An evening view of Bath (October 2025)

#photography

Maps.me lost trust of the community (https://telegra.ph/What-happened-to-the-old-MAPSME-12-20) and Organic Maps was born (2020) 🥳

... then Organic Maps lost trust of the community (https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareholders-a0bf770c) and CoMaps was born (2025) 🥳

Looking forward to CoMaps losing the trust of the community (should be in 2030 by my estimate), and the new fork! 🥳

Long live open source forking! 🍴

I made an experimental mastodon invite qr code sticker generator - the idea is to put them up locally, on lampposts, etc...

It's experimental as I didn't actually try getting the stickers printed yet... sizing might be off... from a quick look 7cm x 7cm seemed a reasonable size.

You can generate and download stickers (or rather an image) for your own instance at https://nicksellen.co.uk/qr/ - and customize the message. It runs entirely in the browser.

Argh, I'd really like to build up a local tech collective here that can support more liberatory tech...

Small projects, e.g. community gardens, often struggle with wordpress websites, and I get asked to help...

... but I don't want to be the sucker hidden away maintaining ancient wordpress sites for free/little money for years... (that probably people hardly visit anyway).

Anyone have advice/tips/experiences here?

Ok folks. This really is it. 130,000 members of the Green Party and climbing.

Reform have c.250,000 and that's been pretty static for months now.

Imagine if the Greens could get more?

You know what to do.

Tell your friends, relatives, neighbours, colleagues, everyone to join. If we can get even just a couple of new members each, this would make a HUGE difference. Member rates are scaled to suit what you can afford.

Go on! You know you want to! 💚💪

https://join.greenparty.org.uk/

https://bsky.app/profile/zackpolanski.bsky.social/post/3m3l55eczxs2r

Karrot (@karrot) is a free and open source tool for grassroots initiatives and groups of people that want to coordinate face-to-face activities on a local, autonomous and voluntary basis. @kim caught up with Karrot team member @nicksellen for the lowdown.

https://gfsc.community/karrot-community-spotlight/

... they did reply in the end, but not very helpfully, just suggested it was because of high volume of new signups (I don't believe that was the cause of the issue), and I could email my details through instead.

Then I had a hunch that my fairly long/complex password might be the issue, and it was!

I changed from a 29 character password to a 12 character one and joining worked. Not sure what made the difference, but hey ho, I'm a member now!

... still failing... and no reply to my email. not very impressed.

Maybe @bathnesgreens can help?

Woo, I decided to join the Green Party 🌿

Boo, 403 forbidden error 🤦

@douginamug we have automatic group removal based on inactivity

this was in response to https://foodsharing.de where a person has to do in manually, which has lots of dynamics...

(our one can still be gamed, just visiting the site to stay in the group, but not actually doing anything, it has been requested it would look at actual signups to doing stuff to check "activity level")

I like composting metaphors here, let things cycle...

@pintoch @ntnsndr @karrot @nathaliesz

Woo, happy to have applied to join the NBTA (National Bargee Travellers Association) - "Representing the interests of all itinerant live-aboard boat dwellers"

https://bargee-traveller.org.uk/

Not to be confused with the National Baton Twirling Association (I wonder if some people are members of both?) 🤣

Finally got round to uploading my slides about the commons: https://dougwebb.site/slides/commons

@ninabreznik I'm not convinced the message aggregators can really solve it either, the corporate platforms are actively hostile towards them...

I remember using pidgin ages back, now it seems matrix-based bridges are at the leading edge, but it's a cat and mouse game I think trying to keep up to date, and many janky bits... meh.

Somehow we managed it for normal phone calls, can call all round the world!

@dajb

@dajb I do know delta chat, although I never tried it. Seems like a nice idea!

Seems it doesn't work with ProtonMail though https://providers.delta.chat (or tutanota, or hotmail/outlook) - which seems surprising, I thought it was just email, maybe it's the encrypted bit that gets complicated?

But in any case I think the technology isn't the bottleneck, the culture/economy has gone another (very fragmented) way and it's hard to get back, even with cool tech.

@ninabreznik

Phew, close to getting our work on Ostrom-commons-style sanctions implemented in @karrot - it's been quite a slog for me this time 😩, touches quite a lot of areas of the code.

https://codeberg.org/karrot/karrot-frontend/pulls/2801 has more deets.

@jorgeluis for me my problem was I have an external antenna that connects using tiny little ts9 connections, and the cables have enough weight they misalign the connections and they don't make a good connection....

the wood and tape help align them!

maybe this is not your problem 😆

I had some trouble with slow internet:

Download: 11.66 Mbit/s

After application of a bit of old pallet wood and some duck tape:

Download: 123.78 Mbit/s

😂

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through “I am not a robot” verification test
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/07/openais-chatgpt-agent-casually-clicks-through-i-am-not-a-robot-verification-test/
"This step is necessary to prove I'm not a bot," wrote the bot as it passed an anti-AI screening step.

Can we get rid of these annoyances now...?

I can't believe this actually works to play music... no dropouts or anything...

youtube music --[mobile network with not great signal]--> music assistant server --[wireguard back out over that not great signal mobile network]--> vpn server --[public internet]--> house router --[wifi]--> mobile phone --[bluetooth]--> bluetooth adapter into hifi!

(not actually my regular setup, was just trying something out...)

I think instant messaging could have piggy backed nicely off email, so you can do email or chat with the one account that you already have - interoperably across providers (like email). People already sort-of understood how email works.

(XMPP already was a good way there too)

Maybe social media piggybacking off that too... if you wanted it.

And if you want to separate your personas, easy to create a separate account (like with email). People knew how already.

But not good for capitalism 😒