My mix garden on the move again, hello peertube!

Digital Italics WebMix

I have been mixing away on the pacemaker device as usual. But noticed my mixgarden is having some troubles. I was using hyperaudio and webmonization to present my mixes. It was good however things changed over the last year.

Webmonization made a number of changes and hyperaudio seems to be slightly broken the configuration I currently have it in.

So with all this in mind and after looking at Peertube and Castopod, I decided to give peertube a try before running my own instance. Similar to what I had planned with Funkwhale a long time ago.

This has worked out well on rankett. Then I heard on podnews last week about music freediverse.

Music Freediverse is a new place for musicians to post their songs as an RSS feed, using PeerTube.

After a email with the sysadmin, about mixes and legality of them. They suggested I check out Split Kit if I have the metadata (which I do), this is something I looked into and now have a lightening address, which you can send sats to on my new mixgarden. I am also interested in the peer 2 peer tech

One of the good things about Peertube is the ability to sync videos over, which I took advantage of, it was a shame the metadata wasn’t copied over too but its fine, as I had it all.

In the short term I’ll keep using peertube but I have a plan to install a peertube instance myself and host it all locally. Then I could syndicate them out elsewhere. (Anyone can recommend a good docker container, do shout)

Another thing for the task list, but likely the best idea for now with lots of room to grow and expand.

Talking of which the next mix is a banger….

How did love get monopolised?

To me its nothing new, the history of Match Group and their almost total  ownership of online dating.

It did make a good point about Plenty of Fish, who said no way and lets not forget OKCupid who wrote why you should never pay for online dating before they were bought.

Still remember the popcorn eating with the vanity fair piece too…

Stop Screwing with okcupid

The whole area of online dating is a surveillance capitalism mess and I really wish someone in the EU commission would apply competition rules and regulations to this space.

https://mas.to/@cubicgarden/111604095351550508

Fresh Fediverse ideas (what a great idea…)

I was talking with Evan recently in London and it spilled out to the Fediverse the next day. We talked about many things including a bit of passion for both of us, the absolute sorry state of online dating.

Its something I won’t even start on, but someone mentioned in a fediverse conversation a site called fediverse ideas.

Having a look, there were a ton of ideas to add from my head. However as they are proper Git issues, I decided its worth planning them out – likely over the holiday season.

Its a great thing to have for many reasons at such a early stage of the fediverse. Really speaks to the culture and innovation growing up around the fediverse and activitypub. My hope is this keeps going but I’m sure once the money comes into the space we will see less generosity, sadly…

Downloading podcasts on a QNAP nas, the hard way

QNAP NasFor a long time I have had this quite unique way to download podcasts on my home network. It’s served me very well but since getting the NAS it’s been an endless fight to find a good way to do the same with minimal effort. Up till recently I have been running another machine on my network with Ubuntu, to download the podcasts using the tiny tiny rss source.

I would sync the podcasts over the network to my NAS mainly for connivance but I like the idea of the NAS being the place to access everything.

So after many years I finally come to a solution which might be useful to others too, as I couldn’t find a good solution in one place. To be fair I stopped running Tiny Tiny RSS (TTRSS) in favour of FreshRSS but regardless.

These are all for informational purposes and aimed at technical people who understand their way around a the terminal, have sudo and SSH access and can use alternative app repos.

  1. Install CrontabUI and Entware-std on your QNAP using the linked repo.
  2. I tried using CastGet which you can install via OPKG store but couldn’t get to grips with it, as it didn’t support what Podget did.
  3. I downloaded and unzipped Podget then ran it from the terminal. It worked once I found the user directory /share/homes/{username}
  4. Then I started moving the download directory and where the config files sat by modifying the permissions.
  5. Once it was working, I created a shell script which would pull the downloads and have all the parameters set. Remembering to make it executable checked it can work under a admin user
  6. Then started on the Qnap cron, which is a pain and needs attention. This is also where CrontabUI can save you a lot of time. I did do it manually but found it tiresome and there was little feedback.
  7. In CrontabUI, I tried a number of different options and would check they would run, looking at the timestamps of files. In the end what work ed for me was, /sbin/download-podcasts.sh. I tried many times to get it working but found it wouldn’t actually run outside of /sbin even with the right execute permissions.
  8. Now it works but may reconsider switching to Castget now I stopped using TTRSS and I have found I need to use Podget 0.6 as it throws a lot of errors from missing libraries and out of date fgrep commands.

Hopefully this might be useful to others? There might be an update if I switch back to Castget.

Flipboard goes all out with activity pub in dotSocial

I had the joy of representing BBC RD in Flipboards new podcast series dot social.

Starting with Mike Masnick and moving through quite an amazing list of people including @evan key contributor to ActivityPub, @coachtony Medium‘s CEO, @WMitchellBaker CEO at Mozilla, chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation and many more.

I was surprised to be number 3 in the line up which you can hear here.

The series is exciting showing off the maturing of the fediverse and the diversity of activitypub.Thanks to Mike McCue for reaching out and his great decision to move Flipboard to the fediverse early.

It feels like a while ago but Mike’s protocols not platforms paper, I have been reading again recently for some related research work. I also recently spent some time with Evan in London. Remembering what wonderful people and the rich history activitypub has.

Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Dec 2023)

 

People investigating a document in detail

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed with the soap opera of Open AI, ai bias feeding ai bias and being anonymous getting more difficult.

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

You are seeing aspects of this with the Apple not advertising with X, Pebble/T2 restarts as a mastodon instance,

Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity is not a blockchain

Ian thinks: Tim Bray is a well known figure in the older tech circles. His review/blog looking at C2PA is revealing, honest and just what I’ll be sending people interested in content provenance and trust.

Privacy costs? But should it?

Ian thinks: Signal revealed how much it costs to run Signal and its quite an open opener. Relying on donations and grants  I am amazed and recently donated, but I do question if privacy should cost, as its so fundamental to being human.

Climate change requires a new financing model.

Ian thinks: Mariana lays out a clear argument why solving the climate crisis is even further off than it should be.due to the way business and markets work. Strong warning but who is listening?

Flipboard’s fediverse podcast is a must listen

Ian thinks: Ok I’m bias, as a upcoming guest on the dotsocial podcast series but if you are confused or even a expert about the emerging space of the fediverse and activitypub. This is the podcast series for you.

How ActivityPub, WordPress and Decentralised social networks work together

Ian thinks: WordPress is huge on the internet and when Automattic announced ActivityPub support, it was exciting. In this podcast Matthias, explains how it all happened in a informative straight forward way for anyone to follow. I would recommend it to anyone interested in what the Fediverse means for the public service internet.

Self service tills in the middle of a battle?

Ian thinks: There has been so much news, discussion and debate about self service tills. Its part of a much bigger question about how much automation society will accept vs how much businesses balance between profit and loss. Not just in profits but also publicity, trust and so much more.

Mozilla Explains: Is Your Dating App Racist?

Ian thinks: There is a lot in this short video but the research is solid in the face of a industry which avoids sharing critical data with researchers.

Dating is so full of data and Elon wants a piece?

Ian thinks: This was not widely reported on but the online dating market is huge, full of personal & sensitive data and growing all the time. Facebook tried but while people may brush it off. Is it bluster? Who knows but its important to think about the bigger picture as online dating is the dominate way people meet across the world.

The era of easy money is gone?

Ian thinks: I first came across this book from the talk at the Thinking Digital conference. Its a good read/listen with lots more detail than expected and strong advice for the future of this space. I can’t help but feel if it was released now, I’d love to hear the final take on Sam Bankman-Fried, who was recently sent to prison.

Find the archive here

Signal is expensive and so is privacy

Donate to signal

Reading the blog post about Signal costs, really got me thinking I need donate to them because it is simply incredible and completely respect their stance on so many things.

I was thinking I do pay for Proton, Beeper and other systems which support my privacy why not Signal?

So I donated! I may even setup a yearly subscription…

Amstel’s thriller chiller mix

Amsterdam canals at night
Amsterdam canals at night

I think of this mix as the evil little child born in Amsterdam during the freaky time of Halloween.

Another travel with Pacemaker mix, this time flying to Amsterdam for a conference over Halloween. It coincides with me djing at a Halloween party just a few days earlier. I started with MK’s thriller and decided it was a great starter for the mix on the plane following.

Originally the mix was a bit longer but I did it again on the plane back and recorded it live using an external recorder. Its likely I could have done it with the Pacemaker device’s own built in recorder but as I was using a later firmware, decided to play it safe.

I have to say, I do love this mix. Its punchy, energy and full of highs. Its even got some songs to sing along to, which my partner would enjoy.

Listen on peertube or on my mixgarden

Here is the full playlist

  1. Thriller (Steve Aoki Midnight Hour Remix) – Michael Jackson
  2. Killer instinct – Sneijder & Bryan Kearney
  3. Dolores – Indecent Noise
  4. Decade (Extended mix) – Chris Element
  5. Music is more than Mathematics – Protoculture
  6. Moon Phases (Extended mix) – Raz Nitzan
  7. Louder – José Amnesia feat. Jennifer Rene
  8. Tears (Protoculture Remix) – Markus Schulz pres. Dakota
  9. Like A Prayer (Extended Visual mix) – Gareth Emery, LSR⧸CITY & Annabel