Notices by Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)
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from activity permalinkMike Gerwitz started following Free Software Foundation System Status.
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Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 04:11:46 UTC 
Mike Gerwitz
@sajith I was not aware; thanks for sharing. -
from activity permalinkMike Gerwitz started following codesections.
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Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 03:38:33 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@codesections Ah, small world! I think it's generally preferred that others link to works, rather than the original author (with the exception of "Show HN" things). HN is a news aggregator; it exists for others to share links with one-another.
Thanks for sharing it, though. I'm happy to see the topic getting attention. -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 03:10:08 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@samir (I say "degrade", but I don't mean for that to sound as though plain text is inferior---I'd usually rather have plain text.) -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 03:09:16 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@samir I'm hoping that websites themselves strip out a lot of the junk, not just provide alternative sites. If a site is well-written, it should degrade well to plain text. I'm in favor of progressive enhancement. -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 02:30:50 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@cwebber ...and I could have just have looked at the pages using the image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(metaphor)). TIL! Thanks for the reference. -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 02:28:40 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@cwebber Admittedly, I don't get the reference. But any club Chris Webber is in sounds like a pretty cool club to be in to me! ;) -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Aug-2018 02:10:58 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
This article is popular right now on HN:
https://pxlnv.com/blog/bullshit-web/
It's something that many of us have been saying for many years. But I've been largely insulated from it: I have blocked all scripts and ads (for privacy and security reasons, but also because most sites serve proprietary JavaScript code) for years. If it weren't for my research (https://mikegerwitz.com/talks), I wouldn't have realized just how bad it has become.
I've also run all my browsing through #Tor for years. And what this article reminds me of (but does not mention; this is unrelated) is how Tor used to be so painfully slow---worse than dialup. It has improved drastically over the years, but by design, it's always going to be slower than directly connecting to a webserver.
But despite that, websites often finish loading for me much faster than those who use the "normal" web over a normal connection, because it's not loading so much shit. That also allows me to stick to <256MiB of data per month on my mobile plan, despite browsing sites linked to on HN and despite the extra packets from Tor itself. (Btw, text.npr.org is great, for those who didn't know of it.)
The very things that got me downvoted into oblivion on HN years ago are now the popular, obvious things. Why do things have to get so _bad_ before most people begin to care? -
from activity permalinkMike Gerwitz started following Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅.
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from activity permalinkMike Gerwitz started following FSFE.
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Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jul-2018 02:58:10 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
@fsf Though, I do suspect that the user is referring to non-free software when he/she says "our own software"; such software does not work for us and is _not_ our own. But free software does serve the user, and is something users can call their own.
Despite my emphasis, it's good to see the perspective. -
Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Jul-2018 01:26:55 UTC
Mike Gerwitz
To clarify: they cut out the beginning part of the question but left the end of it to make it seem as if the reporter was asking Putin something entirely different.
All Mike Gerwitz's GNU Social Instance content and data are available under the