The owl has left the nest

Weblogged was started on the 9th of May in 2022 as a blogging project. Originally named after just me, it later got the name it has now, and since I did not come up with a better name, it now has the domain name www.weblogged.net. This blog was offline for a while due to config changes and issues on the host’s end, which forced a URL change to the new domain name. If you had https://piusbird.space/~anton/ bookmarked, change it. The URL formats have also changed. Thanks to piusbird for continuing to host my blog!

Until next time, Godspeed.

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WordPress and Software Freedom

WordPress is a free software blog platform, and is incredibly easy to use. I had other options, but went with this for things such as comments and editing on a web site.

Things have changed since the last time I logged on here. I have since become a huge supporter of the free software movement (as opposed to a small one), started publishing my own AGPL-licensed free software, and have become an associate member of the Free Software Foundation. I now use mostly free software, with the goal of eventually using only free software.

I have started using LibreJS on my computer, which has become a Thinkpad T60 running 100% free software (including the bootloader), as I had discussed possibly doing in some online spaces a few years back.

I now have issues with WordPress telling me that JavaScript is “disabled” for me, unless I opt to use the classic editor. While I don’t mind the classic editor too much, WordPress’s JavaScript should be licensed to work with LibreJS, but for some reason it isn’t, and I keep seeing text saying that “JavaScript must be enabled.” The thing it, it is enabled.

Maybe it’s time for me to stop using WordPress?

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Tech Optimism and Pessimism, When Extreme, May Harm You

There are the “tech optimists”, which are the people who believe that technology is great, and it will make the world a better place. There are also people known as the “tech pessimists”, which are people who believe things ranging from “technology was good but now it’s bad” to just a flat-out and extreme “technology is a mistake”.

If all technology is a mistake, does that include technologies for travel? How about assistive technologies? Are those also mistakes?

Being overly optimistic does not help either, especially if it leads you to claim things like “everything will be on the cloud and we will be happy!” and “crypto[currencies] and NFTs are good actually… no, really!” With the data breaches, lack of privacy, and all of the other issues that come with cloud computing, and the enormous waste of electricity that comes with cryptocurrencies and mass-produced images that sell for too much money, you can’t really blame the people who say “technology is a mistake”.

Perhaps the flaw in that view is with how broad of a term “technology” is.

Technology has its uses for sharing information, like what I do with my personal web site and blog.

It has its use for letting people communicate with each other over short or long distances, as many have done over the decades with Internet Relay Chat (IRC), AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Chat, and even nowadays with Discord, Skype, Slack, and for still quite a large amount of people: IRC.

It has its uses for various medical things, and medical devices have drastically changed healthcare for many through innovations.

It also has its uses with assistive technology, which even the UN considers to be life-changing.

Further yet, it has its uses in education for engagement, participation, feedback, and connection to content and real-world experiences, with things such as D2L Brightspace, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams now being seen in many schools and universities worldwide.

But the same technologies can be used for horrible purposes that can do more harm than good. Big tech companies pull tons of data from their users to sell for various purposes such as advertising, so they know how to target us with ads for new products or political wins that will favor them, sometimes even if you thought your custom settings disabled it.

But with how bad the technology can be, it can always get better, and it could always be worse. We all have roles that we can play in tech, no matter if you are designing a program, writing the code, performing quality control, using the finished product, or even if you are doing multiple or all of those things at once. Since all technologies are a mix of good and bad, there is no logical reason to be completely optimistic or pessimistic about technology.

The line between good and evil is not a solid one, but rather a very elaborate and blurry one. It is not even just a smooth transition between “here is the good, here is the nice smooth linear transition, and here is the evil.” What is good for some people is evil for others, and what is evil for some is good for others. So, the examples given in this article describing good and bad things can be the exact opposite for some people!

For marketing purposes, collecting data is great since it gives insights into information and groups of people whom they want to target a product or service to.

Would a marketer be a marketer if perse was not marketing to the correct markets? Yes, but per job would almost always be done incorrectly. The same goes for software developers. As people, we want to know how our programs and products are performing compared to others that do the same thing, so in this case, data collection can be seen as justifiable.

For many students as well as professors and teachers, Zoom and Microsoft Teams are nowhere close to replacing the more immersive and involved environments that in-person classes offer to people.

These virtual meeting programs are just horrible attempts at so-called substitutes that cannot truly replace in-person meetings/classes. Likewise, people working in an actual office or at least a physical building were more productive, and they got more done with in-office work than their work-from-home counterparts.

So, while there are benefits to technology, the negatives can sometimes overshadow the positives, and in other cases, the positives will overshadow the negatives. Frequently in tech optimism, all tech is seen as good, and in tech pessimism, all tech is seen as bad.

With all this being said, can we truly group tech into groups of “good and bad” without having tons of overlap or people pointing out how their thoughts make yours wrong?

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Perhaps a better site name would be nice

Instead of keeping the site named after me, it is called “weblogged” for now, unless I come up with a better name eventually.

Do you have suggestions? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

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Test from piusbird.space

THIS IS A TEST of the new blog’s location.  This is only a test.  There is no actual emergency.  If there was an emergency, this post will have a link to the appropriate rightthink news web site for information.

Thanks, Matt, for hosting my blog for me!

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Petition Web Sites Should Stop Spamming Messages

In the past month, I’ve received hundreds of emails and occasional texts, all because I signed a few petitions.

To help try and get support, too many of them would write names of politicians in the “to” field. Tons of people have received such emails, supposedly authored or even sent from left-leaning people such as Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders for left-leaning petitions or right-leaning people such as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for right-leaning petitions.

Sending unwanted messages is a horrible practice for people who claim they want to bring about positive change for their goals. All the unasked-for emails seem to only make a positive change on the number showing how large my mailbox (or maildir) got!

I would prefer to have opted in myself to get the emails. Furthermore, what is stopping me from using any other method for finding causes to support, such as the web site or an RSS feed?

We should still support good causes, but it is difficult for many to do so with how many petition web sites operate: they will spam you relentlessly unless you remember to “unsubscribe” after signing nearly every petition. They want you in their email lists, and they will potentially sell your email address to others, whether you like it or not.

What we could try doing is requesting that those who manage these petitioning platforms stop the unnecessary email spamming. Better yet, we should ask them not to collect unnecessary personally identifiable data on people solely for marketing purposes that the signers would find to be shady and creepy.

We should try to get our point across by signing petitions that let you opt-in (not opt-out) from such emails or texts and encourage petition writers to reject the platforms that spam emails and texts. We should also ask that once the organizers have your email address or phone number, they do not misuse that data in those same ways.

I am not against petition web sites using the information if the signer consents to receive the messages. For example, the person should get an easily understandable message letting per know “you are signing up to this email list, and we will send x messages per day/week.” Alas, if petition web sites operated this way, we would not need to call for the practice to change.

Petitions should be a tool for making change, not building up a list of emails and phone numbers to spam and possibly sell.

Let’s all help make it that way.


Copyright (C) 2022 Anton McClure
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

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Testing

Welcome to my new experiment in weblogging. THIS IS A TEST of the blogging software. No action is needed.

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