News
Here is the latest news from Ind.ie, as found on our personal sites, forum, and in other media coverage. You can also find only the Updates posts and Labs posts on their own pages.
Want to see what we’re reading? Check out the Indie Radar.
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A simple Node transform stream with the new Node 10 pipeline() function
“As part of my research for Hypha, I just completed the Kappa Architecture Workshop and I’m continuing to dive deeper down the stack to brush up on the fundamental concepts I need to be comfortable with going forward. Next up is Node streams. Streams are used everywhere in Node and while I’ve made extensive use of them in the past, there’s always been parts that seemed magical. I don’t really grok them and I’m working to change that.”
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Introducing Small Technology Foundation, Site.js, and Tincan
“Today, Laura and I want to introduce you to Small Technology Foundation, where we will be continuing the work we started at Ind.ie five years ago.”
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Where I’m speaking in Summer/Autumn 2019
“This summer/autumn, I’m speaking at conferences in Amsterdam, London and Edinburgh. This year I’ve had mixed experiences with speaking, so I’m being picky about future talks. So I’m looking forward to the following…”
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This One Weird Trick Tells Us Everything About You
“I wrote a little essay for Smashing Print #1: Ethics & Privacy titled ‘This One Weird Trick Tells Us Everything About You.’ It covers different types of tracking and how it came to exist, as well as regulation, ethics, and why we need better business models.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 5th July 2019
“New blocking rules! On 5th July 2019, Laura blocked adtech on one site, fixed one site and blocked two new trackers. The rules will auto-update if the app is running. If it’s not, you can get the new rules by choosing ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu.”
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Have you heard about Silicon Valley’s unpaid research and development department? It’s called the EU.
“Who should you thank for Facebook’s Libra? “One of the UK’s leading privacy researchers” University College London The DECODE project And, if you’re an EU citizen who pays their taxes, -You. Surprised? Don’t be.”
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Like It or Not, We're Already Cyborgs
“To privacy activists Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag, we don’t need brain implants to become cyborgs; we’re already jacked in. And we need a Universal Declaration of Cyborg Rights.”
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Rerun cloud-init on multipass
“Today, I had the need to experiment with rerunning cloud-init on a virtual machine created with multipass. You can use cloud-init with multipass by specifying a cloud-init.yaml file when creating your instance. e.g, multipass launch --name my-instance --cloud-init ./cloud-init.yaml This is all well and good and works as you would expect. However, today, I wanted to experiment with running cloud-init on an already-provisioned instance.”
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Export/import issues with GitLab CE
“GitLab CE (the free/open source version of GitLab) has an import issues feature but doesn’t have an export issues feature (because, not enterprise, apparently). So if you fork a project and want to transfer the issues also, you’re out of luck. Unless you use the API, that is.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 5th May 2019
“New blocking rules! On 5th June 2019, Laura fixed two sites, and blocked four new trackers. The rules will auto-update if the app is running. If it’s not, you can get the new rules by choosing ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 15th May 2019
“New blocking rules! On 15th May 2019, Laura fixed two sites, and blocked four new trackers. The rules will auto-update if the app is running. If it’s not, you can get the new rules by choosing ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu.”
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The Do’s and Don’ts of Tech Regulation
“Yesterday, I was interviewed on Al Jazeera news about the Macron-Zuckerberg meeting (Warning: the linked page on Al Jazeera includes privacy-eroding trackers, including Facebook.)1 in which they apparently decided on a framework of “co-regulation.” This is not what I mean when I talk about the need to regulate surveillance capitalists.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 9th May 2019
“New blocking rules! On 9th May 2019, Laura blocked one blocker blocker, fixed two sites, blocked cookies for one tracker, and blocked seven new trackers. To get the new rules, choose ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu. If you keep the macOS app open, the rules should auto-update.”
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Slavery 2.0 and how to avoid it: a practical guide for cyborgs
“This is the original English version of an article that I wrote for Issue 32 of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (The German Federal Cultural Foundation) magazine. You can also read the German version.”
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Indie Web Server 9.0.0: Housekeeping
“I just released Indie Web Server version 9.0.0. This is mostly a housekeeping release and nearly all the changes are under the hood.”
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Indie Web Server 8.2.0: Cascading archives for an evergreen web
“I just released version 8.2.0 of Indie Web Server. This version brings with it a cascading archives feature to make it easier than ever for you to support an evergreen web and not break existing links as you evolve your sites.”
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Indie Web Server 8.1.1: Reverse proxy (local mode)
“I just released Indie Web Server version 8.1.1 which introduces a reverse proxy feature.”
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This site [ar.al] now runs on Indie Web Server
“In the interests of eating my own hamster food1, I just switched this site from nginx to Indie Web Server. The only complication in the process was that I had to update the hostname of the server to match the domain name.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 17th April 2019
“New blocking rules! On 17th April 2019, Laura blocked first-party adtech on one site and blocked nine new trackers. To get the new rules, open the app on iOS, or choose ‘Update rules’ from the menu on macOS.”
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Set up a live static personal web site in seconds with Indie Web Server 8.0.0
“On April 1st (no joke), Indie Web Server 7.1.0 introduced the ability to set up a live static web site in seconds on any server that had Node.js installed.”
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Indie Web Server 7.1.0: Launch a live secure static site with a single command
“You have: a VPS with a domain name pointing to it and Node.js installed. You want: to deploy a secure, live static site. You do: npm i -g @ind.ie/web-server && web-server --live Hit your domain name in a browser.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 1st April 2019
“New blocking rules! On 1st April 2019, Laura blocked three blocker blockers, fixed one site, and blocked four new trackers. To get the new rules, open the app on iOS, or choose ‘Update rules’ from the menu on macOS.”
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Indie Web Server: now with native 404 to 302 support for an evergreen web
“What if links never died? What if we never broke the Web? What if it didn’t involve any extra work? It’s possible. And easy. Just make your 404s into 302s. Indie Web Server now has native support for 404 to 302.”
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Custom error pages for Indie Web Server
“I just released Indie Web Server version 6.3.0 with new default 404 and 500 error pages and support for custom ones.”
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Upcoming talks: April
“In April, I will be speaking at two events, starting with The Straits Times Education Forum debate on entrepreneurship to be held at Singapore Management University on April 6th, 2019.”
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Introducing Indie Web Server (video)
“I just recorded a short video demonstrating just how simple and seamless Indie Web Server really is.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 13th March 2019
“New blocking rules! On 13th March 2019, Laura blocked one blocker blocker, and fixed two sites. To get the new rules, choose ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu.”
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Setting multiple key bindings for the same action in GNOME
“In GNOME, you can only set one key binding for a given action using the Settings app (under Devices → Keyboard) even though the settings data structure itself accepts an array. You can, however, set multiple key bindings per action by installing the dconf Editor app or through the command-line using the gsettings command.”
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Indie Web Server
“Indie Web Server is a secure and seamless Small Tech personal web server.”
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HTTPS Server: now with seamless Let’s Encrypt support
“Yesterday, I introduced HTTPS Server as a development server. What a difference a day makes! Today, with seamless Let’s Encrypt support via the excellent Greenlock.js module, HTTPS Server is ready for use as a secure Small Tech personal web server for development and deployment.”
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Upcoming Talks March
“I’m giving two talks this month; at Le Grand Barouf Numérique in Lille, France on the 20th and at the Art, Technology, and Change conference at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 26th.”
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HTTPS Server
“HTTPS Server is a development server that uses nodecert to automatically provision and use locally-trusted TLS certificates.”
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Nodecert
“Nodecert is a Node.js module and command-line tool that automatically provisions locally-trusted TLS certificates for your development environment using mkcert.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 6th March 2019
“New blocking rules! On 6th March 2019, Laura blocked two blocker blockers, fixed one site, and blocked seven new trackers. To get the new rules, choose ‘Update rules’ or ‘Check again now’ from Better’s menu.”
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Small Technology
“The antidote to Big Tech is Small Tech. Big Tech, with its billion-dollar unicorns, has robbed us of the potential of the Internet. Fueled by the extreme shortsightedness and greed of venture capital and startups, the utopic vision of a decentralised and democratic commons has morphed into the dystopic autocracy of Silicon Valley panopticons that we call surveillance capitalism. This status quo threatens not just our democracies but the very integrity of our personhood in the digital and networked age.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 21st February 2019
“New blocking rules! On 21st February 2019, Laura blocked one blocker blocker, fixed one site, and blocked four new trackers.”
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Hypha Glossary
“This is a work-in-progress glossary of terms for Hypha.”
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Privacy is not a science, it is a human right
“Given the levels of institutional corruption in academia and in the regulatory bodies and advocacy institutions that should be protecting our privacy, very few things shock me these days. So hats off to Bart van der Sloot for managing the impossible and finding a new low by framing institutional corruption as scientific neutrality in his article Dubbele petten in de privacywetenschap…”
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On the General Architecture of the Peer Web (and the placement of the PC 2.0 era within the timeline of general computing and the greater socioeconomic context)
“The first era of general computing was the mainframe era and it was centralised. The second, the personal computing (PC 1.0) era, was decentralised. The third is the Web era (let’s call it Mainframe 2.0). And it is, once again, centralised. Today, we find ourselves at the end of the Mainframe 2.0 era and on the precipice of a new chapter in the history of general computing: the Peer Web. Let’s call it the Personal Computing 2.”
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Hypha Spike: Persistence 1
“Following on from Hypha Spike: Multiwriter 2 this spike aims to: Use persistent storage Evolve the sign up / sign in processes accordingly ”
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Episode 4 of the Elastic Brand Podcast with Laura Kalbag
“In this episode Laura and Liz discuss Ethical brand design Toxic technology and dark patterns The need for tech industry diversity. Accessibility and inclusivity. How we can be more ethical as designers. How we need to make sure we are working with ethical companies ”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 2nd February 2019
“New blocking rules! On 2nd February 2019, Laura fixed one broken site, blocked a blocker blocker on another site, and adtech on a third site. To get the new rules, open the app on iOS, or choose ‘Update rules’ from the menu on macOS.”
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Hypha Spike: Multiwriter 2
“Following on from Hypha Spike: Multiwriter 1 this spike aims to: Simplify the node authorisation flow to a simple authorisation alert on already-authorised nodes. ”
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Hypha Spike: Multiwriter 1
“Following on from Hypha Spike: WebRTC 1 and Hypha Spike: DAT 1, this spike aims to explore: Explore the current state of multiwriter in the DAT world. ”
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Ethical design is not superficial
“We are seeing more and more organisations starting to talk about ethical design. Unfortunately I suspect this has less to do with caring about the impact of unethical design on society, democracy and the environment, and more to do with organisations attempting to distance themselves from similar businesses who are finding it impossible to continue to disguise their toxicity.”
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Hypha Spike: WebRTC 1
“Following on from (and in conjunction with) the Hypha Spike: DAT 1, this spike aims to: Replicate a hypercore from browser-to-browser using WebRTC. ”
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Hypha Spike: Diceware
“Pulled out from Hypha Spike: DAT 1. Use Diceware for passphrase generation to ensure a high-entropy process. Use budo in the spikes to enable lightweight use of bundling/modules/etc. ”
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Hypha Spike: DAT 1
“Following on from Hypha Spike: Diceware, this spike aims to explore: Creating an in-browser DAT data store using the keys generated in the previous spike Replicating that datastore over a web socket connection with the always-on node and making it available over UTP ”
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I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)
“It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes, it’s exactly what you have to do in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, and surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy. You see, it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected groups and organisations in the world.”
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Hypha Spike: Aspect Setup 1
“Your identity – your self – is a sharded aggregate of information. For an organism to have integrity it must have ownership and control over the aggregate of these various elemental shards that, combined, constitute its being. In Hypha, I will call these shards aspects.”
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Deployment-first development
“Independent technology – ethical technology – must be as accessible as possible for its intended audience at every step of the process. That doesn’t mean it must be accessible as possible to everyone at every stage in its development but rather it should be accessible as possible for the people that are working on it or with it at any given point. Hypha is currently at the start of its development stage and thus must be as accessible as possible to developers who want to follow along with its development, run it themselves, and possibly fork it off and try new things with it.”
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Success criteria for the PC 2.0 era
“ Own and control your own identifiers. No privileged nodes. Effortlessly own and control your own always-on node on the Internet. ”
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The post-Web is single tenant
“Hypha is an exploration of what personal technology means in the digital/networked age. The goal is to create a bridge from the Mainframe 2.0 era to the Peer Computing (PC 2.0) era1. When we talk about scale in peer computing, our focus is on creating systems that are human-scale.”
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Hypha Spike: Deployment 1
“Wait, what, we’re deploying Hypha – but we haven’t even built it yet?! Exactly.”
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Getting Green Recorder running on Wayland under Gnome on Ubuntu 18.10-based systems
“Green Recorder is an app for recording your screen on Linux which, as far as I know, is the only such app at the moment that works with Wayland. It’s what I used to capture the video of my segment on Al Jazeera News today.”
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Al Jazeera News interview: French “tech tax”
“I did a live interview on Al Jazeera News today on France pushing forward alone with a new tax on big tech companies.”
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Sometimes you have to stick a screwdriver in it (or how to liberate a Chromebook in ten easy steps)
“Over the holidays, I found a Chromebook that Samsung had given me to evaluate about six years ago and which had been gathering dust ever since. Coincidentally, Laura’s sister Annie had just told me that she needed a laptop. Hmm… Well, there was no way I was going to give her a Google spy device, so I decided to liberate the Chromebook from Google’s surveillance-based operating system (ChromeOS) and gift it to her.”
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Tilingnome
“I like the idea of a tiling window manager like i3 (or i3-gaps, or sway) not necessarily because of their lightweight nature when compared to a fully-fledged desktop environment like GNOME but because of their potential organisational and navigational value.”
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What does a private communicator look like?
“Hypha is not about building a single product. It’s about exploring the possibilities and problem domain of private communication and what it means to have technology that enables privacy (and therefore personhood). At the same time, it isn’t about designing from the inside out. It’s not about building the protocols and waiting for the tools to happen. It’s about experimenting with both. And, in the process, hopefully sparking one or more everyday things that enable people to communicate with privacy.”
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Kappa Architecture Workshop
“Kappa Architecture Workshop is an excellent online resource by Stephen Whitmore (of Cabal fame), Mathias Buus (one of the cornerstones of the DAT Project), et al., that gives you an introduction to Kappa Architecture using modules from the DAT Node.js ecosystem like hypercore, multifeed, discovery-swarm and kappa-core… You can follow along with the workshop online, view my working files as I do, and also submit any issues you may run into or improvements you might want to suggest on the workshop’s source code repository.”
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Remember directory from last session in Tilix with zsh
“If you’re using the excellent Tilix terminal with the wonderful zsh shell (in my case, via oh-my-zsh), you might notice that opening a new session (e.g., splitting your current session vertically or horizontally or opening a new window), doesn’t start you at the directory you were in in the previous one as you would expect but rather returns you to your home directory. I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with this but not so much that I actually felt bothered enough to do something about it.”
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Surveillance Capitalism at the BBC
“Recently, I recorded a video on surveillance capitalism with BBC Ideas. You can watch the video on the BBC Ideas web site and you can also embed it on your own site, as shown above… But what happens when you add that code to your site? Do you just get the video, as you would expect, or do you also get something you didn’t bargain for?”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 12th December 2018
“New blocking rules! On 12th December 2018, Laura fixed two broken sites, blocked anti-tracking adtech on two sites, and blocked six new trackers.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 7th December 2018
“New blocking rules! Laura fixed one broken site, blocked one blocker blocker, and blocked twenty-seven new trackers. To get the latest rules, select ‘Update rules’ from the menu in the Better app.”
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Baby Steps
“Five years ago, when I decided to devote myself to tackling the problem of surveillance capitalism, it was clear what we needed: convenient and beautiful ethical everyday things that provide seamless experiences on fully free-as-in-freedom stacks.”
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GDMR: this one simple regulation could end surveillance capitalism in the EU
“No, you didn’t misread it and, no, it’s not a typo. GDMR – the General Data Minimisation Regulation – can end surveillance capitalism in the EU. The problem is that no such regulation exists. So, let’s change that, starting now.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 30th November 2018
“New blocking rules! On 30th November 2018 Laura fixed three broken sites, blocked first-party targeted ads on three sites, and blocked fourteen new trackers.”
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Can Facebook be forced to comply with privacy laws?
“‘Facebook is accused of undermining democratic institutions, but its CEO fails to face up to MPs at a hearing in London.’ Al Jazeera Inside Story featuring @aral.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 23rd November 2018
“New blocking rules! On 23rd November 2018 Laura fixed seven broken sites, blocked three blocker blockers, and blocked twenty-three new trackers. To get the new rules, open the app on iOS, or choose ‘Update rules’ from the menu on macOS.”
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Gnomit 1.0.6
“The pushed the 1.0.6 release of Gnomit, my little git commit message editor for Linux, to the Flathub GitHub repo about two weeks ago but I’m only writing about it now as there was a delay with the update appearing on Flathub.”
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Better Blocker 2018.2 release for macOS and iOS
“Laura and I are happy to announce that Better Blocker version 2018.2 is now available for purchase for iPhone, iPad, and Mac on the App Store and Mac App Store.”
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The quest to design an ethical social media platform
“Ads are the traditional funding source for social platforms; they take users' personal data and serve it to advertisers who want their ads to reach a specific audience. This virtually ensures a fundamentally exploitative business model based on surveillance, says Laura Kalbag, a designer and the co-founder of digital justice not-for-profit Ind.ie.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 3rd November 2018
“New blocking rules! On 3rd November 2018, Laura fixed seven broken sites, blocked four blocker blockers, and blocked twenty-six new trackers. To get the new rules, open the app on iOS, or choose ‘Update rules’ from the menu on macOS.”
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With this amazing trick, you can stay an extra night in Paris but only if you use Linux!
“I was supposed to be back in Cork right now but instead I’m staying an extra night in Paris and it’s all because I was using my Linux machine instead of my Mac at the airport…”
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version: display Linux version information
“One thing I find myself always having to look up is how to display version information in Linux. That’s because the commands for displaying version information are in no way intuitive or memorable.”
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Better Blocking Rules Update 22nd October 2018
“New blocking rules! On 22nd October 2018, Laura fixed four broken sites, blocked six blocker blockers, and blocked six new trackers.”
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Thundernerds Podcast Episode 162 – 🖥️ Surveillance Capitalism & Accessibility with Laura Kalbag
“In this episode we get to speak with Laura Kalbag: Author, Co-Founder and Designer at Indie. We chat with Laura about her residence in Ireland, and the the current European political climate with regards to Brexit. We then dive into Laura’s company Indie, and their product Better; Better is a privacy tool for Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac that protects from behavioural ads and companies that track and profile on the web.”
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Gnomit 1.0.4
“There’s a new version of Gnomit, my little commit message editor for Linux, thanks to the initiative of Sergey Bugaev who sent me a patch a few weeks ago.”
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Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia
“In this opinion piece, activist Aral Balkan says we’re living in a world where data companies have become factory farms for human beings.”
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Updating firmware on Dell XPS 13 With Pop!_OS 18.04
“Firmware upgrades were failing for me on my Dell XPS 13… A little online research led to me to a page on Debugging UEFI Capsule updates, which in turn suggested that I try the latest fwupdate from master. My inability to RTFM, led me to open an issue on the fwpdate issue tracker when compilation failed.”
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Setting up Hiawatha web server on Ubuntu 16.04
“The unfortunately-named Hiawatha web server with its problematic logo is an independent, non-commercial, free and open web server built by Dutchman Hugo Leisink as a hobby project for the last 15 years or so. It’s primarily focused on security and the author appears to have a no-nonsense approach to its development.”
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Better Blocker: thank you for our best week yet!
“Laura and I want to thank those of you who purchased Better Blocker last week. Thanks to you, we had our best week ever and sold over 2,500 units. That’s quite something given that we have sold just over 20,000 units in total over the last two years.”
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Better Blocker for macOS Mojave
“Today, we complete the roll out of the new design with the launch of the new Better Blocker for macOS. In line with the iOS app, we have also dropped the price to the lowest tier for the Mac app. Even though the new apps are radical redesigns, we decided not to release a new app. If you already bought Better Blocker for iOS and/or Better Blocker for macOS, you can simply upgrade to the new apps via the App Store.”
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Better Blocker for iOS 12
“Better Blocker for iOS 12 is now available on the App Store. Better Blocker is our content blocker for iOS and macOS that protects you from privacy-eroding surveillance-based behavioural advertising (adtech) and other trackers. It also removes ads that negatively impact your Web experience. This release is a major redesign. We’ve worked hard to radically simplify the app.”
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Better for iOS 12 is now available on the App Store
“We’ve made the app simpler, easier to use, and just as effective as before. We’ve also made the app more affordable at $0.99, £0.99, €1.09—we want more folks to be protected on the web.”
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Workaround for unclickable app menu bug with window.makeKeyAndOrderFront and NSApp.activate on macOS
“To open a window and make it appear on top of other windows on macOS, you can do the following: myWindow.makeKeyAndOrderFront(nil) NSApp.activate(ignoringOtherApps: true) This works to show the window, make it topmost and also display the app menu. The problem is that the app menu is not clickable until you tab away from the application and back again.”
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Responsive design got my app rejected
“The iOS 12 version of Better is currently in review with a status of Metadata Rejected and I blame responsive design. Let me explain.”
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Better, simpler, and more affordable
“Two weeks ago, in Better Blocker: two year review and thoughts on the future, I wrote that I was going to “radically simplify” the Better apps. Today, I submitted a radical redesign of Better Blocker for iOS to the App Store for approval in time for the launch of iOS 12. The app has a minimal new design and a beautiful new icon that Laura and I designed together.”
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What is Mastodon and why should I use it?
“This post is a follow-up to What’s wrong with Twitter?. Mastodon started out as a microblogging platform similar to Twitter, but has evolved with more features that show an ethical, progressive and inclusive focus. Instead of tweets, your posts on Mastodon are called toots. ”
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What’s wrong with Twitter?
“A couple of weeks ago I posted a quick note mentioning I now have my own Mastodon instance. But first things first: why? My aim is to use Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter. While Mastodon is not equivalent to Twitter, many of its features are similar. And I’m looking for an alternative to Twitter because Twitter is not good for me. ”
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Custom Emoji on Mastodon
“One of the many cool features of Mastodon is that you can create custom emoji for your instances which can be duplicated and adopted by other instances. This morning I made an :indieHeart: custom emoji for Mastodon. Here are some things I learned. ”
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Extended Codice Interview With Rai 1
“I was recently featured in an episode1 of a technology show called Codice on Italian national television channel Rai 1. I just stumbled on an extended cut they released on surveillance-based video site YouTube. You can watch the segment here without being tracked. ”
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New RSS Feeds on the Ind.ie Site
“TLDR; We now have usable RSS feeds! RSS feed for Ind.ie News (everything: updates and labs) RSS feed for Ind.ie Updates (posts about what we’re doing and why) RSS feed for Ind.ie Labs (more “technical” posts) RSS feed for the Ind.ie Radar (news items relevant to Ind.ie interests) ”
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Better Blocker: two year review and thoughts on the future
“I’m proud of what we’ve achieved with Better so far. However, I’m unhappy with the reach Better Blocker has and we must figure out a way of increasing that reach while not cutting off a source of revenue without which we could not afford to pay the rent. Here are some of my thoughts about the future, on how we can optimise for the right things to address these concerns…”
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Get Unicode-aware length of string in JavaScript
“stringInstance.length in JavaScript is not Unicode aware. That means, for example, that the following code: "🤓".length Will return 2, not 1. If you want a Unicode-aware string length, use this function: ”
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Gnomit Flatpak bundle
“Gnomit, my simple Git commit message editor for Gnome, is now available as a Flatpak bundle. ”
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Introducing Gnomit: a simple Git commit message editor for Gnome
“Gnomit is a simple Git commit message editor for Gnome, inspired by the excellent Komet app by Mayur Pawashe that I was using on macOS. ”
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Accessibility for Everyone Audiobook
“I am very happy to tell you that the audiobook of Accessibility For Everyone is now available to buy on Audible. It’s thanks to the hard work of my brother, Sam Kalbag, who single-handedly edited, engineered and produced the audiobook, helped me do the recording properly, and gave me the benefit of his extensive knowledge of audiobooks. ”
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Interview With Shannon Fisher About Accessibility for Everyone
“A while back I had a lovely evening chatting with the fabulous Shannon Fisher about Accessibility For Everyone. Shannon asks really thoughtful questions, and it was fun chatting to someone who already cares so much about inclusivity. ”
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How to install the Vala Reference Manual into Devhelp using the apt package manager
“The Vala Documentation states that the Vala Reference Manual is available in HTML and PDF versions and “is also available for your installed version of Vala as DevHelp from your distribution, such as Fedora or Ubuntu.” Sadly, though, it doesn’t tell you the package names or link to the packages. For Debian’s apt-based systems like Pop!_OS and Ubuntu, the package you’re looking for is called vala-0.40-doc. ”
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Ind.ie, Better, and Laura on Mastodon
“If you’re a person who is on Mastodon, you may be interested to know that we now have our own instances for Ind.ie, and I have my own instance for me. ”
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Getting your iCloud contacts on GNU/Linux
“Just like you can use iCloud calendars on GNU/Linux, you can also synchronise your contacts as iCloud uses an open standard called CardDAV. ”
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Using iCloud calendars on GNU/Linux
“iCloud isn’t just for your Apple toys. Since iCloud uses an open standard called CalDAV, you can synchronise your calendars to your other devices on other operating systems like GNU/Linux. ”
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Multi-writer Dat could power the next Web
“Dat is an exciting new technology that enables you to synchronise data privately and in a peer-to-peer fashion. It uses the same underlying concepts as blockchain1 sans global consensus, and it’s run by the not-for-profit Code for Science & Society. The community has top-notch people like Mathias Buus, Tara Vancil, Karissa McKelvey, and Jim Pick. ”
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How to enable the Browse Files setting in GSConnect
“GSConnect is a beautiful shell extension for Gnome Shell that integrates mobile devices that can run KDE Connect (like phones and tablets that run LineageOS) with desktop computers that run Gnome on GNU/Linux (like my notebook running Pop!_OS). One of the features that you might have trouble with is Browse Files as it is broken by default. It fails unless you have a separate app installed. ”
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Crafting a continuous-client desktop/mobile experience on Linux with GSConnect
“A cornerstone of Apple’s approach to seamless design is reflected in a feature they call Continuity. Continuity aims to provide a “seamless experience” between your various devices. This is essentially what Joshua Topolsky called the continuous client back in 2010 and a concept that I wrote at length about in my chapter titled Mobile Considerations In User Experience Design: “Web or Native?” in Smashing Magazine’s Redesign The Web book back in 2012.”
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Cross-posting using meta information
“Writing a few blog posts last week, and cross-posting them in various locations, got me thinking about how meta information can be reused. I started looking into the meta information in the <head> of each page, and how best to format it so that social networks (Twitter, Facebook, messaging apps…) would pick up on titles, descriptions and images. That way, when I share a URL from my site, if the site/app has the functionality, they can expand that URL into a preview including a nicely-formatted title, summary, and image.”
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Insecure
“The state of sharing on the web is broken. After the Snowden revelations, it became clear that my sharing “content” willy-nilly was a potential danger to me. I was previously oblivious to the risk of sharing everything about myself on social media. The tiniest most harmless piece of information about me could be derived in a data set somewhere to become something very meaningful (even if it’s wrong) and potentially dangerous.”
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Beyond my means
“When I wrote about owning and controlling my own content, I talked about trying to keep my “content” in its canonical location on my site, and then syndicating it to social networks and other sites. Doing this involves cross-posting, something that can be done manually (literally copying and pasting titles, descriptions, links etc) or through automation. Either way, it’s a real faff. Posting to my site alone is a faff.”
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Owning and controlling my own content
“One of the ultimate goals we have at Ind.ie is owning and controlling our own data. That means I want to have ownership and control over my own personal information, rather than it being in the hands of big corporations. My personal information could range from something as intensely private as my medical information, or my private messages with another person. ”
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Changes
“For the last 12 years, my main development machine has been a Mac. As of last week, it’s a Dell XPS 13 running Pop!_OS 18.04.”
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The cost of access
“This was my opening introduction for Futurefest’s “Who Is the Internet For?” debate today in London. I didn’t hit all the points as smoothly as this, but I covered most of it throughout the debate. In the description for this session, it says “Without the inputs from internet users with physical impairments we wouldn’t have the voice technology underpinning Siri or Alexa.” But what is the cost of using Alexa for people who would find it difficult or impossible to access the web or technology without voice recognition?”
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Blog series on personal websites
“I’ve been getting more into blogging again, starting with a series on personal websites, my relationship with my own, and how they are valuable in a world of surveillance capitalism… ”
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Hello Ireland
“On Saturday, we celebrated the victory for Irish people as they repealed the anti-abortion laws. We were celebrating not just because we care about the rights of people with uteruses, but also because we have now been resident in Ireland for two months. And we love it here. Why move? If you know Aral and me, you’ll know we’ve been trying to find the right home for the last three or four years.”
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My speech at General Assembly in Berlin, November 2017
“This is the full video and text of my opening intervention at the General Assembly event in Berlin from November of 2017. ”
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We forced 9 privacy experts to say “I told you so” about Facebook – hopefully we’ll listen next time
“Aral Balkan, digital activist: Yes, I’ve been warning about the dangers of surveillance capitalism and data collection by the likes of Google, Facebook and the entire adtech industry for years. In fact, here, “have a cookie” because you’re being tracked by those same companies as you read this very article on The Next Web. (Unless you have a tracker blocker active, that is.) No, there’s no pleasure in being right about this.”
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The punk rock internet – how DIY rebels are working to replace the tech giants
“The office planner on the wall features two reminders: “Technosocialism” and “Indienet institute”. A huge husky named Oskar lies near the door, while the two people who live and work here – a plain apartment block on the west side of Malmö, Sweden – go about their daily business. ”
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Digital dystopia: tech slavery and the death of privacy – podcast
“To kick off, we explore whether our privacy has been compromised by the tech giants whose business models depend on harvesting and monetising our data. We speak to cyborg rights activist Aral Balkan; the executive director of UK charity Privacy International Gus Hosein; and to Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine. ”
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Farewell, not goodbye: leaving DiEM25 (or “We need to talk about democracy, transparency, feminism, and Assange.”)
“This is not a post I ever wanted to write but it’s time to tie up loose ends before starting the new year. I’ve left DiEM25 and I’d like to explain to you why that is and what I hope DiEM will do differently in the future if it is to realise its tremendous potential to be a force for good in the world. ”
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Semantic HTML on 24 Ways
“It’s been a few years since I wrote something for 24ways, but this year I’m back, making the case for semantic HTML. As I mention in the article, I see a lot of redundant and unsemantic HTML while I’m working on Better. HTML is often seen as easy, and therefore not worth learning in detail. It’s frustrating because HTML is one of the few completely unavoidable technologies of the web.”
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The internet is broken
“Speaking over Skype from a coffee shop in Malmö, Sweden, Aral Balkan is advocating a grassroots revolution against the dominance of such supernodes. The founder of ind.ie, a social enterprise dedicated to building a new internet, he sees the future internet as one in which individuals retain control over their data and how they benefit from it. ”
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Accessibility for Everyone
“For the past three years, Laura Kalbag has been writing a book on accessibility. It’s called Accessibility for Everyone. You should read it. ”
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Evolution
“For the past four years, and with very limited resources, Laura and I – along with the help of some wonderful people – have been trying to make the Web, the Internet, and technology in general a safer and kinder place. In this we are thankful to have wonderful allies, and the shoulders of giants to stand on, some of whom have been working on solutions for far longer than we have even been aware of the problems.”
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Decrypting Amber Rudd
“Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube (Google/Alphabet, Inc) have formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and Amber Rudd is asking them to quietly drop end-to-end encryption from their products. You should not believe a single word any of those companies tells you about end-to-end encryption or privacy on their platforms ever again. PS. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. ”
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We didn’t lose control – it was stolen
“The Web we have is not broken for Google and Facebook. People farmers are reaping the rewards of their violations into our lives to the tune of tens of billions in revenue every year. How can they possibly be our allies? ”
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Encouraging Individual Sovereignty and a Healthy Commons
“Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto outlines his vision for a centralised global colony ruled by the Silicon Valley oligarchy. I say we must do the exact opposite and create a world with individual sovereignty and a healthy commons. ”
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The Nature of the Self in the Digital Age
“This is the original English version of an op-ed I wrote for Zeit Online. ”
For older news items, see our archive.