Angeliki Diakrousi @anglk@post.lurk.org

the VPN introduction zine translated in Chinese!
https://zines.cucu.gr/prints/tunnel-up-tunnel-down-ch/

Share with those who may find it useful.
Download the pdf or consider supporting the vpn zines project* by buying a physical copy or a bundle (zine+silk-screened towel or t-shirt), shipping within EU takes a week!

*There are 2 more zines coming next:
"VPN on mobiles+raspberrypi"
"Backups over a VPN".

Dear #student, #teacher, #worker in an #educational institution..

A letter from #Constant to everyone facing #online #teaching.
Let’s learn together how to do technology differently!

"Together we witnessed how the recent move to ‘distant learning’ has meant that educational institutions have almost without exception turned to online commercial platforms. What we called ‘an elephant in the room’ only a few months ago, has finally trampled all residual ‘room’ in education. It might feel like the change is sudden, but it has been long in the making..."

https://constantvzw.org/site/Dear-student-teacher-worker-in-an-educational-institution,3347.html

Today and tomorrow, some freshly graduated #XPUB students will present at the wild state in #Linz as part of an #arselectronica programme created and hosted by the Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung.

The presentations are streamed online:

@pedrosaclout Tactical #Watermarks is an online republishing platform that exists in both the clear and dark web, exploring topics such as anonymity, paywalls, archives and provenance through digital watermarks.

@estragon Syster Papyri Magicae is a web-based project that unfolds the phenomenon of #gender exclusions in male-dominated tech environments, aiming to discuss and activate feminist practices that respond to this issue.

@r1ta Networks of Care offers a collection of user guidelines for you to browse, dissect and analyse. Delve into the conversations with different #community members and find useful templates, resources, and experiments. Let’s explore the networks of care generated together.

Full scheduled at https://ausstellungen.ufg.at/wildstate

If you can't attend but want to check out the projects, visit https://collectiveioning.xpub.nl

I think that with the whole #Mozilla fiasco, we're just witnessing once more the limit of the green/open/fair/inclusive discourse when it is essentially used as a smoke screen for commercial activities. For many years now Mozilla has used the model of running a non-profit org in front of their for-profit company. It's quite well documented and as such is not a surprising model, it is used by corporations to interface with different audiences, contexts, etc. There is however always a risk of cognitive dissonance with these models, and this is clear with Mozilla's PR right now, stuck between financial priorities and the need to maintain their image of social justice endorsers they have been working hard to promote until now.

If you're lurking in #rotterdam on thursday (2020-07-30) and into learning about #solarpunk #p2p #dweb #dat #hypercore then we're streaming https://events.dat.foundation/2020/ for a few hours at #varia! See https://varia.zone/en/dat-conf.html for more

Great alternatives to Google Maps that use #OpenStreetMap data:

- Qwant Maps: website, has directions. Highlights the fact that data is from #OSM, providing links to view and edit the data.
https://www.qwant.com/maps
- F4map: website, 3D views of cities.
https://demo.f4map.com/
- MAPS.ME: mobile apps with a neat vector renderer. Minimalist. Works offline. More obviously profit-oriented.
- OsmAnd: mobile apps with lots of features. Offline too. (Too?) many customisations and options available.

Come read with us online, this thursday evening, 23/07, 16:00 - 18:00 CEST. 📚

Varia is hosting two collective reading and conversation sessions. One will be online and one will be in our physical space, as a series of events to discuss matters of abolitionist technology & community-driven systems of accountability, while generating anonymous, consensual debris for stone throw, a temporary online work to share our resources and reflections. We sought texts that are talking about what we want to learn with and about, now.

For our first session we will read from Ruha Benjamin's Race After Technology, choosing chapter 5 Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice to read together. In this chapter, Benjamin examines how practitioners, scholars, activists, artists, and students are working to resist and challenge the New Jim Code (a term Benjamin uses to connect discriminatory technology with past segregationist laws in the Southern states). This chapter also offers suggestions on how to contribute to an approach to technology that moves beyond accessing new products, to advocating for justice-oriented design practices.

These workshops are made with @jules @ccl. 👌

Find out more here - http://varia.zone/en/rr-stone-throw-1.html

Very very interesting long read about the possible future of ActivityPub, the underlying protocol of Mastodon and Queer Haus.

Many of the concerns mentioned here in this proposal is why we chose to limit the connections that Queer Haus has to the rest of the fediverse. To build our own curated slice of the fediverse.

This proposal aims to solve this descent into fediverse nation states by making the network itself aware of consent.

Fascinating stuff! Thanks @rra for the link!

https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub

Buster is a browser extension that solves goog's reCAPTCHA's audio challenges using speech recognition. It is a tiny thing but it spares you both the humiliation and the cognitive energy involved in training the algorithms of your future oppression.

I've had it for years and it works really well, give it a go.

https://github.com/dessant/buster