Keith Whyte @keith@tic-ac.org

I did a calculation yesterday that made me want to scream. If you look at the *current* density of satellites in 1km altitude bins in Low Earth Orbit, and assume they are travelling at circular velocities (generally true), then Starlink satellites pass within <1km of each other EVERY 30 SECONDS.

At Starlink altitudes, everything is travelling at 7 km/second, so <1 km close approaches are terrifyingly close. Every 30 seconds. WHY.

Mercury software-defined modem over-the-air demonstration. https://tube.tchncs.de/videos/watch/ffd26c90-f865-442e-8e8f-f083d0ad4773

Mercury modem demonstration 1 (on dummy loads). https://tube.tchncs.de/videos/watch/9c8bb371-8232-452b-b2c3-a0134af220cc

Fantastic post by @mre and I agree with every point. Boggles my mind how much people willingly hand over to Google through Chrome when there’s a better option: Firefox.

(No need to tell me about the minor things Mozilla had done compared to Google or that your particular bank doesn’t work in Firefox—it’s possible to use more than one browser)

The Dying Web https://endler.dev/2024/the-dying-web/

While liberating a Pixel phone I came across this poetry, and on the day Google is convicted of illegal market monopoly in the US: the power button itself, the interface to switching off a device one supposedly owns, is intercepted by a Google 'AI' product. The device can not be powered off, even using buttons as described, without first downloading software from the company.

This domineering and invasive interface culture has to be stopped.

every single cent the EU seizes from bigtech in penalties should be redirected to fund @NGIZero

anyone with me?

in case you haven't heard yet: EU is planning wild budget cuts in the area of open source funding in their HORIZON program. This directly affects NGI big time.

dear @EUCommission , please continue funding NGI . If you don't there will be less and less tech and people left that are willing to develop and run europe's vision of a free and democratic internet.

Can I ask a favour?

There has been much interest in #PeerTube, the Fediverse's video platform. It's really cool and its accounts can be followed from Mastodon etc.

However, PeerTubers sometimes don't get followers and views, and they need followers for their videos to be noticed/searchable by the Fediverse's federation system, so it's catch-22.

This cycle would be broken if more people followed PeerTubers, so here's a thread of some active accounts to follow! (And feel free to share!)

1/12

Antikes Handy

Meeting

Like many other technologists, I gave my time and expertise for free to #StackOverflow because the content was licensed CC-BY-SA - meaning that it was a public good. It brought me joy to help people figure out why their #ASR code wasn't working, or assist with a #CUDA bug.

Now that a deal has been struck with #OpenAI to scrape all the questions and answers in Stack Overflow, to train #GenerativeAI models, like #LLMs, without attribution to authors (as required under the CC-BY-SA license under which Stack Overflow content is licensed), to be sold back to us (the SA clause requires derivative works to be shared under the same license), I have issued a Data Deletion request to Stack Overflow to disassociate my username from my Stack Overflow username, and am closing my account, just like I did with Reddit, Inc.

https://policies.stackoverflow.co/data-request/

The data I helped create is going to be bundled in an #LLM and sold back to me.

In a single move, Stack Overflow has alienated its community - which is also its main source of competitive advantage, in exchange for token lucre.

Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow's former instantiation, used to fulfill a psychological contract - help others out when you can, for the expectation that others may in turn assist you in the future. Now it's not an exchange, it's #enshittification.

Programmers now join artists and copywriters, whose works have been snaffled up to create #GenAI solutions.

The silver lining I see is that once OpenAI creates LLMs that generate code - like Microsoft has done with Copilot on GitHub - where will they go to get help with the bugs that the generative AI models introduce, particularly, given the recent GitClear report, of the "downward pressure on code quality" caused by these tools?

While this is just one more example of #enshittification, it's also a salient lesson for #DevRel folks - if your community is your source of advantage, don't upset them.