But what about those #MS_Windows users out there? How about a gzipped tarball, all nicely packaged up so you can distribute around, of a custom built #PuTTY client that will securely connect people to your #Synchronet_BBS over telnet?
More great news on the #rPi front - remote access for #SOHO and Home based networks as simple as a single apt install command!
Give it a try today and let us all know what you think! I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences with this invaluable remote access tool.
#e2ee is a goal, not a promise. As far back as I can remember, forums like those supporting #Enigmail and #gpg were staffed with volunteers from the privacy community who repeatedly insisted on answering questions, like, "Is <this> (whatever this might be) totally secure?" with stock questions like, "What is it that you consider 'totally secure?" or answers such as, "Secure is a relative term, nothing is completely secure, how secure do you need your mission's communications to be?"
Phrases such as, reasonably secure should be indicators of how ridiculous it is to assume that any secure platform isEVERcompletely, and totally secure.
That begs the question, "Exactly how secure do you require your communications to be?" The answer is always, ... relative.
Which means that you should always believe Ellen Ripley when she says, "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"
My experience is that state actors won't even try to decrypt your communications. That's old school - and a horribly inefficient use of resources. They'll come after you with a keylogger or manufactured legal nightmares or torture - to either or both sides of the communication; depending on the perceived value of your secret.
It all comes down to 4 fundamental questions:
What is the value of your secret to you
What resources do you have available to protect it
What is the perceived value of your secret to your adversary
What resources do they have available to divulge it
I'm unable to pull this up and boost here. Was able to get the whole stream on a Glitch-soc box np, and I can follow the curator here too, but I'm too tired to try testing on Hubzilla or Friendica at the moment; so I'll just post the link then, which may be of interest to some, ... Actually, I suspect, many.
We've had some discussions about this over in the Fediverse-City Matrix room, Where Ryan is also a participant. It's apropos of the recent onboarding with respect to Flipboard curators and also the nacent interoperability we're experiencing with Bluesky's ATP.
After several years of warning after warning after advisory after advisory and calls to repeatedly update or remove andNOT USE CHROME by the Department of Homeland Security, it should be inconceivable that anyone does - but they do.
Sometimes these are patched with automatic updates before horrific and catastrophic results occur, sometimes not. To be frank, part of the problem stems from the fact that Chrome is the largest attack surface out there where browsers are concerned, but notwithstanding it being the fav target are also serious privacy concerns that aren't shared by other chromium based browsers.
To be fair, many exploits are indeed shared by other chromium based browsers, but not most, while some are related to other browser capabilities, like WebRTC, but it's still best to just ditch Chrome and never look back.
Here's more coverage on vulnerabilities issued less than a month ago. It took 3 seconds to bring this up, and no, not using Google, which didn't reveal this when I tried that search engine in a subsequent search, lolz. Why would they return SERPs that poo poo their own product?
There's truly only one way to ensure safety - unplug. But there's a lot of simple things you can do to exact a reasonable level of security, so why not observe some of those best practices? It's not like it will cramp your style.
Anyway, that's my two cents. h/t to @darnell for raising awareness of this latest brokewell. Make sure you take the time to visit the link he's provided for you too.
There are plenty of #Browsers that run on #Android (to name a few, alphabetized):
Brave Browser
Chromium
DuckDuckGo
Firefox
Kiwi
Vivaldi
IMO, No one should be running Chrome - Desktop or otherwise. It's a privacy nightmare even when there aren't CERT warnings circulating.
@tallship@thenexusofprivacy thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it? GoToSocial looks interesting and they don't have a central instance, you host your own even on a Pi.
Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.
No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?
Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.
No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.
The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.
Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.
True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.
With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.
Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.
In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when their on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.
The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".
That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.
masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.
Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.
Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.
There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.
I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.
Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!
Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?
In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.
My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.
The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.
I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.
And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.
Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.
I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.
They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)
Okay it's one of those, "What's peculiar here?" kinda things.
Consider the source itself. And I certainly don't mean code of any sort. 'Why' would 'They' cite Wikipedia, as good a resource as anyone might think it to be?
Why not cite yourself? Instead of citing someone else - who will merely turn right around and cite you as the ultimate source reference?
A few dollars, even that little if that's all that you can, will be greatly appreciated and goes to a tangible cause with a finite timeline. I cannot speak to what will happen to the original archival material following digitizing, but paper does have an expiration date, so the sooner anyone is able to step up with anything the sooner Jason can get back to the business of preservation.
A new version of #novelWriter has been released - w00t!
Not a complete feature set of Markdown, but certainly good enough for most purposes. You should give it a good look. If you're looking for a light markdown editor, one that works with bits and pieces as well as complete chapters in books, focuses on the text and authorship in a distraction free environment, then novelWriter might just be right up your alley!
This is an example of a marketplace listing in Flohmarkt.
What "I" did here...
Went to the "All" tab over at Flen's Market - Much like PeerTube, there's a Home, Local, and All tab, the latter of which includes items from other instances that you've manually federated with within the radius you've specified from your location.
Next, there's a choice to make if you're interested in an item. You can register for a local account (I don't see any reason to do that unless you want to post a listing on that particular server), or you can remotely add yourself (like I did). Since the remote features don't quite seamlessly work with Mitra, I tried this from a masto server - no joy. I tried it from another masto server (a masto fork) - no problem this time, even on an older version of masto. That was humorous to me, as I've a bit of disdain for mastopub servers and found it amusing that even some of the instances running the very latest version of masto won't work, while older one's based on forks do; but I've got a twisted sense of humor.
So next, you can engage with the seller directly from your local instance on most Fediverse platforms (support is added for various additional Fediverse platforms all the time). In this case, (visible because I chose the "All" tab), the particular item was from yet another #Fohmarkt server elsewhere - this is a very nice feature, like #DeSoc#eBay!!!
From there, once you boost the item in the listing, others can see it in their streams, boost it further, make arrangements directly with the seller, etc. Kinda Kewl.
This is different from how most other attempts to deliver a marketplace into the #Fediverse. Usually, what I've seen is someone trying to integrate the functionality local to a platform, which networks (via ActivityPub federation) only with other like platforms. That's not a Fediverse solution - that's a platform solution and leaves everyone else on the fediverse not running that particular platform disenfranchised.
For example, using the Epicyon server platform as an example, it is first to be understood that this particular server platform is designed for very small numbers of user accounts per each instance. You also have to manually contact the admin of remote Epicyon servers yourself (or be contacted by them), then mutually agree to federate each other's marketplaces separately and distinct from any wider federation configurations your server has. Considering the inconveniences with locating other Epicyon instances that may or may not have enabled and made use of their marketplaces and establishing a mutual publishing agreement, coupled with the likelihood that each of your instances between 1 and 10 users, posting an item in the marketplace has a pretty high probability of being more effort than its worth - especially since it dosn't federate with any other Fediverse platforms.
Others follow a similar design, but also generally operate like normal #ActivityPub federation using a blacklist method, as well as being able to accommodate potentially hundreds, or even thousands of users per each instance (yeah, I know, semi-monolithic); so even if those marketplaces didn't already automatically federate across the Fediverse with all instances of other like server platforms, it's still a huge improvement over the previously discussed smolweb platform's model.
But they're still not Fediverse wide...
This is where Flohmarkt really starts to shine - it's fully Federating (Still a WIP wrt some platforms - see the wiki for particulars) across the entire #ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse.
You can check for the latest particulars on Flohmarkt's current Federation status if you're interested in your particular Fediverse platform and level of interoperation with Flohmarkt instances.
I do have some criticisms of the particular functionality in federating that the developers have chosen to incorporate, however. Basically, The server admin still needs to manually federate item listings between the local instance and other remote Flohmarkt servers. It doesn't need to be this way however, but one must concede that after going over the documentation and seeing that the concern's of the dev team are over unchecked spam, phishing, poor quality ads, etc., I find it to be a very reasonable concern, although I'm still not comfortable with how the Dev team has hard-coded this conditional into the server's capability, when a slightly different approach might afford self-hosters much greater flexibility and incintive for adoption; namely:
Make the current model the default
Enable other configurations for federating between other Flohmarkt servers (and eventually, other platform marketplaces) via either simple configuration files, runtime arguments, or via a GUI in an admin control panel, including that of an uninhibited fully blacklist model of sharing listings between Flohmarkt servers.
I generally tend to think that hard-wired, opinionated configuration choices are a less than ideal (usually bad idea) than acknowledging issues surrounding such decisions and then choosing a default while affording server admins (or users themselves) of being able to manage the options for themselves. This is one of those cases where I feel it could make a huge difference in the viabilty and adoption potential for this, "Strictly Federating Marketplace" Fediverse platform.
The other (very minor) criticism I have for Flohmarkt is the pin & string radius solution as it is currently implemented:
It's determined by the server admin, instance wide
It's determined by the server location, or some other arbitrarily decided locale
The radius is a great idea, but I think the following would go a long way towards improving the utility of this feature set:
The server admin decides whether to enable user-level radius configs or server level, as is the case at this time.
Local users determine, and have control over whether an established is applied to either their entire user profile's repertoire of items listed, or on a per item basis.
If he user chooses a per item radius, each listing could have a different radius established.
The local users have location radius specifications that can be based on different criteria, such as pinning a location on a map of their choice, by country (the free IP2Location databases can accommodate this behavior).
The user's particular radius settings for each listing must be preserved and observed by all federating remote Flohmarkt server instances (but not by individual remote user shares/boosts, which should remain unrestricted).
This Radius feature is extremely powerful and I think that every effort of the development team to exploit the potential of this feature set should be a major consideration. Eventually, Flohmarkt servers will federate with other server platform types, exchanging listings between say, Flohmarkt servers and Friendica servers, etc.. but the awesome power unleashed through following and boosting capabilities that are already fully available to remote users to share with others holds the potential at this very time to make Flohmarkt item listings ubiquitous across the entire Fediverse, ... And that is really kewl :)
Well, I'd rather tease your interest and see you go checkout more for yourself rather than feed you everything you wanna know about a really kewl #social_commerce communications tool - you really should experience how kewl it is for yourself.
I couldn't locate a #Matrix support room for Flohmarkt like most contemporary software products maintain in the FOSS world, but the more traditional irc chan #flohmarkt at #LiberaChat is readily available, and of course, there's the issue tracker at the Codeberg repo I previously linked to above.
What are your thoughts and impressions on this novel approach to embedding the marketplace commerce structure into potentially everyone's social streams in the form of both a dedicated platform and as passive feeds via the intervention of other #Fedizens who share and boost individual items and listings in Flohmarkt?
Ghost is an excellent platform for publishing. I used it a lot a few years back for publishing articles when it was headless - that was optimum. Compose at your leisure within your own local environment, then push it up to your own self-hosted instance.
Unfortunately, they let it fall into disrepair, left it unmaintained, and last I checked the Ghost desktop was nowhere to be found in the repo. One of the maintainers explained to me that they just didn't have anyone willing to maintain the app and so I migrated away from the platform myself.
I'm going to give it another looksee to review what happened to the elegant, #headless nature that Ghost used to espouse as one of it's key ingredients for using it in the first place. I just hope that they don't try to go the way of #OOo, #Bacula, and other #FOSS projects that were forked, and somewhat marginalized, as a result of decisions to force community versions into #Freemium products that lacked most functionality without fee based subscriptions. Lord knows, the last time I checked their managed hosting solutions for Ghost it certainly wasn't even competitively priced.
With this newfound revelation in the form of some kind of epiphany, let's hope their commitment to #Fediverse and FOSS exceeds that of their grasp for excessive monetization.