Notices by p̸h̴o̸⁴c̵e̴ₓa̵ (pho4cexa@tiny.tilde.website)

i have been using https://darkreader.org for a few days and i freakin' love it

if you, like me, are a computer nerd cliché who likes to spend all day sat in a chilly dark cave with blackout curtains drawn staring at an array of glowing panels,
(and you're old,)
darkreader will help your eyeballs to not explode when you visit a site with a bright background

😩
i've defended rms' pedantry
i believe in free software
i believe copyleft is essential
i believe AGPL3 is the best license

i disagree with those who say "software freedom isn't important these days" or that ease of use is more important

but every time RMS makes the news he undermines the FSF and the free software movement 🤦♂️

i just e-mailed them to discontinue my recurring donation and told them why

gonna increase my donation to software freedom conservancy instead

🧠 we're... writing lisp and deploying it to production?

👨 we're writing lisp and deploying it to production!

🧠 holy shit we're living the dream!

👨 (so you better not fuck this up)

current status: being blown away daily spelunking through hundred rabbits' body of web-work

tiny example: visit grimgrains.com. oh it's a nice vegan recipe blog. lightweight, beautifully styled, hand-illustrated, and wonderfully organized.

now unplug your router and what's this? you can still visit every recipe on the site! because it was front-loaded into your browser using a bespoke human-readable database and markup format 🤯

built by two people while navigating the pacific on a sailboat 🤯🤯

hot startup idea: a microblog but the database is a ring buffer strictly capped at a few gb so old toots automatically disappear, the database fits in ram, and storage costs never increase

[actually somebody has probably already done this]

i was social today!

i said many words, out loud, to people other than myself

i was only 40% awkward, well below what our statistical analysis team had modeled as the outcome for this evening

i met people irl that previously i only knew through the fediverse

thanks again @art for inviting me to Hack Night

hot startup idea:

luxury "black card" made out of titanium with laser etching so when you whip it out all your friends are impressed by your obscene ill-gotten wealth

but it's a library card

the thousand-dollar annual fees support the libraries for the whole county

it lets you borrow any title from any library (i.e. just like the normal paper card does)

how to efficiently run your home file server when you're off-grid and solar-powered:

"now I have 16 terabytes of network attached storage, that uses no power at all when it's not in use, and automatically spins up on demand"

http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/usb_drives_with_no_phantom_load/ by @joeyh

Amazing!
#solarpunk?

It seems like the seL4 microkernel project is really taking off. I keep hearing of projects that use it and now a DARPA seL4 "Center of Excellence."

(and I'm not in that community at all, just casually following news)

I'd be so excited about projects like the Rust-based OS https://robigalia.org/, but I'm terrified so see it and others permissively-licensed.

If you're working on an OS or kernel please consider a license with tivoization protection like GPL3, for the safety of your users 😱

I'm a copyleft nut but I've got plenty of critiques of the FSF and I don't uncritically revere Richard Stallman, really I don't,

but wow do I love this artwork

Illustrator: Nathan Fox http://www.ba-reps.com/illustrators/nathan-fox

Published in: https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201611/are-we-forfeiting-control-over-our-digital-lives

My GPL advocacy is motivated in part because I think of myself as a user of software before a developer of software.

I want everyone granted the four freedoms with all code because it's painfully frustrating when they're taken from me. Users are "us" versus software manufacturers who are "them."

I wonder if GPL opponents see things differently, with software developers as "us" versus users as "them."

➡️ when the FSF "had to" hand-deliver dead trees because the DMCA comments website used nonfree javascript

➡️ anti-Facebook activists who delete their own FB account, so the people who most need to see their message… don't

➡️ "you oppose capitalism and yet you use the products of capitalism"

🤔 maybe a disingenuous threat of being labeled a hypocrite has been effective in squelching activist voices in several domains

🤔 maybe activists against X have a _responsibility_ to endure X, to subvert it

someone crowdfund a little 3d-printed kit that attaches a kobo e-reader (runs linux, easily replaceable firmware) to your favorite mechanical keyboard and drink AstroHaus's milkshake pls kthx

But just then a bro wandered past and chuckled, "Ha ha, nothing's unbreakable! Some clever hacker will root it eventually!"

Which was even worse.

He could have backed me up and said "the right to repair and tinker is important,"
but instead he undermined me,
giving this dude a pass for tivoizing as hard as he could,
happily accepting corporate control as a matter of course,
because hackers are ✨magic✨.

Just because a lot of stuff has been hacked doesn't mean it's easy, or inevitable.

Passed a booth at PyCon for the AstroHaus Freewrite, a Kickstarter-backed "distraction-free writing tool" combining a small e-ink screen with a mechanical keyboard in a fixed plastic shell for a whopping $550.

I inquired about the firmware.

"Actually it runs Debian!" said the dude.

"Oh! So I could install ssh and..."

"No," he said incredulously, "we're not going to give people root!"

TFW name-dropping one of the most freedom-focused OSes to sell a device that restricts those same freedoms.

when everybody comes over for d&d but no d&d is played they just drink and chat

that's

A

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@rjt I can't say enough good things about having a little file/media/backup/apps server at home! It's soo useful.

Tip: set up automatic backups first! It's easy to get into the habit of just dumping everything into the server, so better to not have to worry about it.

@staticsafe rabid nerds losing their damn minds over systemd is my main motivation to look for reasons to like it and forgive its occasional flaws

@ajroach42 I don't know if they're 8- or16-bit but a variety of retro synthesizers used builtin floppy drives to load their instrument banks, including the Roland S50 that I used to own. I'm sure any still in use have been modified with a USB floppy drive emulator like this one https://www.amazon.com/Nalbantov-Floppy-Emulator-Roland-included/dp/B071YZLV8D

Can somebody with Free Software and anti-surveillance-capitalism leanings tell me their impressions of the Pocket service?

It's "part of the Mozilla family" and integrated with both Firefox and my e-reader, so I'm feeling tempted to try using it

But I'm hesitant because I feel, like with every other SaaS, I'll be betrayed eventually. By data lock-in, or it being shuttered with no means to migrate, or sale of its users' data to marketeers, etc., etc.

And I don't know where they get their money