dusty.ninja

#TIL Garbage has a new album out (as of May 2025) - "Let All That We Imagine Be The Light”

so far, quite liking it

The two ways to be online.

ah dammit my memory failed me again

#Introductions (more of a re-intro, ~5 yrs Mastodon veteran on the original instance)

I’m Andy, a techie, developer advocate, educator and public speaker based in the UK. Follow me for rambling about, among other things…

- #MicroPython
- #APIs
- #MQTT
- #OpenSource
- #VideoGames (Xbox/Switch/Steam Deck/indie)
- #LEGO
- #BoardGames
- #DrWho
- #PenPlotter
- Online communities
- Home automation
- blinky things / making

Links and more -> https://andypiper.me

it's nice to be on mastodon where people don't care if you're popular or smart or good looking or funny or interesting or alive or any of those ultimately unimportant things

(this is a meme about bluesky)

I just flew in from bluesky and boy are my posts tired

@bryan https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate but it seems to have gone stale...

Shocked — just shocked — to discover that supposedly-decentralised social network Bluesky is entirely under the control of the single company that developed it and runs the entire network, and that their CEO is able to personally override moderation decisions to unban high-profile transphobes and ban people who complain about it.

This was completely impossible to predict and nobody ever suspected that anything like this could happen from the outset.

A small post about the upcoming support for native Apple SecTrust in curl 8.17.0.
#curl #apple

https://eissing.org/icing/posts/curl-apple-sectrust/

RIP

This is gorgeous.

A super cosy in-browser free game, where you get to wander around a tiny world, delivering parcels.

An utter delight: https://messenger.abeto.co/

Could we, without relentlessly criticising, let people have their pumpkin spice, avocado toast, fandoms, D&D, too-early Halloween decorations and whatever little harmless things in which they've managed to find a tiny, shriveled flower of joy?

RE: https://aus.social/@joannaholman/115268182358172184

I had a lot of response and a bit of pushback to my posts a few days ago about how ordinary people shouldn’t have to care about tech privacy or ethics. While I’m aware care is unfortunately often needed lately, I wrote it because I see so much discourse on Mastodon that assumes people have more than enough time, mental energy and social capital to keep up with what the most optimal choices would be and make them but are just using mainstream tools because they’re careless about privacy and callously uncaring about ethics.

This is out of touch with reality and un-empathetic. So many people are struggling with so many things these days and there’s a lot in the news that impacts people’s wellbeing. When I was struggling with my mental health I was barely managing consuming news on any topic. Some people also have structural challenges like literacy challenges or being too poor to afford more than a bad Chromebook. For people who do care a lot about living ethically there are so many complex problems competing for their attention.

Even where tech news does break through sometimes change is more demanding than people realistically have the capacity for. This is especially the case for social media and communications tools where it’s not just a matter of personal choices but of convincing others to change. A bunch of times mastodon people insisted quitting tools that are used for communications important to me is simple. Sure installing Signal on my own phone is easy (I have and use it). Getting an org I’m in to migrate off WhatsApp when I’m not in charge, hundreds of volunteers are involved, Signal is not popular here and I’ve burned through a lot of social capital lately advancing some more pressing social justice issues in the org is not realistically viable.

Trying to address the real issues going on in tech can’t rely on shaming average users for not conforming to an imagined version of reality that doesn’t exist and for not “just” doing things that aren’t really viable in light of everything else they’ve got going on. Instead it should start with an empathy for the fact that they’re being asked to pay attention and put in effort that they really shouldn’t have to.