whynothugo

mwl, 2 months ago to random

Google's Incognito Mode isn't, and never has been.

Betrayal is the Internet's business model.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242019127/google-incognito-mode-settlement-search-history

josh, 2 months ago to opensource

Hoo boy. I'm not naming names because I don't want to fan the flames, but the knives are out:

Events around #xz have rightly emboldened volunteer-driven open source projects to take their hyper-wealthy downstream users to task.

Wild to think that many large companies have hollowed out their open source program offices (OSPOs), the internal teams who have been working on addressing these resource issues.

I fear this will get worse before it gets better.

#OpenSource

whynothugo, 4 months ago to random

#fosdem is all about the people.

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

Synapse (the Matrix server implementation) is moving to an AGPL+CLA model.

Their announcement reminds us that this allows them to ship non-open-source derives in exchange for a fee. The wording is very clear: they intend to move from an open source model to an open core model.

Take great care when relying on this software. All the legal elements are in place so as to pull the rug from under you and screw over the community. There is no ambiguity here.

https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

I'm a fan of interfaces that can be used with just arrow keys and ok/cancel buttons (e.g.: enter/escape).

They're not only keyboard friendly, but suitable for use on unusual devices, like a media centre controlled via a small gamepad, devices with a tiny joystick, or phones with feature-phone-style keybords.

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

If anybody wants it, I have an activation-locked M2 MacBook Pro with 32GB RAM and the highest specs.

It was given to me during a consulting job. I never again managed to get in contact with anyone. I tried getting ahold of someone to either return it or have it unlock for months with no luck. I don’t think anyone cares.

I feel bad about throwing this kind of high end hardware into the recycling bin, but this is the only option provided by Apple (what a great way to increase sales!! 🤑🤑).

whynothugo, 9 months ago to random

#Jitsi remains committed to privacy, but now you need to sign up for a Google or Facebook account in order to use their public hosted instance.

https://jitsi.org/blog/authentication-on-meet-jit-si/

What a joke.

whynothugo, 11 months ago to random

I just found a clone of a project that I maintain:

https://github.com/jazzband/django-payments

Here:

https://github.com/mike70193/django-payments

All of its history has been rewritten: commits that I have authored have been rewritten with a different author. There doesn't seem to by any other change.

I've no idea what to think of this.

Daojoan, 4 months ago to random

We don't need web3.

We need to bring back web1.

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

I dream of a world where copyright law does not apply to software. We’ve normalise such harmful idea and continue to build on it day by day.

whynothugo, 2 months ago to random

If xz had been proprietary, would the bug have caught any attention?

600ms (the runtime overhead in this case) is a fraction of what it takes to log into some systems.

whynothugo, 5 months ago to random

Sentry is removing all tracking and unnecessary cookies. Their report on this is pretty transparent.

https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-what-happened/

Definitely an example to follow.

whynothugo, 11 months ago to random

New EU regulation will enforce replaceable batteries on portable devices (e.g.: phones): https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IPR96210/making-batteries-more-sustainable-more-durable-and-better-performing

Very happy to see this kind of thing coming through.

whynothugo, 6 months ago to random

The main reason that I stopped using terminal emulators with tabs was that I used a window manager with tabs (my first was #pekwm).

Suddenly a single window can have two terminal tabs and a pdf reader as the third tab.

Tiling window managers with tabbed containers are essentially the same concept.

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

Given enough time, any wallpaper website will turn into a repository of anime girls and lewd photos.

whynothugo, 8 months ago to random

My problem with Firefox's profiles, is that there's no sane way to maintain them. At some point, something breaks and the solution is to "create a new profile". But there's no simple way to export settings and re-import them all.

And about:config contains both config and state, so copying all of it over might also copy whatever is breaking things. There's no easy way to split configuration from state data.

whynothugo, 7 months ago to random

It’s often very hard to make good metaphors about modern business practices in the tech industry. Imagine a stove that won’t heat your pots and pans if they are not from the same manufacturer as the stove. Imagine a pens and pencils that don’t write if you try to use it from paper that’s not from one of the pen manufacturers’ partners. These ideas are so absurdly inconceivable in other industries that metaphors don’t make sense, but these sort of practice are the norm in tech nowadays.

whynothugo, 21 days ago to random

Sure, having to open a terminal to fix a problem is not newbies friendly. And having to open a car's front cover to fix an engine problem isn't friendly at all either.

Yet somehow I only hear people complaining about one of the two. And it's not the one which can lead to injury.

whynothugo, 6 months ago to random

Open source projects present themselves with slogans like:

> we enhance your rights by giving you the right to choose

But honestly, something like this would be a lot more specific and attractive:

> we don’t shop spyware and the software responds to what the user commands

whynothugo, 3 months ago to random

If you ever think that you’re bad at naming thing, remember that “long long int” is actually a thing in C.

whynothugo, 10 months ago to linuxphones

For months I’ve been contemplating writing an #XMPP GUI client on #Rust (with Unix-like platforms and #LinuxMobile as targets).

My main blocker is the lack of a polished toolkit. The majority of them don’t have good clipboard support and I don’t want an IM client where you can’t send images or files.

I’m gradually accepting that I’m going to need to write my own toolkit (and I really don’t want to).

1/2

whynothugo, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

Some general notes on #s6, the service supervisor y manager suite: https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/03/25/notes-on-s6/

whynothugo, 1 month ago to random

I need a notmuch for pdf files. Something that uses xapian (or alike) to index pdf files and run searches on them.

whynothugo, 5 months ago to random

I tried to watch a YouTube video via yewtu.be, but it seems like Google is actively blocking public Invidious instances.

So now there is an Alpine package for Invidious, you’re welcome.

whynothugo, 9 months ago to random

Any clues on to how I can view the #signature of a #PDF file on linux?

A family member has set their system up to sign with a government-signed certificate, and I want to check that the signature they've attached (and the chain) is valid.

Looking for something simple, it's a one-time okay-to-do-manually kind of thing.