Throughout this semester, OpenTech(AUC) has been proudly supporting experiments with Jupyter Hub in the new programming course offered by Amsterdam University College (AUC), called “Programming in Digital Societies” (PIDS).

In a nutshell, for many weeks now, students are building, running and sharing their Jupyter Notebooks in an environment that is fully owned and controlled by the PIDS lecturing team.

This environment is running on a VPS that OpenTech(AUC) is renting on https://gandi.net (V-R16, 8CPU’s, 16GB RAM, 30 GB storage). The VPS runs Ubuntu, and on top of that an installation of JupyterHub (following the steps of this manual).

Thursday 20 November 2025, from 15:30h to 16:30h, we are organizing a Nextcloud workshop in room AB 1.02.

Our goal is to help students and staff create an account on our self-managed server and to show them how they can use the platform for (among other things): collaborative file editing (text, slides, spreadsheets), sharing forms and creating polls.

Join us in exploring this first step towards digital sovereignty: a digital world that we (you and me) control.

Link to Nextcloud server: https://nextcloud.opentech-auc.org/.

On 22 December 2019, the presidents of the boards of directors of Dutch universities raised the alarm:

“The universities have little or no influence on the way data is collected and personalized. Most providers are not located in the Netherlands and are less familiar with the public values ​​on which our education is based. Furthermore, freedom of choice is limited: the market is dominated by a few large companies. This creates dependence, complicates the negotiating position and hinders renewal.”

The panopticon - a prison system designed to monitor the maximum number of prisoners with the least amount of guards. Designed by an English philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham, it consists of a central tower where the guards are, surrounded by the prison cells arranged in a circular building.

The layout of this tower is such that the guards are able to look into the prisoners’ cells at all times, but the prisoners are unable to see whether the guards are looking at them or not. This results in a feeling of constant surveillance, which in turn eliminates the need to discipline prisoners with forceful authority, as they discipline themselves because of the internalised sense of omniscience. As Foucault put it, “the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.”

As the news is confronting us with the ever increasing political and economic power of the small number of companies and individuals that control our digital lives, we believe the best moment to make the move towards free, open source alternatives is now.

Wednesday the 29th of January, from 14:00h to 15:00h OpenTech(AUC) organizes a hybrid workshop to support the community (staff and students) in making (a start with) this transition.

Op 18 januari 2025 stuurden we deze mail naar socialmedia@uva.nl

Beste lezer,

Wij zijn een groep studenten en medewerkers van Amsterdam University College die zich al langere tijd zorgen maakt over de rol van Big Tech en corporate social media in onze samenleving. Wij komen elke week, buiten het curriculum om, bij elkaar om deze zorgen te bespreken, en om alternatieven te onderzoeken en uit te proberen.

De laatste maanden laten wat ons betreft steeds duidelijker zien dat de huidige situatie onhoudbaar is, en dat het tijd wordt om met z’n allen een betere digitale wereld moeten opbouwen.

This is the second part of a two-part series. See also this article.

“…if we can’t convince people to escape the clutches of capitalism when it only requires a USB stick with Linux and a short online course on bash/python, how are we ever going to gain control over (and share the fruits of) other, more material and inert kinds of technology?”

Who benefits from innovation?

In many ways and in many places, life is better now than it was 100 years ago. Although technological development played a role, it’s definitely not the whole story. It was very much also the product of the successful fight over the benefits of this technological development.

A social media gossip account named “lol.auc.lol” closed on 30 November 2024 after receiving backlash from the AUC community due to offensive posts repeatedly published on the platform. The account permits students to submit anonymous confessions by filling out a form on the website, which then gets immediately posted on X and Instagram. However, what started as a silly college gossip account quickly transformed to a platform of hate. Many students were left aghast, questioning its purpose.

This is the first part of a two-part series. See also this article.

Imagine you’re at a house party, and people are getting drunk. Slowly but steadily, they are raising their voice. And as more and more people do, you are going to have to raise your voice as well. At the end of the night, everyone is screaming in each others’ ears, without being any more audible than when everyone was talking at a normal volume.

Building this website was a nice way to let non-coders in our group get acquainted with terminology from the FLOSS world. Non-experts can quickly learn the basics of Markdown, thus getting the chance of using git from the very first week of work. Here is what we used! Feel free to browse the project’s repository if you are curious about the technical details. In this blog post, we limit ourselves to a non-technical overview for amateurs. Experts will appreciate how we try to extensively use declarative languages. This is done by delegating as much as possible to markup and configuration formats.

In February 2024 around ten students and teachers gathered in StartUpVillage, the most inspiring part of Science Park. Their goal: Learning how to install Arch Linux on a Laptop. As we all know, one does not simply install Arch Linux correctly on the first try. Therefore, help was needed. Breanndán and his colleague Baran - loyal members and friends of OpenTech(AUC) - had the amazing idea of offering their startup’s spare ThinkPad laptops as well as Arch Linux bootable USB sticks. That way, everyone could try out several options in the installation menu without the fear of accidentally deleting all their personal data. With the help of lots of pizzas, drinks, and nerdy jokes the perfect atmosphere was created; discussions about people’s favorite desktop designs and other deeply philosophical questions were continued during the night. Issues like digital accessibility or data security didn’t come to short either. The interdisciplinary background of our group meant that everyone could learn something new. Students inspired by the customization freedom Arch Linux offers took home the ThinkPads to play around with the operating system. A huge shoutout to Breanndán, Baran, and their colleagues for making this event possible!

At OpenTech(AUC) we like to rant about what makes the existing digital worlds we live in terrible. But it’s not all bad. Healthier alternatives exist! In this post we would like to introduce the world of Mastodon.

Mastodon is a decentralized, open source, non-corporate alternative to Twitter. It is part of a larger group of apps and platforms that offer a different digital social world, called “The Fediverse”, where people can take back control over the spaces where they digitally meet. The Fediverse works without the intervention of polarizing algorithms and egotripping tech entrepreneurs.

Normally, when you feel you’re getting the short end of a stick, for example when the supermarket sells you expensive mushy cauliflowers, or when the organization you volunteer at treats you disrespectfully, you go and find what you need somewhere else.

This ability to “defect” to an alternative when you feel you’re not getting a good deal, is an important “power” that helps you get reasonable deals.¹

When it comes to the way we relate to each other digitally, arguably one of the main ways in which we relate these days, we do not have that luxury. Apps like WhatsApp have grown to a point at which the network effects make it almost impossible for alternative suppliers to offer something similar for “consumers” to defect to.

Upon arrival at AUC, first year students are invited to join a WhatsApp group of their cohort. Doing so, we feel AUC fails to live up to its responsibility to help students, where possible, find and build a private, safe, (digital) world, devoid of unnecessary commercial interests that might be (or evolve to become) at odds with the interests of the students themselves.

In some parts of the world, including in the Netherlands, WhatsApp has become the most widely used chat service, both for personal and work related purposes. In fact, its wide usage has become one of its main points of attraction; users benefit from the fact that many of their friends, family members and colleagues are on this platform. The more people use Whatsapp, the more attractive it becomes as a chat service.