Symfony Station @symfonystation@phpc.social

If you have an independently hosted WordPress blog, you can turn it into a Fediverse server by installing the WordPress ActivityPub plugin. This means people can follow your blog from Mastodon etc.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard's Plugins section, click "add new" and search for "ActivityPub" . Click "install now" on the plugin, and when it has finished installing, click "activate".

2. On the WordPress dashboard, go to the "Users" section. Click on your username and scroll to the bottom to find your Fediverse address. Share this address with whoever wants to follow your blog on Mastodon etc.

3. To alter the plugin's settings, on your WordPress dashboard go to Settings > ActivityPub

If you want to switch off or remove the plugin, go to "plugins", then "deactivate" or "delete".

NOTE: This plugin only works with independently hosted WordPress sites. It doesn't work with free accounts on WordPress.com.

#FediTips #Fediverse #ActivityPub #WordPress

New #blog post: Two types of privacy. I define and compare the terms “Tracking reduction” and “Tracking avoidance”.

Excerpt:

When qualifying privacy recommendations with context, I think we should go further than describing threat models: we should acknowledge different types of privacy. “Privacy” means different things to different people. Even a single person may use the word “privacy” differently depending on their situation. Understanding a user’s unique situation(s), including their threat models, can inform us when we select the best of approach. How do we choose between reducing a footprint’s spread and size?

Feedback welcome, now matter how insignificant.

#privacy

@Mrfunkedude @doot

I really don’t want to do the mansplaining thing, and i sincerely apologize, but i am horrified at the prospect of women losing their freedom because of our increasingly theocratic country.

Just using a VPN isn’t enough. The VPN needs to a non-US provider where it’s minimally a hassle, and perhaps impossible, to for US states to subpoena records. Everyone loves to think VPN providers don’t keep logs, but many do - because they are compelled to. The proton vpn service is not bad here.

Sign up for a free proton mail and only use that for any “activities” you may be signing up for. Only use that through the VPN and do not associate it with any of your social media accounts.

Inform yourself about what your state laws do and don’t permit. Hopefully there will be a clearinghouse for this soon. I am very concerned that this will be a moving target, and certain things that seem legal (going to a state or country that permits an abortion to get one or to get medication may become criminal. Today’s federal government will likely not permit such a thing, but when the next republican takes the presidency, I expect that will change).

Finally, vote blue at all levels of government. Localities are becoming much more important. Local sheriffs, judges, prosecutors, mayors, state congress, governors, are all becoming incredibly important in protecting your online activities.

I need privacy. Not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are.

A chance to make change from within would be those working to delete the data. The workers can do this, the executives won't do this unless they need an abortion themselves or find business value in it. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-tech-industry-frets-about-handing-data-states-prosecuting-abortion-2022-06-24/ (https://jacky.wtf/2022/6/h3fA)

#Abortion #Privacy

Abortion Privacy.

This guide is rather basic, and is clearly aimed towards normies, but it’s a good starting-point for folks who might not already be privacy aficionados. Merely researching reproductive care could soon be a crime in your area, and basic digital opsec will help you stay safer.

https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy

The first round of the new @phparch and #Laravel elePHPants are starting their journey to their new homes. Bonus awesome boxes as well.
If you haven't ordered yours yet and always wanted to start a herd or round out your existing herd, now is the time https://www.phparch.com/swag/

TROM.tf updates:

- We've added tasks.trom.tf/ - a complete Trello trade-free alternative.
- We've added sketch.trom.tf/- a simple and useful online sketch whiteboard. Draw together with others and share your drawings.
- We've added another one scratch.trom.tf/ geared towards learning programming and creating animations.
- We moved yt.trom.tf to the original ytb.trom.tf. Do not worry, they are linked so it does not matter which one you use.

As you can see we are adding new trade-free services. Thanks to the people who donate to TROM. Now we have 27 trade-free services that are well maintained. So if you can, please donate to TROM here www.tromsite.com/donate/ to keep these services alive and relevant, and add more in the future.

We will make some "info" pages for some of these newly added services, soon. Enjoy! #tromlive

🚨 NEW: #Facebook is collecting ultrasensitive personal #data about #abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises.

#privacy #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #DeleteFacebook

https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/06/15/facebook-and-anti-abortion-clinics-are-collecting-highly-sensitive-info-on-would-be-patients

Microsoft's Github Copilot is disregarding Free Software licenses and will be happily selling parts of your GPL code against your will! Woo!

https://drewdevault.com/2022/06/23/Copilot-GPL-washing.html

As the author of this article says - free software should be dependant on free software architecture - I recommend https://codeberg.org as an open-source alternative to Github.
Sadly Github is no longer a platform that can be trusted.

CC: @codeberg

#FOSS #Github #Copilot #Microsoft #GPL #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #Codeberg

Congratulations to #Ukraine #Moldova #Georgia with official announcement of European Union candidate status.

Poland has been there in 2000's and finally accepted as member in 2004. The candidacy period isn't merely just waiting, it's mostly about catching up with infrastructure — which means EU harmonisation funds to build roads and stuff — but also legislation, which means very strict auditing of the funds are being spent. In Poland we had cases where local authorities had to return money they got from EU because they spent them in corrupted or nontransparent way.

And that was exactly the period that most efficiently kicked out the old mix of post-communist and Eastern European "friend circles", and resulted in infrastructure finally being built for people.

The fact that 🇺🇦 and 🇲🇩 have been granted Eu Candidate status makes me very happy. It would have been a failure of leadership and failure of basic decency to *not* do that.

Granted, 🇪🇺 will have to adapt and change. We will have to find better ways to deal with malicious actors like Órban or Kaczyński. We will have to recognize our common humanity over our national particular interests more.

But this decision gives me hope we actually *can* do all of this. Let's see to it that we will.

@rysiek Not to mention javascript reimplementations of <select>, <textarea>, <input type="submit">, etc.

I’m thinking about coining a term to reflect a non-toxic alternative to “search engine optimization” (SEO). Working name: “agent optimization”.

MDN has SEO guidelines because people often find MDN articles through general-purpose search engines. I noticed that a subset of their advice is directly beneficial to readers.

For example: imagine two pages have almost the same content (e.g. pages on the width and height CSS properties). Nearly-identical pages confuse search engines. To avoid duplicate content, authors are encouraged to differentiate the pages by using different examples. This is actually great for readers: when a reader navigates from one page to the next, it’d be unhelpful to present the same example again. Perhaps the width example could describe adaptation to a narrow viewport, while the height example could describe the trick for handling image aspect ratios with height: auto.

Lots of SEO is actually just basic design and accessibility guidelines: use good link names, remember alt-text, be mobile-friendly, use headings, don’t require tons of JS to display content, prefer semantic HTML, etc. Stuff like structured data also helps improve reader-mode implementations and makes content-blocking easier.

SEO gets toxic when it veers into copywriting guidelines, tricks like adding the current year to your heading (“Best products to buy in CURRENT_YEAR”), backlink-building, etc. Much of this does include so-called “white-hat SEO”. I think that I should distinguish “agent optimization” from “search engine optimization” by making it about accommodating the tools people use to find information, rather than about ranking high in search results or getting clicks. Once I finish my current WIP blog post (it’s about how to make privacy recommendations for different audiences), I think I’ll write about this. In the meantime, any ideas you have are welcome; please share them.

#POSSE note from https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/06/23/agent-optimization/

I've written an in-depth article aimed at non-technical people who are considering starting their own Mastodon server (and most of it applies to any kind of Fedi server):

https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps

It's on my website https://growyourown.services, which you can follow at @homegrown

Feedback welcome, let me know if there's something that needs fixing/improving. (I'm only writing for non-technical people using managed hosting though.)

#MastoTips #Mastodon #FediTips #Fediverse #Tutorials #SelfHosting #ManagedHosting #GrowYourOwn