Engineer, founder, organizer. Let's put people back in control of their technology. The Open Social Web is a good start. Also wondering aloud where we are taking this planet. Check out my home page for more info and links. tfr
Public Key
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2025-11-14T17:59:23Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Thanks @nprofile…zwgs for your great post announcing that you passing on the maintenance of https://activitypub.rocks to the SocialCG community. https://activitypub.rocks/news/handing-off-activitypubrocks-to-the-activitypub-community.html Everybody: the issue tracker for the site is now here: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub.rocks/issues Contributions welcome! npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst A view from a member of the EU parliament. For those of us in the US. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandra-geese-b9059229_trump-doesnt-want-a-trade-deal-he-wants-activity-7366061746546958336-ppi7 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Many people here know this already. But if you aren’t entirely certain how to protect yourself against surveillance in this &!!^=)$(# age, read this article. https://www.wired.com/story/the-wired-guide-to-protecting-yourself-from-government-surveillance/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Of course he would fire a black woman first. https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/25/business/trump-fire-fed-governor npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Bounce, first previewed at #FediForum, launched to the public today. Migrating your social media account from Bluesky to the Fediverse, while keeping your followers! Some people say it's the magic long prophetized for the open social web and considered impossible by non-believers! 🙂 But here it is! Congratulations @nprofile…uwlx and @nprofile…hx87 from @nprofile…km94 ! Press coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/25/bounce-launches-a-service-for-moving-accounts-between-bluesky-and-mastodon/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst What would it cost to run the #fediverse at scale? With billions instead of millions of users? What does it cost to run a social network anyway? According to the annual reports of two companies that should know, the comparable seems to be about $1-$2 per user per month. And that's after stripping out a bunch of costs, like us not building ad tech in the fediverse. Have better numbers? I'd love to see them! From a recent talk of mine: https://spectra.video/w/k1rVULikPRfavCZ3WhXMgg https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/090/117/164/973/834/original/269f710949a1e2d5.png npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Are there any #Fediverse meetups in southern Germany? Maybe something in university towns that have CS programs? I think München, Erlangen, Augsburg, Ulm, Stuttgart, ... I know of the IndieWeb events in Karlsruhe. Pointers appreciated ... or people who might be interested. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst The emperor's new clothes have arrived in the real world. "And I tell you, those clothes are marvelous, otherwise you are a traitor." Well, arrived a while ago. Just another example. https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/politics/hegseth-fires-head-of-defense-intelligence-agency npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst In today’s what the f… https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-ice-chemical-gas-public-school-portland-1235413558/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst The world we have -- in social media, and more broadly in tech -- vs the world we want. Does this look about right? https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/072/779/755/802/307/original/93753bdbbf8619fe.png npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Spending some time again with #FediTest. It's still early, lots of work still needed and finding the support to work on it has been difficult, but It's actually a pretty cool piece of work if I may say so. (FediTest: an open-source framework and testing tools for distributed systems whose nodes communicate with complex protocols. Such as -- but not limited to -- the ActivityPub stack.) https://feditest.org npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst 7% of people already are getting their news from AI, and it's not even something the AI companies are pushing. Given this incredible quote from Elon, and the blend of AI and social media he and others are working on, how long until the "news" that arrives with people is entirely fictional? 1/3 https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/067/822/694/718/600/original/467483d7b8a020c6.png npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Assembled and working. And, as always, fascinating to watch. https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/062/823/599/364/086/original/812c5b580a3e4963.jpeg npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Social media has become the most used source of news. Commercial social media that is -- the one that has an opaque algorithm between you and the news that optimizes for the business benefit of the platform, not you getting unbiased news. What could possibly go wrong? 1/2 https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/062/266/863/087/828/original/4436da6fd9893443.png npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Today I learned: https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/who-we-are/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “What sets Mastodon (and much of the fediverse) apart the most is the development of an ethical covenant as a social protocol that bands the heterogenous network together [in addition to the technical protocols]”. @nprofile…vj86 In his new book. If this isn’t a reason to check it out … npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Starting to read @nprofile…vj86‘s new book “Move Slowly and Build Bridges” about “Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the struggle for democratic social media” He says we should call it “non-centralized” rather than “decentralized” social media, because there was never a center that needed to be de-centralized. I note that this is a particular feature of the ActivityPub-based fediverse, unlike say Bluesky, which clearly starts out with something centralized and adds credible exit. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "these problems may be rooted in the very architecture of social media platforms: networks that grow through emotionally reactive sharing. If so, improving online discourse will require more than technical tweaks – it will demand rethinking the fundamental dynamics of interaction and visibility that define these environments." Fellow social media innovators: Should we accept the challenge from this paper? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.03385 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst So "Vibe Code Cleanup Specialist" is now a job title? Not sure I should be excited or horrified. And the potential employers are ... the equivalent of software development superfund sites? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Got the newest #Fediverse book in the mail. Looking forward to reading it!! https://www.moveslowlybuildbridges.com npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst It's a great big wonder the entire internet hasn't collapsed (more) yet. https://e-mail.wtf npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst This article almost sounds like a realistic assessment of where “AI” is and where it is going. Are we close to top of the Gartner hype cycle? https://www.ft.com/content/d01290c9-cc92-4c1f-bd70-ac332cd40f94 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Learned a new word: "Hiraeth" It is Welsh, and according to WikiPedia, it has no direct English translation. "... likens it to a homesickness tinged with grief and sadness over the lost or departed, especially in the context of Wales and Welsh culture. It is a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraeth h/t @nprofile…qkcu Now if I had any idea how to pronounce it. Not that I'd ever be in the position to use it. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I have sepcial feelings for ... ... CEOs who have clearly never attempted to unpack the clamshell that their product comes in; ... API developers who clearly have never used their API for anything real. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “Putin to offer bribes to Trump at Ukraine summit” Fixed it for you, Guardian. Because if you think it is all about the economy and what’s good for the country, you clearly haven’t read your own coverage about Trump over the years. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/14/putin-to-offer-financial-incentives-to-trump-at-ukraine-summit npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "The Pixar Lamp!!" https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/13/apple-launching-robot-virtual-companion-in-2027/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Shout-out to Kinesis and their Freestyle Pro keyboard. It's really expensive, but IMHO its price is justifiable. I got the wrist pads and angled supports and I swear I can type faster than with their Freestyle 2, which I have owned for many years and I like a lot as well. The angles are a game changer compared to a typical keyboard IMHO. This version lets you use it with both Mac and PC layouts, which convolutes my brain less than before when switching VMs and remote access. Recommended! npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “According to Gallup, last year 56 percent of Americans believed that crime in the United States was an extremely or very serious problem — but only 14 percent said it was an extremely or very serious problem “in the area where you live.”” Now how could that possibly happen if the news were entirely fact based? https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-plays-the-carnage-card npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Sooo ... do data #portability laws require that you can port your #AI girlfriend? "So, how's your girl?" -- "Oh, fine, but I recently made her move house, from OpenAI to Meta." npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/rubio-orders-us-diplomats-launch-lobbying-blitz-against-europes-tech-law-2025-08-07/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst The choice between a traditional social media platform or the open social web seems to boil down to "do I want to control people to only do things my way" or "do I want to thrive by enabling people to make their own choices". npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst So @nprofile…70tv stated at #FediCon this past weekend that "Open Source is dead" Given that wasn't the focus of the discussion, he didn't have time for much explanation, but Hey Boris, I'd love to hear more of your thinking about this! npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I hadn’t been sure whether we had enough ripe tomatoes in the back yard to make a pasta sauce. https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/967/639/364/769/396/original/d90b7865ba6c1b58.jpeg npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Another amazing insight from @nprofile…kzgj https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/960/720/785/323/720/original/a58080c721e4108a.jpeg npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I’m so glad @nprofile…kzgj is talking about the practicalities of bringing the #fediverse to billions of people, including the billions of dollars that it requires. This is the kind of conversation we need at this point in the fediverse, so we can create something that works for lots of people AND that doesn’t go evil. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Now here’s a perspective! By @nprofile…kzgj https://j12t.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/960/647/672/811/553/original/f30822e85594e9d3.jpeg npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/amazon-ring-cashes-techno-authoritarianism-and-mass-surveillance?utm_source=effector npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Hey @nprofile…034u, I'm flabbergasted that your profile says "Serial #fediForumAttendee" npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Done with the slides for my talk "From Millions to Billions -- a plausible narrative for growing the Open Social Web", to be (first?) given at #FediCon this Friday in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I expect this to be permanent work in progress, as this community / network / market / whatever it all is evolves, and I'm sure that some people will tell me it is not plausible or could be more plausible. Which would be the best outcome ... I love learning from my "audience" because it gets better that way. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Sometimes procrastinating is the most productive thing you can do. At least for me. I have, oftentimes, started working on a specific plan that then turned out to be premature. I have very rarely procrastinated for too long. Today I finally started working on slides for my talk in Vancouver on Friday, and it was the right thing to wait, it's going to be much better than it otherwise would have been. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Hey @nprofile…qset, in your podcast with Kara Swisher you mentioned that in the early days of what became Bluesky, there was an active discussion whether Bluesky should be a joint venture between Twitter and Reddit. A fascinating tidbit I hadn’t heard of! Can you say more about this? What were the arguments in favor and against? Why did it ultimately not go in that direction? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "... prohibiting homeless residents from sleeping outdoors ..." If you put it that way ... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/24/trump-homeless-people-streets-order-housing/85358060007/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Quite interesting conversation between @nprofile…qset and Jack Dorsey on the history of Twitter, why Jack left Bluesky, and what he thins is needed in terms of a social media protocol and why. Agree or disagree, this first recorded episode in Rabble's new podcast revolution.social is worth listening to. https://revolution.social/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Temperatures soared to over 125 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Iran. Seems global boiling, not just warming, is coming https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-heatwave-tehran-energy-water-crisis-rcna220469 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst On the positive side, this AI coding challenge was more successful than I would have thought. On the other side, a 7.5% success rate on anything is not something you should expect much praise for. Or expect 100s of billions of dollars in investment capital. Ahem. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/23/a-new-ai-coding-challenge-just-published-its-first-results-and-they-arent-pretty/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst We make a big deal out of verifying TLS certificates. "Make sure the address in your browser is what you think it is, and do not proceed if there is a certificate warning." In app stores, where we can find apps that access the same data, just not through the browser, it's quite easy to download the wrong app. So many have such similar names! There is no equivalent of the same unique global ID (the domain name) plus cert. Isn't that the exact same attack vector as ignoring TLS certificates? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Seems to me these guys have no concept whatsoever of what science is. https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Stuff is happening. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes.” https://abcnews.go.com/US/night-texas-officials-caught-off-guard-deadly-rainstorms/story?id=123499929 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Indeed. Wish it were different but it is not. https://www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/its-too-late-david-suzuki-says-the-fight-against-climate-change-is-lost/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Sooo funny. The nugget about Anthropic in particular. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/the-resume-is-dying-and-ai-is-holding-the-smoking-gun/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Booked for #FediCon August 1-2 in Vancouver. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst If we wanted to grow the Open Social Web by a factor of 1000 -- roughly the number of users on Meta platforms today compared to, say, Mastodon -- how would we go about it? P.S. Obviously while keeping the good things we have here, and making them even better, rather than backsliding / enshittifying / ... npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “We need to stop trusting the experts” he says, and “You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.” I meant to insert some kind of quip here, but … I simply can’t. https://gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-says-ai-will-approve-new-drugs-at-fda-very-very-quickly-2000622778 npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Is it just me, or are there suddenly more statements that follow the word "AI" right with "bubble" and "burst"? I'm shuddering ... so much more invested capital than, say, the dot-com bubble. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst One of the (several) things that stuck with me from @nprofile…zwgs's keynote at FediForum was that a lot of the code, including open-source code, that's been built in recent decades was built and defaults to gigantic cloud-based centralized systems. Not for people-based systems that evolve around the people that use them, and allow them to interact with each other as they see fit, as we like to do in the Fediverse, for example. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Hello from Surf. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Hi @nprofile…74c4, you obviously have gotten a lot of praise for your Fediverse video, and deservedly so. Many people commented on the sheer production quality. I want to add that your narrative is also first-class. I cannot think of anybody who has told the Fediverse story better than you have, and usually the stories being told are much worse. How did you come up with it? That's also your work, right? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Interesting cultural difference in how to use messaging apps between my friends in the US and those in Germany. The Americans assume that if you have chatted with somebody before, even if there has been a pause in the conversation, the next sentence is a continuation of the conversation. The Germans assume that after a pause, we meet again for a new conversation and the first thing to say is "Hi Johannes". npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Hey @nprofile…lz7q, I appreciate your thread ... keeps people like me in the loop. Did say anything about future funding for the NLNet-administered programs? Some of us had the impression that they were reduced or will be reduced ... also the new funding, how will that be distributed? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Trump coming for your google search results, this column says. https://www.rawstory.com/google-trump-results-wow/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst @nprofile…kgua Does FedCM help? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst We need to separate identity from servers in the ActivityPub world. It's time. I should be able to have a single identity and use it with lots of servers from Mastodon to Lemmy and beyond. Then, various instances could reflect different communities with different people in them, different features and policies. This also would elegantly solve the "instance selection paralysis" in @nprofile…3wy7 's Deadly Fediverse UX sin #1. Fortunately @nprofile…kzgj is starting to assemble people to solve this. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “The flight from Ceylon to Australia on Aug 30, 1943 remains the record holder for longest time airborne (for a commercial passenger flight) at 32 hours, 9 minutes” I’ll walk instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Working on the FediForum notes from last week's so we can publish them. What an amazing set of expertise is in those notes! So much I'm learning by reviewing them! In the meantime, check out the notes from previous FediForum events, now conveniently ordered by topic: https://fediforum.org/topics npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst @nprofile…8rfl @nprofile…zqxh We've been pondering something more regular, although perhaps not as often as weekly. Related: For a little while, @nprofile…xt5t and I hosted regular FediDev meetups for developers ... what kind of subjects did you have in mind? If it's too unstructured and too varied, people might not have too much fun ... But if it was about a subject each time, maybe something doing a show and tell to anchor the conversation? Ideas welcome ... npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst If you want to know what the #Fediverse is, you best watch an amazing 4 min video by Elena Rossini, published today, and previewed at FediForum last week. https://news.elenarossini.com/fediverse-video/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Everybody: If there are 700 marines on the streets of L.A. -- what is happening online? What is the online equivalent? Assume it is happening right now. Consider everything you write on a computer or mobile phone, and all sounds you let them capture, to be available to be used against you, in unreasonably twisted ways. (Yes, some things may continue to be safe -- maybe Tails with Tor, maybe Signal -- but unless you are a professional security engineer, it's much safer to assume they are not.) npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst If I weren't organizing #FediForum demos, I would not have found out about gobo.social. This is a test post. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “Menu bar comes to iPad for the first time” Nothing new under the sun, ever. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I've been writing code for 40 years. And when it works, I'm still amazed as I was the first time I got something to work. Today's example is very simple, as code goes: provision accounts in QiQoChat, our online venue for FediForum, based on the registrations from Humanitix. Little systemd.timer that polls and creates new accounts as they come in. Watching the accounts appear is magic I still think :-) npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst 340 page slide presentation on the AI industry by Mary Meeker and friends. Takes a few hours to get through … and as usual, contains lots of interesting high density info nuggets. One tidbit: apparently people expect the training cost of the leading models to rise from $1b to $10b rather soon. The mind boggles. https://www.bondcap.com/report/tai/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Even if not playing with his cuticles, at 23 with a bachelors degree you are simply not qualified to have opinions on other people’s research. I’m not a big fan of people brandishing their titles, but there are some good reasons why in serious research, a doctorate is table stakes and it goes from there. Another good piece by @nprofile…5mw3 https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/02/a-23-year-old-crypto-bro-is-now-vetoing-nsf-grants-while-staring-at-his-water-bottle/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Fascinating story on a blend of better social media and journalism from East Africa by @nprofile…cnur https://newpublic.substack.com/p/how-the-swahili-wikileaks-built-trust npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst @nprofile…wkrn @nprofile…3wy7 yes. Passed and signed. Going into effect next year. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "TACO Trade" -- I can see he'd feel hurt. Very effective meme. TACO = "Trump Always Chickens Out" https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/28/economy/trump-wall-street-taco-trade-nastiest-question npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst SeaGL has their CfP out. (Open-source conference in Seattle in November). Last year, I gave a talk and hosted a little Fediverse gathering there. We could make it larger this year. Any interested parties? https://pretalx.seagl.org/2025/cfp npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst @nprofile…fa5p Now this is a good and hard-hitting question that I wish more of us were pondering hard. MCP has a clear use case with large dollar signs behind it. The Fediverse does not mostly because nobody has attempted to systematically investigate where such dollar signs could be found. P.S. What use case do you see for Fediverse + MCP? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Utah is going to legally require social media interoperability and portability of the social graph. Wow, this law has been signed and it somehow passed under my radar. IMHO It has a good change to substantially impact the open social web, in a very good way. Thanks @nprofile…3wy7 for the tip! https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/HB0418.html npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Sometimes I regret organizing #FediForum, because an organizer, I can only run so many sessions before I hijack my own unconference. If somebody else organized it, and me being simple an attendee, I'd be tempted to call a session for every time slot available, there are soo many things I'd love to discuss with all of you and many of those session topics don't seem to be brought up by others. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Please ignore, playing around with channel.org #OpenSocialWebChannel npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst “Take a screenshot every few seconds” legitimately sounds like a suggestion from a low-parameter LLM that was given a prompt like “How do I add an arbitrary AI feature to my operating system as quickly as possible in order to make investors happy?” From a Signal blog post. https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst We have made it to “the Trump administration “unquestionably” violated a court order” in the opinion of a judge. Now we made it to the fork in the road. Will they get away with it? https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/deportation-flight-south-sudan-controversy npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst A new Patreon to support Bridgy Fed by A New Social. If you like your posts moving between ActivityPub and AtProto, or you follow accounts on the other network, consider supporting them. https://www.patreon.com/ANewSocial npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I keep wondering why #Bluesky calls it the "social internet" as opposed to the "social web". Yes, I understand, HTTP and web browsers and apps and all of that, but is that really the distinction they are trying to make? Which percentage of their users would even understand that? npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/addressing-meta-problems-support-disinformation-alan-jagolinzer-fdioe npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I always report LinkedIn's own messages trying to sell me something as spam and report them to ... LinkedIn. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "My dream Fediverse platform". Very nice piece by @nprofile…zkhj . Stuff for thought. https://deadsuperhero.com/my-dream-fediverse-platform/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst I’ve been waiting for rogue radios hidden inside other equipment as an attack vector for a long time. And here were are. Solar inverters may not all be what they appear. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst One of the consequences of not seeing the same comments on a post on all ActivityPub servers is that some issue discussed already gets brought up again by people who saw the original post later. That's bad enough when people don't read through comments before they post their own comment, but in this case, they actually can't! npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst "Password can't be the same as your last 24 passwords". But who is counting. npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Summer definitely has arrived. Criteria: I feel like melting in my home office after having been on calls for which I had the door closed. (It tends to get really warm in the summer if the door is closed.) npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Excellent third piece in @nprofile…mpj6 's series on product strategies for the open social web. Interestingly, basically nobody follows anything remotely close to this strategy that I'm aware of (if you are aware of somebody, I'd appreciate pointers). You may quibble with it, or disagree, but very worthwhile reading. https://werd.io/2025/if-i-started-fresh npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst No kings. Call for counter-protests on Trump's birthday, the day he wants to have the military parade. https://www.nokings.org/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Rather “interesting” quotes from the report of the German domestic intelligence service on the AfD party being “confirmed right-wing extremist”. If you make certain translations (say, immigrants from Africa vs from Central America) it sounds very similar to the rhetoric of the American right wing. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/afd-gutachten-des-verfassungsschutzes-1108-seiten-sprengstoff-das-steht-drin-a-47a24040-5bdb-405d-9906-f7c23c6bcb4d (in German, paywall) npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst The #InternetArchive wants your support for this petition urging the record labels to drop their existential lawsuit. I signed. https://chng.it/MdZM9xQXdw npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Of course it was. Could anybody possibly have thought otherwise? https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-uses-was-hacked/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst If you care about the future of social media, in closed platforms or on the open social web, read this interview with Mark Zuckerberg. Many fascinating tidbits that outline a very different future than Twitter-ca-2012 “global town square”. If you don’t care about Llama, start reading where it says “four major product and business opportunities”. Also, the ad business is changing completely. https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-meta-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-about-ai-and-the-evolution-of-social-media/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst Strange bedfellows. “Microsoft is … vowing to fight the US government in court to protect Euro customers' data if needed.” https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/30/microsoft_getting_nervous_about_europes/ npub15ms6n44wany5pmrsuvh36eal9gpq3nrf6d8d6898swz6d38qqa8s0mj6wm Johannes Ernst What good is a system of units if you have to go through some other, competing, system of units, to answer basic questions? How many gallons in a cubic foot? Of course, I can ask Google. Which will provide an AI answer, which I'm certain I should not be certain about.