The European Commission on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for a group of four countries to establish a common organisation for building open source alternatives to much-used (non-European) software.
France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands will work to develop open, European alternatives in “key areas” such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and – curiously – social networks.
I saw something on a Lemmy site that said the International Criminal Court (ICC) is switching from Microsoft Office 365 (or "Copilot for Business (new) for School and Work (classic)" or whatever...
I saw something on a Lemmy site that said the International Criminal Court (ICC) is switching from Microsoft Office 365 (or "Copilot for Business (new) for School and Work (classic)" or whatever they're calling it these days) to a platform called Open Desk. I'd never heard of this platform before. Anyone have any experience with it?
Even though I'm not European, I think having additional cloud platforms, especially open sources ones, can only be a good thing. Separate from US govt concerns, we've all seen the recent major outages with Microsoft and AWS. Need to stop putting all our eggs in only one or a few baskets.
Interesting, in Canada there's an start-up social media platform called Gander whose angle also includes data sovereignty. In some ways it seems like the exploratory days of the internet led by US...
Interesting, in Canada there's an start-up social media platform called Gander whose angle also includes data sovereignty. In some ways it seems like the exploratory days of the internet led by US companies is now shifting towards regional, everyone-controls-their-own-thing approach.
I hope that Canada joins the European consortium of companies working on these projects. I'd love a viable, open source alternative to Office 365 before I die. I don't think it's too much to ask.
I hope that Canada joins the European consortium of companies working on these projects. I'd love a viable, open source alternative to Office 365 before I die. I don't think it's too much to ask.
Interesting. They're in invite beta right now and for folks interested here's their sign up page privacy policy. And their origin story, beginning with I'm weirdly a big (democratic) government...
TL;DR: Social media is a dumpster fire. Between the bots, the ragebait, and the platforms that profit from division, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve in a completely different dimension. So I stopped hoping someone else would fix it—and decided to build something better, right here in Canada
I'm weirdly a big (democratic) government person. I would be so thrilled to join a EU sovereign social media / network or even better, a Canadian + EU one. There's nothing to say gander won't sell once they get off the ground, or if their CEO quits or whatever. I trust companies about as much as I trust a sociopath who hears a rotating board of voices. So ...it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Ganders roadmap has this step competed, "Public benefit company incorporated: Preliminary board, governance, and public benefit statement". They're also working with VMware Sovereign Cloud. Whoever ends up being front runner, I hope the municipal, provincial and federal governments pick up and use sovereign infrastructure.
Edit: typo. Also, they have a frontFoundr crowd funding campaign right now. I would have been tempted to throw some money at them, but I really don't like how much personal information FrontFoundr is asking and what they might do with it. Gander seems to want to work on a paid subscription model, "if everyone pays $5/month and we get 300k paid subscribers" --- that's not going to happen for social media unless they can sell it to the government and have the costs be socialised. Sell it to schools and get all the kids in on it. Parents might sign-up for a paid account to keep an eye on their kids.
People are used to selling their data for free in exchange of "free" usage, I believe that horse has left the barn two decades ago. Tildes is different: it's text and lightweight enough for Deimos to run it forever without needing additional rounds of investments or promises of returns or having to consider acquisitions and mergers. Gander seems to want to be media heavy drug replacement for Bluesky Twitter IG snap everything.
But. It's true that most people want a media heavy scrolling social. I think it's cool that Arlene Dickinson is one of their investors and advisors. I really do want other people to stop using tiktok etc even if I don't necessarily want it.
Wonderful news! Where can I leave feature requests? I would love a social media platform where one can curate one's own algorithm - instead of an obscure algorithm curating our feeds. We know that...
Wonderful news! Where can I leave feature requests?
I would love a social media platform where one can curate one's own algorithm - instead of an obscure algorithm curating our feeds.
We know that the current algorithms are prioritising content that makes people triggered in a negative way, so posts that instigate emotions like anger, jealousy, fear etc. are being promoted. I want the option to tick off my preferred emotions on a list that includes hope, joy, contentment, excitement, creativity, caring, love and so on. I'm willing to spend some time teaching the algorithm how I feel about things to make it work, as long as my data remains private.
That actually sounds interesting; if you'd be able to tell the algorithm by reactions how things make you feel and it could use that data to curate content so you have more positive reactions....
That actually sounds interesting; if you'd be able to tell the algorithm by reactions how things make you feel and it could use that data to curate content so you have more positive reactions.
It'd be interesting to see what kind of feeds that would create.
I'd just rather go back to how it used to be in early social media, where you only saw content from people you followed with no algorithm feeding you crap. But if there must be an algorithm then...
I'd just rather go back to how it used to be in early social media, where you only saw content from people you followed with no algorithm feeding you crap.
But if there must be an algorithm then yeah I second your suggestion.
reviving older thread: please note it's a proposed budget yet to be voted on, but the current government is only two votes away from having this happen for realsies. (CBC) that would be a dream...
reviving older thread:
(Canadian) Federal budget dedicates over $1B to boost Canadian AI and quantum computing
please note it's a proposed budget yet to be voted on, but the current government is only two votes away from having this happen for realsies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget proposes providing more than $1 billion over the next five years to build up Canada’s artificial intelligence and quantum computing ecosystems while embedding AI technology more deeply in federal government operations.
According to the 2025 budget, tabled Tuesday afternoon by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, the federal government proposes providing $925.6 million over the next five years to support a large-scale “sovereign” public AI infrastructure.
According to the budget, $800 million of the $925.6-million investment will come from funds set aside by the last federal budget, which announced a total of $2 billion to boost domestic AI compute capacity and build public supercomputing infrastructure.
that would be a dream scenario for myself, a Canadian. The worst that could happen, though, is that we spend the billion and then the next government sells it pennies on the dollar to a privatized firm. Canada has a tradition of doing that, unfortunately.
While I do think it good for countries to get away from US infrastructure I am forced to wonder if those two categories in particular are a good idea to sink a big pile of federal money in to. AI...
While I do think it good for countries to get away from US infrastructure I am forced to wonder if those two categories in particular are a good idea to sink a big pile of federal money in to. AI seems to be in a bubble and because $1B is kind of peanuts on the scale of current AI investment it probably wouldn't do much of anything. Then there's quantum that has very questionable utility for what seems to be the next few decades. I sure hope they aren't going to burn a bunch of taxpayer money, and by "burn" I mean "feed to Nvidia for chips", just to chase the trendiest buzzwords coming from the mouths of the most well funded lobbyists.
Personal opinion is that sovereign boring tech would make more sense. Cloud compute, storage, identity management, uptime SLAs, etc. The stuff that would let Canadian companies more easily cut AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle. Though that's not as sexy as training a new AI model no one uses due to the ones that spent 100x as much producing superior results.
Agreed, my hope is that AI is a hype catch all term, where a tiny amount is for rolling our own chat LLM, and then the rest goes into boring AWS alternative infrastructure that actually make sense...
Agreed, my hope is that AI is a hype catch all term, where a tiny amount is for rolling our own chat LLM, and then the rest goes into boring AWS alternative infrastructure that actually make sense for long run. Hope......
I saw something on a Lemmy site that said the International Criminal Court (ICC) is switching from Microsoft Office 365 (or "Copilot for Business (new) for School and Work (classic)" or whatever they're calling it these days) to a platform called Open Desk. I'd never heard of this platform before. Anyone have any experience with it?
Even though I'm not European, I think having additional cloud platforms, especially open sources ones, can only be a good thing. Separate from US govt concerns, we've all seen the recent major outages with Microsoft and AWS. Need to stop putting all our eggs in only one or a few baskets.
It is basically just a Kubernetes-based setup of well-known individual services, maintained by a German state organization.
Interesting, in Canada there's an start-up social media platform called Gander whose angle also includes data sovereignty. In some ways it seems like the exploratory days of the internet led by US companies is now shifting towards regional, everyone-controls-their-own-thing approach.
I hope that Canada joins the European consortium of companies working on these projects. I'd love a viable, open source alternative to Office 365 before I die. I don't think it's too much to ask.
Interesting. They're in invite beta right now and for folks interested here's their sign up page privacy policy. And their origin story, beginning with
I'm weirdly a big (democratic) government person. I would be so thrilled to join a EU sovereign social media / network or even better, a Canadian + EU one. There's nothing to say gander won't sell once they get off the ground, or if their CEO quits or whatever. I trust companies about as much as I trust a sociopath who hears a rotating board of voices. So ...it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Ganders roadmap has this step competed, "Public benefit company incorporated: Preliminary board, governance, and public benefit statement". They're also working with VMware Sovereign Cloud. Whoever ends up being front runner, I hope the municipal, provincial and federal governments pick up and use sovereign infrastructure.
Edit: typo. Also, they have a frontFoundr crowd funding campaign right now. I would have been tempted to throw some money at them, but I really don't like how much personal information FrontFoundr is asking and what they might do with it. Gander seems to want to work on a paid subscription model, "if everyone pays $5/month and we get 300k paid subscribers" --- that's not going to happen for social media unless they can sell it to the government and have the costs be socialised. Sell it to schools and get all the kids in on it. Parents might sign-up for a paid account to keep an eye on their kids.
People are used to selling their data for free in exchange of "free" usage, I believe that horse has left the barn two decades ago. Tildes is different: it's text and lightweight enough for Deimos to run it forever without needing additional rounds of investments or promises of returns or having to consider acquisitions and mergers. Gander seems to want to be media heavy drug replacement for Bluesky Twitter IG snap everything.
But. It's true that most people want a media heavy scrolling social. I think it's cool that Arlene Dickinson is one of their investors and advisors. I really do want other people to stop using tiktok etc even if I don't necessarily want it.
<joke>
If I'm unsure whether I want to join, does that make me gander-questioning?
</joke>
Oh that's cool, they're rediscovering NLNet.
Wonderful news! Where can I leave feature requests?
I would love a social media platform where one can curate one's own algorithm - instead of an obscure algorithm curating our feeds.
We know that the current algorithms are prioritising content that makes people triggered in a negative way, so posts that instigate emotions like anger, jealousy, fear etc. are being promoted. I want the option to tick off my preferred emotions on a list that includes hope, joy, contentment, excitement, creativity, caring, love and so on. I'm willing to spend some time teaching the algorithm how I feel about things to make it work, as long as my data remains private.
That actually sounds interesting; if you'd be able to tell the algorithm by reactions how things make you feel and it could use that data to curate content so you have more positive reactions.
It'd be interesting to see what kind of feeds that would create.
I'd just rather go back to how it used to be in early social media, where you only saw content from people you followed with no algorithm feeding you crap.
But if there must be an algorithm then yeah I second your suggestion.
Same, I want a 0 discoverability mode.
Mastodon functions that way right now.
reviving older thread:
please note it's a proposed budget yet to be voted on, but the current government is only two votes away from having this happen for realsies.
(CBC)
that would be a dream scenario for myself, a Canadian. The worst that could happen, though, is that we spend the billion and then the next government sells it pennies on the dollar to a privatized firm. Canada has a tradition of doing that, unfortunately.
While I do think it good for countries to get away from US infrastructure I am forced to wonder if those two categories in particular are a good idea to sink a big pile of federal money in to. AI seems to be in a bubble and because $1B is kind of peanuts on the scale of current AI investment it probably wouldn't do much of anything. Then there's quantum that has very questionable utility for what seems to be the next few decades. I sure hope they aren't going to burn a bunch of taxpayer money, and by "burn" I mean "feed to Nvidia for chips", just to chase the trendiest buzzwords coming from the mouths of the most well funded lobbyists.
Personal opinion is that sovereign boring tech would make more sense. Cloud compute, storage, identity management, uptime SLAs, etc. The stuff that would let Canadian companies more easily cut AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle. Though that's not as sexy as training a new AI model no one uses due to the ones that spent 100x as much producing superior results.
Agreed, my hope is that AI is a hype catch all term, where a tiny amount is for rolling our own chat LLM, and then the rest goes into boring AWS alternative infrastructure that actually make sense for long run. Hope......