner, but claim that attribution is somehow a permanently unsolvable problem.»


https://www.citationneeded.news/free-and-open-access-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/

benjaoming ,
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@aral @marcel @helma @molly0xfff Found @junebug 's take in my echo chamber next to your post, Aral: https://slime.global/@junebug/114167348845257293

Corporations are anti-social when they AI-scrape, don't contribute back to FOSS or use public infrastructure and don't pay tax. They may thrive on the same welfare states that they suffocate, and similar can happen (has happened?) with the open web.

Acknowledging that this is a false choice:

"yes, like that, but under fair terms”
vs
"oh like that? well gloves are off!"

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

Are these idiots serious? Let’s just bloody ignore what Russia did, shall we? And I guess we’ll just do so for the next country they invade. Why? Because Trump says so. Who are these muppets? https://mastodon.social/@villebooks/114070966527498715

benjaoming ,
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@aral these lovely people are also out-right lying about European public opinion on Ukraine: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/en/be-heard/eurobarometer/public-opinion-on-the-war-in-ukraine

(or maybe they just believe their own egos too much to fact check)

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

Yeah, Microsoft, I fucking get that I now have fucking free access to fucking copilot. Now kindly fuck off and take your fucking AI with you.

Screenshot of mail app showing four identical emails from Microsoft GitHub informing me I have free access to GitHub Copilot (sent at 7:20PM, 9:00PM, and two at 9:01PM)
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benjaoming ,
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@aral hehe, nothing is so bad it isn't good for anything https://social.anoxinon.de/@Codeberg/113676012209507491

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , (edited ) to random

Every time I use tldraw, I’m amazed anew how excellent it is. If you ever need a case study for Just Works™…

https://www.tldraw.com

Screenshot of tldraw.com – a very minimalist drawing interface with a basic floating colour palette on the top-right, drawing tools on the bottom, a zoom control on the bottom-left and an app menu on the top-right, with most of the interface taken up by the canvas. The canvas contains a combination sequence diagram/flowchart (sequence chart?) showing the interactions between a client and server where the client loads a.page which results in the server calling the default export on a.page with a parameter object containing references to the request, response, and page and then leads to a decision node that checks if a.page has an onConnect() export. If not, it returns some HTML and the flow ends. If it does have an onConnect() export, the HTML sent to the client has code that creates a WebSocket connection to the default socket for a.page (a.default.socket), passing it the pageId as a query string parameter. On the server, in response, a.page’s onConnect() handler is called, passing it references to the request, response, and page inside a parameter object. After some time, the server receives an event from the client via the WebSocket and that’s where the diagram cuts off in the screenshot.
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benjaoming ,
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@aral here's an alternative with an Open Source license: https://dgrm.net/ (I've tried it for a few small things and it's great)

benjaoming ,
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@aral Oh interesting that it used to be open source and isn't anymore. I've seen other open source 1-person sideprojects developing their business side to a worrying degree. Of course, the person doing it needs an income... but changing the license and selling it is not it.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

Meanwhile, the British press writes fawning love letters to Israel after its terrorist attack yesterday that wounded almost 3,000 people, some 300 of them critically, and killed others (yes, Brown people are people… there you go, some white folks just learned something new today).

“An unleashed Israel is humiliating its enemies” exudes The Telegraph.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/an-unleashed-israel-is-humiliating-its-enemies/ar-AA1qLo8h

You’d think these bastards would have similarly gushed over the Nazis. Oh, wait, they did…

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-britains-nazi-loving-press-baron-made-the-case-for-hitler/

benjaoming ,
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@aral another general trend is for media to cover this with the same fascination and enthusiasm they cover tech innovation in general.

Excited journalist: "How did Israel do it?"
Media pundit: "Very sophisticated/complex (...)"

I still haven't seen the journalists ask an expert "is this legal/terror/a war crime" etc.

But sure, indiscriminately make 3,000 people's personal devices explode... wonder what people would think if Russia did that in Europe. Not even Russia is this barbaric.