London PR firm rewrites Wikipedia for governments and billionaires Founded by Keir Starmer’s comms chief, Portland helps rich clients ‘protect their reputation’ – with a shady, off-the-books service thebureauinvestigates.com/stor…
It was great having a video call with @josschuurmans - nice to meet you! We chatted for almost two hours about open source.
Here are some of the tools we discussed that could also benefit our Mastodon community (I've mentioned them before, but here they are again):
FediAlgo, a fully customizable timeline algorithm that frees you from the tyranny of reverse chronological order github.com/michelcrypt4d4mus/f…
Fediway, a new recommendation engine for Mastodon that aims to replace the main feed for those who prefer a more algorithmic approach github.com/fediway/fediway
Mastodon timeline demo app for FediAlgo, the fully customizable timeline algorithm that will free you from the tyranny of reverse chronological order. - michelcrypt4d4mus/fedialgo_demo_app_foryoufeed
Only two weeks to go until our first London event of the year on 🗓️Wed. 28 Jan. Thank you to Geovation for again hosting us, and our sponsors for making the event possible. We have six talks scheduled!
We are expecting a big turn out so will probably need to close the sign-up soon. If you are planning to attend, please sign-up ASAP
#Signal creator #MoxieMarlinspike wants to do for #AI what he did for messaging His latest brainchild is #Confer, an #opensource AI assistant that provides strong assurances that user data is unreadable to the platform operator, hackers, law enforcement, or any other party other than account holders. The service—including its large language models and back-end components—runs entirely on open source software that users can cryptographically verify is in place. arstechnica.com/security/2026/…
"There is no “pick a server” screen or “find your instance”. There is no friction. This is not “a Mastodon app”; it is the Tŵt app, purpose-built for our community."
This is a vision of the Social Web which I'm sure many won't agree with or, potentially, won't even understand.
But, like @jaz I'm pretty certain this is the future. We need to make spaces which are accessible to the general user, that just take them where they want to go without a scavenger hunt.
I'm so excited for this app and seeing how it can serve the existing community, Welsh people, and everyone else who wants to call it home 🏴
There Is One Fediverse. There Are A Thousand Ways To Join It.
Recently, I was sitting with my sister-in-law talking about social media. She has that nagging, familiar concern about corporate social, the feeling that we’re all just products in someone else’s machine. I pulled out my phone, showed her my toot.wales feed, and started explaining how she could “save the Web site to her home screen”.
She listened politely, then said the thing I believe most people genuinely feel:
“It’s lovely! If only there was an app…”
She does not want a “protocol”. She does not want to hear about “the Fediverse”. She just wants that feed on her phone without a homework assignment. And she wants it from the app store she trusts.
When I started toot.wales, I instinctively knew this. In the early days, I even paid a developer to fork a couple of open-source apps and hard-code them to our community. It was expensive and eventually I simply couldn’t sustain it, but I never lost sight of that goal.
Now, working with our brilliant friends at the Newsmast Foundation, we’ve delivered it: a simple, opinionated, “people-first” social app.
One community. One door.
The biggest design decision we made was the simplest: the app is hard-locked to toot.wales.
There is no “pick a server” screen or “find your instance”. There is no friction. This is not a Mastodon app; it’s the Tŵt app, purpose-built for our community.
I’ve spent years building tools like StartHereSocial to help people navigate the maze of the Fediverse. But for toot.wales, I realised the answer isn’t a better map, it should be an inviting, open front door. If you want to join, you should be able to step right in.
Croeso: A warmer welcome
Alongside the app I built a promotional Web site at croeso.toot.wales. Croeso is Welsh for “welcome”, and that is exactly what it provides. It strips away the jargon, no talk of federation or decentralisation. Instead, it offers clear language about why this is “Better Social”.
It’s joyful and non-threatening on purpose. We’re not here to preach at you to quit X or Facebook, and we’re not shaming anyone. We are simply inviting you to try something different. If you like the vibe, stay. If not, no worries. People stay because it feels good, not because they’ve been coaxed into a boycott.
A Fediverse of communities
Some people see the Fediverse as one giant global town square. I see it differently. For me, it’s a community of communities. There are a million fediverses.
When people looking to onboard new people tell me “mastodon.social is too big”, my gut feeling is no, your server is too small. Communities only grow when we intentionally nurture them. It’s not up to a company in Germany to grow Tŵt in Wales. That’s on us, it’s our problem.
I want everyone in Wales (and the world!) to have a social option that is not drowned in surveillance and ad-tech. To get there, we have to design for clarity rather than complexity.
What’s inside the Tŵt app?
We’ve made some very deliberate choices to keep the app “human-shaped”:
Private Mentions have their own space. You can’t create a private mention in the main composer and you will never see them in your timeline. We’ve put them in a dedicated “Conversations” tab to reduce mistakes and keep privacy intentional.
Three simple tabs. You get Home (your personal feed), Tŵt (the “local” feed plus local replies), and Explore (your lists and hashtags, plus curated feeds for news, sport, culture and more). This creates a natural flow from your own interests to the wider, global community.
Search is just search. There are no “trending” nudges or unsolicited content. If you’re looking for something, we help you find it. We don’t try to distract you along the way. (Trending is it’s own Channel.)
True Bilingualism. English and Cymraeg sit side-by-side as equal choices. Digital spaces should reinforce our identity, not flatten it.
Celebrating the pioneers
The Tŵt ecosystem is already thriving because Welsh media organisations took a leap of faith into the open Web. Groups such as Nation.Cymru, Golwg360, Swansea Bay News, and Wrexham.com didn’t wait to see which way the wind was blowing. They dove in and started building, and are long-time Social Web citizens. Golwg and Swansea Bay now each federate their own platforms!
Whether it’s weather updates from North Wales Storms or local sports teams, these partners make the app feel alive from the moment you log in. The app offers two pathways to consume this content, via Channels you can drop in and out of, or Starter Packs you can follow to bring them into your feed.
Why this matters
For those already comfortable with the Fediverse, using a Web interface or the app of their choice is fine. But for everyone else, “just install the Web site” is not meaningful advice.
People want “the app”. From the trusted app store. They want to tap an icon and feel at home, not slog through an IT exam.
If you run a community and you like our approach, please feel free to use it. Whether it’s the onboarding flow, the “Better Social” messaging, or the focus on language equity, you are welcome to use my work as a template. If we want a healthier internet, we need more communities feeling empowered to build their own front doors.
The Tŵt app is our doorway. It is built for Wales and the Welsh, at home and abroad. It’s simple, it’s ours, and I can’t wait for you to try it. We plan on launching on Dydd Gŵyl Dewi with a special Fediverse Tootup the day before, in the meantime you can get a preview of the app at croeso.toot.wales/en/less-clut…
A social media charity The Newsmast Foundation is an educational charity, supporting the use of social media for good. We’re at the forefront of new, open social media.
!VanLife - After a few weeks work we have just managed to get our #hino #motorhome road legal again with a new #certificateoffitness - while also managing to track down and resolve an issue with a faulty air valve that was causing our over pressure valve to go off every few minutes. We managed to get progress on a new ceiling and and of course we would have loved to have spent the time on the road its good to be able to put it to bed till next time knowing that its in better shape and know we will pretty much be able to pull it out and drive away with it next time.
Planing and installation of ceiling lighting and switches as well as insulation and panelling out the sides will be next. Plus a bt of body work and repaint and clear coat but these are exciting things. - I'm going to love doing the house electrics especially since the basics (solar, fridge and basic lights/sockets) are already in.
As many of you will know, I’ve been campaigning for more than a year to get the Govt of Canada off X. This week’s Grok nonsense pushed me over the edge - and I said a very bad word! https://www.hilltimes.
Very nice that @Paulatics@mstdn.ca is pressing the issue. Twitter is basically pornhub with news. Would the government be willing to publish videos on pornhub to "reach a wider audience"? Referring this video). There are also significant audiences on PornHub.
Disfruta de los vídeos y la música que te gustan, sube material original y comparte el contenido con tus amigos, tu familia y el resto del mundo en YouTube.
At this point, if you know what X has been doing and you're still on there, you're condonning the sick images it's producing and spreading. ESPECIALLY if you're paying for it. The UK government (where I'm from) need to treat it as it would any other site that produces this sick, harmful material. If this was some no-name site run by some poor, no influence guy from his bedroom, they would have blocked it weeks ago.
Its like these officials dont understand the power of this stuff. Like, X is actively working against them, trying to deligitimize established powers at every turn and they don't seem to feel that's urgent in any way? Are they just oblivious? What good does X do anyone at all besides Elon/Nazis/Pedos?
Surely you're not saying they shouldn't have had a Twitter presence?
Or is this more of a "they should have left when Elon took over" kind of thing? In which case, they probably thought that the majority of people who follow(ed) them on there wouldn't have left immediately - not least because there weren't any good alternatives* at the time - so it would have made sense to maintain a presence, which I think is what's actually going on.
* Yes, Mastodon existed, but you've got to think about the average person here. There's a reason the first people on there were academics and tech folks.
Government should post things in publoc places but X and Facebook arent public. They are like shopping malls - free to talk into but put restrictions around what you can do, substitute public law for.private contractual agreements and they replace public justice for their abitrary decision making about behalviour and extract costs ( data, tracking, attention sellijg & emotional manulipulation) from visitors. All of these things are bad for citizen involvement.
Twitter is not a public place and has been looking more and more like the opposite of it. Nowadays you can not even go someone's profile to browse their timeline without logging in.
It may not be a public place per se, but it is a place where a very large cohort of the general public go.
Perhaps my analogy should have been "This is bit like saying that governments shouldn't make announcements on television and radio stations not under government control."
The same logic applies there. Of course they should. A large cohort of the general public watch television and listen to the radio (less so these days in the age of the Internet, but people do still watch and listen there.).
TV stations and radio channels are under government control. The government is the one who controls the licenses for spectrum.
it is a place where a very large cohort of the general public go.
Unless your are completely inept at technology and you have no regards for open standards, there is zero reason to think "just go wherever the audiences are" is a sensible strategy for public institutions.
The internet at large is still accessible. RSS is still a thing. Email is still a thing. If people really are so interested in following status updates from the government, they can easily go to the government-owned website. We are not talking about someone running a food truck and wants to reach customers to sell burritos. We are talking about entities that are so large that they make their own gravity.
But generally government officials make announcements at press conferences in government buildings with an open method for press to become acredited and attend. Sure politicians do media appearances - buts thats different - they are normally acting as an individual - effectively as a candidate.
It's the government, they spend millions of public money in pr, they should have never had a twitter account to begin with and should have used their own tools.
Where are their communications? Who visits a government website without needing to?
To me it makes sense that they should cover as much ground as possible and have accounts on all major platforms as well as making announcements on TV and radio.
And in order to do so they should have their own accounts on there in order that their message gets across directly without having to go through a third party that has an account on there.
Now, when that site starts espousing "free speech" of the sort that only they like, then it might be a good idea to not use that particular platform any more, because that brings in the third party interference that wasn't there in the first place, even if the site was technically third party.
But hey whatever, now let's make, say, the BBC the mouthpiece of the government - it's not like the Tories didn't try really hard to do that when they were in power - and have everyone report on that. Far better.
If they are publishing something .. it should be available to everyone. I domtnhave an issue with Meta or X taking a feed (RSS or Activitypub ) of their posts and publishong them ( like a TV or radio programme does.
There are a few differences. Governments dont generally make announcements on a particular TV station but usually provide an open access press conference.
Gov.uk is the 17th most visited site in UK in Dec 25- semrush.com/trending-websites/… - plenty of people visit that and its not even all of gov sites.
I'm no fan of Starmer, even less of the OSA but Grok is literally producing deepfake CSAM and other non consensual images. The UK government, like I would hope the vast majority of people, think that's appalling and don't want it to happen. They asked X/Musk to stop Grok producing non consensual deepfakes and all they did was limit its availability to paying subscribers - essentially making the creation of deepfake CSAM a premium service. All Musk really demonstrated is that X can act swiftly, despite the numerous times it said it can't, but doesn't want to deprive its paying users of the ability to create CSAM.
It's totally insane to me that this is being framed, by US Republicans as a free speech issue but I guess a country that can murder a woman driving a car is fucked up in plenty of other ways too.
Honestly, I'm more surprised governments didn't invoke the "think of the children" argument here and sanction Shitter. Feels like now would have been a perfect moment
La ciudadanía ha tomado el impulso de organizarse en cooperativas que persiguen otro modelo de movilidad, en el que prevalece el 'carsharing' de vehículos totalmente eléctricos.
So I made game for only the most hardcore OSM folks. I hope the dozens (dozens!) of us enjoy. 🎉
"Think you know OSM tags? Prove it! Take turns adding tags to build a query. But be careful, if the combination you create doesn't exist on OSM, your opponent can call your bluff."
Dr Lucy Rogers MBE is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Former Visiting Professor at Brunel University, she’s an award-winning engineer, author of Up: A Scientist’s Guide to the Magic Above Us and former BBC Robot Wars judge. Her creative projects span animatronic dinosaurs to carbon-negative technologies. She’s passionate about nature and sustainable engineering solutions.
It looks like an interesting talk! Unfortunately, the title: "Up: A Scientist’s Guide to the Magic Above Us." sounds like some pseudoscience bullshit.
Welcome to release v2.0.0 of the Firefly III DataImporter. It contains the latest fixes, translations and features. Docker users can find this release under the latest tag.
Changelog
Version 2.0 of...
Welcome to the Public Domain, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930) 🎖️
🎬 The third film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards is a realistic look at the First World War. Experience the first filmed adaptation now in the public domain.
Libraries, archives, and museums have always collected, preserved, and provided access to knowledge for the public good. But in the digital age, those foundational rights are increasingly under threat. Join […]\n
!VanLife - Working on our #HinoRainbow #motorhome conversion we have an issue with occasional drain of the motor batteries. (I guess something somewhere is being left on despte an isolation switch being used when we are parked up) - I' trying to figure out someway of monitoring battery drain on them so we can be alerted.
despte an isolation switch being used when we are parked up
Is the isolator a manual switch or does it work automagically ("split charger", relay, diode isolator, dc-dc, etc)?
If the leisure and starter batteries really are isolated then it's a chassis problem. The classical approach is to youtube.com/watch?v=G7BvKNfY6h… and pull chassis fuses until the current stops -- that circuit is the problem.
occasional drain of the motor batteries
How long does it take for this to happen? A day? A month? If you have solar on the rig you could leverage it to keep the starter battery[s] charged. This would also work if you are on shore power while parked up.
Disfruta de los vídeos y la música que te gustan, sube material original y comparte el contenido con tus amigos, tu familia y el resto del mundo en YouTube.
Yeah its taken a day or two to flatten the battery so something is going on - its got an isolatation switch which controls a solenoid. I need to look into this more - will need to check that video.
Our house and engine electrics are completely separate but we had been thinking of using the solar to charge the engine batteries. We dont have shore power connection as such because everything is 12v.
Parasitic drains can be frustratingly hard to find, so don't be discouraged if you don't find it right away. I had a '72 beetle with a slow drain. Took me weeks to find it -- it was the original AM radio, which I never listened to. The volume knob was turned just far enough to power the radio on but not far enough to make any sound. Argggh!
We dont have shore power connection as such because everything is 12v.
Shore power can be used as-is (120v, 240v, whatever the local standard is) especially on larger RVs. On vans it usually feeds a converter/charger that run 12v loads and charge 12v banks.
Yeah we converted the bus ourselves and havent bothered with a shore power connection. We will put more batteries and an inverter just in case but almost everything is DC now days anyway..
abeorch
in reply to Roni Rolle Laukkarinen • •