Remote

Greg

@gregalotl@c.im

mastodon 4.7.2

*UX designer & research (30 years) for IBM & consultancy. Enterprise Design Thinking leader. Product designer & avid upcycler.
*Mainframe, Linux, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, homebuilt IoT,
----------
-Opinionated but open-minded
-Evidence, not weight of opinion.
-Society with individuals, not individuals at the expense of society
-Collaboration is the answer
Big fan of: Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics - book or Ted

66 Followers

119 Following

43 Posts

Joined October 28, 2022

Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 2w ago

Replying to

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I'd like to see the @BBC@c.im introduce the over-represented Reform talking heads as: "sexually active, fighting age, ", every time they come on! Love to see them squirm out of that. Any gross generalization drawn from one of them, but applied to all of them would illustrate their hypocrisy nicely. Do it BBC, DO IT!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 2w ago

Replying to

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Is this 'sexually active' Danny Kruger, who is of 'fighting age', perchance? Perhaps, using the tar-them-all-with-the-same-brush tactic of Reform/Daily Fail, we should throw all MPs in jail for the corruption/misdemeanors of any one of them?

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@craiggrannell@mastodon.social I'm also very much for @pluralistic@mamot.fr 's proposition that countries outside the US should use Trump's tarrif setting precedent; breaking trade agreements, as reasonable justification to unburden ourselves from all the DRM legislation forced on us by US for one-way value extraction. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/10/trump-beginning-of-end-enshittification-make-tech-good-again

theguardian.com

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 4mo ago

@UKLabour@mastodon.cloud
@uk_politics

Given the signs that we could be heading towards government by the Deplorables at the next UK election, NOW would be a great time for Starmer to use his majority to turn to proportional representation (no referendum needed). We may see some Deform candidates that way but not the winner takes all hell of FPTP.

UK Politics - Feddit UK

UK Politics - Feddit UK

General Discussion for politics in the UK. Please don’t post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk [/c/uk_politics@feddit.uk] [https://feddit.uk/c/uk_politics] and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk [/c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk] [https://feddit.uk/c/unitedkingdom] . Pick the most appropriate, and put it there. Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community. Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misl

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us If you read Rory Stewart's book, it gives the strong impression that the civil service is also a sclerotic impediment to progress and that between the executive and the civil service, everything is fighting against

risk avoiding viscosity,
job preservation,
primacy of advancement over experience (length of job list vs time in post),
expertise phobia & elevation of ignorance,
patronage, corruption & revolving doors

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@anthropy Libre wolf? @Gargron

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@inthehands Yes. So much yes, I've run out of yes.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@cgx Love it. ❤️ Tap dancing and playing the bagpipes are two things I really wanted to do but never did.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@Tarbh@mastodon.ie Oh come on, that's a bit mean. I'm sure negotiations included quid-pro-quos in both directions, financial, opportunities, etc? Nearly half of the UK referendum voters wanted to remain and a large proportion of those were young remainers who were denied Erasmus opportunities. We (UK) are slowly, much too slowly moving back to EU integration. This is a small step. We need to consolidate in the face of international forces (US, Ru, PRC). At least let this tactical step pass, in the context of a more strategic goal. @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au We need a room full of people like me who can code, but really badly! If it was prolific enough (& AI scraped), it would poison the LLM spring and AI would have to work a lot harder to gain trust. And hopefully, as a party bonus, pop the financial bubble of the AI freeloaders and comodifiers! @adavid@aus.social @spriebsch@phpc.social @preinheimer@phpc.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@petergleick@fediscience.org Don't Look Up!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@ryanc@infosec.exchange Saying hello to someone securely is going to look like a Freemason's convention of complex handshakes

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Yes, seen that. Did you know that France is switching to Linux (government & public institutions) based on the foundations of the genarmerie of a big city adopting and adapting it years ago. 🤞

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@AlexGallagher Matthew Goodwin, I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking for a position in government, I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop talking shit now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you... but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you... and I and everyone I know will vote against you.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@CatherineBabault Even waving hi!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@MarkHoltom In our house we ask "have you changed the Osama" on the evening before rubbish collection. Can't remember how long for, but probably since 2010, when he was tracked down.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@andypiper Happy birthday Andy

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@alice@lgbtqia.space 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺 @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu ACT & do it quickly!! 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@geerlingguy No suppliers in our area over 1.25GB My current supplier is fine at 900MB duplex (with a static IP supplement). Seems sufficient for our family streaming needs. Curious to know what you can do with that extra 9GB that an average user isn't getting with 1GB? For me, I think Duplex is more important (I keep photos/videos on a home Immich server)

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@leanderlindahl@mastodon.social https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/social-media-connect-european-commission_en Compare this to most UK government and media and they're exclusively posting to the toxic silicon valley usual suspects. At least the EU has a broader range. @_elena@mastodon.social @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu

Social media: connect with the European Commission

European Commission

Social media: connect with the European Commission

Keep up to date with all the European Commission’s news and events through social media, including Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube, and LinkedIn.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@anttipeltola@mastodon.world OK. Here's a conundrum. I am and always have been a crappy coder but I work in software as a UX designer and I'm good at that. I have loads of ideas about useful projects that I can't code or would take ages, inevitably getting bogged down in the swamp of self righteousness that is Stack Overflow. Competent coders are busy building their own visions and won't help. AI is the solution for me. In the last few weeks, I (and I mean AI) have knocked three long-term, 'meaning to get it done for ages', projects off my list. Not to say AI is good all the time. But once the structure's there I've been able to steer, cajole & constrain, through careful prompt construction. It puts me in the game. At one level, AI is building prototypes (sorry Figma) and if I commercialized any of these, I'd go with meat based coders to refine or start again. But, I'd be confident that I'd specified the back end and frontend user experience I wanted

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@kyle@mastodon.kylerank.in Just read. V interesting. Used OpenSuSE for years but also Ubuntu & Mac (not Windows for around 30 years) & zOS for 7ish. You brought me up to date on the ebbs & flows. Thanks @jzb@hachyderm.io

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@zachleat uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, AdGuard AdBlocker

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Same government that says contracts with Palantir in NHS & MOD have been carefully constructed to preserve privacy & sovereignty and represent good value for the taxpayer but turn a blind eye towards Palantir's history, leadership, enshitification record and most of all the US CLOUD act, which drives a coach & horses through any notion of contract law, sovereignty or privacy! You can breathe now, I found an exclamation mark.

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@craiggrannell@mastodon.social I have often wondered how politicians deal with tech. They, themselves are largely clueless and they rely on awful or very partial sources. They do use some tech but it's mostly consumer level stuff and anyone with a bit of knowledge there is lauded as a tech expert across the board. They're usually biased to their origin tech, which is invariably proprietary and often have little experience of a) enterprise grade tech b) Open Source & Open Protocols c) Understanding user needs & experiences beyond the commercial silos they bubbled up in. And then there's lobbyists. Politicians are far too credulous with them. There needs to be a register of every representation from commercial interests, with detailed & open minutes. And a hefty jail term for not! Any contract with the government must be open! The 'commercial interest' fig leaf must not be available. It's for the public, it's worth a lot of money and the cost of that is 'everything out in the open - from the outset!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@owa I posted the following e-mail. I'm sure it could be improved a lot but thought I'd share it, in case anyone else wants to adapt it and use it, ---------- There's no point in me recounting every detail in this article But let it suffice that as an IT professional since the early 1990s, I wholeheartedly endorse all the points made. It is of the utmost importance for the benefit of consumers and businesses generally and for the fostering of resilience, independence, innovation and competition that the most open, free, transparent, interoperable, equitable and secure practices prevail and are not subject to lobbying by the very companies that have self-interest in avoidance of such impositions. Leadership of the CMA must demonstrate nonpartisan characteristics, whatever their previous history, or may be judged to have corrupted their obligation to act in the long-term public interest for both consumers & businesses (in the wider sense) The recent prosecution of 'misconduct in public office' for various public figures looks like it may be the mechanism du jour for encouraging those in public office to cast aside their partisan interests in favour of longer term strategic and societal benefits. -------- Perhaps the last paragraph was a little OTT, but I couldn't resist.

Apple’s Interoperability Commitments to the UK’s CMA Promise Nothing - Open Web Advocacy

Open Web Advocacy

Apple’s Interoperability Commitments to the UK’s CMA Promise Nothing - Open Web Advocacy

The UK

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@howard Similar occurred to me. I wondered if he'd change his tune if women said "yes I'll do that and bring my kids up as intelligent, left of centre atheist, anti-capitalists!" @AlexGallagher

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@eff@mastodon.social UK law, widely ignored, requires a. A notice that recording is being done b. Minimal retention time c. Reasonable steps to limit image to own property and not into public space d. No recording into other's property Plus, I'd like to think that the law would protect my likeness being uploaded into the camera manufacturer's cloud or used for AI training or facial recognition. Carrying a 1kW laser never seemed more appealing!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 15mo ago

Replying to

@trochee@dair-community.social @paninid@mastodon.world @louis@ingenthron.social Me: "Hey . What is the threshold value of goodness in a question, that would avoid eliciting an answer that starts 'Good question'?" AI: "Mmm...good question..."

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 8mo ago

@NGIZero At the scale of the EU, commitment to FOSS would save a lot in per seat licensing fees. Some of those savings should be productively repurposed. Fostering an environment where companies that get a fair and proportionate fee for developing the tools, in response to growing/changing needs & improvements would still make economic sense. Those companies should have to operate in harmony with copy left licensing and their enhancements shared. They should operate a Design Thinking paradigm, so that they are user driven, not just tech and should be a good model for the rest of the FOSS community. Following Cory Doctorow's suggestion of countering US' agreement breaking tarrifs with repealing anti circumvention laws would also open up EU markets & opportunities in this space, while helping preserve EU sovereignty. @EUCommission

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@Gargron@mastodon.social Generally, I like to design for majority usage but ALSO significant minorities! Doing otherwise ends up with complete fuck-ups, like Brexit

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 15mo ago

Replying to

@ZebKing@mastodon.online It's great that for every social media behemoth, there's a Fediquivalent but I worry that by mapping those existing silo products we're missing a huge opportunity. We could with the fediverse exploit the very breadth of federation and the richness of opportunities both in those proven silos but also in the gaps between them. Imagine being able to have guilds, with members with organized skills, reputations, qualifications, that cross-cut the more prosaic and functional areas currently on offer (likes, friends, photos, videos, jobs, etc). Let's add genuine emergent value that people want and can use and which they can't get in the current products. This image shows, stick oriented, how people can escape commercial exploitation but doesn't offer compelling carrot oriented reasons why the Fediverse is MUCH better. I wish I couldake it to the conf Love Vancouver xxx

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

@infobeautiful@threads.net
Just got this working for my solar data

https://solar.lubel.me/

On phone:
Swipe left to open controls on right
In 'view all' mode, swipe right for legend
Pinch to scale

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 5mo ago

Ask your MP to support a UK Digital Sovereignty Strategy https://action.openrightsgroup.org/protect-britain%E2%80%99s-digital-backbone-%E2%80%94-ask-your-mp-act

Protect Britain’s Digital Backbone — Ask Your MP to Act

Open Rights Group

Protect Britain’s Digital Backbone — Ask Your MP to Act

Take action! What’s the problem? The UK’s digital backbone. The cloud services, data systems, and platforms that underpin government, public services, and democratic processes is dangerously reliant on a small number of foreign tech companies. Much of this critical digital infrastructure is controlled by US-based firms such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Palantir, whose services are embedded across government and the public sector. Other key providers are based in Israel and China. Together,

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 47mo ago

Replying to

@UKLabour@mastodon.cloud Oh, and 1 = better representation. Cost for @UKLabour@mastodon.cloud will be not being the one and only viable alternative to the Tories and spending 3/4 of your time in opposition. At worst you'll be one of the larger parties in a centre-left coalition and at best you'll be a majority party. What's not to like (apart from two years of the Mail, Telegraph & Express having a pop)

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@phire@phire.place Regulation must be introduced globally, that anyone wearing these glasses MUST wear a dayglo pink burqa with the word 'recording' emblazoned in 50cm Arial Black front & back and an amplified voice warning in the local language, saying 'DANGER, META OVERSTEPPING!"

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@ariaflame Still, I thoroughly enjoyed adapting the quote 😜 @AlexGallagher

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 47mo ago

Replying to on mastodon.cloud

@UKLabour@mastodon.cloud Get the following in your manifesto, pronto!

Electoral reform for PR - like Germany, not like Israel (so we won't need a referendum and so we can't be railroaded by Tufton St zealots again)
Constitutional reform (so a future Tory government can no longer abuse the protocols of state like Johnson, Mogg, Raab, Sunak & Braverman did)
Press reform, to defenestrate the non-dom owned RW press

Do this while you're more likely to win or it'll get swept under the carpet for another generation!

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 18mo ago

Replying to

@BBCRD@social.bbc it would be good to find out how you can exploit it and other BBC services & utilities to start to protect BBC revenues, qualities and guiding principles against government incursions (recent Conservatives and Trump style)

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@Sheril@mastodon.social Where do you fall on this distribution, if you are the human pet of an electro-mechanical overlord?

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Greg @gregalotl@c.im

· 7mo ago

Replying to

@phire@phire.place I'm prepared to compromise on the burqa. An over the head internally mirrored goldfish bowl, with a live stream of loud thrash metal, would be an acceptable mandatory substitute!

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