John Lines @[email protected]

Balancing Freedom of speech and reducing the spread of Hate Speech.
There is a lot of pressure on Twitter to block accounts posting hate speech, particularly related to England Football players, but Twitter accounts are a amorphous mass. If, say, Manchester United ran an ActivityPub site for their supporters then they could drop those who made unacceptable posts, and their views should weigh more heavily than people with no connection to the club - who could simply be ignored.

Two of my interests, access to eduction, and seeing people recognising people's abilities, come together in a Webinar I was informed of recently, and which I have posted about on the Oxford Phab website at https://oxford-phab.wp.paladyn.org/2021/06/09/study-higher-webinar-on-accessibility-in-higher-education/

I mentioned I did Statistics O level in my blog at https://blog.wp.paladyn.org/2021/05/09/mr-acid-rain-and-our-interconnected-world/ - the statistics used in Forestry tends to be more subtle than that used for Physics, as it is harder to control the variables, but I had statistics in my head when I came across https://xkcd.com/2400/ #xkcd #statistics

Happy May Morning !
Have just been watching the choir of Magdalene College School on YouTube,, which is warmer, but much less atmospheric than seeing them in person from the bottom of the tower. I regret that while I can run a Peertube server on a budget of under £100 per year, they can not afford to do the same out of their budget of £17million a year.

Have just been reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-56575815 where Ch. Insp. Booth had created 'Action Cards' but they were not used by control room staff. I am a fan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto which suggests that such checklists need to be developed with, and owned by, the people who will use them, then possibly they would have used them.

Have just been reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-56575815 where Ch. Insp. Booth had created 'Action Cards' but they were not used by control room staff. I am a fan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto which suggests that such checklists need to be developed with, and owned by, the people who will use them, then possibly they would have used them.

Interesting piece from Logic Magazine on the inter relation between making IT systems secure and making them accessible at https://logicmag.io/security/access-denied/

Interesting piece from Logic Magazine on the inter relation between making IT systems secure and making them accessible at https://logicmag.io/security/access-denied/

Noticed that BBC News article "Why popular YouTubers are building their own sites" makes no mention of Peertube, talking about a bunch of platforms I have never heard of, but not really surprised.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55349255

Came across this really infomative info-graphic on Covid-19. Good to have clear information on something which is affecting our lives so much
https://www.azuravesta.com/covid-19-pandemic

Instant Messenger systems used by the military should be based on standards and federated... you can probably see where I am going, but if people with really high security requirements are using the same system, then they have an interest in making sure it is secure. The Internet is built on the back of the ARPANET, a product of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Instant Messenger systems used by the banks should be based on standards and federated. People need to trust the system they use to IM their bank manager, but it should not be unique to the each bank, needing is own app. Some may argue that the financial sector has particular security needs, but so does the NHS, the military etc. If the XMPP standard can not meet these requirements then should be improved until it does, working with other interested parties.

Instant Messenger systems used by the NHS should be based on standards and federated. People need to trust the system they use to IM their doctor, but it should not be unique to the NHS, needing is own app. Some may argue that the NHS has particular security needs, but so do banks, the military etc. If the XMPP standard can not meet these requirements then should be improved until it does, working with other interested parties.

Green Woodpecker in our garden, just turned away from admiring one of my wife's glass sculptures