Mike Babb @mikebabb@mastodon.technology
Front end web developer. Open Web advocate and supporter of FOSS projects. Currently working with React and Redux.
https://mikebabb.com
Regarding Facebook tracking non-users Mark Zuckerberg said "This kind of data collection is fundamental to how the internet works."
I'm not a networking expert but I know enough to be able to confidently say that nothing at all about this data collection is fundamental to how the Internet works. I guess he was using Silicon Valley speak where "the internet" means "huge corporations who make most of their money by selling ads and illegally collecting as much data as possible".
A comprehensive tutorial that does a great job of explaining the core terms and workflow of #React: https://tylermcginnis.com/reactjs-tutorial-a-comprehensive-guide-to-building-apps-with-react/
I'm really excited about the potential of Progressive Web Apps, so I wrote a blog post about it. It's brief, light on jargon, and aimed at a non-technical reader so you don't have to be a techie or a dev to understand what's great about PWAs!
https://mikebabb.com/better-user-experiences-with-progressive-web-apps/
@cypnk This is another reason why password managers are so important. You can store more than passwords in them!
Q: What city were you born in?
A: Sigourney Weaver
Q: What is your father's middle name?
A: Porcupine
Q: What was the name of your first school?
A: Mint Chocolate Chip
That way, even if you get tricked into telling somebody the real answers it won't do them any good.
"The best of the web plus the best of native apps" is a wonderfully concise explanation of progressive web apps, from "6 Myths of PWAs" by @peter: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DveHEej9Z4uV9FNTw6lPDXPOKnuHA4ygK23ksUtVph4/present 👨🏫
I have swapped Fn and Left Ctrl and it is a REVELATION, folks.
(Why didn't they replace Right Ctrl with Fn? Does anybody actually use Right Ctrl, ever? Or like Right Alt?)
Here's a(nother) great write-up Maximiliano Firtman, about the capabilities, quirks and challenges of PWAs on iOS:
“Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here 🚀” https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430dee3a7
A note for #NewUsers
Mastodon has some unique #features that you may not be used to.
When you post an image, there will be a box available when you hover over the image preview. Please use this to describe the image! This helps blind people understand the image when using a screen reader.
The little "CW" icon next to the globe is for Content Warnings. You can add a content warning to any post! It allows people to choose if they want to risk exposing themselves to that topic at that moment.
Hey, The #GDPR actually seems to work 👍: I‘m getting emails from companies telling me that they are going to delete my (years old) data. And Google tells publishers that they get the option to switch to unpersonalised advertising.
#privacy #babysteps
It's great seeing so many new faces on mastodon.technology at the moment, I'm sure it has a lot to do with #deletefacebook and media coverage of more ethical social media alternatives 🙌
Welcome, newcomers!
#Redux is brilliant. A slightly unintuitive trick to using it though is knowing when _not_ to use it - adding it to a project before it has any of the problems Redux solves might just add an unnecessary level of complication.
Great blog post on Slack's "bait and switch".
https://opkode.com/blog/slacks-bait-and-switch/
"The reason email is federated, is because it was developed before surveillance capitalism was a thing and because it was established and entrenched long before these companies came around.
There's a reason why your email address is still the de facto way to sign up for any service on the web (sometimes with one or two degrees of separation), and it's because of federation."
"7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design" aren't really cheats at all - they're good tips on avoiding common design pitfalls and keeping your UI clean and modern: https://medium.com/refactoring-ui/7-practical-tips-for-cheating-at-design-40c736799886
"The web can be weaponised - and we can't count on big tech to stop it" warns Sir Tim Berners-Lee in an open letter on the 29th anniversary of the web: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/12/tim-berners-lee-web-weapon-regulation-open-letter
"What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms."
"Today, I want to challenge us all to have greater ambitions for the web. I want the web to reflect our hopes and fulfil our dreams, rather than magnify our fears and deepen our divisions."
THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN FULFILLED
after dozens of successful presentations from linux laptops, the conference grounds to a halt as people try to figure out A/V for a recent macbook
In "Minimal Viable Service Worker", Jeremy Keith writes that service workers have such clear benefits to users that all websites ought to have one, and offers a minimal script that anyone can copy and paste to add caching and offline capabilities: https://adactio.com/journal/13540
@sil wrote a nice piece talking about collecting machine data in Ubuntu: https://kryogenix.org/days/2018/02/20/collecting-user-data-while-protecting-user-privacy/
I have a very simple take from the perspective of previously helping make releases of Xubuntu. Without knowing who the users are yet getting machine date will allow targeting resources to the most common platforms and usage scenarios. We don't know what is "average" for an Ubuntu user in terms of hardware. Greater privacy is nice but developers need to know what they're building for.
Woah! This is PURE GOLD, people!
Real big list of #opensource self-hosted alternatives. Some time has been spent curating this sucker!
https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted/blob/master/README.md
I really like about Mastodon (I am specifically talking about Mastodon, not the wider Fediverse) how cultural values, respect and inclusiveness are baked into the community - and then backed up with appropriate software features.
This seems like the correct order!
Think about the community you want to build. Try to build it. Give people tools that support those values. Then, iteratively improve all of the above.
Starting small probably helps: you can't please all the people all the time.