Brett Sheffield (he/him)

#FOSS hacker, working at the intersection of #HumanRights and technology. Founder of the #Librecast Project, building the Next Generation Internet with #multicast.

Also, tractors. Has a language habit.

Trans rights are human rights.

Public Key

npub1k4nyz4vjeckd9sfpnfe7q2xwpemqc869kygtnkxj0w7uc07a58jsqn2v8v

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst2ejp2kfvutxjcyse5ulq9r8quasvrazmzy9emrf8h0wv8lw6regpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dscsyxnh

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1k4nyz4vjeckd9sfpnfe7q2xwpemqc869kygtnkxj0w7uc07a58jsqn2v8v

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Last Notes

2026-11-07 16:15:15 GMT

Most of the spam we receive originates from Google and Microsoft, so it's somewhat frustrating that they can unilaterally impose email standards on the rest of us, while failing to follow basic standards themselves.

2026-08-21 16:18:00 GMT

If you're a trans ally 🏳️‍⚧️ , I highly recommend following @nprofile…evp9 to build up your knowledge of common anti-trans misinformation and counters. It's a new account that doesn't have the following it deserves.
#FollowFriday #Trans #Ally

2026-08-17 11:29:53 GMT

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It really makes me angry when employers do this. Every employer knows their budget *before* they start the hiring process. So do the agencies. Of course they do.
Who holds the power in this situation?
What is the purpose of withholding the most crucial piece of information from the applicant?
The EU had a go at fixing this, and they muffed it.

2026-08-17 11:06:29 GMT

Reminder to employers on here, that in the EU you now MUST "inform job seekers about the starting salary or pay range in the vacancy notice or ahead of the interview."
Not clearly stating the salary range in the job advertisement, whilst not illegal, is a huge red flag for job seekers and perpetuates discrimination.
Weasel words like "market rate", given that the market pays less to women and other disadvantaged groups, does not cut it.
No salary band, no boost...
https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/new-eu-rules-pay-transparency-explained-2026-06-05_en

2026-07-14 17:13:37 GMT

Great work people. Thank you for not leaving it up to GNU to decide the fate of emacs.
"We are here to declare our intent to use and develop a version of Emacs that is free from LLM-generated contributions regardless of whatever policy GNU decides upon."
https://human-emacs.org/
#emacs

2026-07-04 12:50:58 GMT

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@nprofile…vf35 I do hope you're collecting all these slates. I need to fix the barn roof.

2026-06-18 18:46:18 GMT

Do you remember the time a couple of years ago when there weren't enough books being written, films being made, art produced, music recorded, or software written?
No, me neither.

2026-06-17 14:34:19 GMT

A conference I used to admire for their unapologetic and compulsory mask policy changed organiser and now invites speakers from LLM vendors to promote their products to a room full of unmasked attendees.
Thanks for curing my FOMO I guess.

2026-05-29 11:08:16 GMT

It's very sad to see #rsync getting polluted with LLM slop now.
Even more sad, given who is doing it.
People are talking angrily about "the maintainer" and suggesting "this guy" [should have his commit bit revoked] etc. apparently not realising that "this guy" is Tridge, both the original author of rsync and creator of samba. His PhD thesis "Efficient Sorting & Synchronization Algorithms" which describes the original rsync algorithm. Still worth a read, even now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tridgell

2026-05-29 09:37:28 GMT

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@nprofile…3kqn Are you aware of Open Slopware?
A curated list of LLM infested projects with receipts and pointers to alternatives:
https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware
I'd quite like to have that converted to something machine-readable (eg. XML) so we can parse it (eg. for masking packages in #gentoo)

2026-05-18 16:45:48 GMT

"So please, grab a mug, a handful of crackers and a comfy chair" says @nprofile…wuv3
🍵
https://code.vinyl-cache.org/vinyl-cache/vinyl-cache/commit/c3ced3d56b01848191f87016ddf3d8f1cef22021
#PeterNeumann #Security #VinylCache

2026-03-30 10:38:59 GMT

OMG it hurts! 🤣
Here I was, trying to eat my breakfast, when my darling wife tells me — and I need to be careful as this might set me off again — that Microsoft ... have started putting ... (just breathe) ... ads into GitHub pull requests 🤣
I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. That's how I want to go — laughing so hard my heart explodes and I fall face down in a stack of pancakes.

2026-03-28 18:04:53 GMT

Happy Bi-annual Jetlag Night to those who celebrate.

2026-03-26 19:48:38 GMT

On this day 25 years ago I arrived in the UK with enough money to last (almost) two weeks, no credit cards, no return ticket, nowhere to stay, and no job waiting for me.
We drown people of colour for less, even if we just bombed their country of origin, but I was white*, so I was alright.
I think about this sometimes.
* and male, and a native English speaker

2026-03-06 19:58:56 GMT

Interesting to watch the chardet debacle unfold. As I wrote in 2024:
"The output from an LLM is a derivative work of the data used to train the LLM. If we fail to recognise this, or are unable to uphold this in law, copyright (and copyleft on which it depends) is dead."
https://blog.brettsheffield.com/all-your-base-are-belong-to-llm

2025-12-21 10:38:01 GMT

I guess I won't be reading Al Jazeera any more. *sigh*
"Al Jazeera Media Network says initiative will shift role of AI ‘from passive tool to active partner in journalism’"
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/21/al-jazeera-launches-new-integrative-ai-model-the-core
#AI #LLM

2025-12-03 08:27:04 GMT

I was reading a blog post just now, when I noticed a discrete little box containing a disclaimer that the post had been written with the assistance of an #LLM
Whilst I appreciate the honesty, it's a bit like putting a disclaimer on the menu that you've pissed in the soup. I still regret having eaten it.
I don't want your #AI slop in my brain thanks.
It's a blog post. I want to see your little tics and typos and idiosyncracies - this is a conversation between humans. Leave out the robot.
🧕🤖🧔

2025-11-29 17:58:30 GMT

"I Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person"
Values demand a sacrifice. Don't collaborate.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-company-but-outside-work-im-actually-a-really-good-person

2025-11-24 08:50:06 GMT

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@nprofile…8jpa did you raise a bug report?

2025-11-19 10:59:13 GMT

Frustrating to see new #IETF drafts and mailing list discussions etc. continuing to use legacy IPv4 in the examples with no mention of #IPv6
Normalize IPv6 by using it in your documentation and examples. The same goes for #OpenSource projects.
It would be nice if, at least within the IETF standards body itself, we could start dancing like it's 1998 🕺

2025-07-30 16:31:21 GMT

Making progress on lowering my digital footprint.
❌ Google
✅ Amazon
✅ Facebook
✅ Apple
❌ Microsoft
I gave notice on my LinkedIn (but still need to close it) and still have a GitHub account, which I no longer use. I've kept it because there are redirects to our #Librecast repositories on there, but I should close it soon. If I want to contribute to a FOSS project I'll have to find another way.
I still have a Google account I use with YouTube, but should probably delete that too.

2025-06-22 08:44:53 GMT

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/29/duolingo_ceo_ai_first_shift/
#Duolingo #DuolingoDeleted #AI #LLM
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/726/113/108/573/510/original/622bea10c10dc044.png

2025-06-18 13:39:33 GMT

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@nprofile…0dp3 Know the feeling:wq

2025-06-13 09:55:14 GMT

OK.
I have clean running water, and no one is shooting at me right at this moment.
I think that means I can put my headphones on and do some coding, once I convince my nervous system of this.

2025-06-12 08:18:19 GMT

Went to plug in my headphones and was startled to find this fella resting here.
I think this is the one that managed to get in our bedroom window last night after thumping against the window pane repeatedly, then making a huge racket on the floor.
I left a window open for it, and thought it had found it's way back outside, but apparently it has been kipping on my music player after a big night on the light. 💡
I want to listen to some music but it seems to be quite comfortable.
#mothstodon
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/669/375/502/123/337/original/a15dc190b97eacaa.jpg

2025-06-12 06:09:28 GMT

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@nprofile…l4wy Those kind of arguments are a distraction and an attempt to undermine the credibility of those involved as a way to undermine the credibility of the boat's mission, and ultimately to justify genocide.
They appeal to your logic and your emotion and your desire to be fair and rational by distracting you from the main point.
Focus on the big thing happening here: genocide.
Bad people can do good things, and anyone on that boat trying to bring aid and attention to Gaza is doing good.

2025-06-12 05:01:25 GMT

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@nprofile…l4wy It looks like you tried to engage in good faith argument with someone who was not. When someone comes out of the gate aggressively attacking you like that, just add a note to their profile, and block.
They don't want to debate, they want to enrage. Just block. Or block and report.
The best support anyone could have offered you is to use their block (and possibly report) buttons.

2025-05-29 19:44:18 GMT

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@nprofile…x759 Thank you Neil, for the work you do, the groups you support, and for publishing so much of your work where many others may benefit.
FOSS is about more than just code, and you obviously get that.

2025-05-26 19:26:26 GMT

Read the first paragraph of an interview with @nprofile…qz4x in @nprofile…fyl9 on how "the Internet sucks. It's not just you".
Had to close the page because the broken javascript on the site was causing my laptop fans to spin up.
A point well made, Tyee!

2025-05-23 07:43:14 GMT

The VesselFinder website is great:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/it-was-so-unreal-norwegian-man-wakes-to-cargo-ship-in-his-garden
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/556/012/255/779/120/original/e106f4e568abdbd0.png

2025-05-20 15:00:08 GMT

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@nprofile…2hju So true.
I spend my time these days on the 1st (programming). I used to run teams doing the 2nd (infrastructure), and they're very different skillsets.
As for the 3rd, I recommend programmers try to get their software packaged. Working with Debian, GUIX and NixOS to package our software has been invaluable. Each process highlights different things, flushes out bugs and reproducibility issues - a good packager is a huge asset.
It's sad that so much software now relies on docker etc.

2025-05-16 14:30:32 GMT

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3
In my @nprofile…krcz presentation in Feb I said:
"The ICC, who store most of their evidence on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, are presently scrambling to deal with the fallout of possible sanctions from the Trump administration ... Sanctions may lead to the loss of evidence, causing the collapse of not just the case in Gaza, but could halt progress in any number of cases the ICC is currently pursuing"
https://librecast.net/fluconf-2025/

2025-05-07 15:58:15 GMT

Boise, Idaho makes Pride flag an official city flag 🏳️‍🌈 ❤️
https://www.eastidahonews.com/2025/05/boise-makes-pride-flag-an-official-city-flag-in-latest-jab-at-legislatures-new-law/

2025-04-06 17:04:55 GMT

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@nprofile…0dp3 Every true forest has an old car within it, and no one can remember how it got there.

2025-04-03 15:47:52 GMT

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@nprofile…y63h As Senator Warren said, it takes courage to speak up with your own name and face to powerful people. Well done.

2025-04-01 15:42:34 GMT

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@nprofile…l4wy delayed by a day or two, but not as long as a week that I recall.

2025-03-24 13:46:29 GMT

My wife and I have agreed we're having fish and chips for dinner tonight.
In the past, we could have just left it there, but now it seems to be necessary to use #Docusign for everything, even where previously an exchange of emails or a verbal agreement would have sufficed.
So my question for the lawyers out there is this: does this toot constitute a binding agreement, or do we need to do the full #eIDAS thingamy? Should I update the terms on my website?

2025-03-21 17:55:25 GMT

They say to never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
Unfortunately this year's @nprofile…3zdw board elections go way beyond that point.
The current Executive Director is leading #OSI in a direction the community don't want to follow with #OSAID. By changing the rules as you go along in this year's election to exclude candidates who want to reform the OSI you have destroyed any remaining trust.
You shat the bed. It's time to change the sheets.

2025-03-15 13:23:07 GMT

The #Debian #Trixie freeze starts today, and appropriately it is snowing 🌨️

2025-03-15 07:14:17 GMT

I wake up every morning
At a quarter to ten
Like am I dying? Is this real?
Oh right it's this again
I'm awoken by my daughter
As she jumps in my bed
Only kidding - I don't have a kid
I crochet instead
Am I depressed? (yeah) Stressed? (yeah)
It's anyone's guess
I'll bother getting better
When I bother getting dressed
Is it going to end? When?
Alrighty then
It's just another day of #LongCovid
And I'm living in the future...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XWEVoI40sE&t=158s
(Thanks Bo)
#LongCovidAwarenessDay

2025-03-11 19:56:43 GMT

Perhaps it's over for you, but
#CovidIsNotOver for me
Today was a good day
Pain level only a three
After five years now
Yes, I know, it's a bore
But please #WearAMask
#LongCovid hurts more

2025-03-10 08:12:54 GMT

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@nprofile…s06p Interesting. After a compelling dive into how we're living in this post-capitalist society, and explaining how our attention is harvested by algorithms he then finishes with a pitch for Ground News - a perfect example of the kind of algorithmic influence he's just been talking about. 🤣 Having asked us to consider all this when we "make personal decisions or read the news" he then wants us to trust an app that sorts news stories into "left" and "right". Ouch!

2025-03-09 10:47:57 GMT

Every UK company must file a "Confirmation Statement" each year and pay £34 (was £13).
This is possibly the most pointless exercise in UK bureaucracy.
As a director, you must, by law, keep all company details up to date, so these MUST already be correct.
If they are not, the Confirmation Statement does not allow any details to be changed, so you can only say yes, as filing late means a penalty.
Processing is entirely automated (took 40s, so there's no human involved), so why the fee?

2025-03-07 10:51:01 GMT

No one was around to hear it
But when I fell over a tree in the forest
I made a sound
#poetry

2025-03-01 09:13:12 GMT

March is it? 🗓️
Look, you folks go on ahead without me. I'll catch up later.

2025-02-21 14:33:17 GMT

In any process where you are talking about "stakeholders", if any of your stakeholders are not individual human beings, you need to think deeper.
A corporation is never a stakeholder.
The only reason to care about a corporation or other org is because of the real people that it might affect. The employees, perhaps. The customers, sometimes. *Those* are your stakeholders.
If one of your "stakeholders" is a trillion dollar corporation, you really are on the wrong path.
#OSAID #OpenSource

2025-02-17 17:24:08 GMT

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@nprofile…x759 With any luck there will be a flood of self-appointed "OSA consultants" to help share the load now that their GDPR consulting is running dry 😉

2025-02-17 10:07:17 GMT

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@nprofile…24ue What happened? 😨

2025-02-16 21:51:43 GMT

As usual, the process of trying to explain various concepts and principles in writing has helped me to think about them more clearly.
The point was to explain these things to other people, but in writing it up I've remembered all sorts of bits and pieces I'd forgotten, and have actually read some of my many notes.
A well structured document demands certain questions be answered, forcing my brain to draw forth long-forgotten ideas.
The code will be better for having done this first.

2025-02-16 19:35:07 GMT

I'm writing a document and I have an #accessibility terminology question:
When talking about an audiovisual presentation, is "viewer" an acceptable term for describing the one consuming the media, given that some of the "viewers" may be #blind listeners?
Is there a better word than "viewer" when referring to a multimedia presentation?
Consumer or Receiver perhaps? Or is Viewer considered inclusive here?

2025-02-07 22:10:51 GMT

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@nprofile…hcrk
// cars.have.navigation
// investor.payment.withheld
// useless.apps.deleted

2025-02-02 11:44:33 GMT

Interesting talk by @nprofile…2hju at #FluConf just now on his Ambient CI system, written in rust.
https://ambient.liw.fi/
Thanks Lars!
#FluConf2025

2025-02-01 19:03:29 GMT

What a fantastic inaugural #FluConf Day 1! Such a diverse range of presentations, both in content and form.
A truly distributed conference, mostly self-hosted on static websites #PeerTube #Mastodon #Jitsi #BigBlueButton #OwnCast etc.
Thanks to @nprofile…e6ra for hosting our video for @nprofile…k70r !
Looking forward to Day 2 of #FluConf2025
Merci @nprofile…krcz and everyone for getting involved !

2025-01-29 10:51:23 GMT

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@nprofile…s06p Sounds like the server have IPv6 privacy extensions enabled. This is good for a desktop, but less so for a server where you want a stable IP.

2025-01-27 16:14:46 GMT

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@nprofile…x759 Thanks! I bit off rather more than I realized with this topic 😃

2025-01-27 16:08:34 GMT

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@nprofile…x759 Thanks for this resource, Neil. I'll be referring to it in my upcoming talk at #fluconf2025

2025-01-17 19:40:42 GMT

My wife says my Pandemic beard is too long. I say the Pandemic is too long.
#CovidIsNotOver #Covid19 #LongCovid #WearAMask
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/845/366/865/247/745/original/1d2863c2680402da.jpg

2025-01-17 11:43:05 GMT

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@nprofile…fn2v With c4 already on the board you can transpose to a Panov fairly easily.

2025-01-17 10:04:55 GMT

"Any claims that any talk was allowed for sponsorship reasons are false"
I love puzzles, but damn this is a tough one.
It seemed obvious, but you're telling me the billionaire who profits from but contributes nothing to #FOSS and who is sponsoring the event was invited to keynote at #FOSDEM for some other reason? Nope, I give up.
Perhaps @nprofile…wcyk can give us a clue. What is the reason for giving this billionaire oxygen?
https://fosdem.org/2025/news/2025-01-16-protests/

2025-01-16 21:19:49 GMT

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@nprofile…s06p Most of the time doing the right thing feels good, but if I wasn't willing to give something up in order to defend what I believe in, then I can't really be said to hold that principle.
It's like courage. Courage is about being scared and doing it anyway. Without fear there is no courage.
If giving up the use of harmful technology/services hasn't cost someone, they haven't been tested yet.
When it costs something to stand firm and you do it anyway, only then do you have values.

2025-01-16 21:02:58 GMT

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@nprofile…s06p Without sacrifice our principles and values are just words.

2024-12-31 19:25:59 GMT

Wishing everyone the best for 2025!
This will be a tough year for many. We're going to have our rights and values challenged like never before. At times it might feel hopeless, but there's always one thing you can do: be yourself. Live your values as best you can.
At every level of society, whatever you do, do it as well as you can. That is enough and it's all anyone has a right to expect of you.
Ask for help when you need it. Help others when you can. We'll get through this. Together.

2024-10-21 17:06:15 GMT

`git vommit` may not be a valid command, but it is an accurate reflection of how I feel about this particular bit of code.

2024-08-14 15:37:48 GMT

I don't disagree that DDOS attacks are a problem on today's Internet.
I'm just not convinced that the solution is to give a large US-based companies billion-dollar incentives to create more of them.
I'm not saying that a company like, say, Cloudflare encourages DDOS, but aligning shareholder value with $badthing seems like a dangerous approach.
It starts to look like a protection racket, and large corporations don't have a great track record in keeping themselves honest.

2024-08-11 16:42:27 GMT

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@npub1kzk…k9tq Codeberg is connected to the modern Internet, unlike, say, Github which is inaccessible from IPv6 networks. 👍

2024-05-07 10:07:18 GMT

Currently working on some #multicast peer discovery code. I keep abbreviating it as "peer disco", but it's definitely feels more like a peer cèilidh.
Nodes dynamically linking with each other in different configurations, shouting things to each other, nodes dropping in and out and reconfiguring again into a new shape and the dance goes on.
Yes, definitely more of a cèilidh.
All that's missing is some 80-shilling and a couple of nodes having a quiet snog in the corner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A8ilidh

2024-04-30 18:52:27 GMT

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@npub1y0e…mm9n Tested on Gentoo Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD as that's what I had to hand. Bugs are in the tracker 😉

2024-04-25 16:12:46 GMT

All Your Base Are Belong to LLM
"The output from an LLM is a derivative work of the data used to train the LLM.
If we fail to recognise this, or are unable to uphold this in law, copyright (and copyleft on which it depends) is dead. Copyright will still be used against us by corporations, but its utility to FOSS to preserve freedom is gone."
https://blog.brettsheffield.com/all-your-base-are-belong-to-llm
#FOSS #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #LLM #AI

2024-04-23 16:07:09 GMT

The other day I had a bug in my code that only affected NetBSD.
In the interests of balance, today I'm trying to track down a bug that affects Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but *not* NetBSD.
Seriously, I've run this test 6654 times and counting, and NetBSD is still happy. I guess I'll call that a pass?
Now Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD - explain yourselves. Why can't you behave like NetBSD here?

2024-03-15 11:03:17 GMT

Today is #LongCovidAwarenessDay and marks one year since I started talking openly about my personal health.
I've never been comfortable with sharing my personal information, but I hoped by talking about what it's like living with #LongCovid (for nearly 4 years now) folks may reconsider their YOLO approach to #covid and actually #WearAMask
This past year has been the worst of my life. It was the year hope died. Hope that I might get better, and hope that ppl might take #Covid seriously.

2023-08-06 11:19:24 GMT

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@npub1y0e…mm9n Isn't that the one by the reopenldap guy that was just a fork of lmdb in the first place...? The one that optimized your code by adding a README?

2023-07-15 16:49:55 GMT

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@npub198t…hasj It would be nice if we could abandon the idea that an IP address has any relation to physical location or jurisdiction.

2023-07-04 18:28:02 GMT

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@npub1evu…uf5t @npub1uwa…s0tr Congrats to Michael and TDF on this step forward. Pleased to see the initial focus on #accessibility improvements.

2022-05-13 11:34:20 GMT

#intro
Citizen of the World and Citizen of Nowhere. Australian, now living in France after spending 15 years in Scotland. Former EU citizen, now disenfranchised. Very angry about that.
#FOSS hacker, working where #Technology and #HumanRights overlap. Founded @nprofile…k70r to build a better rights-enabled Internet with #multicast.
Loves #languages, #food, #travel and #tractors.
Posts mostly in English, but be ready for anything.
Lapsed #epee fencer
Trying to beat #LongCovid by shouting at it.