Matthew Fennell
@matthew@fennell.dev
@bureaucrhaj my friend the professor solved that problem a while ago! Even @rosahaj in her younger days liked bikes!
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sovtechfund/116056808593765766
If you're a FOSS maintainer working on standards or following them, we would love to hear from you! Please share and boost in your circles.
Yeah! Feeling cuddly great!
Can you see I've new stuffing???
But now finally NOMPF!
Another FOSDEM and hackathon are in the rear-view mirror, and it is hard to find words to describe how amazingly productive and fun the experience was! We met so many people at the postmarketOS stand, in the FOSS on Mobile devroom and at dinners in the evening. As always it is fun to put faces to nicknames and to talk about the Linux Mobile ecosystem, and figure out how to improve it in person.
Find photos and what we got done in the blog post:
https://postmarketos.org/blog/2026/02/10/fosdem-and-hackathon/
Thanks to all who came by or contributed towards making this possible!
I wrote a little overview on how you can generate your own public transit schedules in GTFS format.
If you so far could not add your local provider to Transitous, maybe this helps :)
https://jbb.ghsq.de/kde/2026/02/07/Generating-GTFS-Feeds.html
How Australia’s social media ban is having a negative impact on children with disabilities https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/06/ive-lost-my-friends-advocacy-groups-warn-australias-social-media-ban-risks-isolating-kids-with-disabilities #exclusion #authortarianism #socialmedia
Loads of FOI requests going into Ofcom about how they are monitoring VPN use. They are refusing to answer most of them. We know they are paying Apptopia and the contract is here https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/affd2903-bba4-42fa-a96a-f65e7ff23329
FOI responses can be read
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/freedom-of-information/foi-responses
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/
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?
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/
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.
Every time I install a new piece of infrastructure for my homelab as part of becoming more independent from Big Tech, I see a hint on the homepage of that new piece of infrastructure that mentions they received sponsorship from @nlnet almost as if NLNet has been silently preparing Europe for #DigitalSovereignty with Open Source projects ;) I like!
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.
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?”
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
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