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Lynne Teaches Tech: What is “free software”? Why do people say software isn’t free, even though you can download it for free from the app store?

There are a lot of ways you could define “free software”. For example, you could say Candy Crush or CCleaner is free software, because you can install it for free. When people say that software is “free as in freedom”, or “libre”, they mean something else. Under these definitions, neither… Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: What is “free software”? Why do people say software isn’t free, even though you can download it for free from the app store?

Xbox One Woes

Xbox? XBox? XBOX? Whatever. So my wife and I recently made the decision to get an Xbox One, because there were a few games I wanted on it, mainly the Rare Replay Collection for its Xbox 360 titles. I could have got an Xbox 360 and a copy of the… Read More »Xbox One Woes

Archive Team and the Fediverse

The popular Mastodon instance berries.space recently shut down, with all of their content being taken offline, most likely permanently. It was a popular home for teenagers migrating away from tumblr. At its peak, it had over 3,000 users.

When an instance on the Fediverse shuts down, its data is gone, unless the administrators make it accessible in some way. While other instances may have locally cached copies of some posts, for the most part, it’s gone.

This was not the case with berries.space.

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Lynne Teaches Tech: What are protocols and formats? How do they come to be?

This question was originally submitted via the survey.

This question, like our last reader-submitted question, is in three parts:

  • What exactly is a protocol?
  • What exactly is a format?
  • Can you give a short rundown of how standardisation in IT works?

I’ll answer them from top to bottom.

Read More »Lynne Teaches Tech: What are protocols and formats? How do they come to be?