At the Cusp of Productivity
Work in progress: a critique of terms of service (ToS) in "modern" computing
HAVING published almost 115 pages in 0.5 weeks (3.5 days), we think we have a good rhythm going and it blends well with "computer-life balance" because we limit screen time. We've largely overcome censorship attempts (it's not cheap, but freedom is not free), we're continuing to attract whistleblowers, and we still have a number of very long series in the making. One of those will concern terms of service, which typically get a lot worse over time because nobody or almost no-one bothers reading them (and they change all the time, people are forced to accept or lose access, which means it's like "consent" under extortion/blackmail with work/data as hostage).
Today we improved Roy and Rianne's Righteously Royalty-free RSS Reader (R.R.R.R.R.R.), deploying the latest version and pushing the latest code to Git. This helps us curate news for Daily Links and it also helps us find stories/information of interest - stuff we may in turn cover here.
RSS is generally - some exceptions notwithstanding - what remains of real value on the Web, even if one doesn't strictly need the Web to enjoy RSS (it can be done over Gemini or Gopher, in principle, the markup would then vary). One contribution of ours, we hope, will be software that lets people get away from the bloated Web and nasty, malicious, unacceptable terms of service.
Society needs more freedom, not more "social controls". █
