Posts by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
(DIR) Post #AchNC4zPspzfaZlKFM by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-11T09:10:58Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
I definitely see the author's points in this article https://rknight.me/please-expose-your-rss/, but I disagree with the proposed solution. Feed discoverability should be a basic browser feature, not something web developers need to actively implement, nor some information that users have to scrape themselves from the DOM.I made an extension back in the day that parses the <link> tags and puts back the feed icon where it's supposed to be (on the right side of the URL bar), and also renders the feeds properly rather than just spitting out the raw XML: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rss-viewer/. A mobile version that can be installed as a Firefox Mobile extension is also on its way.This is how the web used to work 10 years ago. The <link> tag has a purpose: it instructs browsers that the current page has a feed, so the browser can parse it and show a feed button to the user. Both Firefox and Chrome used to work this way 10 years ago.Then motherfucking evil Google began its war against feeds. First it killed Google Reader, then it stopped complying with the <link> conventions, removed the feed icon from their browser and stopped rendering RSS/Atom. Firefox quickly complied too.Let's make it clear once and for all: yes, I, can add an RSS URL to my website to make discoverability easier, but it's not my job as a web developer to explicitly make feed discoverability easier by modifying my frontend. That's just a workaround. My job as a web developer should be to provide the right <link> element, and then the browser should know what to do with it. Just like the browser is supposed to know what to do with scrollbars if my divs exceed the window size, with no need for explicitly tinkering with window geometry on the frontend side.And, as a user, I shouldn't write my custom JavaScript to parse the feed URL from the DOM. Just like I'm not expected to write my JS user script to render the title of the page.Feeds are one of the fundamental features of the Web. <link> conventions are one of the pillars for scalable content distribution, which was never supposed to be limited to hypertext. I won't settle for a crippled version of the Web just because the crippled version gives some private corporation the illusion of higher profitability.If browsers refuse to provide such basic features, then it's a browser problem. I would say "choose a browser that natively supports feeds", but there's none left. So use extensions to mitigate the impact of feed-hostile browser politics.
(DIR) Post #AcjCHqcfVAkvaYadRQ by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-12T08:40:04Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
This is a great day: #Google has officially been found guilty of monopolist practices when it comes to app distribution and fees collection, and the jury took the decision unanimously.To be clear, I don't like Epic either, and I consider them just as evil and wannabe monopolistic as Google. But Google's app distribution monopoly could be taken down only by another large-size business which could afford years of legal battles.https://www.theverge.com/23945184/epic-v-google-fortnite-play-store-antitrust-trial-updates
(DIR) Post #AclglXfNvlbCQRr7dg by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-13T08:51:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Surveillance capitalism is like a slowly boiled frog. You don't realize how much it has bent every single aspect of our lives in its favour unless you take a step back and ask yourself "how would the world have reacted had this thing happened 10-20 years ago?"#MeAnd23 is a good textbook example.Had such a massive hack happened 10-20 years ago (we're talking of the records about 7 millions individuals, like the whole population of a small/medium country, including names, emails, dates of birth, addresses, members of the family tree, ancestry etc.: lists of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry were already available on the dark web hours after the hack), I have no doubt of how things would have unfolded.A big public outcry, a big class action against the company for not enforcing sufficient protection against personal data, boycott acts, the board stepping down, etc.How do things unfold in 2023 instead?The hack is barely mentioned in the news, it joins a neverending list of data breaches (by now we can all safely assume that some criminal out there has at least our phone number, email address, date of birth and physical address, fished from thousands of data dumps on the dark web), and the company simply rushed to push out an email with a new ToS that simply states that, if the nature of a complaint against them is similar to those of many other users, then there will be "procedures that will encourage a prompt resolution of any disputes and to streamline arbitration proceedings".In other words, closed door arbitration and dispute resolution to avoid a class action where they could be publicly called accountable for mishandling the personal data of millions of individuals, be given harsh fines, or have the board forced to resign.Of course, the new ToS is opt-in by default, unless you send them an email within 30 days. So it's safe to assume that anyone who doesn't file them an email within that time window will lose their right to sue a business for leaking their most sensitive personal data to criminals.If you're asking yourself whether today's tech companies are above the law, you're probably asking the right question.Btw, never ever consider sending your hair, blood or spit to one of these ancestry discovery companies. You're basically giving them all of your personal identifiers, and you're also attaching DNA samples to them. This is the kind of stuff that even law enforcement needs to handle carefully and collect only when required - let alone a tech startup backed by sociopath investors.Hackers are very well aware of the value of that information on the dark web (health insurance companies and racist groups would pay top bucks for it) and regularly target these platforms.In the best-case scenario, companies like 23AndMe will share your data with other data brokers to target you with the right anti-aging cream or erectile dysfunction drug for your age, your ethnic group and your genome type.In the worst case scenario, data about your ethnicity, family tree or health conditions, or worse full genome dumps, may be dumped on the dark web and sold to the best offerer.And, unlike a normal data breach where you usually change your email or reset your password, there's no way of recovering from a theft of your own genetic data.Even open-source enthusiasts should be very wary of sharing the source code of their own bodies so recklessly.https://www.engadget.com/23andme-frantically-changed-its-terms-of-service-to-prevent-hacked-customers-from-suing-152434306.html
(DIR) Post #AcpxQfuBh39LEqZVDs by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-15T12:41:32Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
This is the picture of a drug dealer who's desperately trying to convince us that drugs are good. #Cop28 should have NEVER been hosted by one of the biggest polluters. For clarity:1. There's no such thing as "low-carbon" fossil fuels. All fossil fuels are made of hydrocarbons, and all hydrocarbons release carbon when you burn them. Let's start calling immoral marketing stunts and outright lies by their name.2. "At the end of the day, remember, it is the demand that will decide and dictate what sort of energy source will help meet the growing global energy requirements" - sure, just like it's demand for heroin that keeps heroin dealers in business. Demand alone doesn't legitimize business practices. Otherwise we should all make and sell sandwiches out of our crap - after all, 10 billion flies in the world surely can't be wrong about what tastes good.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/15/cop28-president-sultan-al-jaber-says-his-firm-will-keep-investing-in-oil
(DIR) Post #AczvA1ubJzoprhqJ6G by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T10:11:46Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
#Threads is now officially defederated on this instance.Meta has gotten countless chances of doing things the right way, it has screwed up each single of them, and I want each single byte coming from that morally bankrupt monstruosity out of my life, my house, my network and my instance.Note however that, unlike other defederation talibans, I won't give a damn if you're an instance admin and you decide not to defederate Threads.I'm not afraid of Meta scraping my instance through other federated instances that haven't blocked them. If they want to scrape this instance, they can already do so via API or even search engine results, no need for federation - and they obviously won't give a fuck about your robots.txt or #nobot hashtags, we're talking of a company with no moral compass after all.If you want to give Threads a try, go for it. If you still need more evidence that Meta is irredimable and rotten to the core, go for it. Who am I to ban you/defederate you for holding a different opinion?
(DIR) Post #Ad0424xF1aKwZYMSOm by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T10:49:32Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@SallyStrange I defederated Threads for very similar reasons, but I wouldn't go as far as applying the transitive property to anyone who doesn't defederate them. I feel like it can quickly escalate in a nasty twist of the "my freedom ends where somebody else's freedom begins" principle. On top of that, gratuitous defederation makes the Fediverse more fragmented - and that's exactly what Meta wants.
(DIR) Post #Ad0427NC24Hg4cWD7w by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T11:33:02Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@SallyStrange @santiago fair enough, I could have chosen a less controversial word. But the context remains the same - what I'm denouncing is ideological purity with no functional purposes.To summarize:1. If instance A defederates Threads, then no content from A will be relayed to Threads, and the other way around. Regardless of what instance B does. This is just how the protocol works. The "additional layers of security" argument just doesn't stand.2. If Meta wants to scrape the Fediverse, they already have plenty of resources for doing it, even without going full in with an ActivityPub-compatible platform. And, if an instance is public, there's basically no way of stopping them - I don't think that a company that didn't care of harming teenagers or encouraging a genocide in Myanmar cares about our nobot tags or robots.txt rules.So, from a functional perspective, defederating those who don't defederate Threads *is* a mere act of ideological punishment with no added value.I understand that many are on the Fediverse because they were traumatized/bullied on other platforms, and they want this to remain a safe place. But friendly fire and fragmentation definitely won't help anybody other than companies like Meta. We already have technological solutions to ensure that our own instances are impermeable to the content of platforms/instances we don't like. We shouldn't be overzealous and add a layer of ideological retaliation on top of that.
(DIR) Post #Ad0OcTLvmvJRkaXaiG by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T15:33:19Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@briellebouquet @SallyStrange you're welcome to administer an instance if you think that we aren't doing our work well enough. And maybe run your own relay. Or maybe come up with a better implementation of the authorized fetch mechanism.I defederated Threads, and I defederated a lot of fascist instances in the past. I can't guarantee that I can keep doing it, nor that I can proactively defederate any new instances with lax moderation that come up, nor that I can implement transitive defederation.I also have other things to do with my life, my bills for running an instance are only getting higher, and nobody is paying me anything to try and keep this corner of the Internet clean. And, on top of that, I don't want to ban an instance with hundreds of connections to users on my instance just because it didn't proactively and immediately block Threads, poa.st or some other instance with lax moderation. Other people have also other things to do with their lives and may have different trade-offs to consider, as we ought to respect that too.We as admins can do a best effort to keep everyone safe all the time, but keep in mind that there are many trade-offs to be made, and insulting us for not blindly complying with argument XYZ won't make this place better for anyone.If you have uncompromising concerns about doxxing or content leak, then you should just consider running your own private instance or your own private relay.
(DIR) Post #Ad0OcUVXUganKg2mKO by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T15:41:48Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@briellebouquet @SallyStrange btw, doxxing from content on a public instance is incredibly easy. You don't even need another federated instance. You just need a bot on a non-blocked instance, or even a search engine.If you're really concerned about your data being leaked, then you should implement your own precautions rather than expecting everybody in a decentralized network to implement the precautions that you deem sufficient. It's just unfeasible and it won't scale.And calling me out as a white privileged cis doesn't make your arguments land any better. I've fought side by side with minorities all of my life and always strived to get to the best solutions for everyone, just to be called out as a privileged white dude whenever I disagreed with them on something. I'm honestly sick of this aggressive behaviour. Treat others with respect if you don't want to alienate them.
(DIR) Post #Ad0OcW7VV0YcKioc9A by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-20T15:47:12Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@SallyStrange @briellebouquet it's realism. It's acknowledging that I'll do my best effort, but that1. Proactively and timely banning any lowly moderated instances is unfeasible2. Doing so with 2-3 layers of depth is even more unfeasible (first of all because not all instances have public blocklists)3. Doing so on a relay level is even more unfeasible4. The current solution (authorized fetch) isn't scalable5. Public posts on a public instance means that anyone is just one step away from making a bot on a random non-blocked instance and scrape whatever they likeNo solution can be discussed until we acknowledge these simple facts. Just like we can't talk of flying without first taking of how to overcome terrestrial gravity.
(DIR) Post #AdH2FrcVIPKYOamrSa by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-28T14:11:35Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Here we go again. #India seems to really love installing spyware on journalists' and political opponents' phones, while still pretending to be a democracy.All the products developed by #NSO must be clearly called as illegal by an international moratorium, and all the contracts the company signed with governments should be nullified. No more "we need these tools to keep an eye on terrorists" excuses. Real terrorist groups don't communicate over WhatsApp on their personal iPhones. This kind of software has been, again and again, *only* used to illicitly spy on political opponents and journalists.#Pegasus must disappear, and any government who is caught using it must be sanctioned. It won't solve the problem of State-sponsored hacking, but it'll make the entry barriers high again.p.s. Modi's government apparently summoned Apple execs to ask them to retract their statement or soften it. What's there to soften? Finding Pegasus on somebody's phone is the digital equivalent of a thief caught with his hands in a safe!https://www.dw.com/en/india-journalists-targeted-with-pegasus-spyware-reports/a-67840337
(DIR) Post #AdIsQMUKlyt3nnFjEm by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-12-29T12:48:34Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Standing ovation for Rep. Rashida Tlaib.It takes guts in the West to call out Netanyahu for what he really is (a fascist genocidal maniac and a war criminal), and it takes even more guts to do so if you're a US Congress representative.To the intellectual dishonest journalists covering these facts:1. Stop calling the Squad's Congress minority a "far-left" group. Their mild social-democratic ideas and their support for a sensible welfare state are close to what in Europe would be defined as "moderate center-left". The fact that such ideas are considered extremist in the US tells much more about how far to the right the political baricenter has shifted in the US, rather than how extremist the alleged "left" (or whatever is left of it) has become.2. Stop writing blatant falsehoods like "The group has been vocally against Israel since its conception". Nobody in the group has ever tried to deny the existence of Israel as a State. They only call for Israel to respect the UN resolutions, after violating >100 of them since 1948, respect the international boundaries drawn by the Oslo accords, stop its illegal settlements and evictions in the West Bank, end the state of "perennial occupation", and make progress towards a two-State solution. The fact that calling Israel accountable to respect international laws and institutions (and deals signed by its own representatives) is now considered "anti-Israel", or even "anti-semitic", tells much more about the absolute impunity that Israel enjoys, rather than the group's allegedly extreme positions - and also how morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest mainstream media has become.https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/rep-rashida-tlaib-calls-netanyahu-genocidal-maniac-via-instagram/ar-AA1mbGbh
(DIR) Post #AdQG5AhrfkOgJqxvN2 by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-02T01:44:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
No peace will be possible until Russia is brought on its knees and Putin's head is transfixed on a stake.Until then, it's our duty to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needs to win the war against the ogres. We can't afford our brave brothers and sisters to lose.Слава Україні 🇺🇦 https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drones-attack-bombardment-1e381d5e7fa71fb5549af354e3649681
(DIR) Post #AdQqDevIo92MhXb5rE by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-02T04:09:29Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
I've had to take down my Piped instance at piped.platypush.tech.As my Linode bills were getting more and more expensive, I've had to move some services inside of my home network - and Piped is among them.Once I moved Piped within my home network, it really started taking a toll on my connectivity. Streaming videos to ~20 users simultaneously, with no Cloudflare in front, from a home DSL connection takes quite of a toll.Since many have been using the service but nobody has bothered to contribute to so far, I've decided to take it down and move it to a domain that I won't advertise this time.I like to self-host, and I'll always keep doing it. And I also like to give something back to society - many have been using my services for years, and I'm ok if others use them. I'll always offer them free of charge and I'll always respect everybody's privacy.But there's a limit to everything.One thing is to offer a search engine aggregator or an ebook hosting service for free. Another thing is to provide a media streaming service, running on a home connection, for free.It cost me money to run Piped on a Linode instance (precisely ~$100/month extra on my Linode bills for a beefier 16GB machine), and it costs bandwidth and electricity to run it on my home network.Free software (and services) should be free as in speech, not as in a free beer.I've asked multiple times for users to contribute to keep the lights on, but haven't received a single penny - all while I got on average ~5 video views per minute that prevent me from even having a videocall on my own home network.If you really love free software, but you can't run it yourself on your machines for whatever reason, please at least bother to financially contribute to the instances that you use. Otherwise you're just a freeloader who does more harm than good to the free software.
(DIR) Post #AdRYvwTJJtvHqsQkQi by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-02T18:23:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Bernard here's the fact check + sources of the 2005 speech where he called the break up of the USSR the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, and called it his mission to revert as much of it as he could: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/06/john-bolton/did-vladimir-putin-call-breakup-ussr-greatest-geop/.And this is Vladimir Solovyev, TV propagandist and often spokesperson of the Kremlin's line, recently stating "the only guarantee for our safety is to reach the Atlantic" https://nitter.net/Gerashchenko_en/status/1732041019930145153.He made similar statements in the past, he called for a nuclear WWIII initiated by Russia ("we're all going to die one day anyway": https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-comforts-viewers-nuclear-war-we-all-die-someday-1701580), and he clearly stated that Ukraine was "only the beginning" https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/top-putin-propagandist-says-the-ukraine-war-is-just-the-beginning/About Donetsk and Luhansk, I have several friends who live or used to live there. Before 2014 they didn't mind what they were part on. Half-Ukrainian, half-Russian families are very common, and kids traditionally learn both the languages. Putin just blew on the fire of ethnic divisions that nobody used to care of earlier, and used the Stalinist excuse of "protecting Russian-speaking groups" as a pretext for an invasion. If his goal was just to grab those two Russian-speaking regions, then why didn't he stop there? Why the bombs on Kherson, Kyiv, Odessa, all the way to Lviv on the Western border? Why did he take the Zaporizhzhia plant? Why did he try and stop so many times even grain exports? Why did his troops leave hundreds of km of landmines behind them? The answer is simple: he just wants Ukraine to collapse (all of it): if he can't have it, then he'd rather turn it into a failed State.Which, from a historic point of view, puts him in a position that is actually even worse that Hitler's, and makes him deserve an even worse death.
(DIR) Post #AdRsnQvciBaomwtSsK by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-02T22:05:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Bernard Who's Putin to have a say on the alliances of another sovereign and independent State? I've been to Kyiv several times before the war, and I remember seeing EU flags on the streets and meeting people who were mostly pro-Europe. If the people of a country want to take a certain political side, who's Putin to say if it's right or wrong?Belarus is an example of a pariah State passively aligned with Moscow and governed by a dictator who keeps death penalty legal. And it borders EU and NATO country. Did we ever complain that Belarus should be aligned with us or stay neutral, or threaten to invade it and reduce it to a failed State? No, because that's not how the right to self-determination works.About invading Russia through Ukraine - we're not in 19th century anymore. We don't need an old fashioned land invasion to attack a country, and Putin knows it quite well. And, if we really wanted a land invasion, we could also start it from Finland (a NATO member now, thanks to Putin's reckless war), Poland or any of the Baltic States. So that argument also doesn't make any sense.
(DIR) Post #AdRxn04R4HmpGFd0lc by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-02T23:01:49Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Bernard it is wrong in the 21st century, period. It was wrong when the US saw Cuba as a threat and it actively tried to sabotage them. It was wrong when it actively interfered with the politics of Nicaragua, not to mention Vietnam and Korea. It is wrong for Russia to do the same with Ukraine.A country must have no control whatsoever over what another sovereign country does - that's the whole point of self-determination. They can try and leverage decisions with diplomacy, but when diplomacy fails they should just STFU and accept that other people with another flag who live on the other side of the border have all the rights to decide what they want to do with themselves.Ukrainians elected Zelenskiy, not Putin.
(DIR) Post #AdSXjcQc6s6FPuglhA by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-03T05:44:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Bernard who shot to peaceful protesters in Independence Square has to be clarified. If the shots were actually not fired by police forces, then the real culprits need to be punished.But these reports ignore the simple fact that Yanukovich was a corrupt and very unpopular leader who stuffed all the levels of government with clientelism. My own friends were protesting in those days, risking their own lives together with tens of thousands of others - rest assured that they aren't American agents.Later on, Zelenskiy won the elections on a strongly pro-European platform. Not with 51% of the votes, but with nearly 75%. Ukrainians were so desperate for change after being treated like a satellite of Russia that they democratically elected a comedian with no political experience because he promised them closer ties with Europe and less corruption. That definitely wasn't a coup, and the current government isn't illegal. Assuming that Yanukovich's ousting in 2014 was a coup (and I still have many doubts about that), then how do you call ousting a president elected with nearly three quarters of the votes years later?As a parallel, take Belarus. Following the Russian textbook, Lukashenko jailed anyone who could pose a political threat to him, exiled his main political opponent, ended up with an election that was almost a joke, and quashed protests with forced incarcerations and gratuitous police violence. Did the EU call that a coup and invaded Belarus in response? Sure, we condemned them and put sanctions on them, but not a single soldier crossed the border. Then why should we allow Russia to behave differently?> There is no higher authority above a nation. Nations must therefore do whatever is needed to protect themselves.Absolutely not. International law exists for a reason, and the right to self-determination is an integral part of it. Invading a nation with internationally recognized borders is a violation of the UN treaties that most of the countries (including Russia) signed. Just because nobody seems to give a fuck about the UN and its resolutions and laws nowadays it doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. If we remove those founding international treaties, then only diplomacy, nuclear deterrent or greater military power are what separates a civilized world from a jungle of nations dropping rockets on one another.
(DIR) Post #AdUzLrIcM1B5caKLjc by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-04T09:57:40Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I'm looking for a service where I can just buy a domain name - no hosting attached.I'm tired of 80% of my Bluehost bills being for hosting+WordPress (a service I've never used) when all I need is just a domain name.And I don't like Bluehost's dark patterns either - in their new UI they've made sure to hide DNS management under many, many clicks under the advanced tab, even with a non-dismissable warning. I'm not sure it they are planning to make it a premium feature in the future.Requirements:1. It needs to be certbot/Let's Encrypt friendly - that excludes GoDaddy2. It needs to provide me with the ability to register as many subdomains as I want and manage the DNS records however I want3. No mandatory hosting+WordPress upsells. If I never asked for it, it means that I don't want it4. I'm also happy (if not happier) if it simply allows me to point to my own DNS server. I really just need the domain name, I can run my own DNSOf course, registering my own registrar with ICANN may be an alternative, but for obvious reasons I'd rather avoid that path if possible.
(DIR) Post #AdUzkzz1CkpZnG9D84 by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2024-01-04T10:04:51Z
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@cnx I've been surprised myself to find out that in 2024 it's apparently very hard to have a domain registered with a registrar without having any form of hosting attached (and pay for it).