Aqeel Zafar aqeeliz@identi.ca
Lahore, Pakistan
A software developer, who loves trying out new things, playing games and reading books. Also known as barlas.
Evan Prodromou at 2018-04-13T15:10:19Z
I've always liked this quote by Ben Franklin, made at the signing of the Declaration of Independence:We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Sad to say, apparently it's unsourced, and had been attributed to a number of other people before Franklin.
It makes me think a lot about the federated social web. Small social networks are very vulnerable; we need each other to survive.Christopher Allan Webber, Splicer, AJ Jordan, Aqeel Zafar likes this.
Doug Whitfield at 2018-04-09T21:44:23Z
Let's do a little experiment. It's obviously biased by my relative participation in each, but I'm comparing the reach of twitter, facebook, Diaspora, pump, G+, and GNU Social (plus anything that can talk directly to it...that is not via NavierStokes).Please like this if you see it. Obviously, if you want more people to like it, then you share it, but I'm only going to count likes.Stephen Sekula, David "Judah's Shadow" Blue, Splicer, Sarah Elkins and 26 others likes this.
Doug Whitfield, Doug Whitfield, Doug Whitfield, EVAnaRkISTO and 15 others shared this.
Show all 12 repliesHere are the final numbersGNU Social/Mastodon: 49pump.io: 31Facebook:26Diaspora: 15G+: 7Twitter: 0What's interesting is that on Diaspora, pump, and GNU Social, I all got actual comments about how the study was being conducted. I got literally zero comments on twitter or G+. There's all sorts of bias in this, but I have more "friends" on facebook by an order of magnitude and significantly more on twitter than the free platforms. So, it seems like people join the proprietary networks and just don't use them very much.Facebook is up to 29. The slow burn...Diaspora is up to 17GNU Social up to 97: https://nu.federati.net/conversation/510099#notice-1072972
The Jabber/XMPP Newsletter, 30 March 2018
“Welcome to the second edition of our newsletter. ”
xmpp.org/2018/03/the-xmpp-newsletter-30-march-2018
XMPP rocks!! 🤘
Tupulpo, martinho, Aqeel Zafar, Stephen Sekula and 1 others likes this.
Except no one uses it :-/
» Aqeel Zafar:
“Except no one uses it :-/”
I use it. And if you don't use it because "no one uses it", you're not helping.
Well, I use it, but no one I know uses it (except for one geeky friend, who tries each and every new IM service with me).
P.S: I do have some other contacts, but they are mostly social media contacts I never really talk with, just added them because they use XMPP. :-/
JanKusanagi at 2018-03-21T19:15:53Z
Jabber/XMPP or the highway xD
Aqeel Zafar, Scott Sweeny likes this.
Tom Tishken shared this.
The pumpiverse is a better place when we use titles in posts
Please, use them whenever possible, they really, really help =)
Aqeel Zafar, Ben Sturmfels, Stephen Michael Kellat, clacke@libranet.de ❌ and 3 others likes this.
Krugor, Stephen Michael Kellat, clacke@libranet.de ❌, clacke@libranet.de ❌ and 2 others shared this.
Update the web UI to include an option for a title when posting a note. It'd go a long way to what you're asking.Jason Self at 2017-05-21T19:48:16Z
Doug Whitfield likes this.
>> Jason Self:
“Update the web UI to include an option for a title when posting a note. It'd go a long way to what you're asking.”
Believe me, people often don't use the title field when posting images (which allows titles), or when using almost any other client (which often support titles on anything).
Hence the 'whenever possible' =)
This is mostly addressed to people who don't realize that using titles has advantages. We don't necessarily need to have a "Meanwhile" full of "a note, a note, a note", it can be much more useful.
Obviously if someone has something against using titles, by all means, don't use them...
JanKusanagi at 2017-05-21T20:17:40Z
clacke@libranet.de ❌ likes this.
When in the Web UI, I often share a 1-pixel image so I can add a title.
In AndStatus ... Well, I should be better at requesting features for AndStatus.>> Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠):
“In AndStatus ... Well, I should be better at requesting features for AndStatus.”
You could add your +1 to this issue =)
Christopher Allan Webber at 2017-05-05T22:12:44Z
Fediverse, I am feeling really great about things and optimistic. Thanks everyone who is working hard, which is a lot of people, on making the dream happen. We can do it!
ostfriesenmärz, Elena ``of Valhalla'', der.hans, Aqeel Zafar and 5 others likes this.
ostfriesenmärz, der.hans, clacke@libranet.de ❌, clacke@libranet.de ❌ and 2 others shared this.
Stav Prodromou at 2015-03-14T14:54:04Z
Is it true that in Europe the ratio of the circumference to a a circle's diameter is 14.3 ? #PiDayClaes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Nathan Willis, David "Judah's Shadow" Blue, ostfriesenmärz and 8 others likes this.
Evan Prodromou shared this.
What are in to work today for #piday.
Charles Stanhope at 2015-02-20T03:47:24Z
I've been enjoying listening to Hacker Public Radio. I wish I had discovered it sooner. Better late than never, I suppose, and it's great that there is always more to discover. :)Aqeel Zafar, cmhobbs likes this.
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Craig Maloney at 2015-02-12T06:00:04Z
[Blog] Childhood ownership status: grim (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CraigMaloney/~3/K6TSIKde53I/)While looking through some Google+ posts I came across an article where Marvel apparently told some exercise place they couldn’t name their exercises after comic book characters. And then I hearkened back to a realization that I realized when the Star Wars license was acquired by Disney:
My entire childhood is owned by a handful of companies.
I grew up in the 1970s, and in that time there were several things that I associate with my childhood. Here’s where their licenses stand:
- Star Wars: Lucasfilm (Disney)
- Muppets: Jim Henson Productions (Disney)
- Spiderman: Marvel (Disney)
- Tron (Disney)
- Disney Animation Studios (Disney)
- Dungeons and Dragons: Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro)
- GI Joe / Masters of the Universe / Transformers (Hasbro)
- Parker Brothers (Merlin handheld, various games) (Hasbro)
- Milton-Bradley (Hasbro)
- Mattel Electronics (Intellevision, etc.) (Mattel)
- Atari (who hasn’t owned Atari at this point?)
Worse, companies like Disney and Hasbro are famous for taking their licensed characters / properties so seriously that they will gladly send cease and desist letters to anyone who dares use their IP. Just ask the guy who had a character generator for D&D, or someone who did fan art for My Little Pony. Or anyone who has ever run afoul of Disney’s lawyers.
So I’ve com e to terms that I’ll never be able to have my childhood free from corporations who would rather shake down a daycare than have their trademarks used without permission, or have a fan make something useful for playing their game. I get that. But I don’t have to continually abide by this, nor do I have to continually support their businesses. But the deeds are done, and I can’t change the nostalgia I feel fro the characters, ships, and other trappings of these universes and products.
But I can vote with my future time and efforts. And while I’ll look longingly at the Lego Star Wars toys and other goodies coming out as Disney fully exploits their licenses I can take my inner 8 year old gently by the arm and show him other things: things that allow me to play along in their universe using Creative Commons or other licenses. And I can consciously gravitate to companies that don’t have a coronary whenever someone tries to play in their sandbox.
It’s the sort of thing any responsible parent would want for their inner child.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.mray INACTIVE, Jim Bowering, Jason Self, Mike Linksvayer and 8 others likes this.
Christopher Allan Webber, Freemor, Douglas Perkins, Douglas Perkins shared this.
D & D : Wizards of the coast? I feel old. For me it was TSR.
jasonriedy@fmrl.me at 2015-02-07T22:26:16Z
"Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself" -- Jonathan Coulton, "Code Monkey"Douglas Perkins, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Aqeel Zafar, Tobias Diekershoff and 3 others likes this.
Evan Prodromou at 2015-02-03T14:03:48Z
Identi.ca cert updated.Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Screwtape, Kevin Ford, Mike Linksvayer and 6 others likes this.
Douglas Perkins, Douglas Perkins shared this.
#oleole!
Clever bugspam
Larger image here, for web interface users
Jessica and I were triaging the MediaGoblin issue tracker and found some bugs that were really confusing. They both mentioned LDAP plugins, which we have, so at first they looked like real bugs... but then upon closer examination, they made no sense in the context of MediaGoblin. And hey, at the bottom there was a link... to a spam site!
I was really surprised at how accurate this bug looked... it was too good for a markov chain. @Mark Holmquist found the original post was a stackoverflow submission with terms that matched some other terms in our tracker. No wonder it was hard to detect as spam!
At the moment, I'm admiring the technique. I'm sure that level of admiration will drop off soon for pure annoyance if this keeps up though...
j1mc, Aqeel Zafar, Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) and 3 others likes this.
Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) shared this.
yes, basically it can be a markov chain with input being search engine returns for specific key terms and a lower frequency, to keep long sentences and a kind of "meaningful" effect....
just add the deadly link and you're done ... :/
but this is always interesting how this can create poetry out of trash sometime though ... ;)
@olm-e Yeah... it wasn't a markov chain though this time, it was reusing a real technical question from elsewhere. That's what I thought was surprising.
yes ... it's clever indeed to respect full posts, as it keeps coherence and looks like its just not "posted in the right box" ... what I thought was the use of a markov chain of keywords, not directly in the text, to treat websites forms and spam text from public forums content, like question and answer...
@olm-e Yeah, that's an insidiously "successful" strategy, unfortunately...
lostson at 2015-01-06T03:50:08Z
One thing I really enjoy is sharing my love of #starwars with my kids. A new episode of Star Wars Rebels was on tonight, and this is a big event at our house. Popcorn and everyone in the living room together glued to a new adventure. My four year old daughter has especially taken to Star Wars in general, and just makes the greatest observations while watching the show, makes a father proud.
Aqeel Zafar, Luis, Evan Prodromou, X11R5 and 2 others likes this.
Show all 5 repliesIt is a newer show in Disney new shows every monday night. So far it has been really good.
A new Star Wars cartoon show, graphics are similar to The Clone Wars.
ooh, nice. my kids and I really enjoy/ed clone wars.
it's in between ep 3 and 4
Sean Tilley at 2015-01-05T02:18:59Z
An excellent read on the nature of #surveillance from governments and commercial entities alike.
Ai Weiwei is Living in Our Future
Living under permanent surveillance and what this means for our privacy
Scorpio20, l30bravo, jasonriedy@fmrl.me, sazius and 5 others likes this.
lnxwalt@microca.st, lnxwalt@microca.st, Scorpio20, Scorpio20 and 10 others shared this.
I was unaware about the captcha portion.
@cmhobbs@pump.libernil.net I'm surprised they didn't mention Mechanical Turk in connection with Amazon's warehouse or reCAPTCHA, but I guess it's a bit different because it doesn't conscript you into service like reCAPTCHA or micro-manage you like Amazon's warehouse, Mechanical Turk is more on your own terms (except the hourly rate).Dianara + Mediagoblin
Dianara is now in the GNU Mediagoblin bandwagon, too ;)
Working with these nice people is awesome! \o/
Before anyone rushes to tests things, know that you need a GMG server running the latest code from git, and that currently Dianara needs a few adjustments that I haven't pushed to gitorious.org because those won't be needed in the future.
This is basically what kind-of-works now:
- Uploading an image, with title and description.
- Seeing your Activity timeline.
- Commenting on your posted images.
- Editing your posts and comments.
Looking forward to the Mediagoblin 0.8.0 release ;)Aqeel Zafar, Stephen Sekula, anxel g, ayleph and 13 others likes this.
Colegota, Douglas Perkins, Pascual, Pascual and 2 others shared this.
Show all 11 replies
Now we just need those mobile developers to get this working... I'd love for Puma or Impeller to do this, too!
Stephen Sekula at 2014-12-09T13:05:13Z
Gergely Nagy, Christopher Allan Webber likes this.
>> Stephen Sekula:
“Now we just need those mobile developers to get this working... I'd love for Puma or Impeller to do this, too!”
I don't think they'll need to change much, if at all. Jessica and Chris are taking great care to make GMG's API behave like Pump's API, so it's transparent for the clients.There are a few differences to polish, but it's coming along very nicely =)
Yeah, actually the fixes I made to Pumpa are no longer needed AFAIK, they were already fixed in the Mediagoblin end. (I still kept them because it makes Pumpa more robust in the face of "surprising" responses from the server :-)
If anyone wants to test this with Dianara-dev, now they just need to add DEFINES+=MEDIAGOBLIN in the 'qmake' step, when building from source.
So, instead of what in my instructions is "qmake ..", you should run:
qmake DEFINES+=MEDIAGOBLIN ..
Should work fine against any GMG server running up to date git master.
Anyone already using Dianara can avoid messing up their current configuration by running "Dianara --config somenameforthegmgaccount".
sazius at 2014-12-08T20:29:59Z
The status for Pumpa is about the same, except I think some tweaks are needed to make the activity timeline look a bit nicer. I tested editing a post and that worked as well, so probably does for Dianara too.
Exciting times! :-)
Aqeel Zafar, Stephen Sekula likes this.
Crazy interviews to pumpers (II): Adrián Perales - Entrevistas locas a pumperos (II): Adrián Perales
Laura Arjona Reina at 2014-12-04T18:57:39Z
Gracias @Adrián Perales por hacer esta entrevista posible.
Thanks @Adrián Perales for making this interview possible. (English below, translation mistaks to yours truly)
1.- ¿Quién eres tú en el pumpiverso?
Mi perfil es el de un usuario sin conocimientos técnicos. Como a la mayoría de pumperos, me interesa el software libre y es el tema mayoritario sobre el que publico, pero también hablo de cine, música, literatura, comparto imágenes y artículos. En resumen, ya que Pump.io es una red «de propósito general», aprovecho sus ventajas para hablar de lo que se me antoje.
2.- ¿Cómo era tu vida en Internet antes de pumpear?
Usaba las redes sociales centralizadas de manera más o menos habitual. Anteriormente fui usuario de StatusNet pero lo abandoné por razones que aún hoy se ven en otros usuarios. Pero la conversión de identi.ca a Pump.io (que fue el punto de partida para mí y muchos otros usuarios) coincidió con una vuelta a las ideas del software libre, de modo que me interesé de nuevo por las redes sociales descentralizadas.
3.- ¿Y ahora? ¿Cómo ha cambiado pump.io tu vida digital?
Aparte de la tranquilidad de no tener un Gran Hermano que nos vigile, el hecho de no tener límite de caracteres ha permitido interesantes debates, y en muchas ocasiones he cambiado mi punto de vista sobre ciertas cuestiones, relacionadas o no con el software libre, por las opiniones que hemos compartido.
Lo más importante para mí es que en Pump hay gente que no encontrarás en redes centralizadas, personas con un punto de vista muy particular sobre muchos asuntos y con una opinión bien formada sobre ellos. Me permite tener otro punto de vista.
4.- ¿Le has comentado a tus alumnos/compañeros profes que usas pump.io? Si sí ¿qué han dicho? Si no ¿lo harás?
Lo cierto es que en el MundoReal(TM) hablo bien poco sobre informática en general, menos aún sobre redes libres. Esta labor prefiero dejarla para mi actividad online, donde tengo más posibilidades de que alguien sienta curiosidad y se una.
De todos modos, en el estado actual de Pump no lo recomendaría a alguien de mi entorno personal o profesional. Ahora mismo la vida digital está muy centrada en el navegador, y la interfaz web de Pump.io no es muy amigable para nuevos usuarios. Falta información para empezar a usar la red y muchas funciones que sí tienen los (maravillosos) clientes de escritorio.
5.- Alguien (o una cuenta institucional, feed, etc) que te gustaría que estuviese en pump.io
Nunca entenderé por qué muchas instituciones y sitios de divulgación relacionados con el software libre no tienen una cuenta en Pump o en alguna otra red social libre. Aparte de eso, la naturaleza de la red social en sí llama a gente relacionada con el mundo del software, y echo de menos más variedad en los perfiles. Pero no es algo que me preocupe, estoy seguro de que llegará más gente cuando la interfaz web de Pump sea más amigable.
6.- Pide un deseo
¿Solo uno? Si descarto muchísimos otros, que alguien haga una WebUI externa con las características que le falta a la principal, o que la principal mejore.
7.- Dime a quién entrevisto ahora
Con permiso de mi grupo de «pumperos clásicos» (no voy a decir nombres porque seguro que me olvido a alguien y quedo fatal), una entrevista a @Eugenio M. Vigo puede ser muy interesante.
1.- Who are you in the pumpiverse?
My profile is one of a user without technical backgroud. As most of the pumpers, I'm interested in libre software and it is the main topic of my notes, but I also post about movies, music, literature, I share images and articles. In summary, as Pump.io is a "general purpose" social network, I take advantage of it to talk about what it comes to mind.
2.- How was life on the Internet before pumping?
I often used the centralized social network. I was StatusNet user before, but I abandoned it for reasons that I still see in other users. Identi.ca's migration to Pump.io (which was the starting point for me and many other users) coincided with me coming back to the ideas of libre software, so I got interested again about the decentralized social networks.
3.- And now? How did pump.io change your digital life?
Apart of the peace of mind of not having a Big Brother watching us, the fact of not having character limitations allowed interesting discussions, and many times I've changed my point of view about certain issues, related to libre software or not, due to the opinions that we shared.
The most important thing for me is that in Pump there is people that you will not find in the centralized networks, people with a particular point of view about many topics and a well formed opinion about them. It allows me to see a different point of view.
4.- Have you told your students/colleagues that you use pump.io? If yes What did they say? If not, Will you do it?
Frankly, in RealWorld(TM) I seldom talk about computers in general, less about free networks. This task, I prefer to leave it for my online activity, where I have more possibilities to catch attention of somebody so he or she joins.
Anyway, with the current status of Pump I would not recommend it to somebody in my personal or professional environment. Right now the digital life is very focused in the web browser, and the web interface of Pump.io is not very friendly for newcomers. It lacks information about how to start to use the network, and many features that are present in the (awesome) desktop clients.
5.- Somebody (or an institutional account, feed, etc) that you would like that were in Pump.io
I'll never understand why many institutions and spreading sites related to libre software have no Pump account, nor account in any other free social network. Apart from that, the nature of the social network attracts people related with the world of software, and I miss more diversity in the userbase. But it's not something that worries me, I'm sure that more people will come when the Pump web interface becomes more friendly.
6.- Make a wish
Only one? If I discard many others, I would like that somebody creates an external WebUI with the features that are missing in the main web interface, or that the main web interface is improved.
7.- Tell me who to interview now
With permission of my group of "classic pumpers" (I'll not say names because I'm sure I forget somebody), an interview to @Eugenio M. Vigo can be very interesting.
Francisco M García Claramonte, Aqeel Zafar, anxel g, Panko and 13 others likes this.
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