Pablo Virgo @ptvirgo@mastodon.technology
Joined Jan 2019
I slightly regret using the term "criminal" in that sentence, except insofar as that's how the courts describe them. Many of the people involved may have been arrested without having ever committed a crime.
Real Programmer Problems
I'm volunteering on a project that will help people get criminal records expunged in Philadelphia. The lawyers purchased access to a database of criminal records from the PA courts.
It took three programmers nearly a half hour to figure out a way to refer to the purchased data without calling it some horrifying variation of "state record database."
Pablo Virgo
boosted
A fascinating idea. Viewing your browser tabs as part of the filesystem, allowing you to use standard Unix filesystem tools to view and manipulate the tab contents. The Unix "everything is a file" concept is still a powerful one.
Via Hacker News [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600338 ]
I've recently come across a Isabel Wickerson, who is explaining race in America in terms of a caste system.
It's resonating with my experiences as well.
Pablo Virgo
boosted
OTOH, the acronym for "On The One Hand" is OTOH.
OTOH, the acronym for "On The Other Hand" is OTOH.
Pablo Virgo
boosted
RT @waitbutwhy@twitter.com
I'm just gonna start posting this during every major wave of current events.
Pablo Virgo
boosted
China is poised to crack down on Hong Kong's democracy movement. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/world/asia/china-hong-kong-crackdown.html We welcome the tens of thousands of Hong Kongers who have joined ProtonVPN and @protonmail to protect their privacy. We're proud to #StandwithHK https://protonvpn.com/blog/hong-kong-security-law/
Working on a project that uses [Digital Object Identifier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier), or DOI, to keep track of several data points.
If someone uses my tool to request a resource that they have not yet initialized, I give them a friendly reminder at the start of my error message:
"No DOI"
The other day I went on the FSF forum and told people they should be nice... to a woman.
Troll harder than that.
asking for a friend
If if a dude accidentally does something a bit creepy, is it better to stfu and leave or apologize first? Assume the other person didn't feel the need to point it out, but it was obvious in retrospect.
If you can't avoid Slack but want to inject #FOSS, Jitsi (video conferencing and screen shares) has a handy "add to slack" button, lower right corner of their home page.
Just tested it out with a co-worker; worked in Firefox and Chromium.
#irl-easter-egg
Today I found out I've been sitting next to Addie.
(bandcamp job listing, click "unusually" in "unusually well-loved")
Pablo Virgo
boosted
"The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly." https://pipedreamdragon.tumblr.com/post/190096255201
Pablo Virgo
boosted
Big picture, in the next decade, I would like to see:
1. Federated free software services become the dominant platform for social media and messaging.
2. A more privacy-oriented and cryptographically-literate public, and simple, standard free software tools anyone can leverage for this purpose.
3. Open hardware, especially RISC-V, becoming the dominant approach for new hardware development.
4. Recapturing the mobile market from proprietary walled gardens, instead favoring models which put the user in control of their devices (e.g. pmOS).
5. Average (read: non-SV CEO) technologists becoming more politically engaged, including running for and winning offices, and using political will to reinforce the above and start making a difference outside of tech
My colleague at the Catalyst Cooperative summarized their work:
"Help climate advocates get big wins with data analysis."
We can't wait around hoping for a Green New Deal.
Tonight I'm sitting down with a colleague from the Catalyst Cooperative. We're going to take some time to study what Seth Godin can teach us about marketing, so we can apply it to Catalyst's sustainability work.
Pablo Virgo
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RT @kkomaitis@twitter.com
Regulators only have 1 chance to make this right,especially as Europe considers the #DSA! @doctorow@twitter.com nails it when he talks that #interoperability has a role to play! Regulating Big Tech makes them stronger, so they need #competition instead https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/06/06/regulating-big-tech-makes-them-stronger-so-they-need-competition-instead
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/kkomaitis/status/1197169857537527808
Pablo Virgo
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Majority of Americans know they're under constant surveillance, don't trust the companies doing it, and feel helpless to stop it
https://boingboing.net/2019/11/16/ripe-for-regulation.html
Joined Jan 2019
