Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Used under CC-BY-SA 4.0
I saw this in my mastodon feed and just thought it was incredible and just so much how the Fediverse is and could be a shining light for the future of the social internet.
Wonderful stuff on the eve of xmas.
For Xmas, like many workplaces we have a staff party. I gatecrashed into my previous teams Manchester xmas party and put my name down for 30mins djing. However I didn’t record the mix but I did keep the playlist and so recreated it twice (2nd time for another work event).
I won’t lie, this is less trancy but is a killer mix or as others have said to me… its a banger!
I am moving my mixes to peertube rather than my mixgarden (1) & (2) for now.
Enjoy and remember to turn it up loud.
When I first heard Channel4’s alternative speech was going to be a deep fake of the queen. I laughed but had a ton of questions. Some of them are covered in their behind the scenes video.
I felt the deep fake was a good thing to do, as so many people can’t tell the difference between real and fake. This has a big impact on the democratic process. But of course if you are reading this, you most likely know this already. It was good they made it deliberately fake rather than pass it off as a real speech, but of course some felt it was disrespectful.
Deep and shallow fakes are here and getting better every day, there is a important public service angle putting this front and centre. We got to get better at understanding what we see may not be what’s actually true.
I have been looking at the brighter side of things but also been pragmatically thinking about the future.
Its been a while since I heard from Noam Chomsky and this speech with additional footage is powerful I have been thinking a lot about the near future beyond this pandemic.
First of all, I do think we are talking about a long run on covid19, I suspect it will be Q3-4 when the vaccines actually become available to everyday people (people who are not at high risk, on the front line or anything like that). Pinning our hopes on things going back to the old normal is not going to happen. Heck even my mum the other day said this to me on our last family call! We already prepared ourselves to not spend the festive season together.
The festival season also brings to the UK, the harsh ramifications of Brexit. Something a lot people have blocked out of their mind as they focus on Covid19. Don’t even get me started about the this as its deeply upsetting and really encourages me to just leave this country.
However as Noam talks about in his speech, the elephants in the room (I would say blackswans but they are not because we are very aware of these, or at least we should be!).
Its clear if Trump wins another term as president of America, the countdown to both global nuclear war and environmental collapse will be so much closer than we can imagine. The election is a concern for many reasons but nuclear war and environmental collapse is something we should all be aware and thinking about; and I don’t mean disappearing into our escape pods.
We already passed the point of no environmental change but we are actively increasing accelerating things including future pandemics. Imagine pandemics are simply a side-effect of our environmental impact. That I feel gives it the real scope of the challenge in front of us.
This can all be a harsh reality kick in the teeth. But honestly see it as a kick up the ass for us all. Together we can do it but we all have to acknowledge the reality and look beyond the current pandemic.
Unknown to me, Facebook threw up a old post I created in 2014.
Why?
I have absolutely no idea, but honestly makes me trust Facebook even less. Usually Facebook and Google will surface stuff from the past and ask if you want to share/make it public. This isn’t one of those, it just appeared and friends started commenting and liking again.
Regardless, I was planning to do something similar again so here’s my holiday card for the holiday period; for family, friends and followers. Happy Holidays and look forward to 2018, as 2017 has been pretty poor (but not as bad as 2016)
As mentioned previously, Edward Snowden’s alternative Christmas message to the UK Nation was short and packed with depth.
Ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has delivered an “alternative” UK Christmas message, urging an end to mass surveillance. The broadcast was carried on Channel 4 as an alternative to the Queen’s traditional Christmas message. Mr Snowden focused on privacy, saying: “A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.” The 30-year-old has temporary asylum in Russia after leaking details of US electronic surveillance programmes.
I’ve clipped it to Archive.org, (mp4, ogg, mkv, webm, avi) under some kind of fair use and that this should be available to all the public, wherever they be. As you can see the bit torrent sharing isn’t going so great at the moment. I did upload to Youtube but it was blocked within 4mins by the Youtube bot. Kosso also made a copy here.
So reflection of my issue trying to convince my dad yesterday, how would Snowden’s alternative Christmas message work?
“…The technology of George Orwell’s 1984 are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go.”
“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.”
“Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.”
Me personally would happily give away parts of my privacy in return for non-surveillance and the ability to remove and delete history.
Its a tricky one…
I like to buy presents of my godchildren which matter. Its tricky because you don’t want to buy something boring but educational. When I was young my godparents would get me Lego, Chemistry sets and ultimately Technical Lego. This certainly helped my creativity develop.
So whats the modern equivalent of Lego? Something you can buy more of and add to?
Well I thought Raspberry Pi. Yeah, no brainer right?!
But here’s my issue.
I have 2 male godchildren (4 and 6) and 1 female (7).
My natural thought was to get one for the 6yr old, specially because his dad is technical and the child has already shown an amazing comfort with computers. The other male is too young and frankly more interested in super-heroes. So why not the older female?
I don’t know… (and I feel like I’ve had this debate before, so excuse me if you’ve heard it before).
I also didn’t want to buy her pink stuff but she loves it so much. Along while ago I bought her some pink lego and she seemed quite happy with that. Although to be fair I’ve never actually seen play with them. Me being a melding godfather decided one year to buy her a mini telescope, hoping it will foster a little more science in her life. Of course this nothing against the parents, I love them to bits. But my understanding of what a godfather does is to do whats best for the child regardless of how much it drives the parents insane.
So back to the point, why have I not bought her a Raspberry Pi? Is this nasty sexism which I don’t know about? Absolutely not!
I guess I balanced it all in my mind and decided it would be a little unfair to force something like this on her at this stage. Instead I bought her some more Lego but the friends subsection.
What would you do? Am I doing down the godfather title by not giving her what might be good for her? She has godmothers, maybe its the godmothers who gives her what she wants and the godfather who makes the difficult decisions. And I don’t mean that in a sexist way, the godmothers should be making the difficult decisions for the boys, while the godfathers are buying stuff he wants?
Who knows but I am certainly thinking for her birthday, I should find something which crosses over and brings out her geeky side.
Any tips on what, are very welcomed.
I’m hoping the likes of Jasmine Cox, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Rosie Campbell, Rebecca Gregory-Clarke, etc. Can offer some advice on this? I can’t be the only one wondering about this….?
Thank you for placing your Christmas fresh poultry order with tesco.com. To ensure you receive everything that you’re expecting, please read through the information below: • Christmas fresh poultry is only available in deliveries between 20th and 24th December*. Please note that if you move your delivery outside these dates, you will lose your poultry order. • December 14th** is the final day for placing Christmas fresh poultry orders. You will no longer be able to add, remove or change these products in your shopping basket after this date. • Don’t forget that you can make amends and additions to the rest of your Christmas order until at least 11.45pm on the night before your delivery. If you do so, you will notice that the Christmas fresh poultry you have ordered will be marked with a message to say that you can no longer amend the quantity on the item. Please do not be worried by this – it is simply to show that your fresh poultry order is already in the system. Thank you for taking the time to read this message and we wish you a very Merry Christmas. Kind regards, Tesco Customer Service
If I don’t get my Turkey on the 23rd, expect a full twitter onslaught… 🙂