Joining a decentralized network is not the same as signing up for a silo service... You need to make a bit of an effort at first to slowly grow your network of interesting people to connect to and follow and interact with.

And things normally move a little slower. A post from last week is generally still regarded as fresh, heck even posts from years ago can resurface and get renewed interest on Scuttlebutt.

It is great to see how the community around me is actively tending our network by making sure we keep bad actors out. It does still take time and effort on our own part. There is no central governance to do this for us.

Manyverse users can toggle seeing the follows and blocks posts in their feed, so they can choose to ignore what happens on the network.

However, in recent days, it proves crucial to being able to tend your scuttlebutt connections.

Unlike centralized services, where you don't have much control, a decentralized system like Scuttlebutt, needs active tending of the nodes (users) in the network for it to keep healthy and sane.

So look at what your peers are doing and check why they are blocking pubs and accounts, and if you agree, then repeat what they are doing. Most users will also add a comment as to why they decided to block. The tools for managing your community tree roots will improve over time. And also note that "blocks" are not for eternity. Unblocking is a thing too that happens often.

The choice in the end is still yours who you want to block or not. But be ready to accept the consequences if you didn't look at your peers in the node.

Participation in a decentralized system is highly valued.

Thinking about how Düsseldorf could do its own Doughnut Selfie.

The “Circular Economy” is really how we all should think about our daily lives and work.

I have been also watching many of the informative videos by the Doughnut Economics Action Lab or DEAL.

Here are some videos I watched:

- Short introduction and how the framework is being applied in Amsterdam.
- https://www.kateraworth.com/animations/
- https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/
- "Doughnut Economics" lecture by Kate Raworth

Mein Vorschlag ist, ein neues, spannendes Wahrzeichen für Düsseldorf zu bauen, das sowohl ein kulturelles Zentrum für die Bürger als auch ein touristischer Anziehungspunkt sein kann: ein Museum für Nachhaltigkeit, Innovation und Wissenschaft. Dieses würde die Größe und die zentrale Lage des Geländes voll ausnutzen.

Dieses Museum könnte ein neu konzipiertes Wissenschaftszentrum sein, das sich auf Innovationen und nachhaltige Lösungen für die Zukunft konzentriert. Es könnte Kindern, Jugendlichen und Erwachsenen interaktive, immersive Erlebnisse bieten, zukunftsweisende Ausstellungen zeigen, lokale umweltfreundliche Unternehmen vorstellen, Bildungsmöglichkeiten für Schulen anbieten und Räume für den Ideenaustausch mit Technologieschulen, Vereinen und Universitäten bereitstellen.

Als Elternteil, der in Düsseldorf lebt, weiß ich, dass ein solches Museum die Stadt familienfreundlicher machen würde. Derzeit gibt es nichts Vergleichbares: nur den Aquazoo, der etwas veraltet scheint, nicht sehr interaktiv ist, nicht zentral gelegen ist und am Wochenende immer zu voll ist (natürlich vor der Pandemie). Ich denke, das würde auch helfen, die Stadt für Touristen attraktiver zu machen, besonders an Sonntagen, wenn nicht viel los ist.

Museums-Schlüsselattraktionen könnten sein:

Ausstellungen zu Nachhaltigkeit und Wissenschaft (z. B. wie erneuerbare Energien funktionieren, regenerative Landwirtschaft, Bedeutung der Biodiversität, nachhaltige Innovation, genetische Revolution, Digitalisierung, Robotik, künstliche Intelligenz, virtuelle Realität, Elektrofahrzeuge, Klimawissenschaft...)

Erlebnisattraktionen, um die Theorie in die Praxis umzusetzen und zu testen & zu lernen - diese könnten sogar von Universitätsstudenten vorbereitet und geleitet werden (wie sie es im MIT Museum in Boston tun)

Sonderausstellungen, die von NRW-Wissenschafts- und Technologieunternehmen gesponsert werden (z.B. Henkel oder Bayer, aber auch kleinere Start-up-Unternehmen)

Marktplatz für lokale, nachhaltige Produkte und Lebensmittel

Dachgarten mit dem Schwerpunkt Lernen über Landwirtschaft

IMAX-Kino für Dokumentarfilme oder interaktive Shows

Seminar-/Veranstaltungsort für regelmäßige Vorträge und Veranstaltungen zum Thema Nachhaltigkeit und Innovation. Es könnte genutzt werden, um Experten/Professoren/Innovatoren in die Stadt einzuladen, die ihre Ideen und Lösungen vorstellen

Restaurants mit nachhaltigen Konzepten, wie z.B. nur lokale Produkte zu verwenden und lokale Bauernhöfe vorzustellen

Bildungsveranstaltungen für Schulen, Digitalkurse für Senioren, Innovationsworkshops für Teenager / junge Erwachsene, Tutorials für nachhaltiges Leben für Erwachsene...

Auch aus architektonischer Sicht wäre es eine wunderbare Gelegenheit, ein umweltfreundliches und innovatives Gebäude mit viel Potenzial für Kreativität zu bauen. Sie könnten wahrscheinlich viele Stararchitekten finden, die an einem solch spannenden Projekt interessiert wären.

Zur Inspiration können Sie an das Science Center NEMO in Amsterdam (entworfen von Renzo Piano, es zieht etwa 700.000 Besucher pro Jahr an) oder das Exploratorium in San Francisco denken. Das Museum könnte freien Eintritt für in Düsseldorf lebende Kinder anbieten, um die in der Stadt lebenden Familien zu unterstützen.

Viele der anderen großartigen Ideen, die auf dieser Website zu finden sind, wie das "Umwelt ins Zentrum", könnten in dieses Konzept integriert werden, für ein wirklich ganzheitliches Erlebnis, das Düsseldorfer Familien, Schulen, Universitäten und umweltfreundliche Start-ups und Unternehmen unterstützen wird. Bitte ziehen Sie dies in Betracht, eine solche Gelegenheit kommt nicht oft.

Unsere Beitrag

Had a really bad experience trying to get the V-Tech "Download Manager" for their Magic Book 3D to work on Windows 10 - the application window did not resize and I had to put the screen size to a ridiculous 480x640 pixels to be able to get to some point where I could actually use the buttons in the application.

Somehow it detected the 3D Magibook on USB, but then, after waiting for the app to "load", and I was able to see the books to add the media of, the USB connection all of sudden disappeared and I was stuck again. I tried four times to get through the process to no avail.

Luckily I have a Macbook from work. I am not really supposed to use it for private applications, but in this case I was a little desperate. So I installed the "Download Manager" for Mac on it and had to mess a bit with disk access for it work, but was happy to see that all worked well on the Mac version of the application. First of all, a "firmware upgrade" window popped up and I had to go through the whole process.

I am suspecting that this firmware issue is the cause of the Windows problems. After the firmware upgrade, I was able to get the media for the new book we got our son, using the Mac app. But haven't tried with the Windows 10 version of the app.

Disappointing that the experience with the application on Windows 10 is so bad. So I wrote the customer service about it. Let's see what happens next.

Why do I believe Gemini is great for personal Internet presences? First of all, it's a real grass-roots initiative which I am very excited about.

If you're reading this, chances are high you are already using Gemini. But for history reasons and to share my opinions of Gemini I would like to offer you here some views of mine.

Collecting some of the strong-points of Gemini from my perspective of having some experience with Gopher and running personal websites.

Fast and lightweight

• It's very easy on the system resources. So the protocol works really well on slower hardware without any problems. Hosting on a Raspberry Pi3 is easy-peasy.
• Since there are no fancy design in Gemini capsules, it is really optimized for low bandwidth.
• It should work really fine on a feature-phone, like for KaiOS. I don't believe there is a client yet for KaiOs at this time.
• It's fairly easy to build clients and servers for the protocol.

Simple yet complete

• The specifications provide enough functionality to do basically what you would expect to be able to do online.
• Much lower learning curve compared to Gopher and HTML. You can start publishing Gemini pages within minutes.
• Even-though the syntax is limited, it still gives enough playroom for creative expression.
• Use of TLS certificates promises security and privacy.
• It is more international than US-centric Gopher.
• The procol supports the UTF-8 character set so any language can be used to publish sites in.
• This should help make the protocol more popular in non-ascii wielding regions in the World.

Easy to publish

• Content will be probably first of all stored in static text files which are future-proof and easy to maintain.
• Many servers already available that require minimal technical skills.
• Yes, you still need a server, but there are many collectives which you can join to facilitate this.

Focus

• No popups, animations, videos, sound effects.
• Focus on actual content instead of fluff and effects.
• No advertisemens and commercial tracking.
• No Facebook, Google or Twitter.

Accessible

• Power of formatting goes into the clients or readers. Like in the good old days of the early Web, people are expected to style the content to their own liking.
• It's pure text, has simple navigation rules, so should be great for people with disabilities.
• No JavaScript so you really see what you get.

And on top of this, the young Gemini community is driven to make this a success!

I'm sold.

ps. I published this first in plain text on my Gemini capsule and now that I copy paste this into a HTML document I can really tell just how easy it is to publish on Gemini.

Thank you E-mail for delivering me the important things I need to know about. Enjoying the fact that you let me sip through you on my own pace and time and allowing me to see everything in a time organized manner. Thank you for not engulfing me with unnecessary images and self-starting video advertisements. Thank you for giving me a way to reply and sort my messages. Thank you also for allowing me to filter my messages based upon my own criteria. Also a big thank you (with imap and SMTP) for allowing me to get to my messages on different devices and having them all synchronize the folders. Thank you also for allowing to sign and send secure email with Pretty Good Privacy. I forgive you for the occasional unexpected message from a far - away land as I can simply toss these in the junk folder. Thank you for keeping track of you over many years and after changing many different devices and even accounts. I hope we can enjoy many years together more.

Yours sincerely,

A happy Thunderbird E-mail user.

Pretty proud that I was able to replace the camera modules in my #FairPhone 3 with the latest camera upgrades.

It is really awesome how Fairphone made a truly up-gradable phone possible and they made it really easy to take apart the phone.

The process does require steady hands and some nerve to execute. Detaching the screen from the frame was exciting. You need to get everything to "click" and not "break".

Everything came apart as planned and taking out the old modules and putting in the new was no issue. I did forget to take away one of the blueish protective covers of the front-facing camera module, after I had put the phone back together. So I had the exercise of taking apart the phone twice.

Followed the instructions from Fairphone themselves

The old modules are on their way to IFixit in Stuttgart Germany for refurbishment or recycling.

To all my friends, thank you for supporting my head-shaving fundraiser for St. Baldrick's Foundation. I am amazed to share that I have already smashed my goal, with $1045 raised for childhood cancer research.

While I have met my goal, we are still $12000 short for the overall event goal of raising $50000, so I have increased my goal to $1500 – so if there is anyone still interested in helping, here is the link again 😃

https://bald.johanbove.info

We'll be going live on Facebook during the event, set for this Saturday at 18:00. @Jeff Neu, whose superhero 5-year old son Jake just beat cancer and rang the bell in June this year after three and a half years of treatment, is hosting the event. Many people will shave their heads and some will share their stories, and you are all invited to join if you are curious and have time.

This is the first time I do anything like this. While I am still a little nervous about shaving my head, I know it will be fun and I am grateful and humbled by the support you've all given me!

Visit https://bald.johanbove.info for more information.

I am shaving my head to raise money for childhood cancer research. Sponsor me to help me reach my goal of a €1500.

I will shave my head to raise money for childhood cancer research. Sponsor me to help reach my goal of €1500.

Childhood cancer strikes more than children alone, it attacks whole families too. Did you know that almost half a million children will get cancer each year, and that in Europe and the US, one child out of 5 will die within 5 years from diagnosis? Did you know that there is little funding for childhood cancer research, with many treatment protocols dating 20, 30 or even 50 years? And that these treatment protocols are more intense than the ones for adults, and can last years?

I had no idea. But now that I do know, I want to help, because children can´t fight cancer alone. My fundraiser is in support of the St. Baldrick's Foundation, one of the most important childhood cancer research charities worldwide.

When you support them, you help fund critical trials and grants in more than 377 institutions in 30 countries.

This Saturday afternoon I will take part of a live event together with other families that will share their personal experiences with childhood cancer.

If you want, you can follow me live as I am getting my head shaved.

I am a bit nervous, but I know it´s going to be fun!

Please sponsor me to help me reach my goal of €1500 by this Saturday.

Visit this URL to learn more: https://bald.johanbove.info

See this page if you have a Twitter account and want to control what kind of ads you get served: https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data/twitter_interests

It contained over 300 keywords, some of them I totally did not know why they would be added to my profile, some clearly wrong (Loud Orange Face was in there too) - so I started curating the list. The UX of this page is terrible.

In my case, there are over 300 checkboxes in a long list and there is no way to go through the process of unchecking the boxes easily because on EVERY click a POST request is sent to Twitter, which creates a brief moment where the user needs to wait before they can click on the next checkbox.

So obviously when a lot of people do this at the same time, especially now after watching the Social Dilemma documentary, clearly this page was not designed with that kind of traffic and server load in mind.

Was it done deliberately to discourage people to maintain this list? After 10 clicks or so the server is responding with error 503 ("Service Unavailable" or "over capacity") and none of the changes you make to the list is actually stored. I only noticed this after a reload. Yes, you can happily click further ignoring the error toast notification, but none of your changes will be saved.

This smells like a dark pattern, doesn't it?

Got a SwatchPay watch developed by Swatch and G+D Mobile Security, the other Saturday as a father’s day gift. I activated the payment function today using the Boon Virtual Debet Card I had registered for some months ago. Since WireCard in Germany is filing for bankrupcy there was some confusion and uncertainty.

The nice people at the Düsseldorf @Swatch store had to verify that it would work. It did. Some time later I paid contact-less for lunch with my new watch. Pretty sleek and COVID - safe.

Being able to pay contact-less is pretty great. But people on the street who depend on small change donations are really left out. I simply don’t carry cash and coins anymore with me. My credit-card size wallet also attest for that.

So how could we give small-change using a contact-less cash system? Similar to how in China vagrants use Alibaba Pay QR codes to beg for a small contribution on the street.

How would that work with a system that relies on NFC like SwatchPay? Give everyone who needs it access to NFC readers? What is the cheapest, most battery-efficient, weather-proof, solar-powered NFC reader payment terminal you know of?

It would have to be a system that works offline, but where the collections can be transfered into a system that exchanges for actual cash or exchange for food and clothes or shelter. People who have no identification should also still be able to use this system. The reader would have to taken care of as if it was actual cash.

How can we digitalize small-change donations in Germany where a large part of the population, luckily, still trusts cash in the hand more than electronic payment systems?

So the best solution is that we would reverse the devices. The people on the street all get “SwatchPay - like” watches or a similar thing like a card. They work without a battery, need only to be registered once. Then it would be up to everyone else to use their phones, or a portable NCF payments-capable device, to initialize the donation transaction. There would be an app for that. Just like the existing Boon or SwatchPay apps.

Instead of paying, we would be giving.

How much technology is inside the SwatchPay watches? It’s an NFC tag chip, similar to the ones we all have on our bank and credit cards.

How SwatchPay! Works (source)
Payments are made possible by the NFC chip, which is located on the back of the case. In a ring around the bezel, the watch has an antenna that catches the radiation, connecting the chip with the payment terminal. This is exactly the same technology as your bank card uses. You can activate your watch with your internet banking system. Setting this up costs about ten minutes. SwatchPAY! uses a method they call tokenization, which creates a unique “token” for the device. Simply store your credit or prepaid card on your smartwatch via the app (activation of SwatchPAY! watch in Swatch store) – the app is available for iOS and Android.

More insights in the tokenization can be found in the PDF: SwatchPay case-study by G+D Mobile Security.

Giesecke+Devrient Mobile Security is a company based in Munich, Germany

I’m not an engineer or have really investigated fully into the technical side of this, but the logic seems sound. What if we could tokenize everything this way?

And how we would avoid abuse is a whole different level of challenges to look into.

Von Nicole Lange

Sehr geehrter Herr Benko,

kürzlich habe ich mir Schuhe gekauft; im Karstadt an der Schadowstraße. (Es sind übrigens bequeme Sandalen, trotzdem ein bisschen schick.) Die Stimmung bei diesem Einkauf war gedrückt, denn tags zuvor war bekannt geworden, dass beide großen Kaufhäuser an der Straße schließen sollen, der benachbarte Kaufhof also gleich mit. Mehrere hundert Arbeitsplätze hängen an dieser Entscheidung, von Menschen, die teils seit Jahrzehnten dort arbeiten. Gleich neben mir unterhielt sich eine Kundin mit einer Verkäuferin, die noch unter Schock stand wie auch viele ihrer Kollegen. „Die Leute weinen die ganze Zeit“, hat sie zu der Kundin gesagt. Ich will Ihnen das nicht verschweigen, aber es geht mir auch nicht darum, auf die Tränendrüse zu drücken. Denn es gibt auch gute sachliche Argumente, warum die Schließung beider Häuser ein Fehler wäre.

Baustellen-Ende an der Schadowstraße Die Kundenfrequenzen und Umsätze beider Kaufhäuser sind seit Jahren stark beeinflusst durch die Dauerbaustelle(n) an der Schadowstraße – aber das Ende dieser Zeit naht in großen Schritten. Blicken wir zurück: Anfang 2008, vor mehr als zwölf Jahren, haben die Bauarbeiten für die Wehrhahn-Linie begonnen. Schnell wurde die Straße „ein Ort, an dem die Abrissbirnen kreisen und wo es schrecklich aussieht“, so damals der Einzelhandelsverband. Bis 2010 fiel die Schadowstraße aus den Top 10 der deutschen Einkaufsstraßen auf Rang 22. Aktuell liegt sie auf Rang 17, noch hinter der Flinger Straße. Dass es in diesen Jahren schwer war für die Kaufhäuser: Wen wundert’s?

Für den Weg zurück unter die Top-Einkaufslagen gibt es aber einen klaren Zeitplan. Seit Februar 2016 fährt die Wehrhahn-Linie, die oberirdischen Straßenbahnen sind verschwunden. Bislang kann der gewonnene Platz zwar nicht zum Flanieren genutzt werden: Wenn aber die Arbeiten für den Kö-Bogen II beendet sind, wird die Straße mit neuer Oberflächengestaltung erstrahlen (ein guter Teil ist 2021 fertig, der Rest voraussichtlich bis 2023). Das vieldiskutierte Konzept sieht einen geteilten Straßenraum vor, mit breiten Flanierzonen für Passanten, gelben Lounge-Sesseln und einem großzügigen Radweg. Über letzteren kann man freilich streiten – aber dass das Gesamtkonzept ein Erfolg wird, bezweifelt kaum jemand. Und ein Kaufhaus an einer generalüberholten Einkaufsmeile scheint keine schlechte Sache zu sein. (Und dann ist da noch das geplante Wasserspiel gleich vor Karstadt...)

Kö-Bogen II wird mehr Leute anziehen Wo wir beim Thema Baustelle sind: Bei den Baggern und Bauzäunen geht es ja nicht mehr nur um die Verkehrserschließung, sondern um ein großes städtebauliches Projekt inklusive Einkaufszentrum. Die Mieter des quasi fertigen Kö-Bogen II sind trotz des Namens nicht an der Edelmeile orientiert, sondern klassische Marken für die eher „konsumige“ Schadowstraße: TK Maxx, H&M, Mango, ein dm-Markt. Das Center wird auch Gastronomie beherbergen und die Laufwege von der östlichen Kö komplett neu prägen, glauben Handelsexperten. Die Straße bekommt also einen festen Anker im Westen – ein weiterer im Osten wäre ein Gewinn für die gesamte Straße, mit breitem Sortiment und Tradition. Eine B-Lage, so hat es ja schon Oberbürgermeister Thomas Geisel gesagt, ist das fürwahr nicht.

Die Qualität der Immobilie Vielleicht reden wir an dieser Stelle einmal nur über den Karstadt – denn für dessen Zukunft hege ich wie viele andere die deutlich größeren Hoffnungen; und wir wollen ja komplett ehrlich miteinander sein. Experten haben seit Jahren darüber spekuliert, dass der Kaufhof am Wehrhahn vermutlich schnell einer neuen Nutzung zugeführt würde, wenn beide Häuser zum gleichen Unternehmen gehören. Pläne für einen Neubau haben Sie ja offenbar schon; und die Lage eignet sich tatsächlich für einen Bürobau bestens.

Nebenan sind Sie dagegen Mieter einer Immobilie, die mit ihrer edlen Fassade ein erhaltenswertes Schmuckstück ist; übrigens auch der letzte Warenhausneubau des Architekten Philipp Schaefer, über Jahrzehnte der Chef-Planer für die Kaufhäuser von Karstadt. Zuletzt wurde dort einiges investiert, beispielsweise in die neuen Rolltreppen. Untermieter gibt es im Untergeschoss auch – ein Konzept, das sich weiter ausrollen lässt, um das teils angestaubte Warenhaus-Konzept weiter aufzufrischen.

Dass Kaufhäuser an sich noch eine Zukunft haben, glauben Sie ja selbst – sonst würden Sie kein KaDeWe für die Düsseldorfer vorbereiten, und den Kaufhof an der Kö haben Sie bei unserem Ständehaus-Treff als „mega-erfolgreich“ bezeichnet. Die Schadowstraße der Zukunft wird definitiv Platz für ein weiteres mega-erfolgreiches Haus haben. Ich würde auch zusagen, die nächsten Sandalen wieder dort zu kaufen.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Nicole Lange

Trying to obtain an Access Token for IndiePub with IndieAuth to be used in IFTTT requests so I can link other Web Services with my site.

I was able before to get a token using https://gimme-a-token.5eb.nl/, and the integration with Pocket, Deezer and others worked, but I revoked all access tokens and today it no longer works to create a new token on my Known instance running version 1.2.2.

This post is about trying to solve this issue.

Got the endpoints of my server using:
https://indieweb-endpoints.cc/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsocial.johanbove.info

After entering all the fields in "Gimme A Token" and going through the process to get the access token, I end up on https://social.johanbove.info/indieauth/token with the message "Client mismatch". And I'm not sure where to go next.

What is causing this "client mismatch"? Did Known get safer or is "gimme-a-token" broken?

Going to reach out to Seb and Marcus in the next days.

Found that Greg had a similar issue with Monocle some months ago: https://gist.github.com/jgmac1106/3d4df34f99f9a2bd34d47262f26bf508

Update 2020-06-29 19:00

So I can rule out that "Gimme-A-Token" is broken.

Thanks to the greate people on the #knownchat IRC channel (thanks Aaron, Greg and sknebel) I have a pointer towards htaccess and http/https redirecting. Looking into that now.

Update 2020-06-29 23:20

It seems that for a correct IndieAuth authentication, I had to add a hard-coded "me" url in the head of the Known head.tpl.php file so the Known homepage would always have this link:

<!-- Hardcoded me url -->
<link href="https://social.johanbove.info" rel="me" class="u-url">

This resolved the https://monocle.p3k.io site error message and I can log in in one flow without having to retry.

But unfortunately I'm still getting "Client mismatch" errors with "Gimme a token" most of the time. I did manage to get once an actual token which I can now use again for IFTTT PESOS syndication.

Actually: Beaker OS would be very similar to Google's Chrome OS which installs on many laptops. What would be necessary to make Beaker OS "bootable" ?

A list of basic applications any computer should have

• Editor: check: basic text editor and coding IDE (similar to VScode)
• Browser: check; similar to Chromium, without the extensions. Also issues with accessibility and internationalization.
• Application platform: check
• Address book: how would we integrate non-beaker profiles in the address book?
• Calendar: CalDav, web client
• Message client (email): web client
• File Manager: check, but issues with syncing with OS FUSE and Hyperdrive
• Terminal: check, and extensible with "Web Term Commands"
• Media player: some examples: Winamp player, video player?
• Photo Management: creating a photo gallery is easy. Web client?
• Chat client: IRCCloud, web clients
• "Office-like" applications: spreadsheet, editor, presentations: offline working spreadsheet?
• Games: many web games already out there. Some multi-player using Beaker api?
• Remote Desktop Client: not sure how this would work.

At first, the Keybase acquisition by Zoom comes as a shock to me and I actually immediately thought of deleting my account. But I have invested quite some time and effort in the account and the platform. I use it as my main encryption and signing tool and I've got a decent network and some Stellar Lumens in my account which I'm not sure where to transfer to at the moment. I get it how the people behind #Keybase, who are actually really cool, want to finish their "incredible journey" with some honestly hard-earned money; and on top of all the current features Keybase offers, video chat makes a lot of sense if they want to compete with MS Teams and Slack. But the whole thing still feels like a sell-out and it is totally unclear what will happen to the current user base. Is Zoom going to charge us for our accounts now? It would have been cooler if Keybase has aquired Zoom instead. Worried about the future of Keybase, so I will be looking for an alternative tool in the next days. Not going to delete my account, just yet.

Discovered an exciting new online spectator-sport: following Ebay auctions for rare(ish), yet popular devices.

The last auction I followed for a Sony MZ-RH1 #minidisc player was a real nail-biter. Within the duration of the final 60 seconds four bidders competed with each other, with the bid going up from €188 to €289.

The winning bid went to someone who made a bid only 4 times for this item and only followed a single auction in the last period. They won against someone who, looking at their bidding history, is going through some effort finding the rare gem.

ps. I am not going to make this a regular report - just thought this last auction was particular and I was personally glad the winning bid was just a little bit more than what I offered for a similar device just last week.

In a perfect World I would be able to access all my digital assets without having to enter a password or even authenticate manually.

One of the best parts of #ssb is the fact I only need a secret key file to access my content. The file is literally my access key to all my own SSB stuff.

No need to remember any crazy character combination or even having to register for an email account. I have an SSB and a secret and that’s all that should be necessary.

Having said that, being able to restore my account on #manyverse with the “recovery phrase” does make sense since mobile operating system have terrible file access management.

Thank you dear #ssb community to make this dream become a little more reality.

ps. Since I can authenticate to my PC with my own face (Windows Hello), I really do not need to enter login and password to jump right into Patchwork.

The fact that you can buy a used webcam today faster than new is astounding. A Microsoft Lifecam Cinema, which would sell new before the corona crisis for about €50, was sold today as a good second hand condition on Ebay for €81 (+ shipping cost).

If you happen to own an unused webcam in your drawers, then now is the time to sell and you could even make a profit.

Microsoft LifeCam 3000 outrageously over-priced.

Some shops are not shy in offering this camera for an insanely high price! Don't get fooled.

I'm not pretending to be a communication expert, but I still wanted to share something after being stuck in home-office for over five weeks: you will miss over-hearing your colleagues and casual chats.

Especially since it seems to be common to not openly discuss within MS Teams channels, but stick to private one-on-one or one-on-many chats. You might think it's more private and more focussed, but this is actually regarded as a bad practice as it hurts open collaboration and openness amongst peers.

If you do not post or communicate within the more open (MS Teams) channels, you are leaving out potentially inputs from colleagues who didn't happen to be in your private chats. Please avoid doing this.

Also every message in a direct chat window triggers notifications for everyone included in the chat. If the topic of the chat diverges from the original purpose then please accept people to leave the chat.

If the communication within the private chat is relevant for the broader audience, please move the conversation into a channel. You can always delete irrelevant messages again.

I also would love to see an IRC like chat channel taking place. I wish we had a chat channel like IRC or in a more modern form, through Riot.im.

Honestly if it wasn't for my son being at home all the time too, I would probably have a constant Zoom stream open, if everyone would do that, it would feel more like collaborating in the same hyper-space.