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josh

@[email protected]

Prof of Anthropology & Social Informatics at Indiana University South Bend. PI of Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA). #anthropology #archaeology #citizensci #civictech #culturalheritage #cyborganthropology #digiarch #digitalarchaeology #digitalhumanities #dh #digitalrights #FOSS #GIS #informatics #openScience #openData #openGov #STS

Also #biketowork #canoeing #cooking #HoosierMast #running #SciFi

All communications here are mine, do not reflect my organizations.

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@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

RE: https://flipboard.social/@TechDesk/115980772794544226

The French government dumping Teams and Zoom feels like the avalanche is reaching a critical tipping point.

@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

Today Mastodon fully transitions to a nonprofit organizational model. Simultaneously, Cloudflare goes down, breaking some monolithic social media platforms controlled by oligarchs. Fortunately, you can read about all of this in the Fediverse which just keeps working.

@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

New drop by @pluralistic ...

"The natural history of enshittification:

"1 First, platforms are good to their users.
"2 Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.
"3 Next, they abuse those customers to claw back all the value for themselves – and become a giant pile of shit."

Doctorow, Cory. “Way Past Its Prime: How Did Amazon Get so Rubbish?” The Guardian, 5 Oct. 2025. Technology. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/05/way-past-its-prime-how-did-amazon-get-so-rubbish

@cyberlyra@hachyderm.io avatar cyberlyra , to random

I was gonna post @pluralistic 's excellent Guardian piece, a perfect primer on Enshittification, but that's preaching to the choir around here. Most of us have prolly signed up for the book already, amirite?

So I posted to BlueSky... Spreading the word to people who are aaaaalmost there, but still think it's a question of which broligarch is ok.

josh ,
@josh@fediscience.org avatar

@cyberlyra @pluralistic
Last week was scifi ethics week for my social informatics students. I have a long tradition of having them study Doctorow's CC open materials at Craphound because they're very good and ... open. I've augmented that the last few years with examinations of Doctorow and numerous other scifi authors on the Fediverse, to examine how concepts of rights, humanity, augmentation are portrayed regarding recent events.

This time, one of my students encountered Doctorow's Mastodon page, full of poop emojis for the book drop, and visibly reeled in confusion. What was this prof getting the class into? I told them to do a web search for enshittification. What? Really? Okay. Open the Wikipedia article I said. They looked. Oh wow! This explains so much. Lights on.

@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

If you're looking to avoid Windows 11, I suggest the newest version of Ubuntu. I just loaded it on my personal device, a Lenovo IdeaPad from 2020 that came with Win10 installed. The Lenovo was a pandemic purchase in May 2020. My personal device was an old laptop running Linux at the time. My work office machine was a Windows desktop and I didn't have space for it at home. I needed Windows for work in 2020. I don't need it now. Yay. I still use my personal computer a lot for work, and because my employer is bought into Microsoft hook-line-and-sinker I avoided using Linux for work although I use it a lot other places and have taught my kids to use it.

In the last few years the movement of Microsoft services to the web, plus availability of the Edge browser on Linux, is a game changer for me. I can now do my work on Edge for proprietary web app experiences when Microsoft utilities are unavoidable. There is also a Microsoft Teams clone which uses the web version of Teams and focuses only on Teams behaviors.

Frankly, everything for work seems to run faster than on my brand new Dell laptop running Windows 11 at my office. That's a pretty sad statement about Windows.

I should have made this change a year ago.

Ubuntu 24.04.desktop. Middle of screen shows a Firefox browser window open to DuckDuckGo. Dock/Taskbar on right shows from top to bottom icons for Firefox, Edge, Chrome, Brave, File Manager, Zotero, LibreOffice Write, LibreOffice Calc, LibreOffice Impress, Zoom, Teams for Linux, ClamTk antivirus, Ubuntu App Center, Ubuntu Settings, Ubuntu Help, Trash
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@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

You should help save PBS from the Trump administration, see the link below.

Why? I just finished watching a fine Nova episode I missed last year: "Secrets in Your Data," starring @evacide @eff @cwebber and @pluralistic and other awesome people.

Among the important lessons for the public to see about data privacy and security, showing them the power and use of Mastodon and the Fediverse.

You value this. You're here. No. Other. Broadcaster. Would do something like this hour-long video. Share it with your friends and family who need it, because it's PBS and it's free.

Keep it that way.

Do your part ...
https://protect.pbs.org

Video (free reward after) ...
https://www.pbs.org/video/secrets-in-your-data-eq39xb

@josh@fediscience.org avatar josh , to random

There will be a lot of necessary debate over Mozilla’s original mistake and this hopeful change. This is a good move, and as a long-term user of Firefox I find it very welcome.

Organizations are made of people and make mistakes.

Can you imagine Google or Apple so quickly changing their stances like this in response to user input? Or even at all?

Brave has many integrations with third party vendors. How quickly would they sever financial ties in a similar situation?

DuckDuckGo has a lot of gaps in their privacy models.

We need more open browsers developed by communities for the public good, not unlike Firefox.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-of-use-after-user-backlash/

@RanaldClouston@fediscience.org avatar RanaldClouston , to bookstodon group

Quite different from the planetary I associate most with , the story of a man whose dreams change reality, and the sleep doctor who exploits him. Written with her trademark elegance and wisdom, with shifts between quiet interiority and 'big budget' spectacle that only literary sci fi can offer. A classic that I'm amazed I got so far into my life to get around to reading! bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula Le Guin
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