Aral Balkan @aral@mastodon.ar.al

My current view (elegant little thing that he is, our Osky).

Thousands rally across Europe to back Palestinians

https://inkl.com/a/RqNxGpIMbRM

‘Silence the story’: Israeli bombing of media offices condemned

“Gaza City building that housed Al Jazeera and other media offices was destroyed in an Israeli strike on Saturday.”

https://inkl.com/a/oxXbWntyXxy

Muse Group (the new owners of the Audacity trademark): “the convenience of using Yandex and Google is at odds with the public perception of trustworthiness, so we will be self-hosting instead.”

https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889

People, not users,
People, not consumers,
People, not human capital.

Do you think if enough people tell you that up is down and down is up, you’d start believing it?

Nah, me neither.

But some folks, I guess you don’t even have to tell ‘em twice as long as you tell ‘em with a price.

“Complex” is such versatile word in the English language. It’s at once a synonym for “vested interests”, “conflicts of interest”, and “institutional corruption.”

It’s like this: if our tiny not-for-profit that works to protect human rights in the digital age set up a for-profit corporation that got half a billion-dollars from Google that would be OK because we’re a not-for-profit that owns a for-profit and the money doesn’t affect what we do.

Or, if we set up an advisory board and got Google, Facebook, etc., to pay to be on it, that’d be OK too because they wouldn’t affect what we do.

(It’s complex, you’re probably not smart enough to understand it.)

I seem to be making a right mess of this, folks, so please let me apologise.

As stated on the GNOME wiki, GNOME advisory board members like Google simply “help … guide the overall direction of GNOME.”

If my comments made it sound like they guide the overall direction of GNOME projects, I’m sorry. GNOME, GNOME projects, and GNOME Foundation are three related but separate things. It’s a bit like the holy Trinity. So quite a complex thing. It’s OK if you’re not smart enough to understand it.

I heard that folks working on GNOME projects are protesting surveillance capitalist Google being on the GNOME advisory board but I lost the link to the announcement. Anyone have it?

OK, look, I don’t believe I even have to say this but if you believe for even one moment that surveillance capitalist Google being a paid-up member of GNOME’s advisory board affects what GNOME does in any way, you are a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.

A corporation being on your organisation’s advisory board in no way affects what your organisation does. That’s why we call it an ADVISORY BOARD, people!

Seriously, what’s wrong with all of you?

*smh*

New blog post: Scraping the latest EU VAT rates for e-services from the European Commission’s web site with Node.js

https://ar.al/2021/05/14/scraping-the-latest-eu-vat-rates-for-e-services-from-the-european-commissions-web-site-with-node.js/

#EU #VAT #rates #scraping

If Sheep.org has Wolf.com on its advisory board, it can mean one of two things, either:

1. They don’t understand the relationship between wolves and sheep, or,

2. They aren’t really sheep either.

New blog post: Using the European Commission EU VAT Number validation API with Node.js

https://ar.al/2021/05/14/using-the-european-commission-eu-vat-number-validation-api-with-node.js/

#EU #VAT #API #NodeJS