Following the Railways and Open Transport track at #FOSDEM 2024 #Transitous got started. Just two years later Transitous is mentioned in more than a fourth of the talks there today.
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/railways-and-open-transport/
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Isabelle de Robert presenting the Mobility Database
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David Koňařík presenting the state of open data in Czech public transport.
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Adam Pioterek talking about Bimba.
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Jonah Brüchert talking about crowdsourcing delay information.
SFC call to action at FOSDEM, join this consumer association to show weight of people concerned with their software freedoms:
https://foss-users.eu/wiki/Join
This call comes from about 30m into the talk: "The story of the Vizio lawsuit - a historic case for user rights, nearly complete" by Denver Gingerich on the Legal track.
We're excited to share that we have just $$26,594 left to raise in our match challenge!
We're in the stand at FOSDEM today, keeping track of the number, so you can give online or even just give some cash in person and we'll keep updating the number throughout the day!
Donations made to lower that number will be doubled!! Can we get to our goal here at #FOSDEM?
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/
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Karen Sandler and Tracy Homer standing at the FOSDEM stand. The table has a green tablecloth and you can see an OpenWrt One and various stickers and informational materials on the table. Tracy and Karen are pointing towards a sign that says "Your donation matched! Left to go: $26,594, with a higher number crossed out.
We had our social in Manchester last night, catching up with supporters.
Fancy another one?
We’ll be in London next Monday. Come along, chat on and hear about our campaign for UK digital sovereignty.
🗓️ 2 Feb
🕕 6:30-8:30pm
📍Newspeak House, E2 7DG (UK)
Sign up now ⬇️
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/org-london-meet-up-2/
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@openrightsgroup I would love to join you but already have something else in my diary for Monday evening. Would you consider doing an online follow up event for those who can't be there in person?
While unfortunate to have a cancellation, I'm excited to announce that we will have an "audience choice" session in the Legal & Policy Devroom at #fosdem. You can either fill out the online form to suggest a topic, or just write it on a piece of paper and hand it to one of the Devroom organizers. We want to hear from you!
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/RJPLXP-hot_topic_audience_choice/
Where do I apply for one of these "paid agitator and insurrectionist" jobs I keep hearing so much about? I keep doing it for free so it would be nice to get a pay check.
The only relevant feature for any instant messaging app (or social app, for that matter) is: Are my friends using it? People will gladly overlook minor inconsistencies or missing features as long as they can communicate with their friends. We shouldn’t recommend #Signal as a stepping stone before Jabber/XMPP becomes "good enough," if goodness is defined by the number of people using it.
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@daniel Yeah, similar to recommending silo-to-fedi bridges for example. As long as others can find your content in the silo, there's no incentive to use the open alternative.
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@raucao @daniel@gultsch.socia Indeed! But on the other hand, bridges allow early adopters to move, so they're a double-edged tool if anything.
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@zash @raucao anecdotical data point to support this: I started using XMPP because it had good bridges to silos. It lead me to (modestly) contribute to slixmpp, gajim and write some prosody modules. I very much doubt bridges between proprietary silos and open networks hinder adoption of the latter. Of course, this is very hard to quantify objectively.
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@ableijs The Matrix ecosystem is primarily dominated by one VC funded company. The server that everyone uses is developed by them. The client that everyone recommends is developed by them.
There are some baby steps towards a slightly more diverse ecosystem but for now it's a toss up between whether that's going to happen and enshittification once the VCs want their money back.
XMPP on the other hand is a healthy diverse ecosystem with various stake holders.
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@ableijs I develop a client for Android and I basically can't make any unilateral decisions without involving two client developers (Desktop + iOS) and/or two different server developers from the two major server implementations. And that's a good thing!
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There are a bunch of server and even more client implementations. Yes, @element still has a lot of influence, but The @matrix Foundation is doing it's best to get independent and is funded by a really diverse ecosystem.
For example I'm the founder of a company based in #Dresden building on #matrix. Our Open Source client SDK #trixnity is used in the TI-Messenger of every German public health insurance company but one - so possibly millions of users. We also have an Open Source client #Tammy. Yes, we still have the problem, that Element is recommended by a lot of people but the same problem applies to a lot of Open Source ecosystems including #xmpp.
I'm pretty sure the ecosystem would survive without Element despite the fact that Element is doing a good job in pushing the ecosystem in the right direction despite the VC.
help I've been programming in lisp for too long, I don't remember how to put commas after arguments anymore. I can't add a semicolon to the end of a line
Rip up trade deals with the US. They're not worth the paper they're written on anymore.
Repeal anti-circumvention laws; allow companies in every nation to reverse engineer US tech, and sell better, cheaper alternatives, even to Americans - this would create leverage over the USA.
Cory Doctorow raised this idea at his 39c3 talk, recently. I agree. Those trade deals promise low/no tariffs and we let US tech walk all over us. Well now there is nothing to lose (never was).
If a casual chat about #Linux and #FOSS over a curry sounds fun, please come join us! Just reply to me by the end of 21 January so I know numbers for the booking.
Time: 24 Jan, 19:00
Address:
Kings Cross Tandoori
341 Gray’s Inn Road
WC1X 8PX
Hope to see you there, and any questions feel free to ask.
🆕 blog! “Why my NFC passport didn't work at Heathrow's eGates”
I travel a fair bit. My passport is usually quickly scanned and I can enter or leave a country without delay. But every time I use the eGates at Heathrow Airport to get back in to the UK, my passport is rejected and I'm told to seek assistance from Border Force. Today, I think I discovered why!
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/01/why-my-nfc-passport-didnt-work-at-heathrows-egates/
⸻
#nfc #travel
New blog post is out, with a look at our finances in 2025. Most importantly:
Thanks to your donations, we can now start the Contributor Support Programme to make developing postmarketOS more sustainable. 
https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/12/19/contributor-compensantion-and-financial-update/
One of the things that makes #phosh look a bit unfinished is the fact that we don't show a representation of launching apps in the overview (while they show a splash screen).
We have a merge request for that now and it will hopefully land for 0.52 (or 0.53). This also fixes not being able to interact with apps while one is launching. Together with some pending activation fixes that should make things look more polished and will allow us to fix some other long standing bugs.
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A screenshot from phosh's overview. The running apps carousel shows the authenticator app to the right and the launch splash of the "App Icon Preview" app in the center.
Shall I get it for you? I'm going to FOSDEM and can hand it over to someone you know there?
Really enjoyed @z3ntu 's presentation today here in Japan. I agree with much of the assessment of the problems facing software freedom on the mobile space. I'm excited for #postmarketOS to move beyond being ready just for an average hacker and towards the average user.
Facial scanning in our town centres, removal of jury for many trials, digital ID to track our interactions. The Labour Government really is attacking civil liberties and rights on many fronts.
Say No to Digital ID 🚫
Nearly 3 million people signed the petition against Digital ID. Next Monday, MPs will debate this 4th largest petition in British history.
Tell your MP (UK) to attend the debate and stop digital surveillance.
Use our tool ⬇️
https://action.openrightsgroup.org/tell-your-mp-attend-debate-digital-ids
#NotoDigitalID #DigitalID #surveillance #privacy #ukpolitics #ukpol #ID
Expanding facial recognition without proper safeguards in place puts our rights on the back foot.
We should be able to walk down the street without being ID’d at every step.
The UK Parliament must wake up and halt the march of this tech with its questionable accuracy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3r7pwpgeweo
#facialrecognition #police #policing #ukpolitics ukpol #surveillance #privacy
Upgrade to a new laptop only once every 10-15 years, you get 3x-7x in HD space increase.
2 times ago, it was 2005 when I got this massive increase in laptop disk. Then, the song “My Humps” by Black Eyed Peas was in heavy rotation, & so, when I copy over my old files to my new laptop and I see how much disk space is *left* after copying over the data from the drive that keeps running out of disk space, I imagine these modified lyrics:
“Whatcha gonna do? … with all that space inside your trunk?”
Remember how people go on about how the UK is slowly becoming a fascist country?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/02/david-lammy-jury-trials-cuts-labour-mps-peers
Yes, goodbye Jury Nullification.
I was a juror. The person who was on trial would probably end up in prison if not for the jury system. I was about 75% sure that the defendent was technically guilty of the crime, but I pushed for notguilty and that person is free today. Because the law as it was applied was, I believe, unjust in that specific case.
Anyway, fuck the Labour Party. Good day.
Another year to make a #CyborgMonday joke! For your future cyborg self, invest in #software freedom!
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/
Also check out the hot deals on #freesoftware! Dozens of software projects available at deep discount prices. Act now!
At a whopping £1.8 billion, Digital ID is costly to the UK taxpayer and our rights.
This divisive scheme wasn't on Labour’s manifesto. It’s the last thing this government should be embarking on during a cost of living crisis.
The whole thing needs to be binned.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/digital_id_cost/
#NotoDigitalID #DigitalID #privacy #surveillance #ukpolitics #ukpol
Kicking off #FreeSoftwareAdvent (thanks, @neil), I'll open with remind(1)
While it took several articles and a couple attempts before I switched over to using it, once you taste the power of what it can do, it's hard to go back to less-capable calendaring tools.
While the classic "garbage day is on Thursday unless there was a holiday earlier in the week, in which case it moves back to Friday" scenario is a nice little demo of its power, one of the best examples from my daily use is the kids' school calendars:
• the teen has an A/B schedule which doesn't mesh nicely with calendar days, week-days, etc
• similarly, our elementary-age kiddo has a 4-day cycle schedule for her "specials" class
But remind's nonomitted() function makes quick work of both of those, taking into consideration weekends, the school holidays, and using PUSH/POP directives for high-school testing days that impact his A/B schedule but not her 4-day cycle. I've never encountered another calendar that handled all the edge-cases with so little effort.
It's a little rocky interchanging with other calendars (you have to use rem2ics to create .ics files to share, and pulling in others' iCal is non-trivial and doesn't seem to maintain the fidelity of remote events).
But otherwise, this runs a great deal of my life schedule.
Event alert! 6 February 2026 — Cambridge
"After Section 28: LGBTQIA+ Rights in an Age of Censorship and Backlash" is an urgent day of discussion and action on the growing censorship of LGBTQIA+ lives, and lessons we can learn from Section 28.
Tickets available here https://buytickets.at/aftersection28/1907726
“Excuse me is this the backpack to Roosjesdaal?”
“Yes via Brussel-Midi”
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Rosahaj in backpack asking OV a question
You can become a sustainer and read more about what we've been up to here:
We're a small group of UK-focused hackers, from far and wide across the country, looking to bring some of the CCC spirit back home with us!
We're hoping to grow a grassroots community, fostering spaces and meetups aimed at keeping the chaos spirit flowing 1st Jan to 26th Dec.
We'll be looking to meet and connect with other UK-focused hacking communities and like-minded groups.
We're looking forward to seeing you at #39c3 and online!
Stay tuned for more info on how to find us.
I love how the only way I noticed the outage of ~AWS~ Cloudflare is that people on Fedi are shitposting about it.
Nothing I use depends on it, that's lovely.
| Fruit: | 0 |
| Vegetable: | 8 |
| Both: | 1 |
Closed
Unsolicited advice [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
This may or may not help, but there's a public bridge at aria-net.org which lets you join Matrix rooms and 1:1 chats, without a Matrix account or server, from XMPP.Like all bridges, I'm never 100% confident it's working properly on the other end! But, it's worked quite well for me so far.