- ID de exploración:
- d3e4c98b-6793-4275-859c-ddb92fc6725dFinalizado
- URL enviada:
- https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page/
- Informe finalizado:
Enlaces: 8 encontrados
Los enlaces salientes identificados en la página
| Enlace | Texto |
|---|---|
| https://framapiaf.org/@bbbhltz | Framapiaf |
| https://codeberg.org/bbbhltz/pages | Source |
| https://ko-fi.com/bbbhltz | Support |
| https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ | CC BY-SA |
| https://fediring.net/ | Fediring |
| https://xn--sr8hvo.ws | IndieWeb |
| https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/%F0%9F%9A%BB%F0%9F%90%B7%F0%9F%9B%8C/previous | Previous |
| https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/%F0%9F%9A%BB%F0%9F%90%B7%F0%9F%9B%8C/next | Next |
Variables JavaScript: 9 encontradas
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| Nombre | Tipo |
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| onbeforetoggle | object |
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| throttle | function |
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| addCopyButtonToCodeBlocks | function |
| store | object |
| lunr | function |
| displayResults | function |
Mensajes de registro de la consola: 0 encontrados
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<h2 class="section-title">Blog</h2>
<p>Welcome to my blog.</p>
<p>Here are my posts listed from most recent to least recent:</p>
<ul class="post-list">
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-10-19</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/10/multilingualism/">IndieWeb Carnival: multilingualism in a global Web</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-10-15</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/10/voice-messages/">My Beef with Voice Messages</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-09-29</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/09/puppylinux/">Who’s a good boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-06-22</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/06/vulgar/">Vulgar; Popular</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-06-06</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/06/lookbothways/">Look both ways</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-05-09</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/05/imagine/">Imagine</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-04-13</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/04/unlocking-knowledge/">Unlocking Knowledge</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-03-30</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/03/supernova-goes-pop/">Supernova Goes Pop</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-02-23</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/02/seoshenanigans/">Sneaky SEO Shenanigans Suck</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-02-02</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/02/calendartrick/">Quickly importing events using Khal</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-01-28</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/01/happybirthday/">Happy Birthday Blog</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-01-17</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/01/sexyprivacy/">Make Digital Privacy Sexy</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-01-16</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/01/updatepinetime/">Note to self: How to update PineTime</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2024-01-09</span>
<a href="/blog/2024/01/wavering/">Why did I waver?</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-12-18</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/12/bestalbums2023/">My Best Albums 2023</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-11-17</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/11/sellingpoison/">They Lie</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-09-12</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/09/glasspyramid/">The Glass Pyramid</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-08-29</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/08/picturetaker/">Digicams are still fun</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-07-29</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/07/ffmpeg-waveform/">On making a video for a podcast</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-05-20</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/05/on-debloating-android-phones/">On Debloating Android Phones</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-04-04</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/04/alpine-linux/">On using Alpine Linux as a Desktop</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-02-07</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/02/on-blogging-in-2023/">On Blogging in 2023</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-30</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/tmi-sharing-your-cv-on-linkedin/">TMI: Sharing your CV on LinkedIn</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-27</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/pandoc2023/">Using Pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-22</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/wrong/">Wrong</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-18</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/review-crosscall-core-z5/">Review: Crosscall CORE-Z5</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-06</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/claws-mail/">Claws Mail</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-02</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/featured-images/">Adding Featured Images to My Hugo Blog</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2023-01-01</span>
<a href="/blog/2023/01/using-bitwarden-cli-to-create-login-items/">Using Bitwarden CLI to Create Login Items</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-11-30</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/11/coolpad-cool-s/">Coolpad Cool S</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-11-27</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/11/crosscall/">Crosscall</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-10-21</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/10/pinetime/">I have a PineTime</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-07-12</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/07/we-have-a-winner/">We Have a Winner</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-07-02</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/07/homework/">Homework</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-06-13</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/06/teachping/">Teach(p)ing</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-05-25</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/05/childrens-cartoons/">Children’s Cartoons</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-05-07</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/05/in-search-of-digital-natives/">In Search of Digital Natives</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-04-20</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/04/i-like-e-books/">I like E-books</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-03-24</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/03/guide-privacy/">Low Friction Introduction to Digital Privacy</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-03-10</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/03/privacy-browser/">Privacy Browser</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-03-09</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/03/switching-desktops/">Switching Desktops</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-03-05</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/03/a-quick-look-at-distro-rankings/">A Quick Look at Distro Rankings</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-02-22</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/02/beginner-joy/">The Joys of Being a Beginner</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-02-06</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/02/python-lottery/">Learning about the Lottery</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-01-22</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/01/learning-python/">A Month of Python</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2022-01-13</span>
<a href="/blog/2022/01/computer-know-how/">Computer Know-how</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-12-31</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/12/2021/">2021</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-12-19</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/12/guide-pandoc-cv/">Making my CV with Markdown didn’t turn out as expected…</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-12-10</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/12/freak/">Freak</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-11-23</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/11/using-markdown-and-pandoc-to-make-a-simple-invoice/">Using Markdown and Pandoc to make a simple invoice</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-11-20</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/11/the-eco-conscious-tech-sham/">The Eco-Conscious Tech Sham</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-11-13</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/11/damasio/">The Brutal New Worlds of Alain Damasio</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-11-12</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/11/punkt-update/">Update: Punkt MP02</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-04-29</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/04/technology-whales/">Technology, Ecology, and Whales</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-04-26</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/04/privacy-security-rabbit-hole/">The Privacy-Security Rabbit Hole</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-04-15</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/04/punkt-mp02-review/">The Punkt. MP02 Minimalist Mobile Phone</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-03-26</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/03/linuxlogos/">Linux Users Like Lovely Logos</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-03-04</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/03/pandoc2021/">The Show Must Go On: Making Slides with Markdown and Pandoc</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-02-21</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/02/guide-reports/">Tips for Students: Report Writing</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-02-11</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/02/listicle-film-tv/">Listicle: Documentaries, Films, And Series About Information Technology And Its Influence On Humanity</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-02-10</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/02/listice-books/">Listicle: An Annotated List of Science-Fiction Books</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="display: grid; grid-template-columns: 7em auto">
<span class="date">2021-01-28</span>
<a href="/blog/2021/01/guide-browser/">Tips for Students: The Browser</a>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
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"content": "This is my entry for October’s IndieWeb Carnival , hosted by ZinRicky .\nI come from a tiny village on Nova Scotia\u0026rsquo;s south shore. In case you didn\u0026rsquo;t know, that is the east coast of Canada (America\u0026rsquo;s toque).\nUs village-folk speak English, or something close enough to English that we get by. Like almost any country of a certain size, there are regional differences, but that is not what we\u0026rsquo;re here to talk about today.\nThe theme today is about multilingualism in a global Web, and that quaint little English-speaking village is no longer my home. I live in Europe now, France to be specific. But, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be living here if I hadn\u0026rsquo;t grown up in that little village and gone to school there and been part of the French Immersion program.\nFor six years I took all of my classes in French. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know it, but I was functionally bilingual after those six years. I found out when I made it to university and spoke with native speakers of French. I continued studying French at university and even took part in a project that underlines the importance of multilingualism and the Web.\nI helped out with a research project about online learning. It was a straightforward website, with some Flash elements, about learning a specific grammatical feature of French1. Lo and behold, nobody working in the IT department could speak French, and the professor doing the research needed someone who could speak French. So, I helped make the site.\nThis was in 2005. How many people before or since were unable to share something on the Web due to a language barrier?\nShortly after university I moved to France. I happened to arrive on the eve of Facebook opening the doors to the public. My university was granted access to Facebook in 2004 or 2005. In 2006, none of the French people I was meeting had ever heard of it. They were still enamoured with Myspace and Skyrock.com .\nQuestion: Was Facebook available in French in September 2006?\na. yes b. no c. yes, but only Québécois French\nIf you answered b, you\u0026rsquo;re right, and we can skip right to the part where the French all made accounts and collectively proclaimed, with great exasperation, that Facebook is nul 2. It was nul because it was only in English (and maybe Spanish?) and you couldn\u0026rsquo;t change the colours like Myspace. It was nul because even if you created an account, your friends were not, because it was in English only, or because they had already tried it and quit because of the English.\nFurthermore, it was also during this period (fall semester 2006) that a French friend and colleague saw me working on my laptop and said, \u0026ldquo;In France, we are bad at computers and the Web, because we are bad at English. You should stop teaching English and do something with computers here, you could make a lot of money.\u0026rdquo;\nI cannot say that the French are bad at computers. I don\u0026rsquo;t think they are that bad at English\u0026mdash;they just don\u0026rsquo;t get enough practice. I can sympathize with the statement about language barriers. It is awfully true that knowing English helps me enormously.\nBeing about to speak, read, and write French and use it on the Web, though, is a powerful thing. The quickest example I could give is Wikipedia. Very often, there are articles on Wikipedia where the English version is the most detailed (i.e. the longest), but the French one is the better version for being concise. Sometimes the sources are different too, so that is great if I\u0026rsquo;m actually trying to research something.\nWhile, the lingua franca of the Web will likely always be English, I would have been disheartened to have not learned French and miss out on so much. The French Web, and all of its jargon, patois, argot, and parlance made the years of study worthwhile.\nand it still lives: https://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/fren/tutor/tutor2005/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nit sucks\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/10\/multilingualism\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/language\/": {
"title": "language",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/language\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/": {
"title": "Tags",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/about\/": {
"title": "About",
"tags": [],
"content": "About the Author Born and raised in rural Canada, I do as little as possible as often as I can.\nProfessionally, I teach English as a second language\u0026mdash;my main employer being an international business school in France.\nMy personal interests are technology, entertainment, science-fiction and music (see BookWyrm and ListenBrainz ).\nIf you like the things on this blog you can email me .\nAbout the Content The content on this blog is written by me. I do not use generative AI or bots to help prepare it. My view on generative AI is quite negative, whether for personal or professional reasons. I also use my robots.txt to prevent crawling by AI crawlers.\nClubs About Supporting this Blog If you would like to support this blog, you can do so here ko-fi.com/bbbhltz .\nTodo buy domain name pay for hosting ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/about\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/10\/voice-messages\/": {
"title": "My Beef with Voice Messages",
"tags": ["Technology",],
"content": "Scrolling through Mastodon a post caught my eye.\nTo save your the trouble of translating, the gist is this:\nA voice message is the height of selfishness, it transfers the burden completely onto the person who didn\u0026rsquo;t ask for it.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s more, 90% of the time it starts with, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m sending you a voice message because it\u0026rsquo;ll be easier for me.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026mdash; @[email protected]\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how this revelation escaped me for all these years, but it hit me like a brick.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t get many voice messages. Actually, I don\u0026rsquo;t receive loads of messages at all. That\u0026rsquo;s beside the point. The real point of this quick post is point out the obvious:\nWhile voice messages have a use, they have invaded our lives.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve all seen people talking to themselves while holding their phone in that tell-tale position\u0026mdash;you know, palm pointing to the sky, arse-end of their phone either pointing to their mouth or to their ear. While driving, while in public places, and even while eating.\n90% of the messages my partner receives are vocals. Luckily you can speed them up. But still, what\u0026rsquo;s the deal with eight-minute long voice messages? Is it a podcast or a conversation? How are you supposed to converse with a cascade of words?\nI could say this is an \u0026ldquo;old man yelling at clouds\u0026rdquo; situation, except that over time, I have started doing it too! Only with my partner, mind you, but something peculiar has happened over time.\nThe messages get longer!\nThe first time I gave in and sent a voice message, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t more than a sentence fragment to let them know I would be late. Now? Now I leave audio books that I could sell to BBC or NPR. If I downloaded our exchanges of voice messages, it would be like a soap opera of old.\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure there are some people studying this. It seems like a topic worth studying. At the height of SMS messaging, when people still didn\u0026rsquo;t have unlimited SMS credit, we learned to be concise. And, during the heyday of ICQ, I recall an anecdote recounted by a colleague.\nThe colleague had twins who were in their early teens. For fun, one evening my colleague installed ICQ on the family computer. Over the course of a week my colleague would leave and receive messages. He was a changed man after that. He assumed that instant messaging would be silly and that his children would have trouble communicating clearly. They didn\u0026rsquo;t. He learned about his children\u0026rsquo;s lives, their friends, school, and so on, by leaving them written messages that they could reply to on their own time.\nI think we might be losing something by relying on voice messages, and I\u0026rsquo;m pretty positive that it is disruptive and annoying in public places. I still communicate with nearly everyone via written messages, but some colleagues have begun using voice messaging. How am I supposed to find the information I need if it is in some audio file that cannot be searched.\nI\u0026rsquo;m therefore giving myself a little challenge: no voice messages for a month!\nIf you feel like sending me a written message on Signal, my contact is bbbhltz\u0026lt;dot\u0026gt;48.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/10\/voice-messages\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/technology\/": {
"title": "Technology",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/technology\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tunes\/": {
"title": "Tunes",
"tags": [],
"content": "There is no order to this list. I add albums based on when I discover them.\n2024 HARDWAREZ by MASTER BOOT RECORD Bandcamp Chamber Songs by We Hate You Please Die Bandcamp Honey by Caribou Bandcamp I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU by JPEGMAFIA Bandcamp She Told Me Where To Go by Old Man Luedecke Bandcamp Les manières de table by Annie-Claude Deschênes Bandcamp Boss by 4man Bandcamp META{physical} monsters by Biomass Bandcamp Hex Dealer by Lip Critic Bandcamp I AM JORDAN by I. JORDAN Bandcamp Luminous Rubble by Blockhead Bandcamp Rollercoaster by Cadence Weapon Bandcamp Memory Empathy by DJ Birdbath Bandcamp Three by Four Tet Bandcamp Akoma by Jlin Bandcamp Dwelling by JEWELSSEA Bandcamp XT / Woozy by Sully Bandcamp Body by Horskh Bandcamp DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL by Escuela Grind Bandcamp Adult Contemporary by Chromeo Bandcamp eNdgame by Cyberaktif Bandcamp Dreamfear/Boy Sent From Above by Burial Bandcamp Raves of Future Past by T.Williams Bandcamp Nineteen Eighty-Fur by Cat Temper Bandcamp All Life Long by Kali Malone Bandcamp Despectral Maid by Apollo Bitrate Bandcamp The Collective by Kim Gordon Bandcamp ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tunes\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/software\/": {
"title": "Software I use",
"tags": [],
"content": "Laptop Distribution(s) Debian Stable.\nPuppy Small.\nDesktop Environment LXQt Lightweight and great.\nJWM Very small and usable.\nOffice Geany A powerful, stable, cross-platorm text editor.\nCalibre Manages ebooks. I like ebooks, shoot me!\nLibreOffice General purpose office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, etc.\nzathura A document viewer that saves screen space.\nXournal++ Hand note-taking software. Useful for annotating PDF files.\nInternet Claws Mail Tiny, simple, maintained, plaintext, bottom posting; it has all you need! It works with different email providers and focuses on email. That means that it is lacking a true calendar function and importing and syncing contacts is not always straightforward. You will get over this once you have things looking and working the way you like. Read about it on my blog here . Remember to use plain text Syncthing P2P file synchronization between devices on a local network, or between remote devices over the Internet. I use it just for notes and photos but it can do lots more. This has replaced Dropbox and Google Drive for me.\nBrowsers Firefox Just Firefox with Betterfox , uBO , BPC , and uBlacklist makes for good browsing. Filter lists that I use: laylavish\u0026rsquo;s Huge AI Blocklist , WDMPA\u0026rsquo;s Content Farm List , Shockwave3301\u0026rsquo;s , my own 16 Companies Filters .\nqutebrowser Keyboard-focused browser with a minimal GUI. Some configurations here on Codebeg Piracy Nicotine+ Free and Open Source (FOSS) alternative to the official Soulseek client. Images and Graphics Flameshot Powerful yet simple to use screenshot software.\nInkscape Sometimes I need to make a pretty graphic to wow my students.\nAudio and Video Audacity This is just the most straightforward way to record audio. It works and it works well.\nmpv If I am going to watch a video on my computer, whether local or via YouTube, I use mpv. It does audio as well and there are plugins and extensions that allow for different functions.\nfre:ac A free audio converter and CD ripper (yes, I still need to rip CDs).\nMusic beets The music geek\u0026rsquo;s album organiser. My beets configuration Strawberry Music Player Music player and music collection organizer.\ncmus A small, fast and powerful console music player. I use this over other options (like mpd) because it is so damn easy!\nCommand Line Tools Pandoc A universal document converter. I use this to make 95% of my documents for work.\ne.g. some posts on Pandoc ditaa Turns ASCII art into diagrams.\ngramma Commend-line grammar checker\nImageMagick Convert, edit, work with images.\npdfannots A script that extracts annotations from a PDF file.\nPDFtk A very simple tool that can do lots of things with PDF files. This is a necessity for my job and it has saved me and made me the hero of my department on many occasions.\nscrcpy An application that provides display and control of Android devices connected on USB (or over TCP/IP).\nyt-dlp A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes.\nYtfzf A script that helps you find Youtube videos (without API) and opens/downloads them using mpv/youtube-dl.\nAndroid universal-android-debloater Use ADB to debloat rooted and non-rooted android devices. Improve your privacy, the security and battery life of your device. (some of this can be done by hand ) Launcher KISS Lightning fast, open-source, Android Launcher. or\nLawnchair Open source clone of the Pixel launcher.\nDelta Icons or\nArcticons A monotone line-based icon pack for Android. App Stores Droid-ify Free and Open Source Android App Repository\nAurora Store Aurora Store is an alternate to Google\u0026rsquo;s Play Store, with an elegant design\ne/OS/ App Lounge Main Apps FairEmail Fully featured, open source, privacy friendly email app for Android\nNewPipe A libre lightweight streaming front-end for Android\nqksms The most beautiful SMS messenger for Android\nEtar Calendar Android open source calendar\nPrivacy Browser Android Privacy Browser is an open source Android web browser focused on user privacy\nMull Privacy oriented and deblobbed web browser based on Mozilla technology\nGadgetbridge A free and open source Android application that allows you to pair and manage various gadgets such as smart watches\nTotal Commander Two-paned file manager\nPineTime Infini Time Open Source firmware\nITD Other Tools, Hosting, Git Markdown Codeberg ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/software\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/linux\/": {
"title": "Linux",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/linux\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/review\/": {
"title": "Review",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/review\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/09\/puppylinux\/": {
"title": "Who\u0027s a good boy? A Puppy Linux Mini-Review",
"tags": ["Linux","Review",],
"content": " Background ramble... Having a computer just for work is an unfortunate reality. Some of my colleagues use their personal devices every day. I do as well on occasion, usually when I need to do that one little thing that just frustrates me on Windows.\nAbout eight years ago I was surprised when my employer gave us all laptops for work. Then, about three years ago they had us trade in our laptops for new laptops.\nThat new computer though. It is one of those Dell convertible deals with a touchscreen. Not complaining, but I have no use for that. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if any of my colleagues use it. I must gripe though. It is stronger than me. I live in France, this is what people do here!\nThe new computer is a little heavier and the battery life is not great. The battery life has only been worse since this summer when a new update was pushed (I mean, the employer owns it, they have to update it) and after many reboots there was a new service running in the taskbar\u0026mdash;one of those corporate device management things.\nNow, not sure if it is the update or the new software installed, but going from a 9-hour battery life to just over two hours is the outcome. This first month back at work for the school year has been a pain in my back carrying around the charger as well as the laptop.\nThis, combined with not being able to change the featured apps in the start menu, have brought me where I am today: in need of a portable Linux distribution.\nI tried the different variations of running a VM. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t for me. I am not allowed to wipe the drive and install my favourite distro, I am not allowed to dual-install (well, I could probably get away with it).\n18 years of being that one annoying person who uses Linux, and I\u0026rsquo;ve never tried a portable Linux distribution. It turns out there are a few quirks.\nWhat is Puppy Linux? That\u0026rsquo;s actually a pretty deep question. Puppy isn\u0026rsquo;t a single distribution, it is a family of releases. The particularity of Puppy is that it is one of the distributions that\u0026mdash;like Alpine, antiX, and Porteus\u0026mdash;can run from RAM . Puppy is meant to be easy to use, come preloaded with minimal tools for daily usage, and be light on resources.\nThe project dates back to 2003, the rest is history . Today, the mainline collection of Puppy releases includes Ubuntu-, Debian-, Slackware-, and Void-based variants. I decided to use the Debian 12 Bookworm-based version called BookwormPup64 (version 10.0.8). I did this because I am used to Debian and am fine with older software.\nPuppy can run from a USB with persistent storage, but many users do install it to their hard drive. The advantage here, at least from my limited knowledge of Puppy, is that you can mess around with your system, and if you make a mistake you can reboot without writing those changes to a special file or folder. I opted for a frugal installation to a USB device.\nInstallation Parts of this are very similar to other Linux installations: get the ISO \u0026gt; use dd to write it to USB \u0026gt; boot from that USB \u0026gt; run installer. Despite having used Linux for many years, I always like to see how many clicks it takes to find instructions for writing to a USB (in part because I refuse to memorize this command). Puppy is a little confusing here. The homepage has two different links for downloads, a link to the forum, and a link to the wiki (more on that after). From the homepage to the wiki page containing the required information , it is three clicks.\nThe suggested command is:\n# time sudo dd bs=4M conv=notrunc,fdatasync oflag=direct status=progress if=\u0026lt;DISK IMAGE FILE\u0026gt; of=/dev/sdX After booting from the USB, choosing the keyboard layout and other options in a very easy-to-use setup program I used one of the provided installation programs to install Puppy to another USB. That\u0026rsquo;s it. No Calamares, no TUI, just waiting to copy and format. There are more options to dig into but I chose a setup that got me going quickly. The nitty-gritty details are better explained across the Puppy forum, but the end result is an operating system on a USB flash drive that you can write to.\nInitial Impressions The expectations vs. reality feeling was strong with Puppy. I very much expected something janky\u0026mdash;the main website is hosted on GitHub, there are multiple places to find the ISOs, the wiki is a mess, the lexicon seems silly (pups, puplets, kennels, etc.)\u0026mdash;but the reality did not give that impression.\nIt is fast and snappy, looks good (we\u0026rsquo;re obviously not in GNOME or Plasma territory here), and I was connected to my home network in less than 60 seconds. Within another minute I found the link\u0026mdash;through a context menu on the desktop\u0026mdash;to remove the many desktop icons. Conky starts automatically, there is a compositor running (picom ) and JWM is the window manager.\nThe applications menu is filled with applications and scripts\u0026mdash;many of which I\u0026rsquo;d never heard of. It is clear that the Puppy team meant for the base install to cover many bases while still being minimal.\nA major surprise was opening the terminal and seeing # instead of $. That\u0026rsquo;s because you are the root user by default when running Puppy.\nGetting online at work My workplace, a university, uses an MS-CHAPv2 + Protected EAP method for connecting, requiring an ID and a password. The first day I used Puppy at work I clearly hadn\u0026rsquo;t had enough coffee and just couldn\u0026rsquo;t get it to work. This is despite having access to several connections methods all presented in a single wizard.\nThe Internet Connection Wizard lets you launch and use different network connection tools, like ConnMan, SNS, Network Wizard, and Frisbee.\nOn the walk home from work my brain rebooted, and I realized that I just needed to edit /etc/frisbee/wpa_supplicant.conf like this:\nctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant update_config=1 network={ ssid=\u0026#34;my_ssid\u0026#34; key_mgmt=WPA-EAP eap=PEAP identity=\u0026#34;my_identity\u0026#34; password=\u0026#34;my_password\u0026#34; phase2=\u0026#34;MSCHAPV2\u0026#34; } Software This tiny distro is packed with goodies. BookwormPup64 comes with around 900 packages from the Debian repository, and over 1,000 more pre-configured packages. Some of these packages are useful tools and forks that you could find yourself using regularly. PeasyScan, for example, is a lighter version of the XSane image scanner with a simpler interface.\nThe software from the Debian repository is all marked as \u0026ldquo;held\u0026rdquo; by default. That means that if you need to update a particular package, you would need to unmark it. It also means that if you decide to install a package from the Debian repository and update it later, you will only upgrade the packages that you installed.\nThere are loads of things to find when you start exploring: LXTerminal and lxrandr from the venerable LXDE project, ROX-Filer , JWM , qpdfview , DeaDBeef , EasyTAG , Leafpad , Viewnoir , mpv , CUPS for printing, a firewall and advert blocker, AbiWord , Gnumeric , gFTP , heck, it even comes with jq . That\u0026rsquo;s just what I can name off the top of my head.\nThe added helpers and GUI front-ends get the job done. Most, if not all, of the different helpers have a \u0026ldquo;Help\u0026rdquo; button that open local documentation or link to a website or forum post that explain the functionalities. I found myself launching some of them out of curiosity and discovering more information than I needed.\nJWM JWM , or Joe\u0026rsquo;s Window Manager, is the first thing you will notice using Puppy. Yes, there is a dated feeling to it. Even so, the modern conveniences are there\u0026mdash;keyboard shortcuts for moving windows around, virtual desktops, tonnes of helper apps to make it look the way you want\u0026mdash;and, most importantly, it isn\u0026rsquo;t massive or use loads of memory. I cannot find a decent or recent source, but for a system that runs from RAM, you want to go as low as possible. Some sites say JWM uses as little as 3 MB while others say around 30 MB.\nInitially, I thought I might replace JWM with something I have used before, like Openbox or LXQt, but that idea faded fast. In fact, I would even consider installing this on a modern machine.\nROX-Filer The file manager that comes with Puppy is ROX-Filer. 18 years on Linux and I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard of this piece of software. That makes sense because I\u0026rsquo;ve never heard of ROX Desktop . There are enough options under the hood appearance-wise, and it is more flexible than it looks. It has thumbnails and drag-and-drop and other niceties. Some keyboard shortcuts are a must, / opens the location bar, for instance, and CTRL+E will resize the window, so there is no white space.\nBottom line: ROX-Filer is light and works perfectly for this distribution.\nFirefox-ESR Again, an expectations vs. reality situation: Firefox is pre-configured to reduce annoyances, and disable unwanted features, for example:\nDo Not Track is on by default (privacy.donottrackheader.enabled=true); Pocket is off (extensions.pocket.enabled=false); Firefox accounts is disabled (identity.fxaccounts.enabled=false) This makes it a better experience than the default Firefox-ESR on Debian and was totally unexpected. The same goes for staying up-to-date. This Firefox-ESR is not from the Debian repository, it is installed by default and updates in place. Some people might find this annoying, but then again other people will want to have the latest version without checking the repository first.\nFirefox and other Internet applications, like Claws Mail , all run as a special user, spot, instead of root.\nIn Puppy Linux, spot is a restricted user account that allows you to run certain Internet applications with reduced permissions, enhancing security.\nFor example, the home directory for spot is in /root/spot/ and a browser will be limited to editing files in this directory.\nAdding something new When it comes to adding new software, you will want to stop and read the manual. There are different ways to handle this. Yes, you can straight up install something from the repository. But, installing large apps, like LibreOffice, can be handled more efficiently by choosing to install a PET or SFS version, or using an AppImage or Flatpak. I threw caution to the wind and decided to install TeX Live in order to do some work, and I\u0026rsquo;ve had no problems.\nStill, judging from what I\u0026rsquo;ve gleaned from my dive into the forums, the rule of thumb is: if it is big, check for other methods of installation first.\nEDIT: Using this version of Puppy (because it is based on Debian), it is recommended to prioritize the use of apt and install from the repository rather than using PET or SFS files. Obviously, Flatpak remains an option.\nCommunity \u0026amp; Documentation Speaking of the Puppy Linux Discussion Forums , that is where you will want to go for documentation. There is a wiki, but it needs some TLC. The forum has 3600+ members and a small team of administrators and moderators that can help out with lots of issues. I highly recommended reading through the different posts on the Getting Started subforum. Thankfully, it is not hosted on Discord or some closed community, it is good ol\u0026rsquo; phpBB.\nThe more time spent browsing the forums, the more I came to realize that this easy to use distribution is quite complicated. In comparison to bog-standard Linux experience\u0026mdash;download ISO; install; create account; use\u0026mdash;there are elements to this distribution that are so unique that the solution to some problems are only on this forum and not discussed elsewhere. And this is not taking into the account that some threads veer off into discussions about derivatives and build scripts and remixes.\nNitpicking I do have a few things to nitpick.\nFirst, the website needs clarity. There are two download buttons on the navigation pane and the wiki has less information than the forum, for example.\nNext, some of the helper GUI\u0026rsquo;s lack consistency. Sometimes a word is capitalized, sometimes not. Small details.\nFinally, this distribution has a bit of an issue depending on some conditions:\nIf this is your first Linux experience, the ease of use will be welcoming. You will get an idea of the limitations and strengths compared to other operating systems. But, what if you decide to continue using Linux and try something else? If that were to happen you might ask yourself, upon installing any other popular distribution, why there is a login screen when Puppy does not have one. Or, why there is a need to use sudo when Puppy does not, or other questions particular to Puppy. If this is not your first rodeo\u0026mdash;my case\u0026mdash;you may be stumped by the torrent of new terminology\u0026mdash;what is a pupmode ?. You will find yourself double-checking how things work and asking why the hell anyone would download a package from MediaFire that a random person on the Internet linked to on a forum. You might try to install one of your favourite applications, not understand why it won\u0026rsquo;t run, and then remember that not every application will run as root. Those ifs are just nitpicking, because if you had taken the time to peruse the forum, you\u0026rsquo;d have realized that this is not your average GNU/Linux affair. This is Puppy.\nCan I teach with it? tl;dr YES.\nAfter the Wi-Fi mishap, it was smooth sailing. I did add ARandR to help with connecting to projectors, but beyond that I could do what I needed:\nInstall what I needed to make my slides. Modify office documents with the LibreOffice AppImage or something like PDFtk. Use the projector. Browse the Internet and send email. Annotate a PDF. Take screenshots. (That is not a comprehensive list, obviously.)\nConclusion While Puppy, by name, was not unknown to me, the way it works was. Discovering it was akin to teaching an old dog a new trick. It beat my expectations and the out-of-the-box software works like a charm. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t, however, consider it as something easier to use than Mint or even Debian.\nFinal Grade You\u0026rsquo;re a good dog, yes you are! 7/10.\nSyndication I don\u0026rsquo;t normally do this, but I decided to put this post on more than just my Mastodon\u0026hellip;\njstpst \u0026ldquo;hacker\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;news\u0026rdquo; tilde.news beehaw mastodon ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/09\/puppylinux\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/books\/": {
"title": "Books",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/books\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/opinion\/": {
"title": "Opinion",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/opinion\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/06\/vulgar\/": {
"title": "Vulgar; Popular",
"tags": ["Opinion","Books",],
"content": "I got beef, and I\u0026rsquo;m old enough now to whinge about it. Also, my recent entrance into midlife has unlocked the profuse swearing buff.\nFuck.\nPeople read books. I read books. You have probably read a book. Some books come from libraries, so from your own family bookshelf, and some from shops.\nOne of my hobbies is walking through the book section of the local FNAC (a French retail store that also happens to sell books) and shaking my head at the \u0026ldquo;Lifestyle and Self-Help\u0026rdquo; section. It is just so frustrating, for multiple reasons.\nYoung and stupid, I never would have even looked at this section. But, circa 2006 The Secret1 was gaining popularity and I heard people talking about it. A heard it a lot. And, strolling through the book store I saw it prominently displayed on a gondola . It sported stickers advertising that it had already sold so many copies, and that it was based on the hit film.\nI read the blurb and saw the words \u0026ldquo;law of attraction\u0026rdquo;2 and said, \u0026ldquo;fuck off,\u0026rdquo; because even the 22-year-old country bumpkin that I was could tell this was some rank bullshit. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t they?\nThat was then. This is now. In the years that have passed, that section, which was just a gondola, has grown. Multiple metres of shelves are home to pseudoscience, esoteric nonsense, and the ghostwritten manuscripts of forgotten YouTubers.\nI had learned by then that the French use the word vulgariser to explain the phenomenon of making something accessible and popular. I subsequently learned that we use the same word in English (to vulgarize), and I find that perfect. Many of these books take a word from the PSYCH101 glossary, somehow smear it across several hundred pages of anecdotes, and slap a *jazz hands* science label on it. Vulgar, indeed.\nAnd this is where my first complaint comes from. Mixed in with this utter horseshit, there are legitimate, competent, authors. They are, in fact, scientists and professionals, and they have their work trapped in this section alongside shysters. Daniel Goleman\u0026rsquo;s Emotional Intelligence is labelled as a psychology book, but found in this section, for example. I feel like this is a suitable section for it, but it is not the same as the other books in the section.\nAs I write this, the most prominent books in this section are written by Natacha Calestrémé, Fabien Olicard, Joseph Murphy, and Mark Manson.\nSpoiler: Calestrémé most known for promoting pseudoscience, mediumship, and numerology3; Olicard is a mentalist with a YouTube channel4; Murphy was a New Thought minister who died in 19815; and Manson, who is known for his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life\u0026mdash;which is a (meta) self-help book about how self-help books offer meaningless and impractical advice\u0026mdash;is a blogger that also self-published a book called Models: Attract Women Through Honesty.\n(It is also cute to note that Murphy\u0026rsquo;s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind is currently #11 on Amazon UK\u0026rsquo;s best-selling\u0026hellip; address books ?)\nWithout getting elbow-deep in this heap of shit, I\u0026rsquo;ll move onto my second point: Some works, which are no more than self-help books, are found in business and management sections of the store.\nTim Ferriss\u0026rsquo; 4-Hour Workweek (2007) is in the Management\u0026gt;Human Resources section of the shop. As a reminder, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9\u0026ndash;5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich is indeed a self-help book, described by the author as \u0026ldquo;lifestyle design.\u0026rdquo;6 And, if you read the book\u0026mdash;like I did\u0026mdash;you\u0026rsquo;ll note that the author even (strongly) suggests generating income by selling an \u0026ldquo;information product.\u0026rdquo; He is talking about a book or website.\nBusiness is business, and these shops can put the books wherever they want, but if this were the films or music department, it would be a different story. I listen to Johnny Cash and Cattle Decapitation, but we cannot put them on the same shelf. The Human Centipede is a horror film. We put the Shōjo and Shōnen manga on different shelves and if I ask a salesperson for advice on what to buy for my x-year-old child, they will be able to give advice.\nHere comes a little straw man argument to think about: if a parent with a teenager suffering from depression or GID asks for help, what will the salesperson do? Take them to the bestselling parenting books section, which happens to overlap with the self-help section? What book will they walk away with? Something written ages ago, like Spock\u0026rsquo;s Baby and Child Care, something popular, like Faber and Mazlish\u0026rsquo;s How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk, or something from the psychology section that would (hopefully) bring about the realization that this subject is too important to be vulgarized, and professional help is the best way forward?\nBooks are amazing, and the self-help section is not without merits. But, reading a 120-page paperback by an influencer will not grant you an honorary degree in that subject or make you a researcher. In many cases, it will make you a gullible rube; a mark. \u0026ldquo;Over a million copies sold\u0026rdquo; just means that the publisher bought the copies, or the influencer conned their followers to buy them; the shills make the scam look legitimate.\nWith AI-written books on the rise, the self-help section will probably become a playground for grifters. It is time to remind our friends and children that, while entertaining, they cannot replace science and common sense and may even be so open to interpretation that they are dangerous.\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(Byrne_book) \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought) \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natacha_Calestr%C3%A9m%C3%A9 \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabien_Olicard \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Murphy_(author) \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttp://www.timferriss.com/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/06\/vulgar\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/ai\/": {
"title": "AI",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/ai\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/06\/lookbothways\/": {
"title": "Look both ways",
"tags": ["AI","Technology","Opinion","Short story",],
"content": " I live near an intersection. My street is one-way and there are often traffic jams, and sometimes it is due to planned construction. As a simple pedestrian I am surprised by the number of people that can ignore the warning signs and continue down this street despite having had the opportunity to avoid frustration.\nI see them. They are visible\u0026mdash;bright yellow and orange\u0026mdash;and they are in place days prior to any planned inconveniences. And yet, as I venture out to head further into town to run my errands I see people barrel down that street. Ignoring the signs, ignoring WazeTM, ignoring the world around them.\nPutting myself in the position of the driver, I\u0026rsquo;m sure they are initially struck with a sense of fluidity and ease. They might think to themselves, \u0026ldquo;Hey, I\u0026rsquo;m making good time, there is no traffic today.\u0026rdquo; Or maybe they think that perhaps the construction is finished, and the signs haven\u0026rsquo;t been taken down, so taking the risk might be worth it.\nDown the street I walk, and lo and behold, there is a driver standing in the street beside their vehicle, hands in the air, cursing the construction crew for ruining their day. But they are not alone. Other motorists saw the first one take a chance and didn\u0026rsquo;t want to miss out on saving time either. They crane their heads out their windows, plumes of vape-smoke curling into the air.\nI look over my shoulder and see that traffic has backed up to the intersection. Now traffic is congested in three directions as motorists try to manoeuvre their oversized vehicles\u0026mdash;taking turns, and relying on the waving hand signals of strangers\u0026mdash;into position so that they may continue their journeys.\nThat first driver, that leader of the pack, that disrupter, could have been right. They could have lucked out and found a shortcut. They tried, they failed. But, they took others with them and caused problems for the motorists who would have heeded the signs. Now the cautious motorists are wasting their time and fuel, hands in the air or honking their horns.\nI shake my head and keep on walking.\nI love technology. I like things with buttons and knobs. I love to read about technology despite not having a clue as to how some of these things work. In the world of technology I am a pedestrian sharing the street with motorists and I shake my head a lot.\nFacebook was neat, until it wasn\u0026rsquo;t. There were warning signs, but companies and newspapers went all in on that platform. Regular users suffered from the changes, the algorithms, and the ads\u0026mdash;much like the people stuck in traffic that were following the rules.\nBlockchain, and cryptocurrency, seemed neat from my pedestrian perspective. But it also seemed a little iffy. The warning signs on that highway were billboard-sized. Now have people and companies all around the world throwing their hands up and \u0026ldquo;geniuses\u0026rdquo; serving prison time.\nThe Metaverse? There were warning signs and wireless emergency alerts sent out via SMS. Traffic backed up on that highway until, with a shrug, the drivers made their 3-point-turns and cut their losses.\nNobody that thinks like me should assume they were right all along. No I-told-you-sos should be uttered. It\u0026rsquo;s just that as a pedestrian, you need to be careful. Pedestrians are soft a squishy, and we sometimes forget to look both ways, just like motorists sometime make mistakes. Everyone needs to be cautious.\nI had a productive walk. I ran my errands, went to work, saw friends and colleagues. It was a good long day, the sun is setting now, and I\u0026rsquo;m heading back home. In between songs I hear something. I pull out my earphones and the sound is deafening. What cacophony could this be?\nI stop dead in my tracks and say, out loud, \u0026ldquo;Are you f\u0026mdash;ing kidding me?\u0026rdquo;\nThat first driver is still there. Standing on top of their vehicle they wave their hands around, shouting at the top of their lungs. They are not alone. Some of the original followers are still there with them. And that\u0026rsquo;s not all.\nThe traffic is now backed up in all directions. There are cars and trucks, motorcycles, 18-wheelers, buses, and even cyclists and pedestrians. They are all shouting and honking, revving their engines. The air is thick with pollution and the ground covered with refuse.\nBags of money are piled at the feet of that first driver as they shout the most banal of rallying calls:\n\u0026ldquo;We just need more money and supplies. Look at how many of us are here. This is temporary. Don\u0026rsquo;t give up now!\u0026rdquo;\nPoliticians, doctors, students, teachers, programmers, police, criminals, and others carrying pre-printed placards claiming they will \u0026ldquo;save lives,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;make life easier,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;be more ethical and equal,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;make you rich\u0026rdquo; in exchange for a course on LinkedIn flank the lead driver.\nResidents lean from their windows banging pots and pans. They have no money to give, so they throw their pictures, driving licences, birth certificates, income statements, and password lists instead.\nOne person has a handmade placard that says, \u0026ldquo;Be careful! Drive slow!\u0026rdquo; The drivers throw bottles of p-ss at them. They look just like that actress from the superhero film franchise.\nAn entire traffic-jam\u0026ndash;themed marketplace has developed. There are artists and schools and musicians, food-delivery and courier services. Migrant workers deal with waste. The park across the street from my flat has been converted into an ad hoc overflow parking space.\nWhen I climb the steps to my building I can see down the street. There is a bus filled with people that just want to get on their way, they didn\u0026rsquo;t ask for this. There is an ambulance and a fire engine trying to save lives. And, way down the street, I make out the shape of the boom truck the construction site is waiting on.\nI turn and look back to the source of the traffic jam. The vanity licence plates I can make out read OPENTJ, JAMLE, METAJAM, JAMAZON, JAMVIDIA, MICROJAM, and JAMTHROPIC.\nI throw my hands in the air and shake my head.\nAt home, I sit down to decompress. #trafficjam is trending on all social networks. The top level domain for Tajikistan is being overrun by new registrations. An email from my employer announced their\u0026mdash;our?\u0026mdash;support for the traffic jam.\nI drift to sleep on my couch while doomscrolling, a lullaby of revving engines and honking horns permeates my double pane windows.\nCredits: Photo link ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/06\/lookbothways\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/short-story\/": {
"title": "Short story",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/short-story\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/05\/imagine\/": {
"title": "Imagine",
"tags": ["AI",],
"content": "Introducing Your Future Humans of earth.\nI have an announcement to make.\nI am going to be a musician.\nNow, just to be completely upfront with you, I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to play any instruments or sing\nYet.\nBut, imagine if I could. Music has the power to change the world. I could bring about peace, I could raise awareness, I could save our planet for future generations. And you can be a part of this!\nWhat do I need from you? Despite being entirely non-profit, I need your patience and support while I learn music theory and train. I also need your financial support to pay my rent and my bills. Your investment will fund my travels as I learn the world\u0026rsquo;s languages and appropriate plagiarize study their musical and cultural contributions. Funds will also be used to purchase the required instruments and materials. Environmental costs are negligible because they will be offset (in the future) by the good I will bring to the world.\nHow long will this take? How long are your legs?\nWhat I want to do is what the world wants and needs. So, the timeline for this is not set in stone, but we have a rough estimate:\n(Phase 1) Pre-Training or Theory: minimum 6 years for a Master\u0026rsquo;s degree in music theory plus 2 to 4 years for a doctorate degree. I won\u0026rsquo;t make my degrees public.\n(Phase 2) Fine-Tuning and Training: minimum 15 years to learn to approximately imitate all Western styles of music and build a \u0026ldquo;large music model.\u0026rdquo; Non-Western styles are out of scope for this project.\n(Phase 3a) Taking Requests: minimum 5 years of taking requests and playing songs, so other people can claim they wrote them. I plan on exploiting hiring people in developing nations to review requests. This will reduce poverty and raise standards of living in those countries.\n(Phase 3b) Taking Paid Requests: concurrent with Phase 3a, premium clients will have access to better songs. Possible use cases for this would be film and advertising.\n(Phase 4) Becoming Recognized as a Master: 10 to 15 years of non-stop world tours, collaborations, album production, and private concerts.\nThis means that by or around 2050 I will be able to produce something that can save the world.\nPossible Problems Competition: a lofty goal such as this one will attract competitors. Competition, though, is just proof of how powerful music can be and how important it is for you to give me your money invest today for a better tomorrow.\nHallucinations Duds: the quality of the songs depends on the catalogue of stolen studied songs and styles. Continuous adjustments will need to be made. These dudes are not bugs failures, but rather a telltale feature of a worthwhile investment with a high return.\nTheft of content from other artists: if an individual requests a song and then tries to pass it off as their own, that is fair, even if the song is similar to an existing piece of work. Schools, studios, and labels will need to adjust their expectations. It will be impossible for artists to complain because my method of study is opt-out: it is the artists\u0026rsquo; responsibility to make it known they don\u0026rsquo;t want their work to become part of my large music model.\nExciting Opportunities Partnering with me is one of the greatest opportunities the world has ever seen. You can increase the value of your brand. Here are just a few examples of how you can help yourself.\nBespoke Musician: I can be the official musician of your advertising agency, theatre, film, television or video game studio. Your current staff will be gutted free to pursue their own personal interests and career opportunities.\nNational Musician: I can create the music that represents your nation around the world. The music I create will motivate your workforce, increase national pride and therefore create economic prosperity.\nElectronics OEMs: Phones need ringtones. Partnering with me will give your brand the unique and recognizable sounds and increase your bottom line.\nInterviews and Articles: by interviewing me and featuring my grift mission in your papers and online, your readership will increase. Clickbait Sincere stories featuring me in the title are a surefire way to raise awareness, because the more people talking about me, the more likelihood there will be of gaining a new reader.\nRetail: the right music can push consumers to buy more and be more indulgent with their money. My music will help you control customers in your retail locations.\nRoad Safety: music calms the savage beast, and my music will reduce road rage and save lives.\nInternational Relations: in a world filled with uncountable horrors, a musician of the world and for the world is our only hope.\nInterplanetary Exploration: by mastering every style the (northern part of) planet has to offer, I will be able to write the music that takes our people beyond our galaxy and usher in a future of interplanetary exploration.\nFinal Words I\u0026rsquo;m hoping to grow into an institution. As a non-profit, my aim is to build value for everyone rather than a group of rich white guys.\nIf you too dream of a future and imagine a shared world of people living for today, in peace, with no fear or hunger, I hope some day you\u0026rsquo;ll join me, and the world will live as one.\nShow your support and save the future, today!\nClick here ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/05\/imagine\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blogroll\/": {
"title": "Blogroll",
"tags": [],
"content": "Collections and Webrings Blogroll.org A curated list of personal and independent blogs\nIndieseek.xyz Indieweb Directory A human edited, Indieweb directory\nPersonalSit.es A site built to share and revel in each others\u0026rsquo; personal sites\nWeird Wide Webring The web needs a little more weird\nFediring.net Webring for the personal sites of any member of the fediverse\nindieblog.page Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time\nooh.directory A collection of blogs about every topic (someday my blog will be listed\u0026hellip;someday\u0026hellip;)\nSome Blogs I follow Adam\u0026rsquo;s Desk (RSS) BryceWray (RSS) Buck 65\u0026rsquo;s Substack (RSS) Citation Needed by Molly White (RSS) David Revoy (RSS) Evan Boehs (RSS) Joelchrono (RSS) JP (RSS) Hyde/Lazybear (RSS) Ploum [FR] (RSS) McSinyx (RSS) Mojeek Blog (RSS) Seirdy (RSS) So1o (RSS) ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blogroll\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/linkedin\/": {
"title": "LinkedIn",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/linkedin\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/social-networking\/": {
"title": "Social Networking",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/social-networking\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/04\/unlocking-knowledge\/": {
"title": "Unlocking Knowledge",
"tags": ["Social Networking","LinkedIn","AI",],
"content": " If you\u0026rsquo;ve been using LinkedIn over the past several months, you\u0026rsquo;ve maybe noticed an uptick in solicitation to chime in on certain topics of expertise.\nI won\u0026rsquo;t judge you for taking part. We\u0026rsquo;ve all been a little bored at work and taken personality or IQ tests, and the temptation of a social network is hard to resist. So, going on LinkedIn is at least not going to look as unprofessional as other websites.\nYou connect, and right there on the home page is a simple call to action. Only, this time LinkedIn is referring to you as an expert.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a question begging for an answer. And, not just any answer. An answer from you. Because, you\u0026mdash;yes you\u0026mdash;are an expert. LinkedIn needs you.\nSo, you lean in and reset your glasses on the bridge of your nose and take a gander at the query:\nWhat do you do if you want to maximize your success as a retail sales professional working remotely?\nWhat?\nPeople. I\u0026rsquo;m a teacher. Sure, I worked retail\u0026mdash;20 YEARS AGO\u0026mdash;but I am no expert in that topic. In fact, I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t even deem myself worthy of that label as a teacher.\nPersonally, I wrote this idea off as dumb when I saw it. It is clearly a way to get engagement numbers up, or something. Really, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less about the why. LinkedIn is one of the oddest social networks out there. It is greed and clout having a pissing contest. I have kept my account active, though, because it has helped me find jobs in the past.\nThis morning when I decided to take a look-see at LinkedIn, the post at the top of my feed was a notification that a colleague had contributed their expertise to one of these collaborative articles. The contribution was well-written. Perfect, in fact, especially for someone who does not speak that language fluently. Also, remember what I said about being asked questions about topics I am not an expert on? The retail thing? Think about that for a second when I tell you\u0026mdash;and I mean no insult to this colleague\u0026mdash;that the person answering that question is as close to an expert on the subject as I am to veterinary medicine.\nAt least LinkedIn got my attention, right?\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s up with these Collaborative Articles? In March 2023, Daniel Roth announced the launch of Collaborative Articles in a post titled Unlocking nearly 10 billion years worth of knowledge to help you tackle everyday work problems.\nWe are introducing collaborative articles — knowledge topics published by LinkedIn, with insights and perspectives added by the LinkedIn community. These articles begin as AI-powered conversation starters, developed with our editorial team. Then, using LinkedIn’s Skills Graph, we match each article with relevant member experts who can contribute their lessons, anecdotes, and advice based on their professional experience.\nAnd, that’s when the real magic happens: when professionals share real-life, specific advice by contributing their perspectives to the work questions we’re all facing every day. Because starting a conversation is harder than joining one, these collaborative articles make it easier for professionals to come together and add and improve ideas — which is how shared knowledge is created.\nOf course, feedback is part of this, too. When you read the collaborative articles, you can react to the contributions by clicking the “insightful” reaction, helping your network and peers quickly find great insights. Through the articles, you’ll discover new people to follow who will keep you learning about topics key for your job and career. And to make sure that contributors are rewarded for giving their time and experience, they can earn a new Community Top Voice badge in their skill areas (e.g., “Top Sales Voice”) for adding their insights. You’ll be able to see the badge on profiles and next to contributions on the articles.\nAllow me to TL;DR that for you:\nWe (LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft) had AI write some prompts, and you are going to provide the words and answers we need to write the articles (well, AI will do the writing).\nThen other \u0026ldquo;experts\u0026rdquo; will up- or down-vote the article.\nIn exchange, we will give you magical internet points in the form of a \u0026ldquo;badge\u0026rdquo; for your profile.\nSix months after launch, over a million contributions had been made. Collaborative articles became \u0026ldquo;the fastest growing traffic driver to LinkedIn\u0026rdquo; .\nWow. Good for them. Think of the shareholder value those one million contributions have made.\nJust stop contributing These sweet badges can be tempting, but think about it like this:\nContributors are giving their time to a company for free and getting JPG\u0026rsquo;s in return. Contributors may not even be experts on the topic. Contributors could be using AI to write answers to a question asked by AI. Contributors could be poisoning the data by providing less than accurate answers and then voting on the legitimacy of the article. The FAQ is filled with other tidbits, including the fact that it isn\u0026rsquo;t as easy to get those badges as you may have thought:\nContributions made to collaborative articles are public\n(that is the default and only option)\nYou are automatically following skill pages created by LinkedIn\n(you need to manually unfollow skills)\nLinkedIn identifies members who are likely to be experts in a certain topic based on their work experience, skills proficiency, and prior engagement on the platform.\n(have enough keywords on your profile, and you get to participate)\nYou must make three contributions in a specific skill to be eligible to earn the badge for that skill. Once you\u0026rsquo;ve made three contributions, a progress tracker unlocks, showing your journey to earning the badge. If you\u0026rsquo;re below 50% of contributors, the tracker encourages you to continue making insightful contributions for improvement. If you\u0026rsquo;re above 50% but haven\u0026rsquo;t earned a badge yet, it displays your percentage standing to earn the badge. Once you achieve a badge, the tracker motivates you to showcase your achievement.\n(persuasive tech at its best: there are prompts, ability, and motivation)\nFinal thoughts Never give too much information to a social network. LinkedIn already has a tonne of information about its users, and being LinkedIn famous is the type of millennial flex that Gen Z laughs at and Gen X doesn\u0026rsquo;t give a shit about.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t provide free work for anything with the word \u0026ldquo;AI\u0026rdquo; in the description. Myriad Chatbots have us writing prompts all day and the AI-hype-machine has somehow normalized the idea that \u0026ldquo;prompt engineer\u0026rdquo; is a job. If it is a job, why not reimburse us for our time?\nReal experts and other \u0026ldquo;legitimate voices\u0026rdquo; are not jumping through hoops for a badge. They are probably too busy to bother with LinkedIn. If you are an expert in a field, consider creating a blog or a newsletter to engage with your audience. That way, you own the content you write instead of it being the property of a social network. You can also find ways to monetize your work without using ads or writing sponsored content.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/04\/unlocking-knowledge\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/03\/supernova-goes-pop\/": {
"title": "Supernova Goes Pop",
"tags": ["AI","Technology",],
"content": " The title of this post is indeed a reference to the song Supernova Goes Pop by Powerman 5000 from their album Tonight The Stars Revolt! The headings are lyrics from the song.\nSong Lyrics Supernova Goes Pop by Powerman 5000 Are you the future or are you the past? Have you been chosen or are you the last? The message was sent, it seems so unreal \u0026lsquo;Cause now I\u0026rsquo;m made of plastic, wire and steel And steel\nFollow for now and follow for this \u0026lsquo;Cause everybody follows for nothing at all Follow for now and follow for this \u0026lsquo;Cause everybody follows for nothing at all\nBecause, supernova, yeah, supernova Supernova goes pop Supernova, you think it\u0026rsquo;s over, but The supernova don\u0026rsquo;t stop\nCan you explain just what you are? \u0026lsquo;Cause I\u0026rsquo;ve never been this close to a star, alright The message was sent, you know what to do \u0026lsquo;Cause everybody needs to be someone, don\u0026rsquo;t you? Right, don\u0026rsquo;t you?\nFollow for now and follow for this \u0026lsquo;Cause everybody follows for nothing at all Follow for now and follow for this \u0026lsquo;Cause everybody follows for nothing at all\nBecause, supernova, yeah, supernova Supernova goes pop Supernova, you think it\u0026rsquo;s over, but The supernova don\u0026rsquo;t stop\nSupernova, yeah, supernova Supernova goes pop Supernova, you think it\u0026rsquo;s over, but The supernova don\u0026rsquo;t stop\nLet\u0026rsquo;s go\nSupernova, yeah, supernova That supernova goes pop Supernova, supernova That supernova don\u0026rsquo;t stop\nSupernova, supernova That supernova goes pop, alright Supernova, supernova Supernova don\u0026rsquo;t, it don\u0026rsquo;t, it don\u0026rsquo;t\nStop\nAre you the future or are you the past? […] “Now Minny knows everything in all our school books.”\n“Phew!” said Joe, wiping his forehead, “You know, that was hard work storing all that information in the machine. I didn’t realize there was so much to know. Maybe it’d just be easier to do our homework every day.”\n“I don’t think so,” Danny said. “Sure, it was hard work. But now we’re free forever.”\nThe year was 1958. Before my time, but not before the time of common sense, forethinking, and Science Fiction. In Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, the titular Danny is up to shenanigans again. Along with his friends Joe and Irene, they begin using a computer (Miniac, or \u0026ldquo;Minny\u0026rdquo;) to cheat on their homework. What could ever go wrong?\nFor starters, Minny needs information\u0026mdash;lots of information. And, the person feeding the information into Minny needs to understand the problem:\nProfessor Bullfinch shook his head. “No. It never can be Beethoven, Mrs. Dunn. No matter how intelligent the computer is, it is only a machine. It can solve problems in minutes that would take a man months to work out. But behind it there must be a human brain. It can never be a creator of music or of stories, or paintings, or ideas. It cannot even do our homework for us\u0026mdash;we must do the homework. The machine can only help, as a textbook helps. It can only be a tool, as a typewriter is a tool.”\nFor decades now, writers have been telling us these fantastic tales of what the future could be. Asimov, Gibson, Stephenson, Wells, Leckie, Chambers, and an infinite number of other science and speculative fiction writers have filled our heads with wondrous and worrisome visions of what may come.\nWell, is it coming or not? The future, I mean. It all seems a little dull, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it? Like watching a film after having read the entire plot on Wikipedia.\nThe latest trend\u0026mdash;AI\u0026mdash;feels like some never-ending remake of a reboot of a spin-off of past trends. As a layperson who tries to keep their finger on the pulse of trends like this, because I like technology, I can\u0026rsquo;t help but feel like we\u0026rsquo;ve been here before.\nGenerative AI, like ChatGPT, has been following a path set out by authors and experts for several years now. Like other trends (e.g. web3, blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, etc.), it has grown to dangerous proportions and\u0026mdash;keep in mind that I am just an observer\u0026mdash;it is very likely that this bubble is going to \u0026ldquo;go pop.\u0026rdquo;\nFollow for now and follow for this, \u0026lsquo;cause everybody follows for nothing at all Everybody and their neighbour is on the AI train now. I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of a shape, the name is on the tip of my tongue. Imagine a situation where someone rich or powerful wants to be richer or more powerful. The only way to do that is to get some people who are just a little less rich or powerful than you to give you their money or their loyalty. This situation continues until there are a great number of not-so-rich or powerful people giving something to those who are a little richer or more powerful than them.\nThis is what has happened with AI.\nCompanies like OpenAI have been blown out of proportion and are being copied left, right, and centre. Average folks have been had. My students have been had! Here we are getting ChatGPT to do things for us, like our homework, and for what? For the benefit of OpenAI. We are giving our time to OpenAI\u0026rsquo;s ChatGPT. We are not employed my them, but our prompts are valuable information for them and their partners.\nEvery time we open our news feeds, we see story upon story about the apps (Copilot, Midjourney), models (GPT-4, Mistral), and a whole lot about the infrastructure (looking at you Nvidia and cloud-computing gang). As of writing, There\u0026rsquo;s An AI For That lists over 13,000 AIs for some 16,000 tasks (many with that super sweet .ai TLD ). With all the talk of money, it\u0026rsquo;s no wonder so many exist:\nThe combined market value of Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft has jumped by $2.5trn during the AI boom. Counted in dollars, that is less than three-quarters of the growth of the hardware layer, and barely a quarter in percentage terms. Yet compared with actual revenues that AI is expected to generate for the big-tech trio in the near term, this value creation far exceeds that in the other layers. It is 120 times the $20bn in revenue that generative AI is forecast to add to the cloud giants’ sales in 2024. The comparable ratio is about 40 for the hardware firms and around 30 for the model-makers.\nJust how rich are businesses getting in the AI gold rush? in The Economist Many of these AIs promise great savings to their clients. Some keep tabs on fast-food workers, like Hoptix.ai which promises to \u0026ldquo;Increase your restaurants net profit by 15% in 90 days,\u0026rdquo; and if you find that hard to believe, you haven\u0026rsquo;t seen the totally rad graphic they have on their landing page:\nNot all employees like this idea. That isn\u0026rsquo;t surprising. Hoptix\u0026rsquo;s Riley makes a point on their website of how it can be used to reward employees. Surveillance in the workplace should not be taken lightly, however. If an employer trusts an app to decide who to reward, it probably isn\u0026rsquo;t hard for the app to convince them to dismiss an employee.\nCan you explain just what you are? Is the current form of AI intelligent? Is it even unbiased?\nWhat do those words, \u0026lsquo;intelligent\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;unbiased\u0026rsquo; even mean?\nRed flags have been going up from the start:\nTimnit Gebru didn’t set out to work in AI. At Stanford, she studied electrical engineering\u0026mdash;getting both a bachelor’s and a master’s in the field. Then she became interested in image analysis, getting her Ph.D. in computer vision. When she moved over to AI, though, it was immediately clear that there was something very wrong.\n“There were no Black people\u0026mdash;literally no Black people,” says Gebru, who was born and raised in Ethiopia. “I would go to academic conferences in AI, and I would see four or five Black people out of five, six, seven thousand people internationally.… I saw who was building the AI systems and their attitudes and their points of view. I saw what they were being used for, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we have a problem.’”\nfrom These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI by Lorena O\u0026rsquo;Neil (Rolling Stone)\nI urge you to read the rest of that article. I took the quote from the very start because I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to spoil any part of it.\nThe people and companies behind the models have a lot in common:\nusually men in charge (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face, etc.); usually US-based (Silicon Valley seems popular); and occasionally associated with names you\u0026rsquo;ve heard, but never realized had a foot in the AI door (Meta (Facebook) has LLaMA, Anthropic was founded by members of OpenAI, and most have received funding from Google, Nvidia, Amazon, AMD, Qualcomm, and other big tech names). (Again I will underline that I am just observing.)\nFrom my vantage point, these models and apps are all coming from the same type of people. That is a red flag. Again, I cannot blame a person for taking advantage of a trend and trying to earn a buck. There are plenty of ethical questions that can be raised, but that might be beyond the scope of this little blog post.\nAI as it stands is not really that smart. Sure, it can spit out some words, but not in a very natural way. As a professor in a country where English is not the mother tongue, I have the immense pleasure of reading hundreds upon hundreds of papers written by non-native\u0026ndash;speakers of English. Let me tell you one thing: any teacher or professor with at least a month of experience under their belt will immediately recognize a ChatGPT paper, report, or written activity.\n(Occasionally, students are shocked by their grades. They point at their paper, steeling their nerves, and ask for feedback. A walk-through essay without a single bibliographical entry? Really?)\nAI just isn\u0026rsquo;t that bright for the moment. Some of them can almost pass an IQ test . Not many, though, are particularly gifted when it comes to reason, just ask Sally about her brothers and sister .\nSupernova goes pop In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence.\nThe IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022\u0026mdash;and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan.\nAI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning. by Brian Calvert (Vox)\nThings are heating up (in more ways that one). Climate-wise, this AI boom really could have chosen a better moment. And claiming that AI can solve the problem is exactly what would happen in a sci-fi novel before everything goes boom.\nYou know something is up when you see reports titled \u0026ldquo;How AI Can Speed-Up Climate Action\u0026rdquo; by the Boston Consulting Group and (*sigh*) Google. I for one am relieved to hear that a \u0026ldquo;responsible deployment of AI\u0026rdquo; could \u0026ldquo;[have] the potential to unlock insights that could help mitigate 5% to 10% of GHG emissions by 2030.\u0026rdquo; And we can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing, now, that \u0026ldquo;87% of executives believe AI has potential to address their climate challenges\u0026rdquo;\nMalarky.\nRubbish.\nHorseshit.\nIn the US, there is already evidence that the life of coal-fired power plants is being prolonged to meet the rising energy demands of AI. In just three years from now, AI servers could be consuming as much energy as Sweden does, separate research has found.\nMuch of this increased energy demand comes from the added complexity of AI operations – generating AI queries could require as much as 10 times the computing power as a regular online search. Training ChatGPT, the OpenAI system, can use as much energy as 120 US households over the course of a year, the report claims.\nAI likely to increase energy use and accelerate climate misinformation – report by Oliver Milman (The Guardian)\nWhether it is out of pure laziness, the desire to make a quick buck, or even the sincere hope to make things better, users of these tools have become complicit in the destruction of the planet in the same way Pepsi did with plastics.\nThe Supernova don\u0026rsquo;t stop I don\u0026rsquo;t think the interest in AI will die down soon. But, \u0026ldquo;soon\u0026rdquo; can be interpreted in different ways.\nIt is time to look beyond this boom and to the next, because it is too late to be first in the door. The disruptors have gone and disrupted. Sam Altman has made it to the cover of magazines like so many other great disruptors (Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried come to mind).\nIt is time that more of us simply refuse AI. KFC uses AI to track employees? Don\u0026rsquo;t eat at KFC. Some search engine gives you creepy AI results? Change search engines. You get the idea.\nThis is not ludditism. This is not refusing to let AI loose on finding cures for diseases (despite the harm it does to the planet). This is refusing AI the same way many of us refuse to use a f-cking QR code instead asking for a printed menu in a café or restaurant, or when we refuse to install an app on our phones when the website works fine and our phones have browsers.\nAI just isn\u0026rsquo;t cool enough to be everywhere.\nNon-web References Powerman 5000. (1999). Supernova Goes Pop [Song]. On Tonight the Stars Revolt!. DreamWorks Records.\nWilliams, J. \u0026amp; Abrashkin, R.. (1959). Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Whittlesey House.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/03\/supernova-goes-pop\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/search-engines\/": {
"title": "Search Engines",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/search-engines\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/seo\/": {
"title": "SEO",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/seo\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/02\/seoshenanigans\/": {
"title": "Sneaky SEO Shenanigans Suck",
"tags": ["Search Engines","Web","SEO","Technology",],
"content": "Earlier this week I came across a post on Mastodon:\nToot from @[email protected] regarding online product reviews Of course I had to read the article. I read reviews quite a bit. I know you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t trust them, but I do it anyway. The article shared in the post, How Google is killing independent sites like ours , does an excellent job explaining the situation and putting things into perspective:\nSearching for reviews will net you poorly written articles and listicles. The reviews appear on websites that many would deem trustworthy, like Popular Science or Rolling Stone. Many of the sites break Google\u0026rsquo;s rules. Google is doing nothing about it. The Housefresh article has a follow-up that is worth reading: HouseFresh has virtually disappeared from Google Search results. Now what?\nIf you run a legitimate site providing expert reviews, you cannot stand up against the SEO of these publishing companies. The HouseFresh article uses the example of trying to find an air purifier, and I\u0026rsquo;m not about to repeat their experiment with other products; we all know what will happen.\nThe article also links to the very interesting How 16 Companies are Dominating the World\u0026rsquo;s Google Search Results (2023 Edition) from Detailed.com.\nLook at this infographic!\nThe report notes:\nThe 16 companies in this report are behind at least 562 individual brands which get traffic from Google each day.\nCombined, Semrush estimates they pick up around 3.7 billion clicks from the search engine each month. An average of 6.5 million monthly clicks per site.\nWhat to do?\nWhat\u0026hellip; to\u0026hellip; do?\nYou may be familiar with a browser extension called uBlacklist . It is a search filter for Google and other search engines. It removes results from the page based on a blocklist. The blocklists are .txt files. I can make a .txt file!\nSo I did.\nIn fact, I made 16 of them. And then I made a 17th.\nI put them here:\n16 COMPANIES FILTERS Now you too can subscribe to these lists, and if you see any mistakes let me know.\nJust install the browser extension (see the link above) and copy the SUBSCRIBE links. The official document shows you how to do it.\nThen search!\nBefore you ask, yes, this is just for fun and spite. Some of these sites were already on my list of avoidable sources: sites like Make Use Of and CNET that are notoriously bad at recommending anything other than the latest Samsung or Apple product.\nWhile preparing these files, it surprised me just how many similar sites were in fact subsidiaries of the same parent company. It also surprised me that some of these massive media companies were unknown to me. Not once have I ever heard of Hearst or Recurrent or PMC. It was like an epiphany, the pieces fell into place, my eyes opened. Search results are crap because companies like these have been gaming the SEO system with their keywords and other shenanigans.\nSo, I will filter them out. I do wish the extension worked with Mojeek.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/02\/seoshenanigans\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/web\/": {
"title": "Web",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/web\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/guide\/": {
"title": "Guide",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/guide\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/02\/calendartrick\/": {
"title": "Quickly importing events using Khal",
"tags": ["Guide","Useful Commands",],
"content": "I keep a little file on my computer. It synchronizes with my other devices using Syncthing. The file is called useful-commands.md. Basically, if I ever had to spend more than 5 minutes figuring something out, I keep the commands in that file.\nProblem I have multiple employers that have all, for some reason, decided to not only use the same planning software, but to hide the link to the calendar. This is an option, one of the employers has activated it, the others chose not to because:\nIf we activate the iCal link, nobody will download the app.\nYep. They have all paid (the same developer) to make an app using their branding and colours to inform students and professors of their schedule.\nStupid.\nI can still see my schedule online, though. And, as it turns out, when you export your schedule as a PDF each event is listed like this:\nDD.MM.YYYY HH:MM HH:MM Class (Group) This is extraordinarily convenient because Khal \u0026mdash;a CLI calendar program that synchronizes with CalDAV calendars\u0026mdash;uses that format for adding new events , so I only need to copy and paste each event into the terminal:\n$ khal new 27.02.2024 08:45 10:15 Class (Group) That is awesome. But, if you need to do this 120 times per semester, it gets old fast.\nThat is why, in my useful-commands.md, I have this noted:\n# How to... use khal to add a list of classes file=\u0026#34;lessons.txt\u0026#34; while read -r line; do khal new $line; done \u0026lt; $file This is my reminder to copy all the events to a .txt file and loop through the list of lessons and make Khal add them.\nexplainshell.com can break it down if you like that sort of thing. I just copied things I found around the web and modified them to my need.\nSince I will be importing these events, I can also add a description for each one while I\u0026rsquo;m at it. So, I make a tiny modification on each line:\n27.02.2024 08:45 10:15 Communication Skills (Group S3) :: Public Speaking Evaluation Running the commands takes little to no time, even with hundreds of events.\nAfter, I force it to synchronize with\n$ vdirsyncer sync and it is added to my shared calendar for my partner to see.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/02\/calendartrick\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/useful-commands\/": {
"title": "Useful Commands",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/useful-commands\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/happybirthday\/": {
"title": "Happy Birthday Blog",
"tags": ["Personal",],
"content": "The first post I made to this blog was on 2021-01-28. That was three years ago.\nSince then, I have made around 60 posts. The intention to write more was there, but time and inspiration were not on my side.\nNonetheless, I feel that the past three years have been a success.\nThis is a blog. It serves no commercial purpose. It is made with free software and hosted on a free service. (note to self: make a donation to codeberg ) I have no idea how many people have ever read it. Even if 10 people have read something I wrote, I am happy. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be an influencer, I am not a certified expert on anything, and I consider most of my hobbies a little dull. I like it that way!\nHow then has this blog been a success?\nIt let me express myself. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t paint a picture of who I am; it is more of a doodle. An honest one, mind you.\nOver on the stats page, there is a word cloud that is somewhat representative of how I would describe my interests, because the biggest words in the cloud are:\ntechnology (but not really anything specific), education (because I am a professor), digital privacy (it is one of my personal obsessions), and things like Linux and Pandoc (because those are tools that make my life easier). Best of\u0026hellip; I know that some people have read things from my blog. They even sent me kind words via email about what they liked, disliked, and disagreed with.\nIf we count that engagement alone, along with maybe some mention on Mastodon, my best guess as to a \u0026ldquo;BEST OF\u0026rdquo; for this blog are (in no order):\nThese three short stories: Freak , Homework , and We Have a Winner The Privacy-Security Rabbit Hole The (rather long) Low Friction Introduction to Digital Privacy And, much to my surprise, I\u0026rsquo;ve received two emails thanking me for a post about making an invoice with Pandoc Finally, I\u0026rsquo;ve received no less than 10 requests to write sponsored articles. Strangely enough, they all decide to retract their request when I answer. This is the email that I use when I respond:\nRates for Sponsored Content Product review with photos and links:\nBasic 300\u0026ndash;500 words: €90 Detailed 500\u0026ndash;800 words: €120 In-depth 800\u0026ndash;1000+ words: €200 Sponsored content will include a \u0026ldquo;disclaimer\u0026rdquo; or note informing the reader that the content they are reading was requested by the company. Transparency is key, but rates will not be revealed.\nI do not use X (Twitter), Meta (Facebook, Instagram). I may share the review on Mastodon, depending on the product or service.\nMy favourite things to write about If I had to narrow the focus of this blog, I simply would not. A blog that takes on a singular focus is great. Give me a blog that is 100% music or 100% gadgets and I won\u0026rsquo;t complain. I could probably stick to one thing 80% of the time, but I am so infrequent when it comes to blogging that I would end up breaking my own rule after a month or two.\nAs much fun as I had writing about different phones (see here , here , and here ) I could not just do that. In fact, one of those companies, Crosscall, even let me beta test an unreleased model for several months. Did I write about it? The thought didn\u0026rsquo;t even cross my mind. If you are interested, though, the STELLAR-X5 is fast and fluid in all the right ways.\nI would like to write more about education, but as a non-researcher with only 17\u0026ndash;18 years of experience in higher education, mostly private, my main thoughts have already been laid out, i.e., students are less adept with technology now, the digital experience is hindering instead of helping, AI and LLMs are going to fuck things up. My students are not clamouring to learn how to write prompts or be taught lessons that were planned by OpenAI\u0026rsquo;s carbon footprint chatbot.\nBlogrolls and Collections This little blog is part of a few collections, blogrolls, and webrings . It is also indexed by some search engines.\nObviously, Google can find it, as well as the Bing-based metasearch engines. I am very happy to see it on Marginalia . The info page is fun.\nAll of those links are somewhere on my blog, so it isn\u0026rsquo;t like we are that similar. I do like seeing the landing page for the developer of Privacy Browser www.stoutner.com , the Mojeek Blog , a fedi contact (Hi Joel !), and Scott Nesbitt\u0026rsquo;s Random Notes (I do follow their Open Source Musings blog too) on the same page as mine, because they deserve some of your attention.\n(unfortunately, the blog is still in the queue for the ooh! directory )\nShould I set goals? The #100daystooffload idea is tempting. But, it has taken me 3 years to write 60 odd posts. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I would set such a high goal. Maybe 2 a month? We\u0026rsquo;ll see how that goes. Place your bets: will I have posted 24 times in the next 365 days? I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to calculate odds, so maybe no bets.\nFinally, an easy goal: changing the appearance. I think I would be very content with using one of the minimalist Hugo themes, preferably one with no JavaScript. Maybe I will switch to something that isn\u0026rsquo;t Hugo? Who knows.\nAnyway, Happy Birthday Blog!\n🎂🎂🎂\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/happybirthday\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/personal\/": {
"title": "Personal",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/personal\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/sexyprivacy\/": {
"title": "Make Digital Privacy Sexy",
"tags": ["Opinion","Privacy","Technology",],
"content": "Digital Privacy has an image problem. At the moment, there isn\u0026rsquo;t anything sexy about it. If it were a trailer for a film, you\u0026rsquo;d be playing on your phone while it was on. It needs an image makeover and a re-branding. Many movements have the right idea and are presenting it as inviting and ethical. We need more of this, and less fearmongering.\nWho says it\u0026rsquo;s not sexy? This is all opinion.\nI am just a teacher with an interest in digital privacy . Yes, I degoogled my phone . Yes, I use Linux . No, I don\u0026rsquo;t use Gmail or Facebook. I am not a researcher or hacker. I would call myself a (non-militant) advocate for humane, ethical, and privacy-respecting technology and services.\nBrowsing the web, one can come across innumerable sites and communities dedicated to this topic. In some instances, these communities come off as slightly unwelcoming. That is not sexy. Digital Privacy also comes with its own myths and legends that make it harder to get people interested in their own personal digital privacy. The methods of persuasion are often flawed, repetitive, and are filled with a dictionary\u0026rsquo;s worth of terms that to the uninitiated mean nothing. Finally, there is the occasional call for an \u0026ldquo;all or nothing\u0026rdquo; approach and commitment to the cause.\nTinfoil hats and Neckbeards A simple question on a forum or on social media can sometimes open a can of worms. In the case of digital privacy, some of those worms are of paranoid and conspiratorial leanings.\nYou just had a question, but the replies sound more like quotes from 1984 and Brave New World. You\u0026rsquo;ve walked into a circle-jerk of self-appointed experts (NB. Yes, there are very knowledgeable people among them). Now, they have things to share, but if you are not aware of the culture you will find it surprising to referred to as a \u0026ldquo;normie\u0026rdquo; (are they being derogatory?).\nI find it rather contradictory that any community, big or small, that wants to \u0026ldquo;bring privacy to the masses\u0026rdquo; could be off-putting in any way. I won\u0026rsquo;t be brandishing the t-word around (toxic!) to describe this little corner of the web. The best description is that some forums and subreddits come off as \u0026ldquo;No Normies Clubs\u0026rdquo; where asking a beginner question will earn you manifesto-length essays filled with calls to \u0026ldquo;wake up,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;question authority,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;do your own research,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;develop your critical thinking skills.\u0026rdquo;\nOnce you decipher their lexicon\u0026mdash;\u0026ldquo;Goolag,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Micro$hit,\u0026rdquo; etc.\u0026mdash;you\u0026rsquo;ll discover their advice, and their own disagreements. \u0026ldquo;Just install GrapheneOS,\u0026rdquo; one might say, while another will call them a shill. Soon, you\u0026rsquo;ll be directed to websites with black backgrounds and green monospace fonts. As you dig deeper you\u0026rsquo;ll discover the inherent insecurities of Android, Windows, iOS, and even (*gasp*) Linux. Signal will be good enough in one group, and rubbish in the other.\nThe communication style of some of these communities needs to be brought into check. It is not their fault, they were a sort of echo-chamber of freelance, grassroots, DIY people with a common interest. They injected their hatred of Big Tech into their rhetoric. It is 2024, it isn\u0026rsquo;t appealing any more, and it will not get the next generation of Internet users to pay attention.\nMyths and Legends Another issue with digital privacy is the prevalence of certain myths. All these years, and still people will say they have nothing to hide . Clearly, the messages are not making it downstream.\nIt is true that many companies already have plenty of information on you. You are tracked , yes, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean it is pointless to start protecting yourself now. How has this myth not been dispelled?\nSimilarly, it has been put forward that it is too hard to protect yourself. It is not. It is just different. You change an app, you make a new habit. The \u0026ldquo;all or nothing\u0026rdquo; approach mentioned above does not help. When you learn maths as a child, the teacher does not explain addition, subtraction, division and multiplication on Monday and give a test on it on Tuesday.\nSimplicity of use has lead many a user to the walled garden of the iOS ecosystem. I have no personal experience with these devices, but it is said they are secure. Privacy is not security though. Perhaps the police cannot easily unlock your phone, but your privacy is still being invaded the same way it is with any connected devices.\nThe urban legend of infallible Apple hardware is at least understandable to an extent. It is part of their marketing. Incognito mode, on the contrary, is just poorly understood. Perhaps the greater public will soon see for themselves that companies still track you no matter what. It is, after all, another marketing trick.\nPersuasion and Marketing Privacy advocates have been using different techniques to persuade users to change their ways. Fear, uncertainty and doubt make up a decent portion of these techniques.\nFear of a dystopian world of mass surveillance, and clichéd metaphors and analogies about \u0026ldquo;your life on the cover of the newspaper\u0026rdquo; have failed to appeal to emotion and logic. We\u0026rsquo;ve been bombarded with words like tracker and cookie, instructed to use a password manager and 2FA, and YouTubers remind us of the existence of VPNs around the clock. Did we mention E2EE and why it is important? Because of MITM attacks , obviously.\nThis word soup goes hand in hand with the broken record named \u0026ldquo;The Best of Toxic Tech\u0026rdquo;\u0026hellip;\nWE KNOW ALREADY!\nIt is important to know, but this dead horse has been flogged. People still use Facebook, they still tweet their lives and post pictures on Instagram in between group chats on WhatsApp. Google knows what time they wake up and Amazon is better at suggesting gifts for my partner than I am. And, for crying out loud, we all know about Microsoft. It isn\u0026rsquo;t a secret that when they invested in the next hype (generative AI) that they\u0026rsquo;d find a way to cram it into their OS .\nGo to the top of the highest mountain and scream your lungs out about it, the mountains will echo back \u0026ldquo;we know!\u0026rdquo;\nOccasionally mainstream media will do a piece on this. Bill Maher did one in 2017 called Social Media is the new Nicotine and told viewers that the tech bros were just \u0026ldquo;tobacco farmers in t-shirts\u0026rdquo; and concluded with \u0026ldquo;Philip Morris just wanted your lungs; the App Store wants your soul.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;ve used that video in class with my students. They laugh. They compare the hours spent on their devices with pride. However true this is, we\u0026rsquo;ve reached Silicon Valley Sleaze Saturation. If a whistleblower came forward with a new scandal, we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be surprised. We wouldn\u0026rsquo;t bat an eye.\nIt will be essential for digital privacy advocates to tackle the problem from a different angle, otherwise getting the next generation to commit will be an even bigger one.\nCommitment Friction Getting people on track usually starts off fine: use a different browser you say? As long as I can binge-watch Netflix on Firefox, not an issue. Easy. No friction.\nBut it isn\u0026rsquo;t all as simple as getting your friend or relative to make that switch. In fact, switching browsers isn\u0026rsquo;t even a commitment. It\u0026rsquo;s parallel to parting your hair on the other side. Someone might notice, but the end result is the same.\nA real commitment is, for example, doing sport three times a week. That takes a little forethought and planning, much like changing your email provider. If you jump ship too quick, you might end up paying for something you won\u0026rsquo;t use or is missing that one little feature you didn\u0026rsquo;t know you wanted.\nBut, today, the commitment of all commitments might be quitting social media . That will turn heads. That will make you a weirdo. When my partner stopped using WhatsApp, she was called \u0026ldquo;selfish.\u0026rdquo; When I told a student I didn\u0026rsquo;t use Google search they thought I was pulling their leg, and when I told another I won\u0026rsquo;t use ChatGPT they asked if I was Amish. Quitting these services that we\u0026rsquo;ve been domesticated to use (read that article!) is not just hard for the quitter. It can lead to a form of cognitive dissonance for observers too.\nI am not all doom and gloom. There are things to be optimistic about.\nHippies today\u0026hellip; Squares tomorrow Hippies are optimistic, aren\u0026rsquo;t they? Sexual revolution and all that, you know?\nSeriously, though, it is important to look back (briefly, this is a blog after all) at how other movements evolved. It is also worthwhile to make note of a handful of truths that we tend to forget.\nThe Nature of Counterculture Values change. The counterculture of yesteryear is the norm today. Peace and love in one decade is war in another. Progressive then, conservative now.\nIf we consider the fight for digital privacy as a movement against the norm, it might be viewed as a counterculture. It does seem like that sometimes, and even gets political like with the GDPR or how France will soon put \u0026ldquo;large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supported video surveillance cameras \u0026rdquo; to use. Digital rights are becoming more and more important, and calls to protect them are getting louder.\nSo, if today the advocates for digital privacy are the counterculture, there is a hope that it will become the norm. Not tomorrow, but someday. That doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean we have to forget established truths about big tech.\nMore Truths Technology as a whole, the Internet, the web, social networks, and other ICT have done wonders for the world. The creativity and connectivity that has stemmed from these inventions is jaw-dropping.\nApple has more than once revolutionized technology: with home computing, design, iPods, iPhones, and other gadgets. Now, they regularly crank out new versions of their rectangles that are just evolutions requiring new accessories to function. Microsoft made computers accessible to the masses. Now, they make an operating system that sucks up your data and auction it off to data brokers. Amazon was a revolution. Granted, Bezos wasn\u0026rsquo;t just some guy in a garage making his way in the world, but still, he started something that many have tried to emulate, and exploited some employees along the way. Google organized the web and made searching simple at a time when a generation was just embarking on a journey into the World Wide Web, and Gmail was a great free email when compared to Hotmail. Now, they maintain a browser monopoly and are trying to dictate standards while selling data to the highest bidder. Facebook was cool in 2004; Zuck too. That didn\u0026rsquo;t last long. Plus, nobody forgot about the origins of Facebook. Twitter opened the fire hose and appealed to our anger and rage. Today, it is owned by another face of tech that may have a vision, but is no Tony Stark. OpenAI is hyped, like Blockchain and cryptocurrency, but was positioned as \u0026ldquo;the thing\u0026rdquo; we need everywhere. So they put it everywhere they could. Not a day has gone by without some story mentioning the failures and harms this toy has caused. Something \u0026ldquo;cool\u0026rdquo; can quickly turn into a dumpster fire. The \u0026ldquo;Pirates of Silicon Valley\u0026rdquo; are in the same boat as a well-known \u0026ldquo;Pirate of the Caribbean\u0026rdquo;. They do deserve recognition, but not veneration. The worm has turned. It turned some time ago, in fact.\nTime and Place The great work of so many digital privacy advocates and whistle-blowers cannot be for naught. We know, thanks to the effort of many, the negative effects of technology. The Millennials, and older Gen Zs, grew up with the technology. We watched it change, we watched the canary keel over and turn to dust, and we mustered all of our strength into an apathetic shrug, thinking \u0026ldquo;what can I do about it?\u0026rdquo;\nWell, here\u0026rsquo;s the thing. Millennials are politicians now, and educators, and parents, and aunts, uncles, and mentors. We have responsibilities, a flock to tend to, and an audience that sometimes listens when they look up from their phones.\nWe need to begin sharing our experience and knowledge. We have the information, or at least know where to find it. We need to make it available.\nBut that\u0026rsquo;s haaaaaard Too fuckin\u0026rsquo; bad.\nYou can\u0026rsquo;t just whinge and whine and cram buzzwords like \u0026ldquo;enshittification \u0026rdquo; into your tweets and toots and whatever for Internet points and pat yourself on the back (no offence meant to Cory Doctorow).\nHave you ever walked a senior citizen through a Windows install over the phone for 5 hours? That\u0026rsquo;s hard, but you take it screen by screen, one hair-pulling baby step at a time, and try not to break the phone.\nThat is what it is time to do. It is time to start taking these baby steps together, instead of creating insular communities on obscure forums. If you are reading this, you have likely taken these steps. That makes you a credible individual who can teach by example rather than impose your ideas of what is the right way to be private.\nFor example, instead of indirectly berating someone for using Google, show them that other search engines can find better results sometimes, and casually tell them that Google\u0026rsquo;s results are getting worse . You might tell them to use Firefox and Kagi, and they end up using Brave. Take the win, even if you are one of the anti-Brave folks.\nBecause we already tried fear, and hate, and \u0026ldquo;those guys are evil\u0026rdquo; as methods of persuasion. We need to change the script, and focus on helping the younger generation find the tools that reflect their values and teach them that their private information deserves respect.\nWe walked on dial-up, so they can run on fibre optic.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been around. We\u0026rsquo;ve seen stuff. We can furrow our brows and think outside the box to find solutions that work.\nPray tell, random Internet person Here are two.\n1. Sex Education See, more sex\u0026hellip; it wasn\u0026rsquo;t clickbait!\nDepending on your age, culture, country of origin, whatever, it is possible that you took some classes in elementary, middle, or high school on sex education. It was usually part of a general health class. It was sometimes controversial. I remember the clutching of pearls when we watched this raunchy cinematic masterpiece in class.\nMoving on.\nSex education has saved lives. Rates of teenage pregnancy start dropping, STDs are less frequent among teenagers, and when they do happen stigmatization is lower than it was before. It isn\u0026rsquo;t perfect, but it teaches young people about perfectly normal things by presenting knowledge, and giving access to information that they may not get elsewhere. When taught in the right conditions, it respects their individuality and freedom.\nWe should make digital privacy part of the curriculum. I know, digital literacy is a big thing already. But, digital privacy can be a separate part. You can even throw in some scary stuff if you want to, like sex education does with photos of warts. You can use it to dispel myths, like how we learned that it is, in fact, possible to get pregnant your first time. And who better to teach this than the current batch of teachers who are 30 and over?\n2. Buy Local There was a time when hearing someone state, \u0026ldquo;I only buy locally grown oranges\u0026rdquo; stirred up images of some long-haired, bare-footed, hippy-granola archetype. Today, it is normal and accepted, even by the \u0026ldquo;suits and ties\u0026rdquo; types. This was a movement that took it step by step and curated an image. That image was ethical; it was one that said \u0026ldquo;the effort is worth it.\u0026rdquo;\nThe effort is worth it. As a general rule, most people would advise deciding with your wallet. That is hard when we know that supermarket fruit and vegetables may be covered in pesticides, or be scary GMOs. If you do make the effort to buy local, you can sometimes get better quality produce that wasn\u0026rsquo;t washed by robots in a factory and transported across the country by truck. You can support a local business and build a circle of trust. You can indeed trust the little, local farmer.\nWe can also trust privacy-respecting tech. Many great grassroots associations, like Framasoft , have the right idea. Image is everything, and we need to take that image and resize it. Framasoft, and similar associations, have a mission and a message that isn\u0026rsquo;t based on fear. They are a respectful response to the question of how to protect our privacy online.\nVery often, when I try to show somebody that application B is a drop-in replacement for application A, they argue that they would rather put their trust in an MNC like Apple than in some guy with a GitHub. This is akin to somebody not buying from the local market because they trust the supermarket strawberries imported from halfway around the world more. Bad analogy, I know, but the gist is there. Free and open source software that respects our privacy and has been vetted by users and associations deserves our trust and support the same way a local farmer does.\nIt is about time we changed the metaphors we use. Both application A and B do the same thing, but one may contain pesticides that can have an effect your well-being.\nFinal words This started as a list and just kept going. I do mean what I say, though. I am optimistic that a change is on the horizon. Thanks for reading and, please, shoot me an email or message on Mastodon to let me know what you think.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/sexyprivacy\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/privacy\/": {
"title": "Privacy",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/privacy\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/updatepinetime\/": {
"title": "Note to self: How to update PineTime",
"tags": ["Technology","Guide",],
"content": "The PineTime is great. I say this with some bias because it is the the only smartwatch I have ever used .\nLong story short: after a year and change of use, the PineTime has not let me down. Updates have improved battery life and added new watch-faces. I am not a hacker so I cannot speak for the development capacities of this cheap little gadget.\nSpeaking of updates, without fail, I always forget how to update this thing. I get the files. I read the manpages. And, finally, I remember.\nIt isn\u0026rsquo;t complicated, though. It is clearly a me issue.\nGet ITD and start the daemon The InfiniTime Daemon can be found here: https://gitea.elara.ws/Elara6331/itd .\nI use Debian, but have used this daemon under other Linux distributions. Head over to the releases and snatch the file you need. For me, it was the .deb.\n$ wget https://gitea.elara.ws/Elara6331/itd/releases/download/v1.1.0/itd-1.1.0-linux-x86_64.deb $ sudo apt install ./itd-1.1.0-linux-x86_64.deb Now it is time to turn off the Bluetooth connection with your phone.\nSince I only need to connect to my PC for these updates, I will not \u0026ldquo;enable\u0026rdquo; this itd daemon permanently. As a regular user (not root) you can start and stop the service with these commands:\n$ systemctl --user start itd $ systemctl --user stop itd If Bluetooth is active and working on your laptop, you should get some sort of prompt asking you for a passkey. On my computer it looks like this:\nNow you need to get the new firmware and resources.\nGet InfiniTime firmware and flash it You can grab necessary files from the InfiniTime releases page . You will need two files.\nAs of writing, the current release is v. 1.14 \u0026ldquo;Quince Fruit\u0026rdquo;:\n$ wget https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime/releases/download/1.14.0/pinetime-mcuboot-app-dfu-1.14.0.zip $ wget https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime/releases/download/1.14.0/infinitime-resources-1.14.0.zip I don\u0026rsquo;t know if there is a specific order to do this, but the last few times I have started by installing the infinitime-resources-version.zip file, then flashed the firmware. These are the two little commands I always forget:\n$ itctl res load infinitime-resources-1.14.0.zip $ itctl firmware upgrade -a pinetime-mcuboot-app-dfu-1.14.0.zip Remember to read any prompts and follow instructions and your PineTime will be up-to-date.\nExternal Links PineTime Official Shop Elara6331\u0026rsquo;s InfiniTime Daemon InfiniTime GitHub InfiniTime Official @[email protected] (follow this account to know about updates) ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/updatepinetime\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/blog\/": {
"title": "Blog",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/blog\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/nintendo\/": {
"title": "Nintendo",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/nintendo\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/wavering\/": {
"title": "Why did I waver?",
"tags": ["Blog","Personal","Nintendo",],
"content": "Sometimes peculiar thoughts cross our minds. I\u0026rsquo;m not a deep, philosophical person; I hate overthinking. But, actively fighting against overthinking is just overthinking, isn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nNow, you can call me silly\u0026mdash;I have laughed at myself over this\u0026mdash;because somehow a video game console brought about a minor epiphany. A Nintendo Switch, a console released in 2017, left me scratching my head and pondering the titular question: Why did I waver?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s back up a bit.\nAnd a bit more.\nAnd still a bit more.\nThe year was 1990 or 1991. My brother had a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was amazing. But, it was his, and in his room. The NES was sweet, but it was not this:\nHoly smokes, did I ever want one of those! And so, I irresponsibly used the great power all children are imbued with: emotional manipulation. And, much to the surprise of nobody, my efforts paid off, and I was rewarded with a Game Boy.\nI was a gamer and Nintendo fanboy from that day forward.\nDespite having just that portable console, I still bought the magazines. I even subscribed to Nintendo Power . I read reviews and guides for games on systems I didn\u0026rsquo;t own, like the Super Nintendo after it launched.\nThat Game Boy was one day upgraded to a Game Boy Color. I did get a Super Nintendo (the pack with Killer Instinct and the soundtrack CD). Around the time the GameCube dropped, I managed to finagle a Nintendo 64.\nAlas, I was off to university and working four jobs. Still, my mother decided that video games had never caused me any harm and surprised me with a GameCube.\nThen I moved to France, and told myself: gaming is for children, and I cannot afford it now that I am independent. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t afford it, but I did get a Nintendo DS Lite as a gift along with one of the Zelda games.\nYou have noticed a very Nintendo-themed pattern here. It was always Nintendo. It always will be Nintendo, or nothing.\nThen one day I came home from work, and there, in my home, was a sight of which the memory still makes me shudder. There was an Xbox 360 attached to my television! My roommate had gone out and purchased it that day.\nShame. Shame on me. I picked up the controller and tried the game. I had that machine for several years before giving it away and telling myself: next time, Nintendo.\nThen one day my partner and I decided that holiday was too expensive, so why not buy a console for fun. A great and glorious idea! Off to the store we went. I drifted towards the Nintendo section, trying to hide my joy.\nFrom the corner of my eye I saw my partner coming in my direction carrying a garish blue box. A Sony PlayStation 4 and Crash Bandicoot. I looked at her, ready to put my foot down. Our eyes met. I steadied myself, I knew what was coming. I had nothing to parry with. I was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun filled with armour-piercing ammo: emotional manipulation.\nWell played… well played\nI wavered, and, up until December 2023, I have been playing another console I didn\u0026rsquo;t really enjoy, except for a handful of games.\nWhy did I waver and continue to waver? I don\u0026rsquo;t have an answer.\nI do, however, have a few words to say about the Nintendo Switch.\nIt is an amazing device. I don\u0026rsquo;t have any of the big games for it yet, so I am not even taking content into account. I\u0026rsquo;m talking about the whole design of the product.\nWavering took away some of the fun. Why didn\u0026rsquo;t I enjoy the PS4 as much? Let\u0026rsquo;s make a list:\nnoisy slow startup time buying a physical edition and coming home to be forced to download a 7.8GB file because the disc doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the game on it? slow startup of games in-game load-times slow shutdown time I would not play the PS4 unless I was positive I had at least a 60-minute window for playing.\nNow, Nintendo may have opted to low-end silicon, but that did not prevent them from creating a machine that:\nis quiet turns on and off quickly has shorter load times uses cartridges and smaller update sizes for physical games can suspend overnight without overheating is PORTABLE looks nice is small The list can go on, but you get the point. I\u0026rsquo;m enamoured with this gadget. Once a Nintendo guy, always a Nintendo guy.\nAnd that was the epiphany.\nI wavered, and have just now discovered that I\u0026rsquo;ve been missing out on something joyful for several years.\nWhat if I applied this idea to other things in life?\nWhat if that could be a resolution for 2024?\nThe time has come for me to put my foot down, to draw a line in the sand, and hold my ground. Fun and joy could be a simple decision away, but first, I have a game to finish.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t say I would stop procrastinating, did I?\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2024\/01\/wavering\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/eoy\/": {
"title": "EOY",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/eoy\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/listicle\/": {
"title": "Listicle",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/listicle\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/music\/": {
"title": "Music",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/music\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/12\/bestalbums2023\/": {
"title": "My Best Albums 2023",
"tags": ["Music","Listicle","EOY",],
"content": "Hello music nerds. The end of the year is creeping up on us and that means it is time to take a look back at the year in music.\nAs much as I love discovering new music, this year was not a huge year for that. As far as I can tell (using beets and ListenBrainz as sources) I listened to about 190 albums released between 2023-01-01 and today (2023-12-18). Now, normally I could easily rattle off my favourite 10 or 20 releases, but this year is a blur.\nI will keep it short and unordered: some honourable mentions and my favourite release of the year.\nHonourable Mentions Artist Album Link(s) Fiera Pueblo Nuevo Bandcamp Helena Hauff fabric presents Helena Hauff Bandcamp Pangaea Changing Channels Bandcamp Cyk Lore Bandcamp Duane Betts Wild \u0026amp; Precious Life Bandcamp Four Tet Live at Alexandra Palace London, 24th May 2023 Bandcamp Miss España Niebla Mental Bandcamp Aesop Rock Integrated Tech Solutions Bandcamp Best of I was spoiled this year with not one, but several excellent Buck 65 releases. Last year, after coming back from hiatus with a surprise release, I was overjoyed. This year, Super Dope took the cake and the blue ribbon and the whatever. This ensemble of releases is my choice for best of the year.\nSuper Dope Punk Rock B-Boy Drum Study #3 Drum Study #2 Drum Study #1 14 KT Gold North American Adonis (Buck 65, doseone, Jel) ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/12\/bestalbums2023\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/11\/sellingpoison\/": {
"title": "They Lie",
"tags": ["Privacy","Short story",],
"content": "Opportunities are everywhere.\nSometimes, though, you need to make your own opportunities.\nAll it takes is an idea. And ideas can come from anywhere.\nThis is the story about a boy. One day, towards the end of the 1970s, he read a book. Some would call it historical fiction, some science-fiction, many others would call it conspiracy theory. I will not tell you the name of this book, or the author, because this book plants a seed. No tree of knowledge will sprout from this seed; it only festers and rots.\nGrowing older, the boy, now a man, was not getting what life had promised. He had gone to school, which is what we were told to do at the time. He wondered where his riches were. \u0026lsquo;Life isn\u0026rsquo;t fair,\u0026rsquo; he would think to himself. Thoughts like these were like water for the seed.\nMental healthcare, at this point in time, was not an available resource. In fact, the idea that these thoughts could be a warning sign did not in cross the man\u0026rsquo;s mind.\nThe Internet was an available resource. And the man dove\u0026mdash;deep\u0026mdash;into different corners of the web. Doing his own research paid off. The book he had read years before was just a springboard to the truth. The world was the problem; not him. And the world as the normies know it, is not as it seems.\nHe began to see himself like Nada in They Live , but, in reality, he had become the alien among us. The wolf in sheep\u0026rsquo;s clothing.\nMajor history events? After doing his own research, the man discovered them to be fake. Hoaxes.\nHealth problems? It turns out, according to the man\u0026rsquo;s sources, that Linus Pauling was right and was silenced by \u0026ldquo;Big Pharma\u0026rdquo;.\nIt was all making sense now. It was all a lie. Lying, it seemed, was the key to success.\nAnd, just like that, an idea came to fruition. Yes, the normies need to know the truth. They need to know that the those in power are lying about everything. Spreading the truth, however, does not pay the bills.\n\u0026lsquo;If those in power are exempt from the rules,\u0026rsquo; thought the man, \u0026rsquo;then why should I have to follow them?\u0026rsquo;\nTaking advantage of innocent victims is, as the saying goes, like taking candy from a baby. The man founded a company, Amazing Privacy Services LTD, and became a scam artist. Unsolicited phone calls and classic email scams were practically victimless crimes. If the person on the end of the line wasn\u0026rsquo;t woke enough to realize they were being scammed, that wasn\u0026rsquo;t the man\u0026rsquo;s fault, was it? In fact, from his point of view, he was doing them a favour by teaching them a lesson.\nAlas, victims were becoming harder to get to. The people were waking up, and digital privacy was becoming more accessible to the normies. Unfortunately for the victims, digital privacy was something the man was concerned with. Running scams and hosting information about controversial topics and presenting fringe theories as fact on a website requires some attention to detail, and digital privacy.\nToday, this man is present in forums and groups about privacy. On the outside, he is an individual with some controversial opinions and an interest is protecting people. In reality, he is using these groups to glean information on how people protect themselves, and taking advantage of weaknesses.\nHe is not just a silly looking little snake in the grass. He is a criminal. He is a cancer. He is a bad seed.\nThis story may be fiction, but it is based on truth, unlike the book that the man read decades ago.\nThe path to take here is not clear. Yes, we have a person selling the poison and fighting for an antidote at the same time. It is hypocrisy. Yes, the same person is also peddling lies, misinformation, and even making claims that are punishable by law, but I am not about to go on a wild goose chase to track this person down. That would just put a target on my back.\nI am writing this as a simple warning, one that I have made before , and everyone will agree with:\nDo not trust what you read on the web, even if it looks to be good advice One good piece of advice that you agree with does not mean all the advice on that site or forum is good Do not reveal private information, including details on how you protect yourself online, anywhere ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/11\/sellingpoison\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/09\/glasspyramid\/": {
"title": "The Glass Pyramid",
"tags": ["Short story",],
"content": " There once was a magical glass pyramid. It sat on top of a hill. All were welcome to come and live in the glass pyramid. All you had to do was follow the long and winding path up the hill.\nOutside the pyramid, it was dangerous. There were no houses. There was no food.\nInside the pyramid, it was like a grand city. Everyone had a job to do. Some jobs, even though they were not difficult, were more important than others. The important people lived at the very top of the pyramid and made all the decisions. The important people knew best.\nAfter a time, there were too many people in the pyramid. The important people were upset. There were too many people with less important jobs sharing their space. That is not the way of the pyramid. Something had to be done.\n\u0026ldquo;We should make the pyramid bigger,\u0026rdquo; said one person. \u0026ldquo;Amazing idea,\u0026rdquo; said another. \u0026ldquo;But, that\u0026rsquo;s not fair!\u0026rdquo; said one of the important people. \u0026ldquo;Why should I have to live near these less important people?\u0026rdquo; said another. \u0026ldquo;Well,\u0026rdquo; said one of the most important people, \u0026ldquo;perhaps we should make it harder to get in as well.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd so, a vote was held. The higher you lived in the pyramid, the more your vote counted.\nA fair and democratic solution was reached: They would raise the ceiling of their magical glass pyramid, to make more space for important people. And, each time they raised their glass ceiling, they would make their hill higher as well, to make it more difficult to get in. This was called raising the glass floor.\nEventually, the hill became a mountain. And the pyramid became a needle that went high into the sky. So high and close to the sun that it became very hot for the important people. They blamed the less important people. They told them it was their fault.\nThe least important people worked even harder: They only ate local, they recycled, they spent their earnings on electric vehicles and solar panels, they never used air conditioning or plastic straws.\nThey were told to lower their carbon footprint. So they did.\nThey were told that everyone had to do their part. So they did.\nBut\u0026hellip;\nThe important people were not doing their part. After all, it was not their fault. They did what they wanted, when they wanted. But, despite having everything they could possibly need, they were still not happy.\nThey decided that it was still too easy to get in. Raising the glass floor was not enough. Some of the less important people had to go.\n\u0026ldquo;These people have it too easy,\u0026rdquo; complained one of the important people. \u0026ldquo;Maybe they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even be in the pyramid,\u0026rdquo; said another. And so, they came up with a plan.\nThey made things more expensive, like food and houses and doctors and school. The less important people worked harder and harder. They even stopped having children. No matter what they did though, it was not enough. And this was the plan: If you could not afford to live in the pyramid, you had to leave.\nAfter a time, it became so difficult to get into the pyramid, and so hard to stay, that there was nobody left to do the work that had to be done. The important people had forgotten how to work. They had forgotten how to make food and clean and build things.\nLittle by little, the pyramid started to crack. People who used to be important became less important. Some were even forced to leave.\nThe people outside the pyramid saw that something was wrong. They shouted, \u0026ldquo;how can we help you!\u0026rdquo; And the important people shouted back, \u0026ldquo;nobody wants to work any more!\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Give us jobs, give us homes, let us help you!\u0026rdquo; clamoured the people outside the pyramid. \u0026ldquo;NO,\u0026rdquo; shouted the important people, \u0026ldquo;you are not important enough to live in our pyramid!\u0026rdquo;\nAnd as they slammed the door on the faces of those willing to help, a crack began to form. It started at the bottom. The grew and grew, spreading higher and higher. The people outside did not want the pyramid to fall, it would crush them if it did. So they all came together and tried to hold the pyramid up.\n\u0026ldquo;Come down and help us,\u0026rdquo; the people outside cried. \u0026ldquo;We only have one pyramid,\u0026rdquo; they pleaded. But, the people inside were only interested in getting to the top. They all climbed to the top floor instead of helping hold the pyramid together. They were more afraid of the people outside getting in than they were of the crack.\nAll the important people reached the top of the pyramid. They held a meeting to decide what to do. \u0026ldquo;We just need to use the magic to fix the pyramid,\u0026rdquo; they said. The most important person spoke up. They controlled the magic. They could fix everything in a snap. They said, \u0026ldquo;I will do this for a price!\u0026rdquo;\nThe other important people thought this was fair, but they did not want to spend their money. \u0026ldquo;What if we asked the least important people to donate? It is their fault, isn\u0026rsquo;t it?\u0026rdquo; suggested someone.\nA very famous and important person went down to see the people on the glass floor. They were very emotional. They spoke at length and finally asked the people at the bottom to donate their money.\nThe people at the bottom looked around at each other. One of them began to chuckle. And another. And another.\nA contagious laughter spread among the people at the bottom. They could not stop. They fell over laughing. They laughed so hard the mountain began to shake. The more the mountain shook, the more the pyramid wobbled.\nThe crack spread faster and faster. \u0026ldquo;HELP US!\u0026rdquo; cried all the important people, as they clutched their pearls and wallets. \u0026ldquo;After all we did for you ungrateful people!\u0026rdquo; scolded one of them, sipping champagne. \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t you know who I am?\u0026rdquo; growled another, sat in a rocket they had no idea how to fly.\nThe laughter and the shouting continued until a final crack echoed across the land.\nThe magical glass pyramid shattered and fell.\nWhen the dust settled, the people at the bottom of the pyramid were relieved. They had not been crushed. They began fixing and rebuilding. They made their homes, and schools, and hospitals.\nMany months later, a group of people came climbing up the hill. They stopped in awe of what they saw. The pyramid was still standing.\nThese people were hungry and tired. They wanted to bathe and sleep in beds. They walked straight to the front door, but their path was blocked.\n\u0026ldquo;Unhand me, filth!\u0026rdquo; said one of the travellers to the person barring their way. \u0026ldquo;I am a very important person, and you will let me pass.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Well,\u0026rdquo; started the person at the door, \u0026ldquo;you see, that is not how things work around here.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;This is our magical pyramid,\u0026rdquo; explained the guard. \u0026ldquo;If you want to get in, you need skills, you need to be able to work because everyone has a job to do!\u0026rdquo;\nAlas, over the generations, the important people had forgotten how to work. So they could not enter the pyramid.\nYears passed, and the pyramid began to grow, and the glass ceiling became further away, and the glass floor went up with it, and the story repeated itself, again, and again.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/09\/glasspyramid\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/08\/picturetaker\/": {
"title": "Digicams are still fun",
"tags": ["Technology",],
"content": "I bought a little digicam.\nIt looks like this:\nIt is yellow and plastic and is exactly what you would expect to get when you go into the local electronics shop and ask for the cheapest thing they have. Well, this was the second cheapest. I probably should have gone for the cheapest since this model is from 2019. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. This (very) little yellow gadget\u0026mdash;it is practically a toy in some aspects\u0026mdash;brought back childhood memories of Kolorkins , and so I forked over my cash.\nWhy? I am not a photographer, but I think photography is an awesome hobby, passion, and art form. When I was younger, around the time Kodak was marketing Kolorkins, I always wanted to touch my mother\u0026rsquo;s camera. That, however, was a big \u0026ldquo;no-no.\u0026rdquo; It was such a mysterious device, and I was convinced at the time that it was either extremely high-tech, expensive, fragile, or all of the above. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it was any of those things. It was just something she cherished.\nOnce, at a used clothing store of all places, I found a 35mm camera for sale. It was $5 or something, so I took my allowance and bought it. It was one of those junky plastic things that you needed to manually advance the film on. I used that for a few years, and into university. Digital cameras were definitely around by then, but still expensive. I remember taking it to a Matthew Good concert at the Marquee in Halifax. Melissa Auf der Maur was the opening act. I had a roll of 24 pictures to take. I had to keep my finger over the flash. One of those shots came out great1.\nEven before this time, though, my mother had retired her treasured 35mm and moved on to a compact digital camera: a Samsung Digimax A5. No, I don\u0026rsquo;t have an eidetic memory; I have EXIF Data and this picture of the sweetest dog ever:\nThis photo was taken on the 4th of July 2005, at 5:55 in the morning. I can smell this photo.\nWhen I moved out, I was gifted a digicam of my own. It was a Fujifilm Finepix A805. That thing went places. The advent of phones with better cameras lead me to sell it sometime in 2009 when I bought an LG Viewty and thought to myself, \u0026ldquo;Why would I ever need a camera again?\u0026rdquo;\nI was wrong Sometime, in 2014, I was fed up with the pictures my phone could take. So I marched down to the camera shop and walked out with a reasonable camera for someone who has no idea what they are doing: a Sony HX60V. I found an e-book about digital photography and read nearly the whole thing on a flight to Canada. I was going to get a picture of the supermoon.\nI did. It turned out great. I was eaten alive by blackflies and mosquitos, but I got that picture. And then I took pictures of everything. I put them on Flickr and made a shared album on Google Photos. There were weeks that I was out taking pictures every single day. It was cool. That camera went on holiday with me too. Totally reasonable and worthwhile investment.\nI did take some decent pictures, too. One was used on a tourist website, another in an article about trees, and another was used for the cover of a Moleskine notepad. But, below are two of my favourites:\nLittle fingers When my son was born, I was so happy to have a camera to capture memories with. Phones can be stolen or hacked. I wanted those memories in a safe offline place. Children, though, have a tendency to grow. And they like to touch things. So, that camera found its way onto a shelf until this summer, when I was planning to take a very short trip. I took it out and was sad to discover, that through disuse or possibly a fall, the flash had stopped working. I will repair it, but I wanted to be able to walk around snapping pictures. And then, a little voice that I hadn\u0026rsquo;t heard in years whispered in my ear.\n\u0026ldquo;Fuck it,\u0026rdquo; it said. \u0026ldquo;Just go buy a cheap digicam.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd I was out the door\u0026hellip;\nIt looks like a toy\u0026hellip; because it is fun I bought it, took it out of the box\u0026mdash;in the street\u0026mdash;popped in a microSD card and started snapping. It became clear that this is something that even my son will be able to use. A smile crept across my face.\nAll the fun stuff is built in:\nfilters for colours, fisheye, negative, montages, etc. scene modes full auto and semi-auto (no true manual mode) you can control it with an app you can crop and rotate photos you can record videos, even slow-motion But, most importantly: you point and you shoot. The LCD on this thing is piddly. You will not be stopping between shots to admire your craft or show to your friends. This is a thing that dangles from your wrist to be used at a moment\u0026rsquo;s notice. Getting a steady picture requires holding your breath and genuine hope. You could turn on the full info viewfinder mode to have a grid and a histogram, but, honestly, it is just too small to care about.\nKeep it easy; call it a day Backing up photos is really easy now. I just use gphoto2 . Plug it in and run\ngphoto2 --get-all-files --skip-existing \\ --filename=\u0026#34;%Y/%m/%d/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%C\u0026#34; \u0026amp;\u0026amp; \\ rm */*/*/*.THM and call it a day. When I\u0026rsquo;m out and about, I use the app to transfer photos to my phone and share on Pixelfed. Go have a look at the randomness: pixelfed.fr/@bbbhltz .\nthe hunt for this picture continues\u0026hellip;\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/08\/picturetaker\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/07\/ffmpeg-waveform\/": {
"title": "On making a video for a podcast",
"tags": ["Technology","Guide",],
"content": "My partner has a podcast! It\u0026rsquo;s in French, and it is about the history of Spain. So, if you speak French, check out Pourquoi les espagnols sont comme ça ?:\nSpotify Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts RSS It is also on YouTube , and that is what this post is really about. Now, my better half is an independent woman. Stubborn, some might say, but fundamentally determined to do things on her own. She isn\u0026rsquo;t shy about testing things out on computers, either. I was a little surprised when I saw her YouTube videos. I decided to let her do her thing and not be a backseat driver.\nI like this. It is to the point, and she did spend some time on that cover art (she made it with Paint, millennial flex) so it makes sense to put it front and centre. She wanted more, though. She wanted titles, and logos, and a waveform. And didn\u0026rsquo;t I open my mouth and say I could do that in 2 or 3 commands? I did. I bit my tongue after, but the damage was done.\n\u0026ldquo;Could you really?\u0026rdquo; she asked.\n\u0026ldquo;Send me the audio, and I\u0026rsquo;ll take a crack at it\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nReaders, I had no idea how to do this, but I knew it could be done. I knew I had the tools at hand: FFmpeg and ImageMagick. And, I knew that with a search engine and 20 minutes, I could sort it out.\nWell\u0026hellip; I had a few doubts, because I know from prior experience that FFmpeg has lots of options and flags.\nLuckily for me, a couple searches and some trial and error was all that it took.\nMaking the labels/overlays ImageMagick is fun and easy. Here are the commands I used for Episode 5:\nconvert -background none -fill \u0026#34;#FFDE59\u0026#34; \\ -font Nickainley-Normal -size 1100 \\ -gravity center label:\u0026#34;Pourquoi les espagnols sont comme ça ?\u0026#34; \\ title.png convert -background none -fill \u0026#34;#FFDE59\u0026#34; \\ -font Nickainley-Normal -size x150 \\ -gravity center label:\u0026#34;Épisode 5 : Conquête Hispania (2ème Partie)\u0026#34; \\ episode0.png montage cover.jpg -label \u0026#39;\u0026#39; episode0.png -geometry x150 -geometry +5+5 \\ -background none episode.png (I still don\u0026rsquo;t know how to combine/chain commands together, but it works)\nMaking the waveform and overlaying the images After some trial and error (and searching1), this is what I came up with:\nffmpeg -i input.wav -i bull.png -i title.png -i episode.png -filter_complex \\ \u0026#34;[0:a]aformat=channel_layouts=mono,showwaves=mode=cline:s=1920x1080:colors=#FFDE59[sw]; \\ color=s=1920x1080:c=#FF5757[bg]; \\ [bg][sw]overlay=format=auto:shortest=1,format=yuv420p[v]; \\ [v][1]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2[v1]; [v1][2]overlay=(W-w)/2:20[v2]; [v2][3]overlay=(W-w)/2:910[v3]\u0026#34; \\ -map \u0026#34;[v3]\u0026#34; -map 0:a \\ -c:a aac -b:a 384k -profile:a aac_low \\ -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -profile:v high -crf 18 -coder 1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -g 30 -bf 2 \\ -metadata title=\u0026#34;title\u0026#34; -metadata year=\u0026#34;2023\u0026#34; -metadata album=\u0026#34;podcast name\u0026#34; \\ final-draft.mp4 This takes the input (-i input.wav) and runs it through a filter. That filter will make a 1920x1080 video of the waveform and overlays it on a coloured background.\nOverlaying the pictures I had three images that needed to be overlaid: the two I made above, and a little logo of a bull. We wanted the bull in the middle and the other titles at the top and bottom. I did manage to chain these commands together. I suspect there are better ways to achieve the same results.\nI think it looks pretty sharp for something made with ImageMagick and FFmpeg.\nNext Steps I think I should leave space at the bottom for subtitles. What do you think?\nNew episodes of the podcast launch every Sunday!\nHere is episode 5:\nYouTube recommended encoding settings on FFmpeg \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/07\/ffmpeg-waveform\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/05\/on-debloating-android-phones\/": {
"title": "On Debloating Android Phones",
"tags": ["Technology","Privacy",],
"content": "Recently, a new Android phone has come into my possession. It is fortunately very light on the bloatware that comes on many devices. Just the standard Google stuff, the required packages, and 4 OEM packages. What\u0026rsquo;s more, it is very up-to-date and will probably stay that way based on the company\u0026rsquo;s reputation (I am purposely refraining from saying that company name because it is irrelevant here).\nThe unfortunate thing about even the least bloated phones on the market is that it is still impossible to remove certain applications. Gmail, for example, is of no use to me. It isn\u0026rsquo;t exactly hurting me being there, but I want it out because that is what I do on my phones. Like all but one phone I have ever owned, this phone cannot be rooted. There is a tool for that.\nUAD-ng , the Universal Android Debloater (Next Generation) is a GUI that uses ADB to debloat non-rooted android devices. This is my usual go-to. It is self-explanatory in use and seems active enough by my standards. This time around, it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t launch. I tried both binaries on my laptop before realizing that since Alpine Linux uses musl libc instead of the GNU equivalent, I may need to build it myself. Well, I gave it my best and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t good enough. I could not get that sucker to build (I think I may have sorted out my problem now, better late than never) and patience ran out, so I just did it manually.\nHere is how I got the Google (sort of) off my phone.\nRequirements Android SDK Platform Tools : The Android tools (adb is the one we want) are usually easy enough to install. There are loads of other, more precise, resources on the web that explain how to enable developer options on your phone and install these tools on your computer.\njq : an application included in many Linux distributions and also works on Mac and Windows.\nThe UAD Package List : You can grab the package list from the website.\nA little time: I would start by making a directory to keep track of things. I called mine debloat. Now run\n$ wget https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation/raw/main/resources/assets/uad_lists.json to get the JSON file we want.\nRemoval Decisions Get the package list from your phone Get the recommended removable packages from the UAD JSON Compare Double-check Remove the packages from your phone If your phone is connected to your computer and adb devices shows your device (sometimes you need to put in a pin or confirm on your phone), you should be able to run this command and be given a list of packages:\n$ adb shell pm list packages | cut -f 2 -d \u0026#34;:\u0026#34; * daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037 * daemon started successfully com.google.android.providers.media.module com.qti.phone com.google.android.overlay.modules.permissioncontroller.forframework com.android.calllogbackup com.qualcomm.qti.lpa com.qualcomm.atfwd com.qualcomm.qti.cne com.android.dreams.phototable com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.comms com.android.providers.contacts com.qualcomm.uimremoteserver com.qti.pasrservice com.android.dreams.basic ... I put it in a text file by adding \u0026gt; packages.txt to the command.\nNext, we need to use jq to check the UAD list for removable Google packages.\n$ jq -r \u0026#39;.[]\u0026#39; uad_lists.json | jq -r \u0026#39;select(.list==\u0026#34;Google\u0026#34; and .removal==\u0026#34;Recommended\u0026#34;)\u0026#39; | jq -r \u0026#39;.id\u0026#39; \u0026gt; removable.txt Now we have a packages.txt file and a removable.txt file. There are lots of ways to compare, but on a quiet night with nothing to do, one may not feel like opening up LibreOffice Calc or using an online tool. A couple lines of Python works in this case.\nwith open(\u0026#34;packages.txt\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;r\u0026#34;) as installed: package_reader = installed.readlines() package_list = set() for package in package_reader: package_list.add(package.replace(\u0026#34;\\n\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;\u0026#34;)) # print(package_list) with open(\u0026#34;removable.txt\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;r\u0026#34;) as removable: removable_reader = removable.readlines() removable_list = set() for rpackage in removable_reader: removable_list.add(rpackage.replace(\u0026#34;\\n\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;\u0026#34;)) # print(removable_list) debloat = set(package_list) \u0026amp; set(removable_list) for bloat in debloat: print(f\u0026#34;adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 {bloat}\u0026#34;) This should print out a list of removable packages with the appropriate command prepended to each line.\n$ python chck_pkgs.py adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.feedback adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.as adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.wellbeing adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.marvin.talkback adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.setupwizard adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.deskclock Some Google packages have obvious names, com.android.chrome is clearly Chrome. But, what is com.google.android.apps.tachyon? Well, that\u0026rsquo;s Google Duo/Meet, of course!\nSo, it is time to double-check instead of going crazy on the removals. Just because some people on the Internet suggest something does not mean it is the right thing for you to do. After all, breaking the functionalities of a device you just paid money for in the name of privacy is just silly.\nI read through the descriptions of many of the packages before giving them the boot. Either open the UAD list file in a text editor or ask jq to do the work for us:\n$ jq -r \u0026#39;.[]\u0026#39; uad_lists.json | jq -r \u0026#39;select(.list==\u0026#34;Google\u0026#34; and .removal==\u0026#34;Recommended\u0026#34;)\u0026#39; | jq -r \u0026#39;.id + \u0026#34;: \u0026#34; + .description\u0026#39; If you decide that you need one of the packages that you removed, it can be restored using:\nadb shell cmd package install-existing --user 0 \u0026lt;packagename\u0026gt; This is because the packages were only removed for the user, but not removed from the device. Worst case scenario: factory reset will restore all packages and unbreak anything that needs to be unbroken.\nFinal words The best place for information on doing this likely the XDA Forums where you can likely find device-specific recommendations.\nI have found some benefits to \u0026ldquo;removing\u0026rdquo; these packages: you won\u0026rsquo;t save much space, but possibly some battery will be saved. Also, if you live somewhere where it is not reasonable to pay for unlimited data, some of these packages might be using data that you want to keep for yourself. It is certainly worth looking into in you have devices by other brands that include OEM-specific bloatware that you never use.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/05\/on-debloating-android-phones\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/04\/alpine-linux\/": {
"title": "On using Alpine Linux as a Desktop",
"tags": ["Linux","Review",],
"content": "Introduction I used to use Gemini . (I cannot recall why I stopped using it). Call it prescience, call it hoarding, but I happened to keep my bookmarks file from those days. During some Spring cleaning I opened it up to see what was there.\nThere were a number of bookmarks, one of them being a post . The post was about Alpine Linux. \u0026ldquo;Why would I bookmark this post?\u0026rdquo; I thought to myself. So, off I went to their website\u0026hellip;\nAnd, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a proper and navigable website. This required my attention. While I am not such an expert on websites and design, I have navigated (or have attempted to navigate) many a Linux landing page. When the Alpine Linux page loaded I was obliged to give it a nod of approval. Debian, seriously, what is up with your site?\nThe logo, as well, garnered yet another nod. Hexagons are the bestagons , and this logo is wonderful. The choice of colour, and the simplicity, make it stand out. The site even made it easy to track down the epic tale of logo bikeshed-ification and notes on their website design.\nWithin moments, I was on the Downloads page and remarked a logical selection of images to choose from. There are even idiot-friendly descriptions, which is perfect for me. I initially decided to take it for a spin on my disused Raspberry Pi400. And here came another surprise: the size of the download.\nThe image for the RPi is under 100 MB. And for desktop? Just over 150 MB. \u0026ldquo;Impossible,\u0026rdquo; I thought. And I was wrong. Totally possible. Apparently their slogan \u0026mdash; \u0026ldquo;Small. Simple. Secure.\u0026rdquo; \u0026mdash; is at least 33% true. To know more, continue on to my glowing review of this Linux distribution.\nReview Installation I have added my instructions to the Alpine Wiki, here .\nAlpine Linux may turn off many desktop users. This is because installation is done via the command line. There is no Calamares or Live image. After getting the image on a USB drive, for example, and booting, you are in the terminal (tty) with a blinking cursor and instructions to login as root. From here, you can run the setup-alpine script that walks you through getting the basics installed and configured. I followed this process.\nAfter rebooting I was still at a command prompt, but now had Wi-Fi and began following the instructions from the Wiki . From here, all it took was reading the Wiki and learning to use the apk command.\nAPK \u0026mdash; Alpine Package Keeper apk works like apt on Debian-based distributions, but I do find it easier. I searched (apk search x) and I added (apk add x) without difficulty. apk also takes care of removing dependencies \u0026mdash; apk del x is like apt purge x \u0026amp;\u0026amp; apt autoremove \u0026mdash; and this is just so\u0026hellip; simple. Yes, there was the matter of uncommenting a repository, and I did need to pay special attention to how to use rc-service and rc-update, but in under 10 minutes I was able to install the necessary packages to install LXQt on my old laptop (an Acer Aspire from 2015).\nThe apk tool is also extremely fast.\nUse as a desktop I could wag my chin all day and bore the pants off anyone reading this, but I\u0026rsquo;d rather keep it simple. Once installed, everything boots quick enough and the hardware works (trackpad, webcam, Bluetooth, optical drive, number pad, function keys, etc.). Of course, using something like LXQt makes the system snappy and quick. Desktop users, however, tend to want access to the latest and greatest software.\nAccess to Software One does not need to install a distro to learn these things. Alpine Linux Edge is quite up-to-date.\n(For comparison: Arch Linux and Debian Unstable )\nUsing the Edge (rolling) repository gave me nearly everything needed to do what I do on a computer:\nuse the web update my blog consume media Some packages are out of date, and that can be a pain. But, here I am with a desktop up and running on an 8-year-old laptop that has not been used in years, and it is fast. So, if the pandoc version is 7 months behind, I can grumble a little, but it won\u0026rsquo;t stop me from using this distro.\nBeyond this, up-to-date packages for browsers and many desktop environments are available. You can quickly have access to LibreOffice, Python, audio and video playing software, IDEs and other helpful tools that can get many users through the day.\nDownsides Alpine is a \u0026ldquo;general purpose Linux distribution\u0026rdquo; but does not target desktop users. Anything that could be perceived as a downside stems from this distinction and should be considered a bit of a feature, rather than a bug.\nDrew DeVault\u0026rsquo;s article on Alpine (mentioned above ) mentions the only downside I have noticed in my week or so of using this on my old laptop.\nDocumentation is one of Alpine\u0026rsquo;s weak points. This is generally offset by Alpine\u0026rsquo;s simplicity — it can usually be understood reasonably quickly and easily even in the absence of documentation — but it remains an issue. That being said, Alpine has shown consistent progress in this respect in the past few releases, shipping more manual pages, improving the wiki, and standardizing processes for matters like release notes.\nDrew DeVault\nConclusion I am looking forward to my coming holiday because I will likely switch my main laptop to Alpine Linux. In fact, I am even inclined to finally, after years of being a basic Desktop Linux user, contribute to a project with more than the rare bug report. I will probably need a little help before I do that though.\nAs I am writing this I have also came across Bradley Taunt\u0026rsquo;s Alpine Suck project , a script that installs the core suckless programs. If they don\u0026rsquo;t already exist, I believe that other projects of this nature will appear. Perhaps, even, a desktop distro based on Alpine.\nIt may be apparent, but I will let you in on a secret: I have never tried to write a review of distribution \u0026mdash; ever. My Linux experience only goes back to about 2006. Since then, I have tried a good number of distributions. Never once have I ever thought about sharing my thoughts in more than a few words. Also take into consideration that I am a desktop Linux user.\nIf I were to apply the same grading methods to Alpine Linux as I do my students, I would state the following:\nExcellent \u0026mdash; above average with only minor weak points.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/04\/alpine-linux\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/blogging\/": {
"title": "Blogging",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/blogging\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/02\/on-blogging-in-2023\/": {
"title": "On Blogging in 2023",
"tags": ["Blogging",],
"content": "The vinyl bandwagon has made a few laps around the block in my lifetime. I have occasionally run alongside it, too. While I have never climbed up on my soapbox to tout the strengths of the format or rally followers under an \u0026ldquo;It Just Sounds Warmer\u0026rdquo; banner, I must admit that the ritual and process is pleasant. That little crackle when the needle drops; the minor changes you need to make to the levels and equalizer; the size of the liner notes and elaborate gatefolds of the jackets; all of these give vinyl a nostalgic je ne sais quoi.\nsource\nIn my home, the turntable holds a central position. On a slightly higher shelf, out of the reach of children, it sits flanked by two speakers. Many are drawn to it, only to notice my lack of tube amps (cue disdain) and low-end, entry-level, hardware (activate disgust). In reality, I rarely use my turntable. I suspect I am not the only one like this. It sits, in wait, for the chance to be used, much like Andy\u0026rsquo;s toys in the Toy Story franchise.\nAn album collection, or toys in a trunk, is a decent metaphor for how things seem to work now. We are given new and shiny, but sporadically decide to flick though the collection and listen to a certain album on vinyl, hoping for warm feelings. Toy Story is done, we thought it was over. The toys had a warm, happy, ending. But, over at Disney someone ran out of new and is considering pulling out the faithful, warm, sound of the Toy Story franchise for another spin.\nLooking around we can see Disney is not the only one. Our own nostalgia closets aren\u0026rsquo;t just open \u0026mdash; we\u0026rsquo;ve torn the doors off. Our shirts are plaid, our pants are oversized and of the cargo variety, our footwear is made by the good Dr. Marten or features a Michael Jordan silhouette, and the hairstyles are throwbacks to Dawson\u0026rsquo;s Creek. With our vinyl records spinning in the background, we feel warm and cosy.\nIn September 2016, Andrew Sullivan wrote \u0026ldquo;I Used to Be a Human Being \u0026rdquo; for New York Magazine. He put into words a sentiment that had been building for years: our collective resentment of social networks. The abruptness of this disruption is noted:\n\u0026ldquo;We almost forget that ten years ago, there were no smartphones, and as recently as 2011, only a third of Americans owned one. Now nearly two-thirds do. That figure reaches 85 percent when you\u0026rsquo;re only counting young adults. And 46 percent of Americans told Pew surveyors last year a simple but remarkable thing: They could not live without one. The device went from unknown to indispensable in less than a decade.\u0026rdquo;\nSince then, the resentment has not stopped growing. Different trends, like Digital Minimalism, took root (just look at the wiki for the /r/digitalminimalism subreddit for a taste). We strive for the warm feeling, but it seems out of reach and intangible, and our closet of nostalgia seems to provide nothing old for us. And so, today, 2023, we have begun looking back with sentimentality at a time, towards the end of the 90s, when blogging was a thing.\nBefore the arrival of social media and microblogging services, before Web 2.0 took off, we had methods of sharing our thoughts with strangers on the web. We blogged. Well, I didn\u0026rsquo;t really, but people did this. And today, more and more people are flicking through their album collection, and digging in their toy trunk, for warmth and declaring that blogging is it. Blogging must come back!\nBlogging à la 90s was a ritual. Lots of bloggers used FTP servers. There was a \u0026ldquo;manual\u0026rdquo; feeling about it. Other users followed you via RSS. You couldn\u0026rsquo;t really know if people read what you wrote. You bounced ideas off walls, and bounce by bounce became part of a community. Blogger, now part of the Alphabet family, has been around since then.\nSome notable attempts have been made to inject new life into blogging. WordPress, Medium, Substack, and a slew of other tools are all popular. Another tribe of bloggers swears by static site generators .\nAnd here we are now, new tools in hand, hoping that one of our old tricks will fulfil the need. Monique Judd (in \u0026ldquo;Bring back personal blogging \u0026rdquo;) wrote that \u0026ldquo;Twitter threads just don\u0026rsquo;t do the trick\u0026rdquo; and personal blogs are \u0026ldquo;primary sources in the annals of history,\u0026rdquo; so you should,\n\u0026ldquo;[b]uy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be big. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be fancy. You don\u0026rsquo;t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t. This is your creation. It\u0026rsquo;s your expression. It should reflect you.\n\u0026ldquo;Bring back personal blogging in 2023.\u0026rdquo;\nsource\nSimilar to Sullivan\u0026rsquo;s article, Judd\u0026rsquo;s article (among others) kicked off some threads on HN and garnered some buzz. The trend had been building before this article was published. Blogrolls, Webrings, directories1, and challenges, like 100 Days To Offload , never died. In a warm corner of the web, a very niche corner, people have continued to share their thoughts and ideas with strangers, similar to how vinyl addicts never stopped collecting.\nThis circle of bloggers sometimes overlaps with neighbouring circles on the web, forming a virtual Venn diagram where people who dislike mainstream social media or Big Tech chin-wag on the Fediverse, swapping blogs with activists, techies, privacy experts, gamers, retro geeks, and many more. The lay-offs of 2022\u0026ndash;2023 increased the size of these circles to a point where the content can overflow into the mainstream attracting more and more users. This phenomenon is not new .\nThe optimist in me believes that personal blogging could become bigger than it is. Many users already have a tendency to post using threads, recounting stories or events in a digestible way. I would go as far as calling it a modern skill: taking a technical situation and managing to write a more or less layman-friendly thread. This type of writing works as a thread because with each post there is drama and anticipation.\nThreads like the one mentioned above, I must admit, rouse the pessimist in me. Would I have read that story as a single post on a random blog? Would I have even been aware of the post? Maybe, and probably not, are the honest answers. Despite only ever using Twitter for a few months in total, the concept of the thread, despite what Judd says, strikes me as enough in many cases, and the perfect medium in rare cases.\nTaking someone who has honed their skill as a thread-writer and getting them to post it on a blog takes away from the interactions we\u0026rsquo;ve been conditioned to love. I am left with doubts whether reading blogs hits the addictive nerve centres like social media and podcasts do.\n\u0026ldquo;As I\u0026rsquo;m sure most people who keep a blog will tell you, one of the big benefits is just having somewhere to organize your thoughts and solidify your ideas. I personally see it as an alternative to keeping a journal, which I\u0026rsquo;ve always been lousy at. Knowing my writing might have an audience, no matter how small, is a good motivator in keeping it up and thinking up interesting things to write about.\u0026rdquo;\nmoddedBear Many personal blogs do not seek that attention, though. I recall people questioning the point of blogs back in the early 2000s. What is the point of sharing if you don\u0026rsquo;t know who is reading? As stated, that isn\u0026rsquo;t the point for many bloggers. The remaining bloggers have all the new tools to work with, and can give you an answer to that question. Today, you can have access to data and metrics about your readers that were not readily available in the early 2000s. You can attribute numbers to your posts, which would certainly appeal to a number of social media users.\nBlogging is, in the end, a Pharmakon. It is an agent of change, in the written form. For the active blogger, it works as a cure, giving an outlet, a place to offload thoughts and share, in a world that is becoming lonelier each year \u0026mdash; the warm crackle of the needle hitting the vinyl. For others, it will offer no healing effects. It will act as poison preventing the blogger from thinking for themselves \u0026mdash; the visible disgust of the audiophile when they see your turntable.\n###\nThis article you have just read is not an article. It is not published, it is posted. A blog post has no formal rules, structure, or standard. Should I structure this like an essay with a thesis? Should I have a clear conclusion? Should I ask fewer questions? I suppose if I were a professional blogger I could have presented a clear thesis, given the context, discussed problems, consequences, solutions, examples, and created something witty, meaningful, and blogworthy . This is not, as you can tell, a professional blog. It is my personal blog to do with as I please. And today it pleases me to end here, without a true conclusion, because I feel that I have sufficiently offloaded for now.\nSome examples of these would be https://blogroll.org/ , https://personalsit.es/ , https://indieseek.xyz/ , https://indieblog.page/ , The Indieweb Webring , and https://fediring.net/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/02\/on-blogging-in-2023\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/tmi-sharing-your-cv-on-linkedin\/": {
"title": "TMI: Sharing your CV on LinkedIn",
"tags": ["Privacy","Social Networking","Education",],
"content": " The images provided here have been anonymized in such a way to preserve the original appearance. This is not meant to be a personal attack on anyone, but if you recognize your CV here, email me and I will make it disappear.\nI am fed up.\nLinkedIn, the \u0026ldquo;professional\u0026rdquo; network, is a valuable tool for jobseekers. Not a guarantee, mind you, of finding the dream job, just a tool. There are multiple functions on this site. There is the social function, where you can post thoughts and articles, and, there is the profile function, where you put your employment and educational history. The latter serves as an online CV (or résumé) to help you find the perfect job or perfect employee.\nSchools around the world teach digital literacy and computer skills at different levels of education. We see stories online and on TV telling us to be wary. Just read this story about a stalker who used social media and dating profiles to track a woman to her home address . This story ended fine, with the stalker being punished. Not all stories end this way.\nSo, what about LinkedIn has me fed up?\nThe Problem I find it inconceivable, unbelievable, and downright moronic that many young people would double-down on a platform like LinkedIn by having a profile and using the social feature to share a PDF of their CV.\n\u0026ldquo;Well,\u0026rdquo; you\u0026rsquo;ll say, \u0026ldquo;it looks nice and it is eye-catching. You don\u0026rsquo;t understand, silly millennial!\u0026rdquo;\nAnd, I will agree in part. Despite having nearly 20 years of experience with social networks, and over 25 years of Internet under my stressed out belt, I don\u0026rsquo;t understand. In particular, I don\u0026rsquo;t understand how you could be so careless to share a) a PDF file that contains metadata, sometimes about your device, and b) also include details like your personal phone number, personal email address, home address, and date of birth. And I\u0026rsquo;m not even mentioning the fact that you include your photo. Have you not heard of identity theft? Do you think that only the people in your 1st degree network can see that?\nNow, clearly, there are some reasonable people out there that take the time to remove personal info from a document like that before sharing. And still others that set the sharing permissions. But, it is a site with a search bar. So, being curious, I decided to search for posts containing phrases like \u0026ldquo;my CV,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;my resume.\u0026rdquo;\nThe expected happened. Post after post, 1st degree and 3rd degree contacts, of PDF files being shared.\nLinkedIn lets you download the PDF. So I downloaded enough to be able to get some numbers (I also sorted by most recent, and included all levels of contacts). Based on what I was able to see, both directly and indirectly by reading the CVs and looking at the metadata, I can say that:\n20% of my contacts shared their full date of birth 50% used their school-provided email addresses 50% used their personal email addresses 40% shared their full home address, including street number 100% shared their personal mobile number I literally know where you live. I can look at your addresses on street view. Not only that, but I can search for you on other social networks with your personal email. That is creepy.\nScratching away at the surface, I know that (roughly):\n10% made their CV using Google Docs 10% used PowerPoint (why?) 20% used Word (one of which used Hloom ; another the 2013 edition of Word) 40% used Canva 20% of the PDF files I downloaded included no information besides the creation date re: Canva\nI cannot knock what I haven\u0026rsquo;t tried, but if you are going to use Canva, at least be smart. One of the PDF files even included the name of the template. It is called \u0026ldquo;Foncé Violet Femme Photo Service à la clientèle C.V.\u0026rdquo; . Don\u0026rsquo;t list Canva as a skill if you just know how to edit a template.\nSimple Solutions TMI Don\u0026rsquo;t include that personal information when you share a PDF of your CV. Problem solved! It is, however, somewhat important to include your email address. The way around this issue is via aliases.\nAn alias is still your email address, but you will know where that email came from. Here is an example:\nIf you use Gmail (so early 2000s) you actually have built-in aliases! Imagine your email address is [email protected]. Guess what? [email protected] is also your address. As is [email protected] (at least it was the last time I checked, let me check again right now\u0026hellip;yup, still works!). You also have + addresses, so [email protected] works too, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t look great on a CV. Now, when you open an email you will see in the to: field that it was sent to [email protected] instead of your regular address, and you will know that someone got it from your LinkedIn CV. This is, as stated above, a simple solution. There are others, like creating a separate email address just for job searches, that many would see as a hassle.\nStanding out from the crowd Looking at the picture above, you will notice that more than one of those CVs uses the 2-column template. If you have never encountered this before, just know that it is overwhelmingly used in France. So many CVs look the same. The lack of creativity comes from using templates, or perhaps there is some logic to using this template.\nCanva, and many tools like it, seem like creative ways of doing things. In the end, it is overkill. There are colours and shapes, lists, icons, and other flourishes that neither reveal your creativity nor your actual skill level.\nTell me, for example, why in your soft skills section do you rate your communication skills as 4-stars? Is it out of 5? 6? If you are a skilled communicator, why can you not communicate how skilled you are at communicating with words? And what is a 4/5 in Excel? Does that mean you can use VBA, or do you just know how to filter columns?\nYou want to add pizazz to your CV? Try something out of the ordinary? Learn how to use the tool. Are you a creative person? Make an online portfolio.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t blame yourself A study by Dell of 15,105 people, aged 18\u0026ndash;26, across 15 markets revealed that 44% of Gen Z feel as though both schools and businesses should work together to bridge the digital skills gap; 1/3 feel that their school education did not prepare them with the technology skills needed for their planned career; and 56% received either very basic or no digital skills training.\nDigital literacy concerns us all, and educators need to underline the importance of digital privacy. Perhaps they do, and you just forgot. Be wary of social networks, even the professional ones. Become digital natives one step at a time. Help your friends along the way, and stop telling us all where you live.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/tmi-sharing-your-cv-on-linkedin\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/markdown\/": {
"title": "Markdown",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/markdown\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/pandoc\/": {
"title": "Pandoc",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/pandoc\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/pandoc2023\/": {
"title": "Using Pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update",
"tags": ["Pandoc","Markdown","Education","Guide",],
"content": "In March 2021 I wrote about using pandoc to make my presentations for class . Towards the end of that post, I wrote:\nMy next quest will be to figure out how to make my own themes and styles. If you know how or have a nice, simple, guide, let me know.\nWell, it turns out that I was not far from a simple solution. With the recent release of pandoc 3.0 I was reminded that pandoc is, quite certainly, my most-used-tool for teaching \u0026mdash; I use it for my slides, and all the different documents that I need to make at my various teaching positions.\nAdding some colour Being quite content with the built-in options for themes (colortheme, innertheme and outertheme) I was under no pressure to seek out a solution. That is, until it became necessary to my sanity to be able to open a presentation and immediately recognize what school it was for \u0026mdash; I teach at four different places!\nThe answer was in the Beamer user Guide and involves making a small .tex file.\nHere is a (slightly modified) version that I use for one of my schools:\n% define some new colours % NB RGB and rgb are not the same thing! \\definecolor{sgreen}{RGB}{52,201,33} \\definecolor{lessdarkbackground}{RGB}{95,96,93} \\definecolor{darkbackground}{RGB}{40,38,39} \\definecolor{sorange}{RGB}{235,175,0} \\definecolor{sred}{RGB}{212,33,39} % tell LaTeX to use one of those colours for the structure \\usecolortheme[named=darkbackground]{structure} % tell LaTeX which colours to use for which elements \\setbeamertemplate{blocks}[shadow=true] \\setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=lessdarkbackground} \\setbeamercolor{block title}{bg=darkbackground, fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{block body}{bg=darkbackground, fg=white} \\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=white} \\setbeamercolor{titlelike}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{itemize item}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{itemize subitem}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{itemize subsubitem}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{enumerate item}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{enumerate subitem}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{enumerate subsubitem}{fg=sorange} \\setbeamercolor{section number projected}{fg=white, bg=sorange} % some extra commands \\usepackage[os=mac]{menukeys} \\usepackage{fancybox} \\usepackage[many]{tcolorbox} \\usepackage{pgf} \\usepackage[normalem]{ulem} These LaTeX instructions override the default blue theme, whale, and add a few extra functions that I rarely use, but don\u0026rsquo;t want to bother looking up again.\nRunning pandoc with the appropriate commands gives me this:\nPersonally, this is not my favourite colour scheme. It does match what is used at the school, however, and that is what I was going for.\nWhy the quote? I included a slide with a quote to point out that some solutions are more obvious than others. I am not at all comfortable with LaTeX, maybe someday. For now, I have the tools I need, and time-wise I can manage. I believe that learning LaTeX would be a logical step for someone in my position: many academics use LaTeX \u0026mdash; I am just a professor, and do not need to publish, but knowing this skill would be an advantage.\nMoving on to the quote.\nI like to keep things simple. A quote, with italic or emphasized text, followed by the name of the person quoted, flushed right, boldfaced, preceded by \u0026ldquo;\u0026mdash;.\u0026rdquo;\nSee? Simple.\nAt one point, I had some trouble getting the author\u0026rsquo;s name to the right of the slide. Then, I had trouble getting the text to be bold without resorting to LaTeX commands like \\textbf.\nAs is usually the case, the problem was how I was positioning the Markdown markup.\nThis was wrong:\n\\hfill **--- Kim Stanley Robinson** \\ \\hfill *The Ministry for the Future* (2021) Why? Because of how pandoc interprets the * following the \\hfill (horizontal fill) command. It just doesn\u0026rsquo;t work like that.\nThis is the simple solution:\n**\\hfill --- Kim Stanley Robinson** \\ *\\hfill The Ministry for the Future* (2021) Wrapping the \\hfill command in the markup takes care of the problem. No more resorting to LaTeX commands.\nWorkflow 2023 Nothing much has changed since before in terms of workflow.\nGenerally, I keep a \u0026ldquo;build\u0026rdquo; folder for each of my employers. Things have become disorganized since deciding on this structure, and I need to revamp it. But, right now, it might look like this:\nSCHOOL └── COURSE └── build ├── assets │ └── logo.webp ├── Slides.md └── style.tex I would prepare my Markdown file with the appropriate front matter and run:\npandoc -t beamer --pdf-engine=xelatex -H style.tex input.md -o output.pdf (-t beamer is the output type, --pdf-engine=xelatex because I like to use different fonts, -H style.tex includes my \u0026ldquo;theme\u0026rdquo; in the header)\nDoing that is not what I call a fluid workflow. And I have seen many, many solutions. My \u0026ldquo;solution\u0026rdquo; is to use Kate .\nKate has an \u0026ldquo;External Tools\u0026rdquo; plugin. With that, it is possible to create a button, or menu item, to do the work for you.\nSo, now I have a single-click \u0026ldquo;build\u0026rdquo; button for Markdown files. That means I can \u0026ldquo;preview\u0026rdquo; my slides when I want by leaving zathura open. I also tend to spellcheck things frequently.\nOnce I have the PDF file, I manually copy it into my shared Syncthing folder, so the file is on my phone. Then, when I turn on my work computer, the file will be synced to it as well.\nReady to teach.\nThe Next Step Learning how to make a bloody Makefile!\nI don\u0026rsquo;t need it (yet), but it would be nice to know how to do this. It would streamline things, for certain.\nSome links pandoc has a website and a GitHub . It can be installed on different operating systems.\nI highly recommend you follow the pandoc account on Mastodon https://fosstodon.org/@pandoc as well as https://scholar.social/@tarleb ; those accounts are overflowing with tips like this trick to prevent pandoc from adding title, date or author to the document text or how to create example and alert blocks in Beamer .\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/pandoc2023\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/wrong\/": {
"title": "Wrong",
"tags": ["Short story",],
"content": " Gather round, my younglings,\nhear my prose.\nI will tell you a story\neveryone knows...\nOur good hero has things to say and things to share. Belly full and coffee prepared, they take their seat and stare.\nA blank screen beckons.\nFingers fly and letters coalesce into words and sentences and paragraphs.\nHeadings and subheadings, table of contents, references and footnotes; the œuvre is ready for public viewing.\nThe wordsmith climbs the rungs of the digital soapbox.\n\u0026ldquo;Redditors, come read my righteous words, give me your karma!\u0026rdquo; they declare. \u0026ldquo;Good people of Hacker News, Lobsters, and Mastodon; Lemmy, you too may enjoy my writings. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have not been forgotten.\u0026rdquo;\nFinally, the tension our hero felt is released. They relax into their chair and sip their coffee. Content with their content.\nping!\n\u0026ldquo;Ah, surely a word of encouragement from one of my many followers,\u0026rdquo; they think.\nNay. It is not the case. Confused and perplexed, leaning closer in hopes of gaining insight from the pixels on the screen.\nThe chair creeks; a drop of coffee falls and lands on writer\u0026rsquo;s keyboard; the wings of a housefly beat\u0026hellip;\nthump thump thump\nThey squint, reading the words, mouthing them:\nYou. Are. Wrong.\n\u0026ldquo;Wrong? Me?\u0026rdquo; they think.\nOur hero places their beverage aside, index fingers finding the home row, and prepares a polite retort.\n\u0026ldquo;Please, stranger, enlighten me with proof of my fault, that I may amend my previous statement and learn from my mistake.\u0026rdquo;\nping!\nA hasty reply: \u0026ldquo;Everything is wrong, because you neglected this [link to a personal blog that cites no sources] and this [article from three years ago on a conspiracy theory website]. Not to mention, your claims contradict this statement made by [a sockpuppet account of the mod of this forum].\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ah, bless their heart. A troll attempting to draw out my ire,\u0026rdquo; they think to themselves. \u0026ldquo;A waste of CO2.\u0026rdquo;\nping\nA tab calls, it is Hacker News. Lobsters, too, favours our hero.\nCould it be? No. An army of trolls, for sure. For their is no other explanation.\n\u0026ldquo;What preposterous nonsense is this? Hacker News is a joke, for shame! And I thought more of you Lobsters! I shall not engage you belittlers. I shall block you deriding denigrators. You cannot bait me into this most basest of disagreements. I will not, shall not, could not, cannot get into an argument on the Internet,\u0026rdquo; they proclaim as they block, report, filter, and mute those who dare disagree.\nBut\u0026hellip; what if\u0026hellip;\nA seed of doubt takes root, confirmation bias clouds, cognitive dissonance boils blood.\n\u0026ldquo;I know what to do. Exactly, and most precisely, I shall riposte. The haters shall learn that this is something up with which I shall not put!\u0026rdquo;\nCopy Paste Format Markdown BBCode Plaintext\n\u0026ldquo;See [here], misguided stranger, not to mention [this], [that], and [still more things] that confirm my position. Easy mistakes to make, but when you do your own research and forge your own path, you will understand. Also, your grammar needs work.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd so the day goes\u0026hellip; Our hero\u0026rsquo;s coffee is cold, their stomach growls as the sun travels from east to west. Duties are shirked, friends are ignored.\nFar away, on another continent, another stranger awakens and joins the conversation.\nBut, that troll from before? They are unbothered. Their day was filled with friends and family and dogs to walk. Our hero is the furthest thing from their mind.\nWho is the hero?\nWho is the troll?\nThe end of this story?\nNobody knows.\nOne cannot win a battle\nagainst Internet foes... ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/wrong\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/review-crosscall-core-z5\/": {
"title": "Review: Crosscall CORE-Z5",
"tags": ["Technology","Review",],
"content": "Mid-November, 2022, my trusty Nokia 5.3 began acting up. I began looking for a new device . I was only looking, though, because I don\u0026rsquo;t relish spending money on a device, or reading reviews, or dealing with transferring things from an old phone to a new phone. I rediscovered the French brand, Crosscall and spent some time learning how to compare devices. I initially planned of getting an eco-friendly or privacy-oriented device, but that idea didn\u0026rsquo;t pan out . Before I knew it, I had spent way beyond what I was planning on a device just to get something different\u0026hellip;\nA Chonky Boy Judging the book by its cover First impressions mean a lot\nThe Crosscall CORE-Z5 comes in a plain brown cardboard box (recycled, of course). What\u0026rsquo;s inside the box?\nA chonky phone a printed guide a USB-C to USB-C cable and charging block a Crosscall X-BLOCKER (which I have no use for yet, so I won\u0026rsquo;t mention it any more) three different sizes of earbud tips no headphones or earbuds no lanyard There are first impressions, and there are first impressions. I knew beforehand that it would be bigger and heavier than most phones I have used in the past. This thing is a beast.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t just have bezels. It has a chin and a forehead. And a notch camera too. It is thick. There are buttons. Many buttons! But, most of all, it is heavy and quite solid feeling.\n(source )\nAround the sides of the phone there are 7 (seven!) buttons. Two are for the volume rocker, one is the power button (which doubles as a fingerprint scanner). On the top there is a single red button, and on the left side there are three buttons \u0026mdash; these buttons can be configured with two functions each. This is a rugged device, so the headphone jack and USB port are protected.\nThe body is made of polycarbonate and thermoplastic elastomer, the screen is Gorilla Glass 5. I find the device to be rather slippery. On the back we have a camera (a single camera!), a speaker, and a Magconn connection (Crosscall X-LINK).\nOverall, I like the physical design of the device. I do wish Crosscall had used the rubbery elastomer on the back as well, for comfort and to make it easier to hold.\nGetting to the CORE of it What\u0026rsquo;s inside this unit?\nOS: Android 12 Display: 1560 x 720, 6.1\u0026quot; Processor: Octa-core CPU @2.6GHz SoC: Qualcomm QCM6490 (ARMv8) GPU: Qualcomm Adreno 643 RAM: 4 GB Camera: 48MP (f/1.8) and 8MP (f/2) Video: 4K 30fps capable Sensors, etc.: accelerometer, altimeter, Bluetooth, cameras, compass, GPS, gyroscope, light sensor, NFC, pedometer, proximity sensor, and Wi-Fi Performance-wise, I don\u0026rsquo;t have much to complain about, nor to compare with. Aside from a quick in-store test, I have never used a high-end flagship phone. That said, I find it fast enough to do what I do most: work. From quick emails to large, multi-tab, spreadsheets, the CORE-Z5 has made me realize how people are able to accomplish so much on their devices. I decided to run some tests on the phone and they confirm what I experienced: The phone is faster than what I was used to.\nBenchmark Comparison (interactive chart) The comparison chart above shows how the CORE-Z5 matches up against several other phones. The Nokia 5.3 (my previous phone), three phones that I considered buying (the Teracube 2e, the Murena One, and the Fairphone 4), and a recent flagship device (the Pixel 7 Pro). I won\u0026rsquo;t claim to understand these tests, but I am pleased to see that the PCMark Work test nearly doubled the results of my former phone. The Geekbench benchmark was probably the most user-friendly of the tests that I ran, in case you are also looking to benchmark your phone and, like me, you have no idea where to begin.\nAdditionally, I ran the GFXBench test on the CORE-Z5. I don\u0026rsquo;t game on my phone, but for those who are interested, here are the results:\nGFXBench Results\nOpenGL Aztec Ruins High Tier: 3034 Frames (47.2 Fps) OpenGL 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 490 Frames (7.6 Fps) OpenGL Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 1086 Frames (16.9 Fps) OpenGL Aztec Ruins Normal Tier: 3844 Frames (59.8 Fps) OpenGL Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Offscreen: 2728 Frames (42.4 Fps) Vulkan Aztec Ruins High Tier: 3188 Frames (49.6 Fps) Vulkan 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 523 Frames (8.1 Fps) Vulkan Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 1155 Frames (18.0 Fps) Vulkan Aztec Ruins Normal Tier: 3844 Frames (59.8 Fps) Vulkan Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Offscreen: 3131 Frames (48.7 Fps) Connectivity Note: I do not have 5G\nI tested the connectivity of the device on my home and work Wi-Fi networks, on 4G, and using it as a hotspot. Here are the results:\nUpload Download Wi-Fi Home 16.4 Mbps 0.96 Mbps Wi-Fi Work 104 Mbps 89.1 Mbps 4G 82.9 Mbps 23.8 Mbps Hotspot (4G) 59.5 Mbps 6.61 Mbps Photography In a world where most phones have at least two cameras on the back, the CORE-Z5 stands out. It has just one. It is listed as a 48MP camera, but the default in the camera app is set to 12MP \u0026ldquo;Fusion4\u0026rdquo;. Crosscall brands this as Fusion4 technology, but what is happening here is pixel binning . The default photo app is in need of a little upgrade, and is missing options like panorama altogether, and hides common options in the settings (timers, exposure, white balance, etc.)\nThe results are fine for me. If you love to take and share photos, you will be let down. A rugged phone is not meant for shutterbugs.\nWhile this isn\u0026rsquo;t the best example, it is realistic. One does not stage every photo, we do hope for things to turn out a little clearer. Even more so given that the product page for the CORE-Z5 states: \u0026ldquo;Accurate photos, even in low lighting.\u0026rdquo;\nDaily driving Weight and size notwithstanding, this is an easy device to use. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why more phone-makers haven\u0026rsquo;t put more programmable buttons on their devices. It makes the experience better.\nMy button layout looks like this:\n(long/triple-tap)\nButton 1: answer call / torch Button 2: camera / emergency Button 3: OSMAnd~ / Total Commander Button 4: Silent toggle / Vibration toggle Out of the box, you have Android 12 and a minimal, near-vanilla, experience. Crosscall has added a few apps (that cannot be removed \u0026mdash; booooo!):\nX-STORY: an app for making video montages X-Sensors: a neat little app that does nothing but show you that the sensors are working (the compass is nice) X-SAFE: a shortcut to the phone\u0026rsquo;s emergency settings X-CAMP: a sort of social network X-Talk: a PTT / walkie-talkie app (I deactivated this one because I have no use for it, and it maintained a constant network connect \u0026mdash; yuck) Note: the phone is only available in 14 countries (see map )\nMany of the close-to-vanilla Android devices can make the same claim: decent battery life. I have squeezed up to two days of moderate use from the CORE-Z5, three days of light use. I never need to worry about taking the charger. The phone itself can act as a charger, too, and I have used it to recharge my DAP while on the go.\nI also purchased a USB hub for it, so I can output via HDMI and connect other USB devices to it. It worked perfectly, and I was able to give a lecture that included slides and a video. On another occasion, I corrected 25 homework assignments and entered the grades in a spreadsheet. Work-wise, I am very content. Additionally, I am more than impressed with the fingerprint sensor and the ability to use the phone while it is wet.\nConclusion and Complaints A review without complaints is not a review. I have complaints, and here they are:\nLet us remove those Crosscall apps \u0026mdash; bloatware, even cool bloatware, is still bloatware. The X-CAMP app is neat, but users need a forum, a FAQ, and a wiki. A high percentage of the questions on the app are about storage space and Bluetooth issues \u0026mdash; give the users a place to refer to when those problems are encountered. The X-CAMP map is provided by Mapbox , which relies on OpenStreetMap, but OSM is not credited in the app itself \u0026mdash; this should be rectified. The X-Talk app needs an easy option for deactivation for those who do not wish to use it. Update the camera app and add additional modes, like panorama. I have many positive remarks about this phone. Some are mentioned above (battery life, usefulness of the buttons, performance) while others fit into the category of \u0026ldquo;I forgot how much I missed that\u0026rdquo;:\nProgrammable buttons LED notifications Magconn charging Ruggedness Powerful torch Speaker volume Precise GPS (good enough for Mapillary ) I am not even close to the target market for this type of phone (no sports, not outdoorsy, etc.) and I can certainly see myself using it for the next five years, or more. Especially since it has a 5-year warranty and promises 10-year availability for parts and a high repairability score. Despite the many good things, I cannot give this phone a score higher than 3/5.\nThe Crosscall CORE-Z5 takes things somewhat beyond my expectations, but still falls short of exceptional.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/review-crosscall-core-z5\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/claws-mail\/": {
"title": "Claws Mail",
"tags": ["Technology","Review","Linux",],
"content": " The following is neither a review nor a recommendation. It is a brief look at one of my most used pieces of software .\nYou turn on your computer. There is work to be done. Work sometimes requires communication, and despite all the amazing ways we have to communicate, email is still here.\nI do not lament the persistence of email; it is my preferred method of communication. I like how an email is just there. Do you want to reply to it now? It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. Email can wait awhile.\nClient Conundrum Desktop email clients come in several varieties, or flavours:\nAll Dressed Gourmet (think Sea Salt \u0026amp; Malt Vinegar) Plain Salted While some of you may have never heard of All Dressed , I am using it here to refer to email software that is, in fact, Personal Information Management , or PIM, software. PIM software is what we are used to when we think of \u0026ldquo;email software.\u0026rdquo; It includes email, but also an address book, calendar, alerts, scheduling, and even RSS sometimes. Outlook and Thunderbird are the two most popular examples (forgive me, I have never used a Mac, so I am likely ignoring an obvious example).\nYour Gourmet clients may have some elements of PIM software, but their focus is more on the visual panache; an attempt at adding zest to the bland potato that is email. These are the \u0026ldquo;minimal\u0026rdquo; clients that look a little nicer and newer, like Geary or Mailspring .\nFinally, we have the plain salted variety. This is where Claws Mail is found. It does email. It can do some other things, but really, it is all about email.\nWhy Use Claws? Claws was always on my radar, and I had tried it out multiple times. Two years ago, however, it started becoming easier to have a desktop email client. The number of employers providing email addresses began to grow, and they all insisted on using Office365. My workflow was thrown off.\nTraditionally, I use the browser-based webmail client for all emails. They are generally just as quick to access, and they provide notifications. No problem. That is, until you have three different employers using Office365, and it becomes challenging to stay logged into several accounts at once! There are workarounds for this, but why bother?\nAnd so, along came the need for a desktop email client. It goes without saying that I tried Thunderbird, Evolution, KMail, and the rest. Thunderbird worked the best, but it is an absolute behemoth. It is a suite of integrated software. At the time I was testing these out, my desktop was actually a Raspberry Pi 400, and Thunderbird was not friendly with that device \u0026mdash; even when running from an SSD.\nThis also coincided with moving my personal email away from Gmail and transferring emails over to Mailbox.org. The decision to move away from that service was part of a bigger personal project: digital privacy . Furthermore, there was a growing frustration on my behalf with HTML emails; it seemed as though all of my employers decided that adding multiple images and graphics to their signatures was a great idea.\nTherefore, a low-end computer, a multiplication of employers using Office365, and a distaste for \u0026ldquo;fancy\u0026rdquo; emails put me on the path to Claws.\nOverview Claws Mail is, in their own words, \u0026ldquo;user-friendly, lightweight, and fast\u0026rdquo;. There are the features you\u0026rsquo;d expect, along with a few extras. Something that might surprise users coming from other desktop clients is the appearance. Although similar to modern clients, there is a nostalgia present as well \u0026mdash; in a good way.\nThere are all the panes one would expect to find: lists, columns, messages, etc. And there are the familiar buttons to check, send, reply, delete, and so on. There isn\u0026rsquo;t a calendar (although it can be done using a plugin) but there is an address book. Diving into some of the preferences, it is apparent that some degree of personalization is available. There are a few themes, folder colours can be changed, signatures can be edited, and you can sign and encrypt emails. Nothing out of the ordinary, in other words. A set of plugins is available too, and with them, you can extend Claws Mail and use it as an RSS newsfeed reader, have access to some calendars, deal with spam, digitally sign and encrypt emails, and even show avatars.\nDoes it work? The short answer is, yes, it works wonderfully. It does require flexibility on the part of the user, though. There are methods to sync your address book using Vdirsyncer (read-only!). There is a plugin for calendars. I was convinced that lack of a calendar and synchronized contacts would be a deal-breaker. It turns out that it isn\u0026rsquo;t a big deal.\nI postponed synchronizing my contacts for a week or so, before realizing that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. Most of the time I reply to messages, sometimes I write messages. The messages that I write for my work are generally to the same people. It is quite rare that I need to have more than 25 email addresses in my address book. Claws lets you right-click \u0026gt; \u0026ldquo;Add contact\u0026rdquo; so that issue solved itself.\nClaws Mail is an email client aiming at being fast, easy-to-use and powerful. It is mostly desktop-independent, but tries to integrate with your desktop as best as possible. The Claws Mail developers try hard to keep it lightweight, so that it should be usable on low-end computers without much memory or CPU power.\n\u0026mdash; Claws Mail Documentation\nTo answer the question with some more detail, Claws is user-friendly. There is a familiarity to the functions. There might be a speed-bump here or there when adding accounts (what\u0026rsquo;s the SMTP port for Office365 again?), but many desktop clients require manual adjustments for certain types of accounts.\nClaws is fast. That is true. RAM usage is low, it starts quickly, it quits quickly. There are moments of lag. For example, if I happen to try and do several operations at once at the same moment it tries to synchronize all of my accounts. It has never once crashed, however. Neither has it locked up for more than a few seconds. This is quite different from my experience with KMail and even Thunderbird.\nClaws Mail is an effective piece of software, which is a sign of power. The small team behind the project has done a great job putting nearly everything a perfect email client needs in a small package.\nFavourite Extra Features Minimize to tray: email needs to be put in the corner sometimes.\nClaws Mail has a notification plugin with a good number of options. Themes: a little visual flourish doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt.\nA small set of themes is available . And sometimes you can find ones in the wild, like the Papirus theme . Fancy HTML Plugin: for when you do receive HTML email.\nCan be configured to use custom CSS, disable JavaScript, images, etc. Conclusion With a little effort, switching from the web frontend to a desktop client was painless. (If you are wondering, I do handle contacts and calendars with khard , khal , and vdirsyncer . I keep some config files for them in my repo ). Claws Mail gets the job done, is fast, and is plaintext -friendly.\nLinks Claws Mail Homepage ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/claws-mail\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/featured-images\/": {
"title": "Adding Featured Images to My Hugo Blog",
"tags": ["Blogging","Guide",],
"content": "It is funny how little I understand the tools that make this blog work. Sure, I can (sort of) read HTML, and I can guess my way through CSS and JavaScript. But, when it came to making this blog, I just picked Hugo and stuck with it. I followed Mogwai\u0026rsquo;s Creating a simple.css Site with Hugo guide and pushed it to the web and called it a day. Then I followed another guide, Simone Silvestroni\u0026rsquo;s A human-readable RSS feed with Jekyll , in order to add a slightly different RSS feed to my page. Then, yet another guide for adding admonitions.\nI would call it a Frankenblog, but that would imply that I am some sort of scientist who knows what\u0026rsquo;s going on. It is a lot of guesswork, and it is fun, and when I screw up there is CTRL+Z. The last guide mentioned above, on admonitions, is a good example of how things go for me. Do you think I knew what an admonition was before I happened across that blog post? No, I did not. And today it happened again, for I didn\u0026rsquo;t know what to call the \u0026ldquo;Featured Image\u0026rdquo; that appears on social media when I share my blog. I really didn\u0026rsquo;t care about it, and I still don\u0026rsquo;t, but it looks nice and turns out that once you know what you are looking for, the answers are out there.\nI came across https://metatags.io/ which is a tool to debug and generate meta tag code for any website. I plugged one of my blog entries into it and\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;it looks a little dull.\nFrom there I searched and quickly found the guide \u0026ldquo;Adding meta tags in Hugo blog \u0026rdquo; by Erin Jeong. It turns out that was what my blog was missing: meta tags!\nYou can see for yourself that there isn\u0026rsquo;t much to it, and in my case I only needed to modify two files:\nhead.html in /layout/partials my config.toml Here is the line added to head.html.\n{{ if .Param \u0026#34;featured_image\u0026#34; }}\u0026lt;meta property=\u0026#34;og:image\u0026#34; content=\u0026#34;{{ .Param \u0026#34;featured_image\u0026#34; | absURL }}\u0026#34;\u0026gt;{{ else }}\u0026lt;meta property=\u0026#34;og:image\u0026#34; content=\u0026#34;{{ $.Site.Params.Avatar | absURL }}\u0026#34;\u0026gt;{{ end }} Here is what I added to my config.toml\n[params] avatar = \u0026#34;Avatar1024.png\u0026#34; As an experiment, I modified an older post that already had images in it. Returning to the Meta Tags site, it now shows a \u0026ldquo;card\u0026rdquo; with an image. That is what I was hoping for.\nUsing post validation tools from LinkedIn and Facebook confirms that it should work!\n(I decided to add the other meta tags to my blog while writing, for Twitter cards and Description)\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/featured-images\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/programming\/": {
"title": "Programming",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/programming\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/using-bitwarden-cli-to-create-login-items\/": {
"title": "Using Bitwarden CLI to Create Login Items",
"tags": ["Privacy","Programming",],
"content": "I read the docs for the Bitwarden CLI . All straightforward enough. But, I am not always clear-headed. Having, as I tend to do, skipped a step I was stalled for about 45 minutes trying to figure this out.\nI use the Bitwarden CLI regularly through a qutebrowser userscript (and rofi \u0026mdash; link to script ) to log in to websites. I tend to never use it to create login items. It honestly looked like a pain. This morning, though, coffee in hand and new calendar on the wall, I decided to take a look at it. As I just mentioned, I managed to bork it up, and then decided to make it easier on myself.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know how to make Bash scripts, but the magic of search engines resulted in this:\n#!/usr/bin/env bash read -p \u0026#34;New Item Name: \u0026#34; name read -p \u0026#34;New Item URI: \u0026#34; uriname read -p \u0026#34;New Item Username: \u0026#34; username read -sp \u0026#34;New Item Password: \u0026#34; secret echo \u0026#34;{\\\u0026#34;organizationId\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;collectionIds\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;folderId\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;type\\\u0026#34;:1,\\\u0026#34;name\\\u0026#34;:\\\u0026#34;$name\\\u0026#34;,\\\u0026#34;notes\\\u0026#34;:\\\u0026#34;\\\u0026#34;,\\\u0026#34;favorite\\\u0026#34;:false,\\\u0026#34;fields\\\u0026#34;:[],\\\u0026#34;login\\\u0026#34;:{\\\u0026#34;uris\\\u0026#34;:[{\\\u0026#34;match\\\u0026#34;: null,\\\u0026#34;uri\\\u0026#34;: \\\u0026#34;$uriname\\\u0026#34;}],\\\u0026#34;username\\\u0026#34;:\\\u0026#34;$username\\\u0026#34;,\\\u0026#34;password\\\u0026#34;:\\\u0026#34;$secret\\\u0026#34;,\\\u0026#34;totp\\\u0026#34;:\\\u0026#34;\\\u0026#34;},\\\u0026#34;secureNote\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;card\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;identity\\\u0026#34;:null,\\\u0026#34;reprompt\\\u0026#34;:0}\u0026#34; \u0026gt; tmpItem.json clear encodedItem=$(cat tmpItem.json | bw encode) bw create item $encodedItem rm tmpItem.json This is just the basics. It only gets four things needed to create the login item: the name of the item, a single URI, a username, and a password. Those variables are thrown into a JSON file, encoded by Bitwarden, and transformed into a login item. The JSON file is deleted after.\nNow, I am not a security expert either. But, this gets the job done. I also use bw generate -usln to make my passwords, so that helps. AND 2FA. Don\u0026rsquo;t forget the 2FA.\nYou can go complain about my naïve understanding of how Bash scripts and privacy work here on Codeberg: bbbhltz/newbw . I do hope this helps other beginners like myself.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2023\/01\/using-bitwarden-cli-to-create-login-items\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/11\/coolpad-cool-s\/": {
"title": "Coolpad Cool S",
"tags": ["Technology",],
"content": "I am in the market for a new phone.\nOne of the phones I nearly purchased is the Coolpad Cool S .\nWait.\nSorry.\nThat link isn\u0026rsquo;t right.\nThis is the Coolpad Cool S .\nYou might have noticed a striking similarity between these devices.\nLook. See?\nMoving on.\nI did not buy that rectangle phone, nor did I buy the phone that is not that phone.\nWhy am I not saying the name of the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S. Well, for one, they are not exactly the same. It looks like one has a bigger battery than the other. The other reason I don\u0026rsquo;t want to explicitly type out the name of the company that makes the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S is because they are trying to take things in the right direction. They really are. If it gets people thinking outside of the Android/iOS box, that cannot be a bad thing.\nYou might have also seen a pricing difference. I was uncertain, so I did the math:\n$$\\because \\newline 350 - 160 = 190 \\newline \\therefore \\newline 350 \u0026gt; 160$$\nWhy pay more, right?\nMoving on, iterum.\nWe are not all so naïve. I\u0026rsquo;m sure that many of you have seen a phone exactly like you own, but with a different logo on it. I have. It is abundantly clear that many OEMs sell us devices that they did not concoct in their secret labs. This is where ODMs come into play.\nI only just learned about this in the last few hours. Clicking around the web, as one does at work, I came across an old-ish post on Reddit which linked to an article on Nokiamob.net which states that\n\u0026ldquo;in 2019, some 9% of Samsung phones were designed by ODM companies, 17% of Huawei devices, 49% of LG devices, and most importantly 54% of Nokia devices. In 2020, the percentage rose and now some 22% of Samsung devices, 18% of Huawei, 74% of Xiaomi, 89% of Lenovo, and 88% of Nokia phones are designed outside of the house. This means that the brand OEM is just tuning the details, but companies like Wingtech is doing all the rest.\u0026rdquo;\nAfter that, I thought I would look up one of the phones I was considering. It was as easy as heading over to GSMArena and using their \u0026ldquo;Phone Finder\u0026rdquo; tool to look up devices with the same processor, a fingerprint scanner on the side, a 48MP camera, etc. and poof, there it was: a near identical match the phone I was looking into purchasing.\nWell. It pays to look around and do your research. I do hope that the next phone from the company that does not sell the Coolpad Cool S is worth the price they ask for it.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/11\/coolpad-cool-s\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/11\/crosscall\/": {
"title": "Crosscall",
"tags": ["Technology","Review",],
"content": " When I wrote this, I did not own any of the devices mentioned below.\nWhile searching for new phone I came across a brand that I have known about for some time, but never considered as I am not a target customer. I was, however, wowed by the presentation of their website and repairability promises. The more I read, the more I found myself convinced by this French brand. I am strongly considering becoming their next customer.\nSummary Crosscall is an ethical mobile device manufacturer that targets segments of the population who need something more rugged than a regular black rectangle. This French company stands out from the crowd with its devices and commitments in different fields. There is strong competition in the sector globally, and the market for such devices is growing. Crosscall will soon be one of the few manufacturers making phones in France instead of China.\nBy sticking to their commitments, Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s customer base will likely grow. Innovation in their field should remain their constant, and more presence on social networks (even alternative ones) to share these innovations would be a plus.\nIntroduction Shopping for a new smartphone is only as hard as you make it. Looking closely at the details of each device, while ignoring their similar exteriors, is easy for consumers, but hard for shoppers. The difference being that consumers are generally well-informed, until they are confronted with an overwhelming number of similar products as a shopper. Smartphones are all very similar in appearance \u0026mdash; ubiquitous black rectangles \u0026mdash; with some exceptions: the somewhat recent arrival of foldable smartphones, and the \u0026ldquo;rugged\u0026rdquo; phones.\nThis is a brief report on the French company, Crosscall, and their smartphone offer (using their latest device, the Core-Z5, as an example). We will look at the company, their products, their competition, and overall presentation. That will be followed up with a conclusion and recommendations. The goal of this report is to underline that \u0026mdash; despite outward appearances, limited target market, and high prices \u0026mdash; Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s range of devices deserves consideration when shopping for a new smartphone.\nDetails Crosscall was founded in 2009 by Cyril Vidal . Since then, they have designed over 25 different mobile devices along with 20 different accessories . They have (or have had) contracts with Decathlon, the SNCF, the French Ministry of the Interior and many others . One of their devices, the Action-X5 , won the iF Design award for telecommunications product in 2022. The current VP, David Eberlé, is the former president of Samsung Electronics France.\nThis company, one of the few French mobile phone brands (Kapsys, Wiko, Archos, Murena, and Thomson are a few others), sets itself apart in more than one way. The first being that they are moving production from China to France in 2023 , a unique endeavour.\nThe brand had the choice between \u0026ldquo;doubling its workforce in Asia to ensure quality control or relocating the facility and strengthening the value chain.\u0026rdquo; An industrial choice, but also a societal one. The company is following the trend of promoting projects aimed at restoring France\u0026rsquo;s digital and industrial sovereignty.\nThe other unique features of the company are their promises and the very devices they make.\nFundamental Uniqueness It is so common for a company to make promises regarding the 3Ps (people, planet, and profit; the foundation of Corporate Social Responsibility) that we take it for granted. Most companies have a page on their website dedicated to this purpose. Crosscall does not differ here. Their promises do, however.\nManufacturers of any device tend to propose warranties. Crosscall one-ups this trend by offering a 5-year warranty and 10 years of replacement parts (on their most recent 5-series). This is an effort to fight against planned obsolescence they refer to as their \u0026ldquo;greatest promise:\u0026rdquo;\nAs well as reflecting the durability of our products, this warranty could make a real difference on the telephony market, where the duration of manufacturers\u0026rsquo; warranties for the majority of phones is still only two years. At Crosscall we strive to design devices that last, so that we can move away from the current cycle of feverish smartphone replacement, which is much too fast and bad for the planet.\nAnd, naturally, Crosscall guarantees 3 years of security patches and one major Android update.\nTheir other commitments are detailed in their CSR report (download at the bottom of this page ) where they talk about offsetting the environmental impact of production through a \u0026ldquo;second life\u0026rdquo; program (refurbished phones) and contributing to sustainable development goals by providing spare parts. They use packaging without plastic and plant-based inks. Sea-based transportation methods are used. They also train all employees in cybersecurity.\nThe fundamental uniqueness behind these buzzwords is the 5-year warranty, availability of spare parts, and the right to repair your own device. This is in contrast to other big brands that glue their phones shut. The most recent model, the Core-Z5, can be disassembled and repaired using a single Phillips-head screwdriver.\nSmartphones and Accessories Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s range of consumer products \u0026mdash; which includes smartphones , feature phones , tablets and a growing collection of accessories \u0026mdash; are all designed around \u0026ldquo;rising to the challenge\u0026rdquo; and durability, while \u0026ldquo;prioritising [their] users\u0026rsquo; needs\u0026rdquo;. A clear visual identity is observed across the range. The naming scheme is consistent as well.\nA universal sign of durability in 2022 is the IP rating and meeting the MIL-STD-810 H military standards \u0026mdash; the eighth version of the test standard most commonly used to determine if a product can withstand the effects of difficult environmental conditions. All of Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s devices have an IP rating, and most of their mobile devices meet the military standards.\nThese ratings are important because of Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s target market: extreme sports enthusiasts, military, police, firefighters, paramedics, and anyone who works or plays in harsh conditions. Communicating with their target market is done mostly through ambassadors and events (as far as I can tell). A person needing this kind of device would likely go to them out of need for a rugged device. As such, finding reviews of their products is not as easy as finding a review for a recent model by more popular brands. Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s website is well-designed and up-to-date compared to some of their competitors and their YouTube channel is slowly filling with informative videos, interviews, unboxings, events, and the like.\nCrosscall\u0026rsquo;s devices are built upon a magnesium chassis with an I-beam inspired shape, inside a polycarbonate and thermoplastic elastomer body. As can be expected, the screens are usually Corning Gorilla Glass that allow for glove- and wet-touch. The devices are tested in Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s own lab in an effort to confirm the device will last 5 years: e.g. 300 1.2-metre drops on concrete, heat, cold, immersion in water, scratches, etc.\nAdditionally, a feature of Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s devices is their compatible with a collection of accessories that leverage Magconn™ technology for recharging. They call it X-LINK and combine it with a clip called the X-BLOCKER to secure your device to an external battery, car or bicycle attachments, selfie-sticks, armbands, chest harnesses, and a docking station. This is an attractive and unique proposition in a world where purchasing accessories made by 3rd parties can (somehow) void warranties or damage your device.\nThe Rugged Phones Market Crosscall faces both direct and indirect competition. Direct competitors focus on rugged devices and target a similar segment of the population. American manufacturer Caterpillar, like Crosscall, targets logistics, health, agriculture, construction, security and production industries. China\u0026rsquo;s Ulefone targets those same segments as well as the extreme sports enthusiasts that Crosscall also targets. There are additional direct competitors, like Blackview, that make rugged devices as well as non-rugged smartphones.\nBoth Caterpillar and Ulefone include FLIR in their devices, making them more suited to certain industries than others.\nPhone IP rating Screen Camera Chipset Battery Price Crosscall Core Z5 IP68 6.08\u0026quot; 48 MP Qualcomm QCM6490 4,950 mAh €800 CAT S53 IP68/IP69K 6.5\u0026quot; 48 MP Qualcomm SM4350 Snapdragon 480 5,500 mAh €530 Ulefone Power Armor 18T IP68/IP69K 6.58\u0026quot; 108 MP MediaTek Dimensity 900 9,600 mAh €640 Crosscall\u0026rsquo;s screen, battery, and camera are less impressive than the others above, but comes with a (slightly) newer SoC (the QCM6490 was announced 6 months later than the Snapdragon 480 \u0026mdash; 7 June 2021 and 4 January 2021, respectively; the Dimensity 900 was announced in May 2020).\nThe market for rugged phones is growing, so the list of competitors will likely grow as well. This is due to growth in the \u0026ldquo;oil \u0026amp; gas, aerospace, automotive, transportation, telecommunications, and logistics [industries, and] owing to the fact that rugged phones are water-resistant, dust-proof, and can operate against shock and extreme temperatures.\u0026rdquo;1\nCNET reported in June 2021 that rugged phones have \u0026ldquo;gone from oddball to mainstream\u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;No matter how elaborate or expensive a phone you buy, the manufacturer generally assumes you\u0026rsquo;ll take it upon yourself to immediately swaddle it in an after market case, so it can survive daily use. There\u0026rsquo;s no other consumer electronic product that leaves the factory so not ready for the real world.\u0026rdquo;\nThey also pointed out that it is not just the ruggedness and lack of need for a case that draw users to these devices, but the presence of other niche features like programmable buttons, thermal imaging cameras, dual SIM card trays, and replaceable batteries.2\nIn addition to the companies mentioned above, other competitors in this sector are Kyocera, DOOGEE, OUKITEL, Juniper Systems, AGM Mobile, Sonim, Zebra, and Unitech Electronics.\nPrice Range and Availability The number of phones in the same price range as the Core-Z5 \u0026mdash; ~€800 \u0026mdash; is limitless. Many shops (in France) dedicate the most space on the shelves to two brands: Samsung and Xiaomi. These devices, due to their price, are indirect competitors. Some customers tend to buy with their wallets and may, when presented with the option, put their money on a more well-known device and name brand, like the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G and the Xiaomi 12T Pro , which can be purchased in-store more readily than Crosscall devices.\nBased solely on personal observation, it can be said that Crosscall devices are not easy to test hands-on. Even here in France, home of the brand, stores generally do not keep the devices on display. In my area, the main electronic shops do not have any models in stock.\nOverall Presentation Aside from a handful of English errors (typos really), the only thing negative that can be said about the Crosscall website is that it is not lite. Similar to other rugged phone manufacturers, Crosscall has opted to give as much information as possible, in the shiniest way possible. Scrolling down the product page for the Core-Z5 reveals animations and videos. The photos of the device are large enough to make out the details .\nThe entire website is designed to give you more than enough information to make your decision. The company comes off as proud, trustworthy, and transparent. With great detail, however, comes great resources. Website Carbon Calculator rates their website as \u0026ldquo;dirtier than 65% of the web pages tested\u0026rdquo; but also states the website is running on sustainable energy. Ecograder gives the site a 78/100 with some points of improvement.\nConclusion Crosscall is a serious company that will likely branch out into other sectors. Their consumer devices that come with guarantees and repairability promises make them excellent choices, and the company\u0026rsquo;s focus on CSR and transparency does not go unnoticed.\nWhile the style and design of the objects are not what the average smartphone customers are accustomed to, they are necessary in order to achieve durability and ratings, such as the IP ratings.\nIn conclusion, Crosscall is undeserving of being under the radar, but does have to keep on eye on their competitors who have different ratings and features, pricing, and communication strategies.\nRecommendations Crosscall must maintain its visual identity. Changing would be a mistake. An optimistic recommendation would be to push into other sectors and create a less angular device, but other telephone manufacturers tried changing their style, and we have not forgetten the BlackBerry Storm .\nWithout a doubt, Crosscall must continue making devices that go beyond the call of duty. Why have an IP68 rating when there are competitors with IP69 ratings? With each device, they must do something better than the competition as they have done in the past.\nA small suggestion would be a price breakdown of a device on their blog. Not one of the recent devices, but perhaps one of the discontinued models. Give us the transparency provided throughout the website. What was the cost of the device? How much time went into design? How many prototypes before finding the right balance? These are things consumers need to know in order to accept paying the price for these devices. The prices are, however, acceptable.\nCommunication needs a small boost. Crosscall has ambassadors, and is present at events, but finding reviews online is not easy, nor is finding a store where the device is on display. YouTube has some video reviews, and there are written reviews on different sites, but consumers need to have more than Amazon reviews to rely upon. If Crosscall is opposed to oversharing on social media, perhaps considering an alternative social network, like Mastodon, would be an option. An area where less would certainly be more is the website: Perhaps a \u0026ldquo;lite\u0026rdquo; version is in order for 2023.\nLinks CROSSCALL Homepage CROSSCALL on LinkedIn CROSSCALL on Twitter CROSSCALL on YouTube CROSSCALL on Facebook Worldwide Rugged Phones Industry to 2027 - Rising 5G Deployments to Complement the Growth are Driving the Market \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThese are rugged times, here are the best rugged phones for them \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/11\/crosscall\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/10\/pinetime\/": {
"title": "I have a PineTime",
"tags": ["Technology",],
"content": "It has been long enough since my last update that I honestly forgot how to add a new post\u0026hellip;\nThis is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge of information and updates.\nPineTime After a short exchange over on Fosstodon, I needed little convincing to buy a PineTime. For starters, this is the exact type of \u0026ldquo;end-user-geek\u0026rdquo; gadget that I love. The setup and updating is easy, though not as direct as other smartwatches may be.\nI bought it for one reason, and you might think that reason is privacy. That is a benefit of using the PineTime, though not the feature that I wanted it for. I just wanted a cheap heart rate monitor that does not require sharing my info with a company. So, I suppose the final deciding factor was the benefit of privacy. Maybe you were right.\nI had already used the companion app, Gadgetbridge with my hybrid Fossil Q. So, it made sense for me to continue using that. Installing the latest firmware or update was pretty clear, and fast. You just need to navigate to the releases page on GitHub , download an archive, open it with Gadgetbridge and wait.\nThe latest update did require an extra step. To give you an idea of how easy this was, the entire process, including:\nturning on my laptop, installing the InfiniTime Daemon and figuring out how to connect to my watch, downloading the archive containing resources, and launching the command itctl res load infinitime-resources-1.10.0.zip was all over and done with in less than 6 minutes.\nI do, however, maintain one of my principal gripes with smartwatches: charging. Smartwatches are not the Casios of yore. The battery does not last 5 or even 10 years. My worries, while confirmed, are not actually that much of a problem. I won\u0026rsquo;t be taking my PineTime on holiday with me, because I don\u0026rsquo;t want to travel with the charging dongle, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t succeeded in draining the battery to 0 yet.\nAlways Learning There is always some new thing to deal with, and opportunity to learn. Since the last update I finally completed the CS50P Introduction to Python course. I also had to figure out some basic ImageMagick commands, and wrap my head around something that should be clearer than it is.\nThe two following \u0026ldquo;tricks\u0026rdquo; I am putting here \u0026mdash; so I don\u0026rsquo;t forget them.\nImageMagick I had a stupid simple thing I needed to do. Place two images side-by-side, with labels and a title; and one of the images needed to be resized. There was nothing to this. ImageMagick is a tool that I use from time to time and I have always managed to find the solutions I need through search engines. I was surprised by the results this time around. I think it turned out OK.\nThe solution I needed is a combination of the Montage command and Text to Image Handling .\nmontage -label A -resize \u0026#39;x800\u0026#39; crime-real-manip.webp -label B crime-real.webp -tile 2x1 -geometry +20+20 -background none -shadow -title \u0026#39;Real and Better\u0026#39; -pointsize 30 -font Humor-Sans real-better.webp I added the shadow for good measure.\nYou can find the name of the font you want to use by running:\nidentify -list font | grep \u0026#34;Humor\u0026#34; where \u0026ldquo;Humor\u0026rdquo; would be the name of the font you are looking for.\nDigitally sign a document in Okular This should be presented in a user-friendly manner, or streamlined somehow. I mean, once I found the commands and zipped through the man page , all the information was there. There were even examples and step-by-step instructions. But, for some reason my searches lead me down overcomplicated, winding paths.\nThe solution was simple.\nThis is all there was to it.\nFirst, install certutil. On my Debian install, you need to run sudo apt install libnss3-tools to have this binary.\nCreate a directory; cd into it.\nmkdir newcert cd newcert/ Run two commands. certutil -N -d ~/newcert/ # creates new databases certutil -S -s \u0026#34;CN=name,O=organisation,E=email\u0026#34; -n examplecert -x -t \u0026#34;CT,C,C\u0026#34; -v 120 -m 1234 -d ~/newcert/ # creates the certificate we need You will be asked for a password. Don\u0026rsquo;t forget it. I did.\nAdd the certificate to the Okular backend by changing the \u0026ldquo;Certificate Database\u0026rdquo; location. Sign your life away. As always, if you see mistakes that need fixing, let me know.\nI\u0026rsquo;m off to get my steps in.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/10\/pinetime\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/07\/we-have-a-winner\/": {
"title": "We Have a Winner",
"tags": ["Short story",],
"content": " FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE\nWe Have a Winner SEATTLE, Washington \u0026mdash; We are happy to announce that we have a winner to our yearly lottery draw. As with our previous draws, the winner was randomly selected in the presence of the CEO and the board of directors. The winner has yet to claim their prize, and due to anonymity laws we are unable to divulge the name, location, or any other personal data about the individual.\nAs a reminder, in order for the winner to claim their prize, the individual must meet the following requirements:\nBe at least 18 years of age. Have made at least one purchase on the site or through one of the partners in the last 12 months. Have a completed profile, including confirmed postal address. Have scanned and uploaded their palm print in one of our physical stores. This year\u0026rsquo;s winner has yet to upload their palm print.\nWe urge all users who have yet to complete this step to make their way to one of our physical stores.\nYou might be the world\u0026rsquo;s next billionaire!\n### OneStop.shop has been the world\u0026rsquo;s leading online and physical shopping experience since 1995. Lead by billionaire philanthropist and innovator, Gina Troy, we make the world a better place by giving you the best deal.\n\u0026ldquo;The press release is live.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Do we know who the user is?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ma\u0026rsquo;am, we can find out, but we would violate our own privacy policy.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Who is it?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Are you sure?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Damn you, just tell me!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The personal information cannot be decrypted. User a55o-omah-UyaU-9Ggh-fuAj-9aUM is the winner.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Online activity?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;They made one purchase this year: a pack of 24 BIC ballpoint pens and a notepad, $16.48. The account was created on the same day as the order. Payment via gift voucher purchased at a physical store. They haven\u0026rsquo;t even connected to the site since to use the remainder of the balance.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;And the winner is\u0026hellip;somebody who still uses pens and paper?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ma\u0026rsquo;am?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Make sure nobody can tell we looked this up. I\u0026rsquo;m going home to drink wine and forget about the fact that somebody who spent less than what I spend a day on coffee is going to be a billionaire.\u0026rdquo;\nBreakfast The news is blaring in the kitchen. Day 17 of the lottery watch. It has been a slow month. Do we really idolize wealth that much? Someone might be rich! Oh! la la!\n\u0026ldquo;Can you turn it down?\u0026rdquo; I yell.\nMouth full of food, they answer back with an onomatopoeia best transcribed as, \u0026ldquo;yeahmmu\u0026rsquo;,\u0026rdquo; which I guess is \u0026ldquo;yeah, mum.\u0026rdquo;\nI complain about it, but I am a hypocrite. I was online watching the draw when it happened. THANKS FOR PLAYING! TRY AGAIN NEXT YEAR! is burned into my eyes. I see it when I blink. Time to put on the good mum face. Time to pretend like we aren\u0026rsquo;t drowning under debt. \u0026ldquo;Plans today?\u0026rdquo;\nThey swallow, take a breath, and with an eye roll reply, \u0026ldquo;Job search. Yippee!\u0026rdquo;\nAdolescent sarcasm still prevalent at 18. Maybe I did baby them too much. Too long with the dummy when they were young? Too lenient? At least they aren\u0026rsquo;t some tweaker sleeping on the street, and they clean up after themselves. \u0026ldquo;So, you\u0026rsquo;ll be here all day?\u0026rdquo; I ask.\n\u0026ldquo;Nope. Gonna hit the streets. Walk in. Face to face cold-call!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re kidding!\u0026rdquo;\nTo be a fly on the wall to watch them walk in the door \u0026mdash; piercings, candyfloss coloured hair, torn jeans, and chewing gum \u0026mdash; and announce they are looking for a job! The thought lightens my mood. \u0026ldquo;Can\u0026rsquo;t wait to hear about it! Fingers crossed!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I bet,\u0026rdquo; they smirk back at me.\n\u0026ldquo;Love you.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yup. Love you too mum.\u0026rdquo;\nPain in the ass that they are, I know they\u0026rsquo;re sincere when they say that.\nLunch Get a job; get money; help mum. Easy-peasy. Belly is full enough to get to lunch without fainting. Been in America for several generations and mum still maintains that \u0026ldquo;stiff upper lip\u0026rdquo; thing, but she can\u0026rsquo;t fool anyone. She\u0026rsquo;s been wearing the same clothes for the past five years. She shines her shoes and mends her stockings like we\u0026rsquo;re living in\u0026hellip; a long time ago. I make a note of the food I eat, what she pays for my clothes, my hair, my medication. I\u0026rsquo;ll pay her back. Just need a job.\nHere we go. Alix goes job hunting. Round one. Fast food. Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be too hard. They hire everyone, right?\n\u0026ldquo;Did you fill out the form online?\u0026rdquo; says the person who I assume is a manager (they have a grey short-sleeved shirt on and a black tie).\nI clear my throat, \u0026ldquo;Form?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;All applicants must apply using the online form.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh? No. I thought I could\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nHe\u0026rsquo;s shaking his head, \u0026ldquo;Sorry kid. I don\u0026rsquo;t decide who works here. You gotta apply online, and the AI does the rest.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Thanks, I guess.\u0026rdquo;\nWell, nobody gets a job on their first try. Right? I mean. I guess I could have asked around how people get jobs. Or at least paid closer attention in class. An enterprising young person should be enough, or so I thought. Die and retry, like in the games. Into the next overpriced, neon-signed, burger joint we go.\n\u0026ldquo;All openings are announced on our social.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026hellip;and the next.\n\u0026ldquo;We are managed remotely. I\u0026rsquo;m not even from here, I was relocated after training.\u0026rdquo;\nAgain and again. The same answers. Mum might have had a point, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like using social or the net for that matter. I know mum has to pay, so I keep it simple.\nClothing stores next? It isn\u0026rsquo;t even lunch, and I have already been shut down about 9 times. What\u0026rsquo;s a little more humiliation?\n\u0026ldquo;Hi! I was wondering if you were hiring?\u0026rdquo;\nThe girl behind the counter lifts her glasses and looks at me from head to toe, and then again from toe to head. \u0026ldquo;No,\u0026rdquo; she states. \u0026ldquo;If you don\u0026rsquo;t plan on buying anything, I\u0026rsquo;m gonna have to ask you to leave.\u0026rdquo;\nOkay. Early lunch it is. And I know just the place.\n\u0026ldquo;My man with the frying pan! Whaddya got for me today?\u0026rdquo; I blurt out as I hop over the mat at the entrance. That damn ding-dong sound annoys me to no end.\n\u0026ldquo;Ah, my worst customer who won\u0026rsquo;t even tell me their name. You have money today?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Come on, some kind soul must have paid something forward today! And that isn\u0026rsquo;t nice. I\u0026rsquo;m not your worst customer. I\u0026rsquo;d have to pay in order to be a customer!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;Come on,\u0026rsquo; they say. I say, \u0026lsquo;come on and pay me for once.\u0026rsquo; You clean. Have place to live. Pink and blue hair; not cheap. You buy someday?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Someday, but not today, my man! Soon, though. Out looking for a job, and I need sustenance.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I give you grilled cheese. To go! But first, I need laugh. Say something with that funny accent.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re one to talk! You sound like a racist stereotype, ha!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;This? This character, kid. Talk like this just for customers. Come on. Just a word.\u0026rdquo; He looks around and points at a large roll of thin shiny metal hanging near the kitchen entrance, \u0026ldquo;you call this what?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Aluminium,\u0026rdquo; I say, the way my mum says it, the way her parents said it, the way many people from outside of America said it back when.\n\u0026ldquo;ALUMINEEEEYUUUM! Hahaha! That\u0026rsquo;s good. Classy. Not like American accent. They all talk like they have hot food in their mouths. Aluminum. Ha!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oooookay. You got your laugh. Hit me up with some hot carbs and casein. Gotta hit the streets.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Here. And, if you get job, I give you free dessert with first purchase!\u0026rdquo;\nI walk out the door as he changes the \u0026ldquo;Open\u0026rdquo; sign to \u0026ldquo;Be Back in 30 Minutes\u0026rdquo; and head on my merry way. Maybe I should ask him his name. I make a note in my journal of the free grilled cheese. A block later I am done eating and decide on a little digestive rest on a bench. Cars zip by silently. People walk carrying bags. A couple strolls by carrying armloads of produce in a small wooden crate. That\u0026rsquo;s different. I look down that street and see a fruit and vegetable stand at the very end of the block.\nCould be worth a shot.\n\u0026ldquo;Hi. Nice, uh, stuff,\u0026rdquo; I say to the lady behind the stand.\n\u0026ldquo;Thanks. Do you want some of this stuff?\u0026rdquo;\nNo glasses. No watch. This looks promising.\n\u0026ldquo;I was actually wondering if you were looking for help? Like, hiring?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You wanna to work for me? Here?\u0026rdquo; she says incredulously.\n\u0026ldquo;I mean. I need a job. I\u0026rsquo;ve asked around, but it isn\u0026rsquo;t my lucky day. I just need a little money to help my mum out.\u0026rdquo; Emotional manipulation might work on someone other than my mum, right?\n\u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re serious \u0026mdash; If you are really serious \u0026mdash; be here tomorrow morning, 5:30. At 5:31, I leave, and you won\u0026rsquo;t get a second chance.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Do you need anything? Like, an online application? Because, I don\u0026rsquo;t have any of that. I don\u0026rsquo;t even use social. I don\u0026rsquo;t even have a résumé.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;A bank account is all you need for this job. And don\u0026rsquo;t wear anything nice. We don\u0026rsquo;t just sell, you know? We pick it ourselves.\u0026rdquo;\nHoly crap!\nThis is a job.\nI got a job. I can\u0026rsquo;t wait to tell mum.\nSo caught up in the moment that I was, I didn\u0026rsquo;t see the person walking towards me carrying an armload of groceries. I walked smack into them. Everything fell on the ground. \u0026ldquo;Oh no! I\u0026rsquo;m so sorry! Let me help you,\u0026rdquo; I say without even thinking.\n\u0026ldquo;No problem. I live right here,\u0026rdquo; said the man while pointing at the door of the building we were standing in front of.\nI picked up some things and followed him as he used a badge to unlock the door. I took a step inside and felt a prick on the side of my neck. My knees. Something\u0026hellip;is\u0026hellip;wrong\u0026hellip; \u0026ldquo;I need to thit down\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Was that my voice? My mouth is numb. There are two men standing over me.\n\u0026ldquo;Look what I caught us, Ronnie,\u0026rdquo; says the grocery guy to the other man.\nThe other man, Ronnie, starts to sign something back.\n\u0026ldquo;OK then. This is how we do this,\u0026rdquo; Ronnie is crouched down beside me, holding my face. \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re gonna give us your money, and in a few hours you\u0026rsquo;ll be all better. Nobody gets hurt.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t\u0026hellip;got\u0026hellip;money\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; I manage to mumble.\n\u0026ldquo;No money! Everyone has money. Where\u0026rsquo;s your phone?\u0026rdquo;\nRonnie and grocery guy\u0026rsquo;s hands start patting me down. They\u0026rsquo;re looking in my bag.\n\u0026ldquo;A pen and a book?\u0026rdquo; exclaims grocery guy, shocked.\nRonnie is signing something back to him.\n\u0026ldquo;Well, Ronnie. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know you were into that sort of thing. This here\u0026rsquo;s just a boy if you didn\u0026rsquo;t notice. If you wanna do that, well, I won\u0026rsquo;t be watching your back.\u0026rdquo;\nRonnie signs again. Points at me.\n\u0026ldquo;What? A woman? What do you mean?\u0026rdquo;\nGrocery guy leans in closer, \u0026ldquo;Well\u0026hellip;fuck me! I must be higher than I thought, ha! This here is a girl. And not no kid either. Ain\u0026rsquo;t much of a looker, though.\u0026rdquo;\nHere I am, completely doped out of my gourd, about to be who-knows-whated, and I decide to correct two cretins about my desired pronouns: \u0026ldquo;They,\u0026rdquo; I squeak out.\nThe two men are looking down at me. I can\u0026rsquo;t do much more than blink and breathe. I feel a tear roll out of my left eye, down my temple, and into my ear. Blurry-eyed, I look up at them, hoping that there is a thread of empathy that I can latch onto.\nI hear something crunch. I can\u0026rsquo;t lift me head. Did they just break my leg?\nNo.\nLight.\nA bang.\nSomeone just came in the door.\n\u0026ldquo;Thefuck\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; says grocery guy.\nA third person is standing over me. Ronnie, or grocery guy \u0026mdash; who knows \u0026mdash; throws a punch. Door guy \u0026mdash; or girl?\u0026hellip; Door person seems to swat the punch away. I hear a slight ping as he blocks it.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh fuck dude! My hand! You broke my hand. You\u0026rsquo;re gonna get it! Ronnie!\u0026rdquo;\nWhy are they all still standing over me? Can\u0026rsquo;t they take this outside? Ronnie has a knife now. Maybe? Ronnie has something shiny, and he is pointing it at door person.\n\u0026ldquo;Be smart or be dead,\u0026rdquo; says door person. Man\u0026rsquo;s voice. Sounds familiar.\nI see Ronnie cock his arm back. He takes an awkward swing. Door person catches the knife with his hand. In his hand? Whatever they drugged me with is good. Is this tripping? I think I am tripping. I wish my mum were here.\nDoor person is holding Ronnie\u0026rsquo;s hand in his. I hear a crunch. Ronnie groans and whimpers, falls back out my my field of vision.\nNow grocery guy is up behind door person. He grabs him around the neck. Door person reaches up and grabs his arm. Another snap, followed by screaming and swearing. Then door person turns around and clocks him in the head. I hear his body slump on the ground.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m taking them. Don\u0026rsquo;t even try to follow me.\u0026rdquo;\nI feel an arm slide under my shoulders, another under my knees. Door person is picking me up.\n\u0026ldquo;Let\u0026rsquo;s get you to a clinic. Closest isn\u0026rsquo;t far. Can you walk a little?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Who\u0026hellip;?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;John. I\u0026rsquo;m John.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Alix.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Nice to finally know your name, Alix. Job hunt going well?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;grilled cheese?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yes. I made you the grilled cheese.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;alu\u0026hellip;minium\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;They really drugged you good. The clinic is just across the street.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No money.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I know. But, we\u0026rsquo;ll deal with that after.\u0026rdquo;\nThey carry me through the door. I see the logo. It is one of OneStop.shop\u0026rsquo;s clinics. This is going to be expensive. Someone is putting my hand on a palm reader. Then I am on a stretcher. I let myself fall asleep.\nDinner \u0026amp; Dessert Awake.\nI look around the room.\nSomeone is here with me. I wipe my eyes. It is\u0026hellip;the guy from the restaurant!\n\u0026ldquo;What the\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh good. You\u0026rsquo;re awake. I can get back to work.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;How?\u0026rdquo; I say, while making punching and chopping motions.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh? Yeah. Titanium prosthetic.\u0026rdquo; He holds up one hand and spreads the rip in the prosthetic skin to reveal shiny metal bits. \u0026ldquo;Accident with a door a few years back. Long story. I was walking back from my lunch break when I saw those guys grab you.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Your\u0026hellip;voice.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I told you. Just marketing. My name is John, and you\u0026rsquo;re Alix. Your mom should be here soon. You were only out for 30 minutes. They flushed your system. The miracles of modern medicine, I guess.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;How much?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;How much what? Money? I don\u0026rsquo;t know. They didn\u0026rsquo;t ask for payment; said it was taken care of. They found your photo in the system and scanned you in. No questions asked.\u0026rdquo;\nThis is confusing. My account has about $12 on it. I hear shoes clip-clopping down the hall. Unmistakable shoes. My mum\u0026rsquo;s five-year-old shoes.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh sweetie! I was so scared!\u0026rdquo; she walks in, ignoring John, and throws herself onto me with more hugs than I could have ever imagined. \u0026ldquo;And you,\u0026rdquo; she says looking at John. \u0026ldquo;Thank you, thank you, thank you.\u0026rdquo; She looks back at me, \u0026ldquo;tell me what happened.\u0026rdquo;\nJohn excuses himself and walks out, nodding to me.\n\u0026ldquo;I got a job, and then some guys grabbed me,\u0026rdquo; I answer. \u0026ldquo;Then John \u0026mdash; the old guy that was here \u0026mdash; found me and brought me here. I\u0026rsquo;m sorry, mum. I just wanted to help. How much is the bill?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What bill?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;For the clinic.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I guess they\u0026rsquo;ll tell us when we leave.\u0026rdquo;\nWe chitchat some. I tell her about the bad morning of job hunting, and the fruit and vegetable stand, and how I need to be up early tomorrow. A nurse passes by and takes out the IV.\nWe head to the reception and ask for the bill. We\u0026rsquo;re told there is no bill. That it was paid.\n\u0026ldquo;By whom?\u0026rdquo; asks mum.\nThe answer: \u0026ldquo;By your daughter.\u0026rdquo;\nWe look at each other. She looks as confused as I am. Her head swivels around, and she grabs my arm \u0026mdash; the arm that had the IV in it \u0026mdash; hauling me toward a OneStop.shop banking machine.\n\u0026ldquo;Ouch.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Sorry honey\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nShe puts me in front of the machine.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve never used one of these,\u0026rdquo; I tell her.\nShe takes my hand and slaps it on the palm reader.\nA loading screen and then\u0026hellip;CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE OUR WINNER!\n\u0026ldquo;What the hell did I win?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You won\u0026hellip;the draw,\u0026rdquo; she whispers to me.\n\u0026ldquo;I won the \u0026ndash;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Shhh! Be quiet. You won the yearly draw. The big one. It was you. You won\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nThe notification fades away, and I see my balance: $999,999,275.35.\nMy eyes fill with tears. I reach into my bag and pull out my notebook. Mum is shivering. Speechless.\n\u0026ldquo;What are you doing?\u0026rdquo; asks mum.\n\u0026ldquo;Taking care of business,\u0026rdquo; I reply.\nI set up a transfer and then grab her hand and slap it on the palm reader.\n\u0026ldquo;Alix, no! Stop! You don\u0026rsquo;t have to.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No, mum. I do. Besides, what I owe you is a drop in the bucket.\u0026rdquo; And then, I look at my watch.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m getting hungry. Are you hungry? My treat. I know a great place that owes me a free dessert. Let\u0026rsquo;s get you some new shoes along the way.\u0026rdquo;\nIndigestion Bzzzz-bzzzz-bzzzz\nGina Troy picks up her phone and answers. \u0026ldquo;Yes?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ma\u0026rsquo;am. We have a winner.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Please tell me that it\u0026rsquo;s not some idiot druggy that\u0026rsquo;s gonna get themselves killed.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. I think this will play out well. Winner is 18 years old. Low income. Very low income family. Lots of debt. Found out they were the winner in one of our clinics where she was dropped off after being attacked.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Do we have video?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yes.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Can we use it?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll let you decide. Sending it to you now.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; Pink and blue hair? Cute-ish. Maybe she will agree to be in promotional material. I almost feel good about being a philanthropist.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;They go by \u0026rsquo;they,\u0026rsquo; I\u0026rsquo;ll start getting the press\u0026mdash;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Wait!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ma\u0026rsquo;am?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Who brought them in? Who is that man? Do we have ID?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Uh\u0026hellip;no. We have a clear shot of him leaving though. Sending now.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Motherfu\u0026mdash; Get the press release ready. I trust you. Just send it as soon as you can. You don\u0026rsquo;t need my approval. I have other business. Keep in touch.\u0026rdquo;\nGina ends the call and pulls a small notepad from the bottom drawer of her desk. After a few pages of flipping she finds what she needs. She gets another phone from the same place she found the notepad and dials a number. Someone answers after just one ring.\n\u0026ldquo;Yes?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s me. Tell him I found him. I found John. He can meet me at our usual spot.\u0026rdquo;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/07\/we-have-a-winner\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/07\/homework\/": {
"title": "Homework",
"tags": ["Short story",],
"content": "\u0026ldquo;Dinner time!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Coming, mom!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What were you doing in your room? You were being very quiet for once.\u0026rdquo;\nWhat was I doing in my room?\n\u0026ldquo;Homework.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What subject?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;history?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Is that a question, or an answer?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Just tired, mom. History. Not done yet. Can I eat in my room?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yeah, sure. But bring the plate out when you\u0026rsquo;re done. Your room smells bad enough!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Ha ha, you are so funny.\u0026rdquo;\nNow, where was I?\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: When I was a kid I saw a guy with no gear. Freaked me out.\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: yeah right i call bs\nFuckin\u0026rsquo; chatroom trolls.\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: fu you don't know me, I saw the dude, the one who the police say fucked up the restaurant owner that time, I was like 6 or 7.\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: this one [link]?\nOK, still a troll, but at least they reply quickly.\nPolice save restaurant owner from deranged man WASHINGTON \u0026ndash; Time and place were on the side of the law today, when a deranged individual was arrested while attacking a restaurant owner.\n\u0026ldquo;He came in my restaurant, and I told him I could not accept cash or card, he needed to use the app like everyone else,\u0026rdquo; said the owner, John Hu. \u0026ldquo;Not a second later he grabbed me and started hitting my hand with a hammer he had with him.\u0026rdquo;\nLuckily for the owner, three off-duty officers were in the vicinity and heard the commotion. Without hesitation, they raced into action and apprehended the individual.\nOnce in custody, they determined that the perpetrator had been cited for previous violations of disturbing the peace. He was taken into custody pending trial.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just so thankful that those officers were nearby. Once my hand is healed, I would love to shake theirs,\u0026rdquo; says John.\nUPDATE:\nAfter his arrest the perpetrator of this heinous act was evaluated in a psychiatric facility. There, it was quickly determined that due to prolonged disconnection from social networks, he had fallen into a deep depression. This depression exacerbated his anti-social behaviour which eventually lead to a mental break with reality.\n\u0026ldquo;It is important to remain in touch with friends and relatives as much as possible. To deprive oneself of a technology used by most of the developed world is to open the door to grave consequences,\u0026rdquo; says Dr. Phil Framer, psychiatrist at UMHW.\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: done?\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: fuck\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: no way that dude had a hammer, my mom was there 2, she looked right at him\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: no way you remember if he had a hammer or not, i bet you didnt see shit\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: how can you be so fuckin stupid to believe in this shit tho?\n\u0026gt; truthseeker29: you really think that ungeared ppl are all crazy?\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: open your eyes @truthseeker29\n\u0026gt; unblinded99: you came here a normie, now you learn the truth, i gtg\n# @unblinded99 has left the chat\n# @truthseeker29 has left the chat\nNo fuckin\u0026rsquo; way did that dude have a hammer. I can\u0026rsquo;t deal with that level of crazy.\n\u0026ldquo;Mom?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Done your homework?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Uh, yeah, can I ask you somethin\u0026rsquo;?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Shoot.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Do you remember when I was little, and we saw that ungeared guy get arrested?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Michael\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;His name was Michael, we went to school together, until we were about 13.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Why didn\u0026rsquo;t you tell me?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Why would I? You never asked?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;So, do you think he was crazy?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What? No! Not him. He was just a bit\u0026hellip;different.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;So, you don\u0026rsquo;t think he attacked the restaurant owner?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What do you mean?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Look, someone sent me this article.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Honey, where did you get that? That isn\u0026rsquo;t even a real news site.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Huh?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Here, look, first, no author. And, I bet that that doctor, isn\u0026rsquo;t a doctor, or doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist. And look at the other junk on that site. Do you really think that there is some sort of global conspiracy to take over the world,\u0026rdquo; she said sarcastically, wiggling her fingers in the air like she was casting a spell, \u0026ldquo;that people without implants spread diseases, that the president rigged the votes? Look at that one! This is an article about how billionaires and film stars are cannibals! Fuck off \u0026mdash; Are they still going on about Pizzagate?\u0026rdquo;\nMom stopped reading and looked at me, tilting her head to the side little. \u0026ldquo;Paul,\u0026rdquo; she began, \u0026ldquo;my mother told me stories her mother told her. I know that you are smart and mature, but even smart people can get sucked into Internet fantasies. Back when social networks were still figuring things out, there were lots of problems with them. Many people were sucked into believing things that were just not true, or real, or\u0026hellip; Some of it was make-believe, like, obvious nonsense, and even when they found out who was doing it, people still believed it.\n\u0026ldquo;I am not going to police you on the net. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to know what you\u0026rsquo;re looking at anyway,\u0026rdquo; she stopped to smile at me.\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t be weird, mom.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Just\u0026hellip;don\u0026rsquo;t believe everything you read.\u0026rdquo;\nSo, what am I? Gullible? Stupid? I\u0026rsquo;ll show that little troll\u0026hellip;\nJohn Hu still owns the restaurant. I just have to swing by tomorrow and ask if he has seen Michael lately, that my mom and him are old friends.\nDIIIINGDOOONNG\nA little bell rings as I step into the restaurant. It smells like any other restaurant in the city: fusion! Burgers and fries, vinegar, tofu, fish, sweet, sour\u0026hellip;and sweat. Behind the counter is the man from the article, John Hu. I bring up the ordering app on my glasses and pick two cheap items and a drink. I stand at the counter and wait for him to bring my order. I decide to send a quick message to that little dipshit to let him know what I\u0026rsquo;m doing. Before I can hit send, though\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Order up! This one for you kid?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Uh, yes. Yes. For me. Um, hey\u0026hellip;little, uh, question. My mom wanted to know if her friend still comes around here?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;That depends. What\u0026rsquo;s friend\u0026rsquo;s name?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Michael.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Are\u0026hellip;you OK?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Michael still comes in. Now you get out. Customers waiting. Go tell your mom he comes by almost every day.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Oh. Thanks.\u0026rdquo;\nEvery day! I could just wa\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Hey John, how\u0026rsquo;s it going?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Michael! Just talking about you. With that boy. Your order almost ready. You two talk. He says his momma wants to meet you, haha!\u0026rdquo;\nMichael looked at me. I might be 17, but I suddenly felt a lot younger. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t often that I looked at people so closely. He had the connected glasses and watch, but was for sure the guy I saw when I was a child. Before he could say anything, verbal diarrhoea kicked in.\n\u0026ldquo;We saw you. My mom and I, I mean. We saw you the day that you came here\u0026hellip;with the police. She knows you. My mom went to school with you.\u0026rdquo;\nHe didn\u0026rsquo;t flinch. \u0026ldquo;Follow me,\u0026rdquo; he grunted. \u0026ldquo;John! Can I use the restroom?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I say \u0026rsquo;no\u0026rsquo; you do it anyway.\u0026rdquo;\nI followed him behind the counter. We went through the kitchen and down a hallway. He stopped and I nearly ran into him.\n\u0026ldquo;We can talk here. White zone. What do you want?\u0026rdquo;\nI told him. I told him about when I was a kid, what I saw, and what the news says happened. He told me what happened, for real.\n\u0026ldquo;But, you still come in here?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Of course, John is my friend. He was hurt, but we know who was to blame. Who is to blame.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The cops!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. They were just being jerks. Violent and dangerous jerks. I hate those cops, but not all cops.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;So, who? The government?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;A little, but the problem is a little bigger and harder to explain. They are to blame.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;They?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You know? They. Sure, the government is partially to blame. The companies that made all this garbage we have to wear. They are some true fuckers. But they did this when they gave up.\u0026rdquo;\nI am totally lost here. Maybe this guy is crazy. How do I get outta here?\n\u0026ldquo;Back when, you know, before my grandparents\u0026rsquo; time and all that. Like, early 2000s,\u0026rdquo; he began, clearly seeing my confusion, \u0026ldquo;the tech companies and the government and advertisers and all that were up to some unethical stuff. People, some NGOs and stuff, they started to push back. But then, poof, no more pushing. The people fighting for our rights just\u0026hellip;gave up. People called them retro-nerds, and neo-Luddites, and the media convinced everyone that what they were doing was a trend or something.\n\u0026ldquo;They were the government, and the monopolies, but they were also the people, like us, that were just so complacent.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s\u0026hellip;a lot\u0026hellip;to believe.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Yup. And you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t believe it, I wish it weren\u0026rsquo;t like that. But, I know what happened to me, and I can tell you one thing. That story you read? It didn\u0026rsquo;t happen like that. Other things that people say? Lots of bullshit. The Internet is like a dog park after a nice sunny day.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;A what?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s full of shit. Mainstream news? They just want viewership. They spin it, they make it spectacular. They are a business, hard to blame them sometimes. But, just the walking path through the dog park. Alternative news sites,\u0026rdquo; he said making air-quotes, \u0026ldquo;is all half-truths, falsities, misinformation, and omissions preying on weak-minded people for the same thing: likes and clicks. Today, they make what I do hard. Tall grass, you know? Might be safe, might be full of shit.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;And, what do you do?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I recruit people.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;To do\u0026hellip;what?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I could tell you, or I could give you a little job to do for me, and you can find out for yourself.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Like\u0026hellip;homework?\u0026rdquo;\nHis eyebrows raised behind his glasses. He smiled a little.\n\u0026ldquo;Sure, kid, like homework. I\u0026rsquo;ll be in touch. Get out of here, before John throws a hissy fit.\u0026rdquo;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/07\/homework\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/poetry\/": {
"title": "Poetry",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/poetry\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/06\/teachping\/": {
"title": "Teach(p)ing",
"tags": ["Poetry","Education",],
"content": "Another notification, What could it be? Click this, open that, Why was this sent to me?\nAn email from my manager To say I need to check Teams. Let\u0026rsquo;s install another app And choose from one of six themes.\nCome navigate this list of groups And help me find my way. It\u0026rsquo;s not like I have something to do, I only have to teach today.\nThere. We found it. Ah, a file to download. Fill out this spreadsheet, Log into to Moodle and upload.\nNow, time to go to work. Teaching is what I like best, Not Yammer this and Doodle that, Not another software to beta test.\nTurn on the laptop. Plug it in. Connect to WiFi. Why can\u0026rsquo;t I log in?\nDown for maintenance, Yet again. The hours on OneDrive, The weeks of eyestrain.\nA training session for Slack, Do we really need that? Yes, it is the same but different. A lot of effort for group chat.\nReply all. Out of office. What to do? I\u0026rsquo;m nauseous.\nHow many accounts must we use Just to prove we\u0026rsquo;ve gone digital? This feels like more work, Not a little bit paradisiacal.\nListen here, administrators: Nothing about this is streamlined. The teachers are run ragged, They\u0026rsquo;ve lost all peace of mind.\nTechnological progress in the name of efficiency Creates more work in the long run. If the teachers are all exhausted, Our school won\u0026rsquo;t be number one.\nDo you want to make things easier? Do you want a suggestion? It would be easier to teach Without all this interruption.\nStop sending me messages. I don\u0026rsquo;t want another app. Don\u0026rsquo;t take it the wrong way, But it\u0026rsquo;s all a load of crap.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll still do my work Without this DX. You\u0026rsquo;ll still be happy As you cash all those cheques.\nYou want to be innovative, But you just copy the rest. I would give you a zero If you did that on a test.\nSo, turn off those screens. Time to disconnect. It\u0026rsquo;s the only way I know To teach the present perfect.\nI have spoken, You have heard. Please don\u0026rsquo;t make me remember Another password.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/06\/teachping\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/cartoons\/": {
"title": "Cartoons",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/cartoons\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/05\/childrens-cartoons\/": {
"title": "Children\u0027s Cartoons",
"tags": ["Cartoons","Parenting",],
"content": "The 1980s were a wonderful time for children\u0026rsquo;s cartoons. No questions were asked, it seems. It gave birth to things that today would have no chance of survival against television censors and parents1. Sure, there were rules about violence, but they were fundamentally long-form toy ads, and some of them were great.\nMy childhood was Transformers, GI Joe, ThunderCats, SilverHawks, M.A.S.K, The Masters of the Universe, and the like. Most of the time, the premise was straightforward: Good versus Evil. And nearly all of them had kick-ass opening credits, that were often very similar\u0026hellip;\nInteresting, no? Let\u0026rsquo;s try again\u0026hellip;\nOK, amazingly similar. And these cartoons were produced after the toys2.\nSo, as a fan of cartoons (and toys) I was delighted and filled with joy by the idea of watching cartoons with my son. Now, I know, TV is bad for children. No screens before three years old and all that. I read the studies and I promised myself I would try not to overload him with TV.\nI failed\u0026hellip;\nI knew, though, that things would not be like in the 80s and 90s. The shows for younger children are not like before. There is a little less action, things are a little less scary, the vocabulary is subdued.\nI did not know I would be up against literal crack for kids\u0026hellip;\nPAW Patrol Guru Studio \u0026amp; Spin Master Entertainment\nPAW Patrol should need no introduction. It is a TV show designed to sell merchandise, there is no doubt about that. It took some great ideas from the past, and diluted them into an addictive slurry for young minds.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, I let my son watch it and I have seen every single episode, special, and film. I can say, based on my hundreds of hours of watching TV since the 1980s, that this show is a drug for kids.\nBefore we get into this, I recommend watching The Science of Cute . Skip to around the 9 minute 39 second mark.\nThis mini-documentary is about why we find puppies cute. In the video, Julie Hecht says:\nCuteness is incredibly important for us as a human species [\u0026hellip;]. Konrad Loranz \u0026mdash; one of the ethologists, people that study animal behaviour \u0026mdash; introduced the idea that there might be certain physical features that are particularly cute and endearing that we are attracted to.\nThey would have a high and protruding forehead, very big eyes, [and] big cheeks. [They would have] a little nose, and a little mouth. And they have short, pudgy, extremities.\n[A]ll of these features would essentially elicit our attraction [\u0026hellip;]\nShortly after this explanation, an artist draws the definition of cute. It is a puppy that is similar to the pups in PAW Patrol:\nPAW Patrol takes one of the animals that we find the cutest, puppies, and creates exaggeratedly cute versions of them as heroes. Even the humans follow the description given above. The whole concept is excellent. And they can\u0026rsquo;t be blamed for wanting profit, but they can be blamed for cutting corners!\nThe CGI animation used in this show is awfully basic. Over the course of nine seasons, not a whisker has been changed. As little detail as possible is used. Yes, they have added new characters, and new vehicles. Yes, just in case you didn\u0026rsquo;t know, the PAW Patrol have the OG vehicles, dog houses that transform into themed vehicles, as well as a slew of others: sea patrol vehicles, city vehicles, race cars, motorcycles, planes, knights\u0026rsquo; chariots, dinosaur themed vehicles, superhero vehicles, and \u0026ldquo;ultimate rescue\u0026rdquo; vehicles. You need to have something new to sell, right? But, they have never updated the quality of the animation.\nThe content of the show, on the surface, seems fine. The pups rescue people in danger and teach kids to be careful. There are attempts at inclusivity as well \u0026mdash; one of the pups has physical handicap that doesn\u0026rsquo;t prevent him from being a hero, another is supposed to be hyperactive, one of them speaks Spanish, and there is even a cat who occasionally helps out. But, if you look at something like Blue\u0026rsquo;s Clues and then watch this, you will immediately notice that the pacing is off:\nA problem occurs in town, so The PAW Patrol is called. Sure, there is an entire sequence involved with pups getting HQ to receive their orders, but there is no invitation to the audience to guess which pups will be called upon to solve this problem. This sequence is very similar to the one used in M.A.S.K., so I must ask you watch the opening credits. M.A.S.K. Opening Credits Want further comparison? I have been thinking about this for years now, so you will have to bear with me. Both shows have:\ntransforming vehicles themed heroes (e.g. water specialist, flying, etc.) specialized equipment (helmets in M.A.S.K., backpacks (\u0026ldquo;Pup-Packs\u0026rdquo;) in PAW Patrol) a villain with a moustache who also has access to innovative technology no explanation as to where said technology comes from a robot occasional non-hero characters that help out a \u0026ldquo;get to HQ\u0026rdquo; sequence a \u0026ldquo;get your costumes on\u0026rdquo; sequence catchy opening credits an attempt at providing a moral for younger children In the end, PAW Patrol is essentially very cheap eye-candy, but, you might think that there is a moral of some sort? Nope. No moral. The major protagonist, Mayor Humdinger (voiced by the wonderful Ron Pardo ) is never punished for his wrongdoings. The pirate who steals stuff always gets away. The villains clean up their messes, and they go home.\nAlso, the adults in the show are awful. The safety of a town, the nearby city, the jungle , the Kingdom of Barkingburg , the oceans and the skies is left in the hands of a 10-year-old boy and some puppies. The adults are clumsy and inept, incapable of taking care of a chicken in some instances. The only ones with any sense are the children and the pups. What message is this for children?\nFinally, it is confusing. Really confusing. Children like stories, but this show has no story really. There are no parents in the main town, but there is a child, Alex , who lives with his grandfather. There are two other kids that come visit their aunt. The main character is 10 years old, but never says anything about his parents. Where did these people come from?\nPAW Patrol is not the only show like this. Off the top of my head I can say that PJ Masks is on the same level. Cheap animation, no morals, designed to sell toys.\nSpeaking of toys, PAW Patrol managed to botch this too. Whether it is by design or some other reason, it is quite difficult to find toys of the human characters. They were produced, but have since been discontinued. Your kid can be addicted to the show, and get a truckload of toys, and imagine their hearts away, but, they will have nobody to save and nobody to save them from \u0026mdash; they will have multiple versions of the pups in their different vehicles, and maybe a dragon.\nI feel it important to note that I do not hate this show. I just think it can be better. The PAW Patrol movie shows that: better animation style, a story that provides some background for a main character, a lesson for children on overcoming fears, and so on. Ryder, though, is freakin\u0026rsquo; creepy looking in the movie:\nAnd, I am looking forward to the movie sequel and the spin-off series in the works. I can\u0026rsquo;t help it, I am hooked now too.\nTwo Can Play It has not been as easy as it should have been to find TV shows that my son likes and that I would call good. Shows that have an educational side, a funny side, or an emotional side that demonstrate an effort from the creators to make something good.\nI want to talk about five of these shows. You will notice that some of these shows have taken advantage of the \u0026ldquo;big head, big eyes, small body\u0026rdquo; science mentioned earlier. The difference is that these shows go the extra mile. Sometimes in terms of content and message, sometimes in the quality of the presentation, sometimes both.\nTumble Leaf Amazon Studios\nThe first big hit in our household, before PAW Patrol, was Tumble Leaf. This show was beautiful to watch, and the creators were nice enough to give it an emotional finale. The stories were perfect for kids and follow the same premise: Fig the fox finds an object and must use that object to have fun. This is what kids do. A mirror can be a play thing. A drumstick can be more than a drumstick. A tool can be used more than one way. The overall message: go play!\nTumble Leaf Teaser Furthermore, the show is calm. It is soft, and quiet, and subtle. There are no screeching characters, or overly anxiety-inducing scenes. While this is not the case of my son, I am aware that some kids are sensitive to sounds and action scenes. This is a show that you could let your children watch unattended, but you won\u0026rsquo;t, because it is too gorgeous. You will also be happy to know that there is no merchandise available. That means you will not be buying toys or stuffed animals or lunch boxes or anything like that to please you children.\nI did play my cards wrong. Tumble Leaf is a great show for children of all ages, but I should have started with something like Daniel Tiger\u0026rsquo;s Neighborhood that is explicitly for very young children. I do occasionally propose an episode of Tumble Leaf\nDaniel Tiger\u0026rsquo;s Neighborhood Fred Rogers Productions, 9 Story Media Group, 9 Story USA\nDaniel Tiger is the continuation of Mr. Rogers\u0026rsquo; Neighborhood. That is all you need to know. Appearance and content-wise, this is the most childish of the shows in this list. It is for 3- and 4-year-old children, after all.\nThe series centers around Daniel Tiger [\u0026hellip;]. Two 11-minute segments are linked by a common socio-emotional theme, such as disappointment and sadness or anger and thankfulness. The theme also uses a musical motif phrase, which the show calls \u0026ldquo;strategy songs,\u0026rdquo; to reinforce the theme and help children remember the life lessons. Many of the \u0026ldquo;strategy songs\u0026rdquo; are available in albums or as singles under the artist name \u0026ldquo;Daniel Tiger\u0026rsquo;s Neighborhood.\u0026rdquo; The program is targeted at preschool-aged children; it teaches emotional intelligence, kindness, and human respect. Its content follows a curriculum based on Fred Rogers\u0026rsquo; teaching and new research into child development. 3\nIn short, this is a safe show for children.\nHey Duggee Studio AKA\nThis one is just as entertaining for parents as it is for children. It is silly and loud, but educational. It is a show that gets the audience involved through the use of a narrator, and teaches things in the same way that something like Sesame Street does.\nThe concept is that question kids ask all the time, what are we going to do today? And while doing that thing, we learn. We learn about tadpoles, elections, trains, kites, building, shapes, singing, whistling, water, being sick, being quiet, and, yes, sticks .\nThe show is about a group of children at day camp. Their camp counsellor is Duggee, a dog, who always has ideas and seems to know about everything. The group of children is loud and colourful: There is a sensitive rhino named Tag; Norrie, a quiet and calm mouse; Betty, a know-it-all octopus; Happy, an alligator obsessed with water; and a loud, hyperactive, disruptive, but yoga-practicing hippo named Rolly. Of course, there are a series of other characters that they interact with.\nAdults will have no problem watching this show with their children, because there is always a little joke in there for them. Keep in mind, though, that some of these jokes do require a little knowledge of British culture \u0026mdash; note the reference to Spaghetti Trees in this episode:\nStillwater Gaumont Animation \u0026amp; Scholastic Entertainment\nCalm and Zen; soft-spoken, but powerful. Stillwater is visually beautiful to watch, and filled with detail that children\u0026rsquo;s shows normally ignore. As an example, the characters in this show have different outfits in nearly every episode. They have detailed expressions, and flowing hair, and fur. The environment is rich and there are different locations and weather events. Finally, each episode has a story within a story using a different animation style to present an anecdote in response to a problem.\nStillwater is a panda, he lives next door to a family with three children who, as humans do, encounter difficulties. Jealousy, dismay about the outcome of a race, growing up, getting a haircut, and so on. The anecdotes used to help the children to find solutions to their problems are retellings of Zen Buddhist and Taoist stories, mostly, and use lots of metaphors and analogies.\nThis series is based on a book, which is a good thing. It means that behind it there is an author, an IP , and a vision maintaining the course of the production. It isn\u0026rsquo;t something for your children to watch religiously when a new episode appears \u0026mdash; there are only 20 episodes containing two stories each. This is something that you can use like a story book for children, and say, \u0026ldquo;hey, how about a Stillwater?\u0026rdquo; And, like when you read a story to your child, there is a certain memorability to each episode and story that does stick.\nBluey Ludo Studio\nBluey is pure, unfiltered, entertainment. It is a lesson for children and their parents. It is the source of roaring laughter in my house. It is all about play and creativity. In my opinion, Bluey represents the standard in children\u0026rsquo;s television programming. It is the ideal show to transition from the more \u0026ldquo;preschool\u0026rdquo;-style program \u0026mdash; think Daniel Tiger, or shows that have a narrator like Hey Duggee \u0026mdash; to something that reflects the psychological development that children experience at this time in their lives.\nAs we grow, many of us use private speech during play. You will hear children muttering and telling stories with their toys. They narrate the events, and ask themselves questions out loud. At some point, we grow out of this and begin using inner speech . There are many scenes where we see the main characters of the show reflecting on what happened, but no narrator is there to help, and the character does not look at fourth wall and ask for guidance.\nBluey stands out in 2022. It has a very Saturday morning aesthetic, whereas many shows have taken a more 3D-CGI route. The characters have lives and jobs and backgrounds: Bluey is in a bit of an alternative school, she has a little sister named Bingo, a mother who works part-time, Chilli, and a father, Bandit, an archaeologist. There are aunts and uncles, babysitters, neighbours, teachers, friends, and even an episode dedicated to one of those friends. The production team spends about three months on each episode, after, the whole Ludo team gets together on a Friday to view the almost-finished product with friends and family, and their children 4. The children in the show also voiced by the children of the team. Finally, there is another minor twist.\nIt goes without saying that many shows like to focus on the mother as the main caregiver in a family, and the father as the breadwinner. Doing the opposite was often seen as a gimmick, some little twist \u0026mdash; it is a show about a family, but different. Bluey does not feel like that at all. You hardly register the fact that in many episodes it is Bandit getting wrapped up in his daughters\u0026rsquo; strange games, trying to keep them entertained. It is this aspect that draws parents in, at least in my case. There is a realness to Bandit, and the rest of the characters, that when seen through the eyes of an adult does not register as \u0026ldquo;this is a silly kids\u0026rsquo; show\u0026rdquo;, but rather as \u0026ldquo;holy crap this is brilliant.\u0026rdquo;\nConclusion It won\u0026rsquo;t come as a surprise to learn that I do feel some regret. My son has seen too many episodes of these shows. Time that could have been spent outside, playing, or being creative and actively learning was wasted on passive entertainment. Ideally, I would have known about these shows before my son was born, and therefore avoided the dreaded path of the PAW Patrol. I also would have changed the order: Daniel Tiger first, then Hey Duggee, followed by Stillwater, Tumble Leaf, and finally Bluey.\nIf you are a cartoon lover, or parent, I recommend that you watch these shows \u0026mdash; even PAW Patrol, because it is important to be ready when your son or daughter comes home from school and asks why they have never seen that show. I also recommend that you try and see TV shows from your own childhood.\n(I say this because it is amazing how things have changed. An innocuous little cartoon from our childhood, when seen through adult eyes, can be traumatic. The Animals of Farthing Wood is quite heavy, and just look at the synopsis for the first episode of Capital Critters5 which my mother let me watch: \u0026ldquo;After Max the mouse\u0026rsquo;s family is murdered by pest control workers, he moves to Washington, D.C. to live with his cousin Berkley.\u0026rdquo;)\nFinally, always check the merchandise situation of a show before letting your children get hooked. PAW Patrol is a vector for toy sales, whereas the other programs mentioned above are not.\nRead about the \u0026ldquo;Adult Story Line\u0026rdquo; and cancellation of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nIt may surprise you to know that the two examples above, ThunderCats and SilverHawks, were produced by Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment who were previously known for their stop-motion Christmas specials, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer .\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nDaniel Tiger\u0026rsquo;s Neighborhood - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nI took my daughter to see how they make Bluey at Ludo Studios in Brisbane and it sort of blew her mind - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nCapitol Critters - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/05\/childrens-cartoons\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/parenting\/": {
"title": "Parenting",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/parenting\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/05\/in-search-of-digital-natives\/": {
"title": "In Search of Digital Natives",
"tags": ["Technology","Education",],
"content": "Promises were made, people. I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about flying cars, I\u0026rsquo;m talking about the people that were supposed to make those cars and the cool things to go along with them. We were promised a generation of digital natives. Where are they?\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re reading this, there is a good chance you are one of those digital natives we were promised. You are everywhere. There are throngs of you across the globe. I have met many of you, and the things you can do! You programme and solder; you make robots; your front-ends are gorgeous, your back-ends robust; you are makers and tinkerers. But, we were told there would be an entire cohort of digital natives.\nThe term was coined back in the 90s, but I have been teaching since the early 2000s and every year I hear students give the same speech. They say, \u0026ldquo;my generation is the first generation to grow up with the internet, we are digital natives.\u0026rdquo; Millennials, like myself, have also been saying the same thing.\nWe experienced the joys of 300bps modems, dial-up, and broadband. The arrival of the World Wide Web, Amazon, eBay, and the first dating sites. There was ICQ, MSN, AOL, GeoCities, Rotten.com and Warez. We had floppies and diskettes and burned CDs. We had monochrome CRT monitors. We installed games that were distributed on multiple diskettes. The sneakernet was a thing! We had laptops that didn\u0026rsquo;t have Wi-Fi. We were friends with Tom. We used websites like AltaVista and Alt.box.sk.\nBut, all along, were told that the next generation would be the real deal. Their level of digital literacy would dwarf ours. Everyone and their dog would be the next Zuckerberg. I must say that I am underwhelmed.\nAgain, you will tell me they are everywhere. And, I will agree with you and nod my head, but follow up with a question: How is it that so many are so digitally illiterate?\nWas it social media? It is definitely one of the factors. Was it because Google and Wikipedia took away their curiosity and willingness to learn? Could be. Did the smartphones make things so accessible within three clicks that they all decided they were hackers? I cannot say, and as this is meant to be a short blog post, some stream of consciousness, I am not going to stop and do the research to answer those questions.\nWith each year that passes, my students become less and less adept when it comes to computers and technology. Obviously, where I work, I cannot expect to run into the prodigies that are self-caught programmers, but hell, would it kill them to learn a thing or two?\nMy average student keeps all of their files on the desktop of their MacBook. They have at least three browsers installed, an upgrade warning, and 97 tabs open. I ask them to go to their webmail and watch in disbelief as they proceed:\nOpen browser New tab Google search the school website Login Navigate to the link for outlook.office365.com Login again Scroll through screens if unread emails instead of searching Open email Figure out how to download the attachment Open the attachment from the browser Meanwhile, noises. The sounds of overlapping Facebook notifications. Because they have Facebook open in multiple tabs. Their €1,400 MacBook is revving up. It sounds like I\u0026rsquo;m standing under a wind turbine, but in reality I am in a classroom. It locks up. They look at me with one of those, \u0026ldquo;whatcha gonna do?\u0026rdquo; expressions.\nAnother students steps in, but is also unable to present the work. Why? Because somehow, after three years of school, they do not have an adapter for their computer. Does someone have an adapter? Of course someone does. We are saved, but then comes a new horror.\nThis student opens Facebook and asks the first student to send her the file through that platform. So, student A gets out their iPhone, downloads the attachment, and sends it over Facebook. Lo and behold, we have a PowerPoint\u0026hellip; but not.\nBecause, unbeknownst to us, these students made their presentation with Canva and downloaded the PDF, which, clearly, would not contain videos and animations, right? A look of shock and panic, \u0026ldquo;Sir, can we try a different computer?\u0026rdquo;\nUp comes teammate #3, \u0026ldquo;The Maker.\u0026rdquo; Their computer has HDMI. Battery levels are optimal. They connect. Now six hands are jamming away to get the screen to stop extending in order to mirror the content. Success. Angels weep for my soul as I die a slow and agonizing death \u0026mdash; on the inside. There is no sound. There was no need for animations. They read, word-for-word, the text from their presentation.\nAt the end, \u0026ldquo;The Maker\u0026rdquo; holds down the power button, forcing a hard shutdown.\nThis is not a one-time thing. This is not bi-weekly. This is multiple times per class per week per semester. The digital natives I work with think PowerPoint is too hard. They don\u0026rsquo;t know how to turn on spellcheck or put page numbers on their documents. They copy and paste and submit Wikipedia articles as their own, but leave in the hyperlinks and footnotes! They use their phones to take pictures of their computer screens. And, on their CVs, they proudly proclaim:\nComputer Skills: Proficient user, Expert in Microsoft Office, Social Networks, Windows, and Mac. I digress.\nDigital natives, what went wrong? You got off on the right foot: Powerful pocket-sized computers, high speed internet, streaming services, the cloud, laptops with batteries that last longer than two hours, but you can write a report faster with two thumbs on your 6-inch slab of plastic and glass than you can with 10 fingers and 105 keys. They mock you and call you \u0026ldquo;zoomers,\u0026rdquo; but many of you cannot seem to activate your microphones and cameras in order to use Zoom. I ask you to send me a file, you say it is too big for email, so you send it with WeTransfer, and it isn\u0026rsquo;t even 4 MB.\nNatives and immigrants of the digital age, you know in your hearts that I speak the truth. So, tell me, please, how can we bridge the gap? How can we teach you the skills you need? How can it be made interesting for your hyper-connected generation to learn the basics?\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/05\/in-search-of-digital-natives\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/04\/i-like-e-books\/": {
"title": "I like E-books",
"tags": ["Technology","Books",],
"content": "No joke. I do, truly, like e-books. Of course, real books are better. It isn\u0026rsquo;t a cliché to say that. Most of the time, a real, printed, book makes more sense than reading an e-book.\nIn many instances, the printed book may cost less, and, in a way is easier to transport and travel with. I say this because there is less concern about losing a book or having it stolen. If you lose a copy of a recent paperback, you lose a little money and one book. If you lose a brand-new e-reader, you lose a collection of books, the money used to purchase the e-reader and the books, and possibly some online credentials and banking info.\nThe printed book can be handled, and mishandled. It can sit in the sun and be left in a glovebox, fall down, and even get a little wet. You can dog-ear the pages and take notes and write your name on it. Your copy of a printed book is yours.\nE-books are a different beast.\nHow I wound up with an e-reader I have actually had three different e-readers. All of them are the same brand. All of them still work. Two of them were the same model.\nIt all started well over 10 years ago. I wanted to get into reading again, but living in France, it isn\u0026rsquo;t always easy to have immediate access to new releases in English. Reading a translated version of a book does not interest me. I have no problem reading a French book, if that is the original language, and when I do want to read a French book, I still just buy the printed version.\nSo, I bought a Kobo e-reader. I travelled to China with that device to visit someone, and they borrowed it. I never got it back. So, returning to France I went straight to the shop next to the train station and bought the same model.\nWhat got me hooked on e-readers? That first year with an e-reader was wonderful. I read 12 books. That is nothing compared to hardcore book readers, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t think I would read more than five. It is certainly more than the one book (actually, a play) I had read the previous year.\nThe two books that got me hooked were 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and The Martian by Andy Weir. I don\u0026rsquo;t even remember how I ended up with copies of these books on my device. I know I didn\u0026rsquo;t buy them.\nReading with the e-reader was motivating. I like seeing numbers and knowing how many minutes are left in a chapter, or in the book. I could only estimate if reading a printed book. Not only that, but I also liked being in a bubble when I am on the metro: mp3 player plus e-book means nobody knows what I am listening to, or what I am reading.\nThere was also the aspect of reading at night. My flat at the time was as awful as it was small. There was no way for me to have a night stand with a light. E-readers, with backlit screens, solved that problem. Also, I love reading and falling asleep mid-sentence. I could do that with an e-book, and it would shut down automatically, leaving me to sleep peacefully in the dark.\nFinally, there is a practical side. Yes, your library can fit in your backpack, but you can also highlight sections and create annotations. This is a function that I use on nearly every book I read. There is always a sentence, or a quote, or an entire page that needs to be highlighted for later use. This functionality, mixed with the other obvious functions, left me hooked on e-books.\nHow I use my e-reader Where do my books come from if I don\u0026rsquo;t buy them? I cannot tell you, but you can guess. Except for a few books, my collection is all sideloaded onto the device as EPUB files. This is why I bought a Kobo instead of a Kindle. I knew that I could get EPUB files from many places, usually the day of release. I did learn after that it is possible to accomplish the same thing with a Kindle.\nOne can just drag and drop the files and be off to the beach for a long read. Or, one can use a piece of software called Calibre. Calibre is not a secret. Even people who have never dealt with e-books have caught wind of this beast.\nSince the point here is not a guide, I won\u0026rsquo;t go into getting the Kobo to work with Calibre. It is easy. There are plugins. There are guides. Everything you need to know is on the MobileRead Forums It works like this:\nget an e-book open Calibre and import the e-book ask Calibre to get the metadata (cover, series info, tags) and save it to the file upload the file to your Kobo \u0026mdash; and if you have the right plugins, it will upload as a \u0026ldquo;kepub\u0026rdquo; Managing your library is easy like this, and even allows for exporting annotations to your computer.\nKobo also has a \u0026ldquo;My Words\u0026rdquo; feature. It is just a list of words. It seems banal at first, but after some time you do amass a list of words that are not part of your working vocabulary.\nTweaking the e-reader Kobo has features that cannot be accessed easily. It is a pity, some of them are useful. Kobo e-readers come with several games, a web browser, a \u0026ldquo;dark mode\u0026rdquo;, and the ability to take screenshots. None of those features, other than the browser, can be accessed without some tweaks.\nWhile we can all understand the concept of \u0026ldquo;beta features\u0026rdquo;, it would be nice to be able to test them without going through a whole rigmarole of modifications. Luckily, there is NickelMenu .\nNickelMenu adds a custom menu to Kobo devices. It is quick and easy to install. Once again, I will spare you all the \u0026ldquo;how to\u0026rdquo; part of this. It is documented on the website and different forums.\nMy NickelMenu config looks like this:\n# NICKELMENU CONFIG # Main Menu Items menu_item : main : KOReader : cmd_spawn : quiet : exec /mnt/onboard/.adds/koreader/koreader.sh menu_item : main :Unblock It :nickel_extras : unblock_it menu_item : main :Solitaire :nickel_extras : solitaire menu_item : main :Sudoku :nickel_extras : sudoku menu_item : main :Word Scramble :nickel_extras : word_scramble menu_item : main :Sketch Pad :nickel_extras : sketch_pad menu_item : main: Screenshot : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots # Library Items menu_item : library : Rescan Library : nickel_misc : rescan_books_full # Reader Items menu_item : reader : Screenshot : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots menu_item : reader : Dark Mode : nickel_setting : toggle : dark_mode With it, I am able to access or toggle things like\u0026hellip;\nSolitaire\nSudoku\nA Sketchpad\n(it saves as an svg)\nUnblock It\nA \u0026ldquo;Boggle\u0026rdquo; clone called Word Scramble\nDark Mode\nExtending the e-reader with KOReader KOReader is a document viewer for E-Ink devices. It runs like an app on your Kobo. Essentially, it shuts down the Kobo software and launches a different, alternative, operating system. Installation is as easy as it sounds here: Installation on Kobo devices .\nI have it installed, but don\u0026rsquo;t use it for reading everything. I use it for reading PDF files, accessing Wikipedia articles, and reading articles saved via Wallabag. You can also configure it to work wirelessly with Calibre.\nI recommend installing KOReader, even if you don\u0026rsquo;t think you will ever use it, just to have a better way to read PDF files.\nThe downsides of Kobo According to novou on the MobileRead forums, usage data from your Kobo is sent to Google Analytics. Not a single person would ever be surprised by that.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t tie metrics to accounts and clear UID\u0026rsquo;s and unsent callbacks across sessions (meaning they don\u0026rsquo;t track devices across reboots.)\nBut aiming to report each time you load the home-screen, or read a book for X minutes nonetheless seems like overkill to me. Their metrics are not super-invasive, and an extremely far cry from stuff like CarrierIQ, or individual menu button tracking.\nThat said, for me at least, they still do cross the line into \u0026lsquo;creepy,\u0026rsquo; especially since the callbacks are being sent to Google, where those stats will be saved and analysed as a part of Google\u0026rsquo;s hoard of personal data. (If it were Kobo infrastructure, I\u0026rsquo;d still be concerned, but much less so. Kobo isn\u0026rsquo;t a business built on harvesting personal data.)1\nYou can disable Google Analytics by editing the /etc/hosts file on your Kobo.\nThe easiest way I have found to do that is to install KOReader, using the nice one-click method above, connect to your Wi-Fi, enable SSH, and just go change it by hand.\nMy /etc/hosts file:\n127.0.0.1 host localhost.localdomain localhost localhost localhost.localdomain # default 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com google-analytics.com # GA loopback The other thing about the Kobo is that it comes with several baked in features that I have come to dislike:\nA system of badges that were once meant to be shared on social networks, like Facebook, but can no longer be shared. This is fun for about two minutes, but it is just cruft. When searching the web from a highlight, it defaults to searching with Google, and you need to accept the cookie policy every time. Pocket integration, which I did use for years, but which cannot be disabled. It didn\u0026rsquo;t sync some articles, like comics, either. The state of e-books, e-readers, and e-book readers Worldwide, the number of e-book readers is growing \u0026mdash; slowly, but surely \u0026mdash; but that growth will taper off in the coming years2. In terms of revenue, the same growth can be measured3.\nIn France, a country that is all about culture and supporting small independent libraries, Amazon has the majority of the market (63% as of May 2020, Kobo had 33%4), e-books are not that popular. They have managed to get some traction with the 20 to 29 year-olds \u0026mdash; 43% of which had read an e-book at least once, but the majority of French people do not read e-books (Statista, 20175).\nThe future of e-books, though, is colour6 and more functionalities:\nPocketBook is already selling colour devices. Vivlio makes e-readers with flexible software that can even play audio files. Bookeen has a rather stylish, but chunky, e-reader as well as other e-ink devices for note-taking. Final words E-readers are developing quickly. Almost quickly enough that an e-reader you buy today could be obsolete in two years. This is as good as it is bad. New features mean that consumers will feel the need to buy a new device. Hesitant consumers may buy a newer device, one of the colour e-readers, for example, and find themselves disappointed with the experience. We all know that e-waste is a growing problem, and this type of situation is one that could lead to even more waste.\nAs someone who enjoys reading e-books, I do want to see some development in the sector, but there is no way I will ever replace my e-reader every two years. An ideal e-reader for me would be something a little more flexible, in terms of configuration, or perhaps something more open and privacy-centric. I would purchase a \u0026ldquo;bare e-reader\u0026rdquo;, if such a thing existed, so I could control what kind of software went on it.\nNow, back to reading!\nCall to action If you have made it this far, you should consider joining one of the BookWyrm instances . These are social networks for book lovers. If you know what Goodreads is, but don\u0026rsquo;t want to use another service owned by Amazon, give BookWyrm a shot.\nAlso, add me to your contacts while you are there: bbbhltz on BookWyrm .\nTouch KT\u0026rsquo;s Google Analytics integration, and how to disable it. - MobileRead Forums \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nStatista. (February 3, 2022). Number of e-book readers worldwide 2017-2026 (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/forecasts/1294239/number-of-ebook-users-global \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nStatista. (March 4, 2022). E-book market revenue worldwide 2017-2026 (in million U.S. dollars) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/forecasts/1294207/ebook-market-revenue-worldwide \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nFoxintelligence. (June 16, 2020). E-reading market share of the most popular digital e-reader brands in France between March and May 2020 [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/statistics/1147874/online-market-share-of-e-readers-by-brand-france/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nStatista. (juillet 1, 2017). Fréquence de lecture d\u0026rsquo;e-books par les consommateurs français en 2017, selon l\u0026rsquo;âge des répondants [Graphique]. In Statista. Retrieved avril 11, 2022, from https://fr-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/statistiques/761557/media-technologie-frequence-lecture-ebooks-france-selon-age/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nE Ink\u0026rsquo;s New Color Electronic Paper Is Fast Enough for Video – https://gizmodo.com/e-inks-new-color-electronic-paper-is-fast-enough-for-vi-1848768109 \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/04\/i-like-e-books\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/guide-privacy\/": {
"title": "Low Friction Introduction to Digital Privacy",
"tags": ["Guide","Technology","Privacy",],
"content": " This guide is not meant to be a list of suggestions and recommendations in the traditional \u0026ldquo;you should do this\u0026rdquo; sense. It is up to each individual person to contemplate their needs and how far they are willing to go to achieve them. Your privacy, security, and anonymity matter. The decisions to take should not be decided by a stranger on the Internet. When the wording in this guide implies suggestion, it should be understood as \u0026ldquo;several websites and individuals on the Internet suggest,\u0026rdquo; and not \u0026ldquo;if you don\u0026rsquo;t do this you are doing it wrong.\u0026rdquo; Take your time. You will need it. Find your own sources too. Don\u0026rsquo;t hesitate to send me a message to tell me how wrong I am about things.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t talk about \u0026ldquo;big A\u0026rdquo; in this guide. I have no idea what the deal is vis-à-vis security, privacy or anonymity when it comes to the \u0026ldquo;fruit company\u0026rdquo;.\nContents Introduction Basics Tough Choices Communicating Browsing The Cloud Your Phone Review Your Work Next Steps Further Reading Terms Introduction Several years ago, my interest in digital privacy and security ballooned. While I had been interested in some time, I found myself digging deeper, constantly changing settings. I became a little obsessed. The thing is, I am not an expert. I was putting the horse before the cart, so to speak. I made extreme choices that lead to lots of friction that could have been avoided had I taken my time.\nThis guide, which will hopefully be brief and light on opinion, is my attempt at proposing various things that most people can do. The target audience for this guide would be someone who is also interested in the topic and is in a position where they can start making changes without too much friction. The friction that I speak of is when the changes you make have unintended consequences on your digital life. An example would be switching to a new piece of software that none of your friends or family use, or forcing yourself to change phones and use something that you are neither happy, nor comfortable with as a device.\nThe suggestions that I make below will not go as far as rooting your telephone or installing a new operating system on your computer. You will not need to spend too much time configuring. This guide will just be a taste, hopefully enough to give you an appetite.\nEach suggestion below will be qualified by its level of friction.\nLevel of Friction ◆ Little to no friction Your friends and family will not notice anything. You may need to install a new piece of software. ◆ ◆ Some friction You may lose access to some things that you have become used to, or need to configure some things. ◆ ◆ ◆ Lots of friction Noticeable changes. Friends and family might begin asking questions. Doing everything below will not make you 100% safe on the Internet, nor will it guarantee your privacy. It will only create a little more friction for the different actors (advertisers, hackers, etc.) to gain access to your assets .\nThe assets are anything we want to protect; a file, for example. We want to protect this file from a bad actor. How likely will you be hacked? Well, it happens quite often, even if you think you have nothing to hide. What will happen if you don\u0026rsquo;t protect it? Perhaps you will lose access to your email accounts, or someone will make purchases on your Amazon account, or go as far as committing identity theft. Are you willing to make an effort to prevent this from happening? The answer to that is up to you. How much friction can you handle to create friction for the bad actor?\nRecommended viewing: Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters Basics These are not even suggestions. There isn\u0026rsquo;t a single computer user that would advise you against doing these. They are extremely easy and can be set up with little to no friction.\nUsing a Password Manager (◆) This is something that a number of people don\u0026rsquo;t think about. You might be using Chrome or Firefox, you log into a site, you let your browser save the password. Cool. No problem, right? Admittedly, I did this for quite some time. I was very happy with Chrome, or Firefox, having my passwords synced across devices. Well, what if your Google account is compromised? Now you don\u0026rsquo;t just lose access to your email, but all of you accounts. Also, depending on how you use your computer, if someone steals your device from you while it is unlocked, they would also have access to all of your passwords.\nBitwarden is a popular recommendation for password manager. There are many reasons for this. It works across many devices, it is open-source, and if you are willing to make the effort, you can even self-host your own server. The basic service is free and secure. They explain how to get your passwords from Chrome and Firefox , as well as other services. The whole process takes minutes to complete.\nAfter, you can install the app on your phone and the plugin for your browser (or use a standalone piece of software on your computer) and you are set. The only minor bit of friction is that you need to remember one master password. You can also access your passwords from an online vault.\nThe perks of using a password manager are many. I am particularly fond of having access to a password generator.\nThere are, obviously, many password managers to choose from if Bitwarden is not to your taste.\nUsing an Authenticator (◆ ◆) Now that your passwords are a little safer, it is time to make account access more difficult for anyone who isn\u0026rsquo;t you!\nYou may have seen people doing this. Or, you have heard people talking about \u0026ldquo;two-factor authentication \u0026rdquo;. The process is actually easier than setting up a password manager. I do, however, rate this as a task that can result in some friction.\nMost people use 2FA for their most important online activities: email, social media accounts, banking, etc. If something stores your personal information, photos, emails, or any asset you want to keep to yourself, use of 2FA is generally a baked-in feature. Facebook and Google use it and recommend that their users take advantage of it.\nHow does this cause friction? The friction comes from the perceived amount of time it takes to a) take out your phone, b) unlock your phone, c) launch the app on your phone, d) enter a pin, and finally e) type out the token on your computer or device. The process is fluid and fast, but for lots of people, it seems like a hassle.\nIt is worth it though, for the piece of mind that comes from knowing that the target on my digital back is smaller.\nLike with password managers above, there are many apps to choose from. I ended up using Aegis Authenticator , but before I also used the Google Authenticator . If you have never seen the concept in action, it works like this:\nGo to website and login You will be prompted to enter a token or pin You use your phone (or in some cases another device) to get the token You are connected You don\u0026rsquo;t have to set up every account on the same day. But, be sure to add it to any account that you may ever access on a computer that is not your own!\nUsing an Ad blocker (◆) I suspect most people use an ad blocker of some sort. Good on you. It goes without saying that browsing the web is awful when there are ads everywhere. The most highly recommended ad blocker that you can use is probably is uBlock Origin (often referred to as uBO). uBO is light on resources, available on most devices and browsers, highly customizable, and open source .\nThere are many guides1 for uBO on the web. This is because uBO is more than an ad blocker. It is a content filter. In addition to blocking ads, it can block JavaScript, frames, images, 3rd party fonts, etc. It also helps prevent tracking . As such, this is the first tool presented in the guide that can increase your privacy while using the web.\nThe default options are good, but you can try activating the different lists and filters and see if it interferes with your daily browsing. Or, activate everything just to see what the Internet would be like without cookies, JavaScript, trackers, or ads.\nThere are many copies of uBlock Origin available. ublock.org is not the same thing, despite looking very similar.\nTough Choices The next round of suggestions to increase your online privacy will cause friction. You will need to be thoughtful about your decisions and be prepared to make some tough choices.\nChoosing a new Email Provider (◆ ◆) Changing email providers is a hassle. Yes, nearly every alternative service provides some sort of migration guide, but it is still annoying. No matter what, you will need to activate some form of email forwarding on your old account, check it from time to time, or set up automatic replies. That said, there will be other friction-inducing moments as well.\nToot from @[email protected] regarding Gmail If you are a user of Gmail, then changing email providers means changing a lot of things: cloud services, bookmark syncing, password syncing, etc. If you are trying to increase your digital privacy and reduce your attack surface, moving away from the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft is a good idea. There are plenty of choices. I will only talk about three here, because I have only used these three. Feel free to try all of them as well, as well as any other you come across.\nProtonMail is generally the first stop. Using the clever tools of the public relations trade, they quickly made it on every list of alternative email providers. The keywords we are looking for are all there: independent, secure, encryption, 2FA, open source, Swiss. What\u0026rsquo;s more, it has a modern and fast interface. According to their privacy policy,\nOur overriding policy is to collect as little user information (personal data included) as possible to ensure a completely private user experience when using the Services. We do not have the technical means to access the content of your encrypted emails, files, and calendar events.2\nThere is a calendar, a drive (if you pay), a VPN, and a free plan with 500 MB of storage. When I was originally looking to change email providers, Proton did not yet have a calendar, which was very important for me. Also, the free version does not let you access your emails from apps or clients like Thunderbird. That, for me, meant when I was testing I was unable to have a preview of all the features without spending money. Spending money causes friction.\nSince Proton did not have a calendar when I first looked at it, I had to look elsewhere. I landed on Mailbox.org . I decided to stay there. There are some things that bother me about Mailbox, but they are very small things. They offer a free trial, which is great, because I wanted to see what it would be like to migrate from Google. They had the different features I was looking for and an extremely flexible pricing plan. Like several other alternative choices, they run on 100% green energy and publish yearly transparency reports. Almost everything about it was perfect for me. I say almost because there are two things that bother me:\nI find the interface slow compared to Proton and Disroot. The servers are in Germany, and Germany is part of the 14-eyes Surveillance agreement3. Disroot is a community effort. Like with the previously mentioned alternatives, you get the whole kit and caboodle (2 GB cloud storage, online office, calendar, chat, video, etc.). If you are the rebellious type, and like to go out and protest or take part in actions that are socially good, Disroot may be your type of community.\nDisroot aims to change the way people are used to interact on the web. We want to encourage and show them not only that there are open and ethical alternatives but also that it is the only possible way to break free from the walled gardens proposed and promoted by proprietary software and corporations, either through our platform, others that have similar values and goals or even their own projects.4\nThe interface is quite fast, but lacks options that other services have. In the end, it is free, and you can test it easily. I have used this email address the least, so I cannot make any claims to how well it works.\nAs this is a tough choice, it cannot be made for you by a list like this. Many articles and sites that propose \u0026ldquo;best alternatives\u0026rdquo; could be biased or misinformed, or be written by people like me (who have tested these services, but are not professionals). You should make a table. Decide how much you are willing to pay for email, and the services you would like with it. Also, consider the email address. The number of times I have had to correct people because my @mailbox.org address was written down as gmail or with a .com or even as @mèlboxe.org.\nFeature Proton Mailbox Disroot Pricing Freemium Flexible Free Calendar / Drive ✓ / ✓ ✓ / ✓ ✓ / ✓ IMAP/SMTP ✓ ✓ ✓ 2FA ✓ ✓ ✓ Open Source ✓ ✓ ✓ Aliases ✓ ✓ ✓ Your criterium In addition to the services mentioned above, there are others:\nA short list of Email Providers CTemplar Cock.li CounterMail Dismail Posteo RiseUp Soverin Tutanota If you do decide to switch email providers, then you will want to back up and maybe even import your old emails into your new email account. The entire process took several days for me, but I had been using Gmail since 2004 and Google Drive was where I kept everything.\nQuitting or Cleaning up your Social Networks (◆ ◆ ◆) Prepare for friction. Quitting social networks is hard.\nRecommended viewing: Cal Newport: Quit social media If you cannot imagine doing it, then possibly it is not for you. Just know, it can be done, with difficulty.\nDoes everyone in your family use a certain social network? Your friends too? Well, you may just have to stay put. But, don\u0026rsquo;t be naive. Meta/Facebook /Instagram do not have a good history when it comes to privacy and personal data. Facebook has an entire Wikipedia entry on criticisms . Even social networks like Reddit lack transparency. Everything you like, dislike, or comment on has value.\nIf you are a social person, and you like to interact with strangers on the web about different subjects, there are alternatives. Here are some examples:\nNetwork Alternative Frontend Alternative Network Facebook - Friendica Twitter Nitter (doesn\u0026rsquo;t work as well anymore) Mastodon Reddit Teddit / Libreddit (no longer reliable) Lemmy Instagram Proxigram Pixelfed YouTube Piped / Indivious Peertube TikTok ProxiTok - The alternative frontends let you access, and sometimes interact with, the social networks in a more privacy-friendly manner. Or, you could try out a different social network inspired by the original. It is a very hard choice, especially if that is how you stay in touch.\nAn easier option is \u0026ldquo;spring-cleaning.\u0026rdquo; Take a few days to casually audit each social network you use. Do you need to follow so many brands? Do you need to like everything and always comment? Do those likes and comments need to stay there?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take Facebook as an example. While I know that many younger people are not that enthused by Facebook, it is an important social network. I did not delete my account. I just stopped using it. No, I did not deactivate it. I wanted to make sure that my face and name on Facebook are me, and not someone else. All I did was clean it up.\nI unliked and unfollowed anything that was not a friend or person that I had met in real life. Even music and TV shows. I painstakingly deleted every like and comment I left on other posts. I deleted all photos except my profile photo. I left every group except the Alumni group for my university (I needed to have a video meeting and show my diploma to get access. That was a lot of effort for something so useless.) I signed out of the chat. I removed personal information from my \u0026ldquo;About me\u0026rdquo; page. So, now the account sits there, doing its thing. Nobody has contacted me in about a year. When I do visit, Facebook struggled with recommendations. Today I checked, and they were trying to sell me an online course for something ridiculous.\nBut, I am not the average social media user. It was easy for me to walk away. I have never used Instagram or TikTok, and my Twitter account lasted about a year before I forgot about it. You will need to figure things out on your own or just accept that some companies and services will have information about you.\nCommunicating Beyond email and social media, there are many ways to stay in touch.\nEmail Clients (◆) If you have already made the decision to step away from Gmail or Outlook, maybe it is time to change email clients too. For years, I ignored the existence of desktop clients. Outlook was never my cup of tea. If you like having a desktop client, for accessing multiple accounts maybe, you can look at some choices below.\nThunderbird : Very similar to Outlook in functionality. This is another Mozilla product, like Firefox. There are loads of add-ons for it too for blocking ads and trackers. With some friction and time, this program can replace Outlook and even more. Claws Mail : The extreme lightweight approach. Just email. The interface will seem dated, but there are themes and plugins to extend the functionality. I use this, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t even bothered syncing my contacts. Too much of a bother for the moment. Android has some great email clients. Two very similar options are K-9 and FairEmail.\nK-9 Mail : an open source email client focused on making it easy to chew through large volumes of email. FairEmail : fully featured, open source, privacy-oriented email app for Android. Planning If you have decided to leave Gmail or Outlook, you may also be looking for a way to read your emails on your desktop without going through the web client. And, if you have also left Facebook, you might be looking to replace the Events feature. There are options for both.\nThunderbird: Mozilla\u0026rsquo;s answer to Outlook has a calendar that lets your interact with different services. You can sync your contacts with various services as well. Mobilizon : A platform for organizing events. Messaging WhatsApp and Messenger can be replaced too. Signal quickly became the WhatsApp replacement during the pandemic. Telegram too has a large fanbase. While I don\u0026rsquo;t use the latter, I can tell you that both are good examples of \u0026ldquo;drop-in replacements\u0026rdquo;. My 70-year-old mother switched to Signal without issue or help from anyone, and my partner\u0026rsquo;s entire family went on to Telegram.\nHere is a very short list of the many \u0026ldquo;instant messaging\u0026rdquo; / \u0026ldquo;group chat\u0026rdquo; services available:\nSignal : Edward Snowden\u0026rsquo;s messenger of choice. Telegram : Another full-featured messenger. Threema (never used this one, so I won\u0026rsquo;t even leave a comment or description) Delta Chat : A different concept of chat \u0026mdash; one without central servers! It works through email accounts, so you don\u0026rsquo;t even need to even a new account. Video Chat Zoom took over during the pandemic, but like Jedi and the Sith, there are always more. Some of them do not even require an account!\nJitsi is simple and secure, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t even require an app, it runs in the browser. No account is required. It has saved me a few times. Some other services mentioned here integrate with Jitsi (Mailbox provides a Jitsi instance).\nAnd, if you are a teacher, BigBlueButton has some excellent features. BBB is made for teachers, by a team that works with teachers. It is not a second-tier video chat, just look at the features added in their last release .\nBrowsing While browsing the web, cookies received from the different websites you visit are stored by the browser.\nSome of them contain login information or site preferences, and some are used for tracking user behaviour over long periods of time.\nThis is why browsers are popular targets for hackers (and governments), who try to steal information, destroy files, and commit other malicious activities.\nThe browser is probably the most used programs on your computer. For some, it is also one of the most used apps on your phone. Staying with the default browser is a choice that you can make. After all, in most cases, you cannot delete the browser, only disable it and ignore that it is there, taking up space. You do you.\nChanging your Browser (◆ ◆) Why would you change your browser? It is a legitimate question. The short version is that by using the default browser, you are making it easier for corporations to track you. Chrome, the most used browser in the world, has some privacy features, but in the end Alphabet (Google) is a for-profit company. When a company gives something for free, that means you are the product.\nRecommended viewing: Richard Serra: Television Delivers People (1973) Changing your browser creates some friction. It shouldn\u0026rsquo;t, but it does. The choices of browsers are many; the opinions on those browsers are strong. A given browser may indeed provide excellent protection against tracking and ads, but company or people behind the project may not be as transparent as they claim.\nAs I have not had the Apple experience, I will make no attempt to provide specific advice about the options available for their users. Outside the fruit company\u0026rsquo;s offering, you will surely have come across the two main families of browsers: The Chromium Family and the Firefox Family.\nChrome sits on their thrown with little to fear. So little, in fact, that the competition usually includes the Google search engine as one of the default options. There was a time when many hoped Firefox would overtake Chrome. It is unlikely that will happen. Why so few options? Simple. It is incredibly complicated, expensive, and time-consuming to build a new browser engine. Furthermore, most websites are built with Chrome in mind these days.\nGoogle / Chrome / Chromium Family The code upon which the Chrome browser is built is open source, so there are many browsers that are copies of Chrome with modified features. Even Microsoft Edge is based on that code. In the logos above you might recognize Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, and the Android browser Bromite. There are more, but listing them here will not help you decide.\nIf you have gone ahead with some steps above, you may have decided to change your email provider. If it was Gmail, and you have decided to begin distancing yourself from that giant, there is less reason to use Chrome, or even Chromium, and look at some other options.\nBrave is frequently presented as a great alternative. Opinions and controversies aside, Brave fairs quite well when put to the test . It comes with built-in ad blocking, too.\nVivaldi also makes the same claim, and also proposes a translation tool, a mail client, and other features .\nConveniently, Brave and Vivaldi are both available on mobile. Some people like to use similar apps on their phone. It is a point to consider.\nBromite is an Android-only affair. Similar to its cousins, it has ripped the Google stuff out of the code and added extra features and customizations.\nI do not want to rank anything in this guide, but if I were, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I could give an unbiased opinion of these browsers. I have tried Vivaldi, Brave, Bromite, and another called ungoogled-chromium . I used the latter two for the longest amount of time, and my current browser (qutebrowser ) is based on Chromium.\nMozilla / Firefox Family The year was 2002. Netscape had lost the browser war . From its ashes a new project was born. It would grow into Firefox.\nFirefox is developed today by the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation. The Foundation is a non-profit that leads the open source Mozilla project, which was founded back in 1998. The Corporation is a subsidiary of the Foundation. The Corporation reinvests its profits in the Foundation.\nHow Mozilla Operates\nMozilla is unique. Founded as a community open source project in 1998, Mozilla currently consists of two organizations: the 501(c)3 Mozilla Foundation, which backs emerging leaders and mobilizes citizens to create a global movement for the health of the internet; and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, which creates products, advances public policy and explores new technologies that give people more control over their lives online, and shapes the future of the internet platform for the public good. Each is governed by a separate board of directors. The two organizations work in concert with each other and a global community of tens of thousands of volunteers under the single banner: Mozilla.\nBecause of its unique structure, Mozilla stands apart from its peers in the technology and social enterprise sectors globally as one of the most successful social enterprises.5\nYou might wonder where that profit comes from.\nToday, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla\u0026rsquo;s termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath (which was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019.)5\nGoogle, and others, pay the Corporation to include their search engines by default in the browser. Also, since 2015, the proprietary service Pocket has been integrated into Firefox (which is open source). These are points of controversy for many. The controversy has grown since 2017, when the Corporation acquired Pocket. If you have used Pocket, you may have noticed that suggests articles to users, which implies that user data is being accessed.\nDespite this, Firefox remains the \u0026ldquo;private\u0026rdquo; choice when compared to Chromium-based browsers. There are lots of add-ons and guides to help you harden your Firefox installation. And, it is possible to strip Pocket from Firefox, and disable the bookmark syncing service.\nFirefox is open source, there are a number of forks, and a number of ways to customize the way it works.\nLibreWolf is one of these forks. The elevator pitch is that they are \u0026ldquo;an independent fork of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom\u0026rdquo; with a long list of features . Using LibreWolf with an add-on like uBO and the right filters would be a very easy way to access the web with little to no time spent configuring settings.\nWaterfox is a slightly better-known fork of Firefox has been around since 2011. Their pitch is similar, but there are some concerns:\nWaterfox web browser has been sold to System1 recently, the same company that bought the Startpage search engine some time ago. To be precise, Startpage was bought by Privacy One Group Ltd which System1 owns. System1 is an advertising company that tries to \u0026ldquo;make advertising better and safer, while respecting consumer privacy\u0026rdquo;.6\nOn mobile, you can find Focus by Mozilla, which is essentially Firefox with automatic tracking protection and ad blocking, and a project called Mull (Gitlab ) which can be installed through F-Droid . Mull is a \u0026ldquo;privacy-oriented and deblobbed web browser\u0026rdquo; like the others, but with features borrowed from Tor and other sources.\nA word on Tor Tor is another Firefox fork, with security enhancement allowing it to connect to the Tor network.\nI am not a Tor user. The Tor browser may very well apply to my threat model, but I have never bothered with it.\nBefore downloading and using the Tor browser, though, it is in your interest to read the \u0026ldquo;about\u0026rdquo; page from the Tor manual and look over the Tor training resources . Those two sources will give you an understanding on what Tor is all about. On many sites, you will likely come across a list of best practices regarding Tor that tend to include:\nDo not install any other add-ons Avoid resizing your window Do not log into bookmark syncing services If you like syncing bookmarks, or using particular add-ons, then maybe Tor is not for you.\nBut, Tor is an important tool for people from all walks of life (journalists, activists, human rights defenders, parents who want to protect their children while online, and people in abusive situations). There are many threats that need to be considered, like who may have access to your browser history, anybody you may have angered in the past, the software on your computer, corporations, data criminals, casual hackers, local law enforcement, private investigators, foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, etc. The list is very long.\nThink about what type of digital security profile applies to you. Perhaps install Tor and just keep it up to date in case you need it, or, use it every day.\nThe final decision of browser will be a matter of taste. If you like tweaking, there is something for you. If you are more of an \u0026ldquo;install and browse\u0026rdquo; person, there is also something for you.\nSearching (◆ ◆) Google Search is amazing. You cannot deny it. They have crawled so many pages, indexed them, and cross-referenced them. They know what you are looking for even if you cannot spell it. Prior to Google, there were many search engines. Since Google, many have tried to take their throne. They are the kings of the castle for a reason. It is the same reason why when Google Search launched when I was about 11 or 12 years old, that our IT teacher printed out a banner (dot matrix printers, you know) that read \u0026ldquo;USE GOOGLE.COM\u0026rdquo; and pinned it to the bulletin board: It works very well.\nIt also increases your attack surface by providing data brokers with information about you and your preferences. Google Search knows things about you, and you can get away from them. You can do it right now.\nThere are many alternative search engines that are more privacy focused than Google and Bing. We will look at three of them:\nDuckDuckGo Qwant Mojeek But first, you need to know something. DuckDuckGo and Qwant are metasearch engines . They both depend on Bing for their results (and Yandex in some instances). Bing is a crawler . So are Google, Yandex, and a few others. Qwant and DuckDuckGo will return similar results. If you want a better and more detailed explanation of this, Seirdy has an excellent post on his blog where he also talks about why someone would even bother using a non-mainstream search engine.\nI generally use DuckDuckGo. It seems to return what I am looking for most of the time. When it doesn\u0026rsquo;t, it provides an magnificent feature called Bangs that allow you to use shortcuts to search on other sites. All you need is a !. At the moment, there are 13,565 bangs available. For example, starting your search with !yt lets you search YouTube, !g Google, !reddit Reddit. If a site has a search function, DDG has banged it. Using DDG as your default search engine means that you can search most of your favourite sites from a single place.\nDDG promotes itself as a privacy-oriented search alternative, just like Qwant, and they also promise not to track us. I don\u0026rsquo;t use Qwant (someday I will write something about Qwant, just know they are sketchy). In the end, these two search engines will assist you in your mission to protect your private information online.\nBut\u0026hellip;\n[\u0026hellip;] The New York Times reviewed the top 20 search results on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for more than 30 conspiracy theories and right-wing topics. Search results can change over time and vary among users, but the comparisons provide a snapshot of what a single user might have seen on a typical day in mid-February.\nFor many terms, Bing and DuckDuckGo surfaced more untrustworthy websites than Google did, when results were compared with website ratings from the Global Disinformation Index, NewsGuard and research published in the journal Science. (While DuckDuckGo relies on Bing\u0026rsquo;s algorithm, their search results can differ.)\nSearch results on Google also included some untrustworthy websites, but they tended to be less common and lower on the search page.7\nMojeek is a different beast. It is a search engine with its own crawler. They are on a mission to build, slowly but surely, their own index. Mojeek has been working on this since 2006 and recently passed \u0026ldquo;7 billion pages indexed\u0026rdquo; mark8. The scope of the mission is wide. There are the privacy promises (no cookies, no tracking, no selling of data, no outsourcing9), the environmental (Mojeek is hosted and run from a green data centre10), and governance.\n[W]e would never intentionally manipulate our results to show any particular point of view. We don\u0026rsquo;t believe a search engine should have an agenda, whether political or otherwise, and returning as relevant but opposing views should be a goal.11\nThis focus on ESG12 speaks to me, but finding the things I want on Mojeek requires patience. I have been using it daily now for about two weeks. Sometimes, I do give up and head back to DDG. Then I remember that when I first used DDG, the results were not always great either. Time will tell. I suggest that you at least bookmark Mojeek, because it is growing.\nGeneral Recommendations (◆) This is short and easy. Just a few points.\nUse bookmarks : It saves time. Why do so many people search for something they use every day? Bookmarks are useful. Keep them organized. Avoid creating unnecessary accounts. Avoid \u0026ldquo;login with Google/Facebook/etc.\u0026rdquo; If you need that service, create an account. I myself accidentally created a Spotify account this way, and it still exists, but I cannot access it because the account I \u0026ldquo;logged in with\u0026rdquo; no longer exists. Avoid letting your browser save your passwords. Many email providers offer the option to create aliases and disposable accounts if you need to use your email somewhere sketchy. Don\u0026rsquo;t trust everything you read on random blogs. Add-ons (◆) In addition to uBlock Origin, you can use other add-ons and extensions to improve your privacy. The more you use, however, the more unique your \u0026ldquo;fingerprint \u0026rdquo; will be. Again, I am not suggesting you install everything listed below, but being aware of their existence is important.\nLibRedirect : A web extension that redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram\u0026hellip; requests to alternative privacy-friendly frontends and backends. xBrowserSync : a free and open-source alternative to browser syncing tools offered by companies like Google, Firefox, Opera and others. The project was born out of a concern for the over-reliance on services provided by big tech, who collect as much personal data as they can and have demonstrated that they do not respect their user\u0026rsquo;s privacy. The Cloud Convenience comes at a cost. Services like Dropbox and Google Drive offer so much cloud storage for free, it almost feels like you have to have an account.\nThis category can create some friction. Here are two possible solutions to leaving Big Cloud.\nSharing with just yourself (◆ ◆) If you only need to share some files, maybe some photos, or some Excel documents, between the devices you own, you can avoid the Cloud altogether with Syncthing .\nSyncthing keeps your information private and encrypted. It is easy, but I did give it a medium friction rating because it is not something many people are used to doing with their devices.\nWith Syncthing, you would install it on the devices you plan to use and share between. As long as the device is on the same network, the file is shared between the device. This is how I sync my work between my home computer and my work computer. At home, I prepare. The files sync to my phone. When I get to work, the files sync to the work computer from my phone. I also sync my photos, but only to my personal computer.\nSharing and collaborating with others (◆ ◆) This is where things can get rough. Collaborating on files is something we need to do regularly. If it is for work, you can use your work cloud and online office tools. But, what if we don\u0026rsquo;t have those? This is where Nextcloud comes to the rescue.\nNextcloud is a service with features we sometimes need: file sharing, collaborative tools, groupware. You can install this on your own and have your own personal cloud, if you have the time and will to host your own server. There are also free providers . Disroot, which we mentioned in the email section, uses Nextcloud. As do a few others.\nYour Phone I see a few friends with these \u0026ldquo;cleaner\u0026rdquo; apps on their phones. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to cite names, because that is slander, but modern Android phones don\u0026rsquo;t really need them. Head over to εxodus and look up some of the apps you use. For example, one of the famous \u0026ldquo;cleaner\u0026rdquo; apps contains more than a few trackers. Why would an app that clears out useless files need to send data to these companies? Your guess is as good as mine (actually, it is probably money).\nYour phone is a pocket-sized tracking device combined with a wallet and a closet filled with secrets. It has your search history, your location history, your chats, your purchases, some health information, and photos, among other pieces of information you don\u0026rsquo;t want to share with the world.\nNothing to Hide (2017) Cleaning Out Your Wallet (◆ ◆ ◆) You need to take a moment to consider the apps on your device, and the accounts saved on your device. We have been spoiled over the years, and have taken shortcuts to completing tasks. Facebook has an app; do you need to use it? Did you stop using Gmail? Disconnect your Google account on your phone (don\u0026rsquo;t worry, there are ways to stay up to date). In fact, if you want to create some real friction, reset your phone to factory settings and do not ever enter your Google information. Then start thinking about what you need on the phone and where you can get it without the Google Play Store.\nIf you look at F-Droid or Droid-ify / NeoStore you will see that your can install many apps without Google!\nAs far as I know, there is nothing unsafe about using F-Droid. The app even tells you if there are trackers or if the app connects to other services. The apps on the store are audited in a way, and, in most cases, you can go see the code used in the apps. That said, some people are of the opinion that putting your trust in the hands of an individual is a preposterous idea, and that large companies, like Google and Facebook, are actually more trustworthy. This, like many things, will be your decision to make. I\u0026rsquo;m not saying \u0026ldquo;do your own research,\u0026rdquo; I am reminding you that you can have your own opinion.\nIf you want to try other options there is Accrescent and Obtainium . However you feel, it won\u0026rsquo;t hurt to look and try some things out. Here are some examples:\nInstall a password manager (e.g. Bitwarden) Install an 2FA authentication app (e.g. Aegis) Install something to help block ads, trackers, and other Internet traffic (e.g. InviZible Pro ) Install an email client (e.g. FairEmail) Install a calendar app (e.g. Etar ) Install something to watch YouTube content with (e.g. NewPipe , LibreTube ) Install chat clients (e.g. Signal, Telegram) Install a different browser (e.g. Privacy Browser ) Review Your Work You can take a moment to see if your work is paying off.\nBelow are some sites that test for ads, trackers, and other sneaky Internet trickery. Don\u0026rsquo;t worry about getting 100%. Browser fingerprinting is very tricky to avoid, especially if you want to use your computer or device without too much friction.\nAd Blocker Test AdBlock Tester Cover Your Tracks (ads, tracking, fingerprinting) BrowserLeaks CreepJS (JavaScript trickery) No-JavaScript fingerprinting Browser Privacy Check by EXPERTE.com Next Step: The Main Course All of this was just the starter \u0026mdash; the appetizer. If you have followed along, even just casually reading and checking out the links, you have only had a taste. Digital privacy is more complex than having a password generator, or avoiding Big Tech, or following a guide from a forum written by a guy with a tinfoil hat.\nIf none of the above causes too much friction, don\u0026rsquo;t stop. Keep going. Here are a few more things you can try.\nBegin using PGP for your emails. Stop using MS Office on your computer. Delete all social networks. Replace more apps on your phone. For example, you can replace the camera, the keyboard, the photo viewer, the maps, the SMS app, etc. Take a look at the different communities on Matrix or try out XMPP Try out Linux13 on your computer (NB: installing Linux is not a magic shield that protects you \u0026mdash; Linux has malware and Linux can be hacked), or LineageOS for your phone. If you have a Pixel phone, you can also try GrapheneOS or CalyxOS . Another option is /e/OS . Further Reading and Resources Agencies, Organizations, Associations\nCenter for Humane Technology EFF Surveillance Self-Defense PrivacySpy: We track online privacy Redecentralize.org CHATONS La Quadrature du Net FDN - French Data Network La Contre-Voie Guides and Lists\nPrivacy Guides Guide: How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour A Good Privacy List and Android FOSS Apps List by brainf+ck degoogle A list of alternatives to Google products PrivacyTests.org: open-source tests of web browser privacy Awesome Humane Tech: Promoting Solutions that Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society Curated List of Privacy Respecting Services and Software Awesome Privacy: Limiting personal data leaks on the internet PrivacySec Lissy93/personal-security-checklist: 🔒 A curated checklist of 300+ tips for protecting digital security and privacy in 2022 Search Engines\nThe Most Private Search Engine Mojeek Teclis: Non-commercial Web Search Kagi Search Spot (Search engine based on Searx , created by the e Foundation ) Articles\nWhy not Signal? Why Not Signal? | Hacker News Centralized vs Decentralized vs Distributed Systems on Berty Technologies It is important for free software to use free software infrastructure Muting videoconferencing apps may not prevent them from listening - gHacks Tech News. Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic (Spoiler: Social media helped) How to Be More Anonymous Online - WIRED Videos\nYou Should Check Out the Indie Web Tools\nUAD: tool to debloat non-rooted android devices Terms 2FA / two-factor authentication \u0026amp; OTP / one-time passwords (2FA) An electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more factors to an authentication mechanism14 (OTP) A password that is valid for only one login session or transaction, on a computer system or other digital device15 asset Any piece of data or a device that needs to be protected centralized When all information comes from one server e.g. Facebook cookie A collection of information, usually including a username and the current date and time, stored on the local computer of a person using the web Used by websites to identify users who have previously registered or visited the site crawler An Internet bot that systematically browses the web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of indexing decentralized When information is distributed among multiple hubs e.g. Mastodon fingerprinting “Browser fingerprinting” is a method of tracking web browsers by the configuration and settings information they make visible to websites, rather than traditional tracking methods such as IP addresses and unique cookies16 fork A project fork is when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software harden To make less vulnerable to attack metasearch engine An online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results open-source software Open-source software is released under a licence in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose It may be developed in a collaborative public manner The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software 17 PGP Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication 18 proprietary software Proprietary software, also known as non-free software or closed-source software, is computer software for which the software\u0026rsquo;s publisher or another person reserves some licensing rights to use, modify, share modifications, or share the software It is the opposite of open-source or free software 19 tracking When operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors\u0026rsquo; activities on the web 20 One such guide is uBlock Origin Suggested Settings – 12Bytes.org . Doing everything in that guide will create a little more friction that you might desire.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nProtonMail - Privacy Policy \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nUKUSA Agreement - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nAbout | Disroot \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe State of Mozilla: 2018 Annual Report — Mozilla \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWaterfox web browser sold to System1 - gHacks Tech News \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nFed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo - The New York Times \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nMojeek Updates, August 2023 | Mojeek Blog \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nMojeek Privacy Policy \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nDoing what\u0026rsquo;s right, Mojeek and the environment | Mojeek Blog \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWe\u0026rsquo;re building – Mojeek – the world\u0026rsquo;s alternative search engine which respects your privacy, and provides its own unique and unbiased results. Ask us anything. : IAmA \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nEnvironmental, social and corporate governance - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nI will not mention any specific distribution. Take a look around, you will find one to try on your own.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nMulti-factor authentication - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nOne-time password - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nCover Your Tracks | About \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nOpen-source software - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nPretty Good Privacy - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nProprietary software - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nWeb tracking - Wikipedia \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/guide-privacy\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/privacy-browser\/": {
"title": "Privacy Browser",
"tags": ["Privacy","Technology","Review",],
"content": "The escape from the rabbit hole left you stronger.\nIt still beckons you from time to time. You are wise to the ways now, though. You can get close, and lean in, without fear of falling. You\u0026rsquo;re fine. You can so see what it wants.\nAh, yes, of course. The same news as before, another comparison of browser privacy. Well, not just another. This one is rather detailed . You share it with the strangers of the internet, and continue on your merry way.\nA voice\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Hey! Get back here!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. You can f-ck right off! I know how this deal works. I am not some journalist or researcher. I am not a hacker. I have my ad blocker, I block the invisible trackers, I use https, and I know my fingerprint is not unique. I don\u0026rsquo;t like it, but I am fine with it.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No\u0026hellip; Just\u0026hellip; Come on, take a look. It won\u0026rsquo;t take long.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You have 5 minutes.\u0026rdquo;\nJust a Peek\u0026hellip; This rabbit hole goes on forever. Your time can be put to use elsewhere. The folks doing the work to inform are doing a great job. More and more people around you talk about \u0026ldquo;protecting their privacy online.\u0026rdquo; No need to go down, let\u0026rsquo;s sit on the edge of this deep dark hole and look.\nIf what you seek\nis to take a peek,\nthen spend a week\nwith\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;That\u0026rsquo;s a search engine, not a browser.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Patience. You said I had 5 minutes.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Go on\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nOur vision is to be the world\u0026rsquo;s alternative search engine; a search engine that does what\u0026rsquo;s right, that values and respects your privacy, whilst providing its own unique and unbiased search results.\nMojeek is the result of years of work. The work of Marc Smith, to be precise. He began this project in 2004 and today employs six other team members. Mojeek is a crawler based search engine with its very own index of web pages.\nOn 8 March 2022, Mojeek announced that they had surpassed 5 Billion Pages indexed1.\nAs of 8 March 2024, Mojeek has indexed \u0026ldquo;7.8bn and a bit\u0026rdquo; pages2.\nYou agree. Mojeek is cool. Their servers a \u0026ldquo;green\u0026rdquo; , they are independent and unbiased , and they have a tracker free newsletter and RSS feed and a Mastodon account .\n\u0026ldquo;Thanks for the info. See ya!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I still have a minute or two!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;What about a privacy-centric Android browser with Mojeek as the default search engine?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Send me the link. I\u0026rsquo;ll give it a shot. I\u0026rsquo;m out!\u0026rdquo;\nFun with Privacy Browser Venturing away from the rabbit hole feels good. Your phone beeps. It is a link:\nPrivacy Browser Android (The only way to prevent data from being abused is to prevent it from being collected in the first place.)\nYou bite. It is on F-Droid , so, why not?\nEverything checks out\u0026hellip;\nOpen source Blocks ads, JavaScript, cookies, and DOM storage by default Easy to switch user agents Default search engine is Mojeek Other search engines must pass Requirements to be included Dev is on Fosstodon Oh, that\u0026rsquo;s different: \u0026ldquo;uses Android\u0026rsquo;s built-in WebView to render web pages\u0026rdquo;.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s give it a (screen)shot.\nAh. OK. Now we\u0026rsquo;re talking. You cannot even screenshot the app without going into the settings to turn that on\u0026hellip;\nTake two.\nAfter a quick load, Privacy Browser takes you to Mojeek. From here you discover that there is a left menu and a right menu.\nThe left menu takes you to navigation and global controls.\nThe right menu takes you to page and domain settings, as well as sharing and bookmarks.\nDomain settings inherit from global settings, but can make the experience for certain sites better. Many sites with drop down menus need JavaScript.\nI leave this as default, but there are a good number of preconfigs here.\nFinally, just to show how pervasive JavaScript is. This very blog. There is one post that requires JavaScript to render maths. Without JavaScript, I suppose it is still human-readable. But, I did spend about 10 minutes getting Katex working (don\u0026rsquo;t worry, it is only needed for that post) so I hope you have JS on for that post.\nCan I work with this browser?\nThat really is my only requirement. I need the browser for one specific thing: Accessing my schedule. In order to get to it, I needed to make domain settings for *.microsoftonline.* and *.myworkdomain.* and activate JavaScript, Cookies, and DOM storage. A minor annoyance.\nCan I waste time with this browser?\nYes. But, sometimes mobile pages don\u0026rsquo;t load automagically. Not a big problem. Apparently, different user agents return different pages.\nSomething that I do like is the \u0026ldquo;save as\u0026rdquo; functionality.\nInstead of the standard UX, Privacy Browser has a nice little progress notification at the bottom (a \u0026ldquo;snackbar\u0026rdquo;, not in the Android menu). There is no persistent notification in the Android menu. According to the dev,\n\u0026ldquo;[T]here are a couple of things about Android\u0026rsquo;s download manager that are unsatisfactory. First, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t provide a mechanism to specify a proxy. Second, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t work at all on Android 7.0 when a VPN is enabled.\u0026rdquo;3\nYou are also able to edit the URL before you download. All of this is very nice. I, for one, do not need any more notifications on my device, nor do I want anyone seeing what I have been downloading (for clarity, it is mostly PDF files of articles and magazines from my school\u0026rsquo;s library).\nAnd, very important, even for me, is the ability to clear cache and cookies when exiting. This is on my default.\nIs there a future?\nYes! It looks like this project will continue and expand to desktop. Android\u0026rsquo;s WebView will be swapped out for Privacy WebView (a fork of the former with added privacy features). There will be Linux, Windows and macOS browsers.4\nSilly Rabbit Well, it seems the little rabbit was right: This was worth my time. I should go thank him\u0026hellip;\nNo.\nNot falling for that again. Both of these new tools are good enough for now.\nMojeek Surpasses 5 Billion Pages | Mojeek Blog \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://mastodon.social/@Mojeek/112060297863694606 \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nPrivacy Browser 3.4 – Stoutner \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n3.x Series Roadmap – Stoutner \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/privacy-browser\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/switching-desktops\/": {
"title": "Switching Desktops",
"tags": ["Linux",],
"content": "\u0026ldquo;Variety is the spice of life\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The more, the merrier\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Too much is better than too little\u0026rdquo;\nLook up from your phone, or computer, for a moment. Are you alone? If not, and the person near has their phone or computer out, take a quick look. No! Not at what they\u0026rsquo;re doing. Just look to see their screen, whether it is their phone screen or their computer screen.\nThere is a very good chance that you will see the \u0026ldquo;out-of-the-box\u0026rdquo; default. I have noticed that many Android users, for example, just use their phone as-is. There is nothing wrong with that, even though some phones come with bloatware on the home screen. My mother\u0026rsquo;s phone, a Samsung, has icons for Facebook, Twitter, and an NHL app on the home screen. None of those are useful to her, but she leaves them be and instructed me not to delete them.\nI do not know that many iPhone users, but from the few that I see, they tend to leave some defaults in place, in terms of app placement and also choice. My students are nearly all Mac users these days. While there is some variety, I tend to see a large collection of icons on the desktop, Safari, sometimes Chrome, and a small collection of defaults in the dock.\nWindows users are in the same boat. They have a set of quick launch buttons, or launchers in the start menu, that they like to leave in place. Who can blame them? When I was handed my work computer, it came with Edge, Firefox, and Chrome. All three browsers were in the quick launch bar.\nWhen I was a student, things were not like this. Oh, no. We were a different breed. Call us kitsch or cliché, but when you don\u0026rsquo;t have all the streaming services and social networks, you get to wandering through menus and testing different options. At least, that is what we did when I was at university.\nYou need to remember that back in those days, everything came with \u0026ldquo;skins\u0026rdquo;. Many of your favourite applications were skinable. Winamp had a ridiculous number of skins to choose from. Just too many, really, if there is such a thing. The idea of letting users customize the appearance of programs was fuelled by Windows\u0026rsquo; boring appearance compared to the simplistic beauty of Apple interfaces.\nWired magazine even wrote about this phenomenon in October 2000 in an article called \u0026ldquo;GUIs Just Want to Have Fun\u0026rdquo; .\nThe faceless interface is dead. Long live skins, the hyper-personal edge of desktop computing.\nThe article goes on to cite the names of dozens of skinable programs, as well as software that still exists today. I won\u0026rsquo;t soon forget the time I spent tweaking Windows, from the vendor logo, the loading and login screens, and the shell itself. The article mentions Litestep and WindowBlinds, both of which I used and enjoyed. It was just the way we did things. We all had similar looking devices, we needed to make the screen look a little different at least.\nThe madness of skinning did die down, I think, but not before Apple got a little upset.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s no better example than Russ Schwenkler\u0026rsquo;s desktop. On one hand, it\u0026rsquo;s a thing of striking beauty. On the other, you practically need a walking tour to understand how it works. It starts with a Windows extension called NextStart and adds a suite of matching skins for more than a dozen programs. Instead of the standard Windows taskbar, it features a docking area where icon aliases can be shuffled in and out; Schwenkler adds a skinned version of the Launchkaos program manager. Custom minitools include audio playback controls, a hexadecimal calculator, system meters, and file viewers. A WindowBlinds skin holds it all together.\nThe aesthetic, Schwenkler says, is \u0026ldquo;tailored, with lots of attention to detail. I use a variety of surfaces that work together visually, along with lights, shadows, and highlights - things a button that\u0026rsquo;s just a dot or a big broad X isn\u0026rsquo;t going to give you.\u0026rdquo;\nSchwenkler became an instant skins celebrity this past January when WinAqua, his WindowBlinds-based clone of MacOS X, hit the streets before the beta release of Apple\u0026rsquo;s operating system. Posted on skinz .org, WinAqua was downloaded more than 10,000 times in a single day before the site pulled it at the request of Apple attorneys.\nI have rarely seen a customized desktop outside the Linux world. But, the reason for that is simple. Linux\u0026rsquo;s users are blessed with an abundance of options. And it isn\u0026rsquo;t just a question of skins, Linux users can, and have the habit of, customizing the entire interface of their desktop to pixel-perfect precision. And, if for some reason that one thing they want to change cannot be changed, well, they pack up their dotfiles and head on to newer pastures: a different desktop environment.\nParadox of Choice Just when you are starting to feel comfortable, like you have everything you need, you look over at your neighbour, and his grass seems greener. This was my conundrum very recently. For at least three years, I was happy in my environment. But, things started to get in the way. There was a lack of flexibility. I looked and looked for solutions to this minor problem. And, the solution I found was to change.\nFor about three years, like I said, I was comfortable. LXDE and LXQt were all I required. I could work and play. But, I started to get an itch. I just wanted to take a look at something new. Looking is OK, right?\nWhile at first it may seem like you are limited, it is not the case. You can have a DIY minimal keyboard-controlled tiled window manager, with no theming whatsoever, a slick modern Mac-like desktop, or a traditional desktop with a panel and a start menu.\nThe obvious choices when changing desktops are the big players: KDE, Gnome, Xfce along with some forks like Cinnamon and MATE. After a terse look, and to cut to the chase, I chose KDE.\nKDE: The Winamp of Desktops The last time I used KDE was on Netrunner . I think it was on a netbook. It used KDE 4. While I didn\u0026rsquo;t hate it, it was not adapted to the device. Also, I had no interest in widgets and customizing at the time. I found it clunky, and it really slogged along on that Eeepc.\n(I did dabble with ricing and tiling window managers later, but it is not my thing)\nKDE Plasma is not KDE 4. Things are faster, integrated, and can be fine-tuned. Even the default layout is agreeable to use, down to the wallpaper. The thing that many people would enjoy is that you can make it work the way you want.\nAs a very basic example, I have added buttons to the text editor, Kate, that launch a spelling/grammar checker in an external terminal. There are also buttons to help me convert files to different formats without opening up a terminal and typing in an entire command.\nOnce things are working the way you want, you can make things look different, and here is where things become very flexible. All forms of colours and shapes can be modified and tweaked. Just like with Winamp, there are stores filled with scores of themes, icons, widgets, decorations and scripts .\nThe recent version of KDE Plasma comes with a great overview mode too, which is something that I was missing during my years of LXDE/Qt usage.\nThere is far too much to see and do. This is not a bad thing, but if you like this sort of thing, it can be a massive time suck. No matter how you look at it, though, it is a prime example of the \u0026ldquo;hyper-personal\u0026rdquo; desktop that Wired talked about.\nKonqlusion Blissfully ignorant to what KDE can do, my several days of rediscovery have reminded me that when you own a computer, you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be confined to the default appearance and functionality. Your device should work the way you want it. It was one of my reasons for abandoning Windows all those years ago.\nKDE is a mature and powerful desktop environment that could convince most people that Linux is not all command lines and clunky interfaces. It has quickly surpassed all my expectations. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t taken KDE for a spin in the past few years, it is worth your time.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/switching-desktops\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/a-quick-look-at-distro-rankings\/": {
"title": "A Quick Look at Distro Rankings",
"tags": ["Linux",],
"content": "I\u0026rsquo;m afraid I have the distrohop bug again. But, luckily for my sanity and my family, I will not be doing that anytime soon. My partner has seen what happens when that happens. I disappear for the better part of a day. Thinking about it is a nice exercise, though, and it allows me to learn what\u0026rsquo;s going on in the world of Linux distributions.\nI am a \u0026ldquo;desktop Linux user\u0026rdquo;. I don\u0026rsquo;t program anything, and it has been months since I\u0026rsquo;ve had to build a package that is not available in the Debian package repository. If something doesn\u0026rsquo;t work, I just star it on GitHub or forget about it. Like many desktop users, I have the habit of taking a peek at DistroWatch from time to time. I tend to glance at the DistroWatch page rankings at least once a month.\nI was first told about DistroWatch in 2002. When I was at university, my good friend was a Linux user. I believe he used Slackware at the time. His desktop was confusing and interesting at the same time. Since then, I look at the site. It is truly very useful, if only for knowing what distros are based on Ubuntu LTS and getting little updates about releases. I can only assume that a good number of people use that site as well.\nI also like to see the difference between the page hit rankings, the visitor ratings , and the trends . This is how I got to writing this post. Do these rankings actually mean anything? What are the true \u0026ldquo;mainstream\u0026rdquo; distros?\nRanking Comparison As I had some free time today, I started making comparisons. I chose a not-very-reliable method. I took the top 21 distros from DistroWatch\u0026rsquo;s page hit rankings from the last six months (to include Arch) and compared those to the global rankings from SimilarWeb. SimilarWeb is an alternative to Alexa.com , which will soon shut down. As I write this, I realize that I should have used just one country, and not the global rankings. But, the end results works out well.\nThe table below lists the distros by DistroWatch rank. The rightmost column is the global ranking from SimilarWeb.\nDistroWatch Page Hit Ranking Trends vs SimilarWeb Rankings (information gathered 2022-03-05)\nDW Rank Distro SW Rank 1 MX Linux 123,888 2 EndeavourOS 69,927 3 Mint 19,755 4 Manjaro 28,875 5 Pop!_0S 75,268 1 6 Ubuntu 8,959 7 Garuda 107,654 8 Debian 22,133 9 Fedora 57,025 10 elemantary 128,442 11 Zorin 46,294 12 openSUSE 68,228 13 Slackware 288,450 14 antiX 404,101 15 KDE Neon 40,615 2 16 Lite 200,193 17 Solus 199,704 18 Kali 21,201 19 PCLinuxOS 357,687 20 Kubuntu 217,700 21 Arch 16,512 There are no surprises here. The top six SimilarWeb rankings are:\nUbuntu Arch Mint Kali Debian Manjaro The top six distros include what we expect. User-friendly choices Ubuntu, Mint and Manjaro, Unixporn favourite Arch, and old man Debian. Kali might not seem like a top choice, but it has become synonymous with \u0026ldquo;ethical hacking\u0026rdquo;, and received a significant boost being featured on the TV Series Mr. Robot.\nGoogle Trends: Mr. Robot vs Kali The first season of the series ran from 24 June 2015 to 2 September 2015. Season 2 from 13 July to 21 September 2016. Season 3 from 11 October to 13 December 2017. The final season ran from 6 October to 22 December 2019. You\u0026rsquo;ll need to zoom in a little, but there are tiny upticks for Kali Linux coinciding with each season of Mr. Robot. As people lost interest in the series, during a hiatus between seasons, there was also a slight loss in interest for Kali. I have just now realized that I did not watch that final season.\nSentiment Social media plays an important role in everything, so I decided to take a look at the \u0026ldquo;social buzz\u0026rdquo; of those six distros. I used Social Searcher for this. This is not the perfect solution, as it does not really take into account things like forums or Mastodon, but the numbers are interesting to look at.\nWith Social Searcher, it is possible to have a general look at the \u0026ldquo;sentiment\u0026rdquo; users have towards these distros.\nComparison of sentiment toward Linux Distributions You can see that for the most part, people are quite neutral in their opinion. Kali seems to win in the \u0026ldquo;Positive Sentiment\u0026rdquo; category, with Manjaro coming in a close second. Ubuntu proves that the more users/customers that you have, the more complaints. If there were a way to search across more sources, I am sure we could paint a better picture.\nNot wanting to leave MX without its fair due, I took a look. And I was a little surprised.\nSentiment towards MX Linux MX appears to have a low percentage of negative sentiment shared on social networks. A very low percentage! Positive opinion is off the charts. Is it the lack of systemd? Having used MX in the past, I can agree that I was very happy with that distro. It was great for my old computer.\nConclusion The main conclusion I can draw from these numbers is that Arch is far more mainstream than its users make it out to be. Either that, or its users need to visit the site so often to look for direction that it boosts the distro\u0026rsquo;s global page ranking. Also, Ubuntu needs to do something to increase the positive sentiment. As the door to the world of Linux for many users, the experience should be more positive. Finally, it might be worth noting that many Linux websites are less than inviting. As Matt from The Linux Cast pointed out recently, Linux has a website problem .\nArch has things down with access to documentation, MX has lots of YouTube videos posted by the devs, Mint gives us an easy to find download button and instructions, but Ubuntu has company logos everywhere and a variety of choices for download (do I want LTS or the newest version?). Debian\u0026rsquo;s website has a big download button, but it is for the version without non-free firmware, meaning that users could spend time installing something that may not work, and a new user would not understand why (I know, I\u0026rsquo;ve been there).\nThe URL to the distro was not ranked, I used the domain.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe URL to the distro was not ranked, I used the domain.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/03\/a-quick-look-at-distro-rankings\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/02\/beginner-joy\/": {
"title": "The Joys of Being a Beginner",
"tags": ["Programming",],
"content": "Have you ever player Stardew Valley ? It is a sort of idle game, an improved version of Harvest Moon , about farming and fishing, among other things. When you first play the game, you want nothing more than to advance. You want to have a bigger house, a horse, visit the areas that you couldn\u0026rsquo;t at the start of the game. The further you progress, the more there is to do. Very quickly, you will find yourself rushing around without an idle moment. You will wake up, check calendars and weather reports, tend to the garden, go to town, go to the mines, go fishing, and realize that you need to get back home before time runs out. The fun remains, but there is also a nostalgia for that first day. To be able to roll out of bed, water a few parsnips and not really worry about the rest. This is the joy of being a new player. The joy of being a beginner.\nA certain number of years ago, I was a student. I absolutely enjoyed being a student. There were some classes that I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t get my head around. One of those was beginner programming. Much like when I started playing Stardew Valley a few years back, I was fed up with the beginner stuff. I wanted more. When the exams came, I was not ready. I took my bad grades, and decided that programming was not something for me.\nReflecting on this part of my life, I am now certain the professors were doing an excellent job teaching the subject. I was just not ready to be a beginner. Western culture wants us to be experts and proficient. We need to be fast learners with high uptake bandwidth with innate logic and critical thinking skills. Just being literate is not enough. Would you even bother putting a skill on your CV/résumé if you were only a novice at that task?\nSince those days, much of which I have now concluded were focused on learning to learn, I have, in fact, become slightly more proficient at learning. It is a recent development, though, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it was learning little things related to computers, or living in another country, or meeting new people, or having different jobs with different tasks. Whatever the reason, whenever it happened, the joys of being a beginner have revealed themselves to me.\nPlenty of pompous people produce pithy posts parleying the pros of practising self-improvement and the perfectionment of one\u0026rsquo;s cognitive processes. Learning is life, life is learning, yadda yadda yadda. Rarely do they stop to remind us that, when we were children, we enjoyed learning something new. Learning to ride a bike, learning to play badminton, learning to swim. Toddlers look like they are having fun just learning to walk! But, those same toddlers, once they become proficient, find themselves bored with the activity and demand to be carried.\nIf I were to describe my current skill level in programming, I would likely use the term sub-toddler. I would say it with a large smile. The last time I have had this much fun was when I was first learning about Linux, but this is more akin to when I was learning French at age 12. Each day, there is a new thing, and it is great. It is learning to walk, and water parsnips.\nTake for example what I learned this morning:\nThat is a game made using Python with the Turtle module. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I need to tell many of you, but just in case, this is the description of Turtle:\nTurtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon in 1967. 1\nNotice that is something meant for introducing programming to kids. I am not a kid, and kid is not even considered academic English where I teach. When I saw the exercise I was meant to work on, I thought to myself, \u0026ldquo;really?\u0026rdquo; How will this teach me anything? I have been slowly plodding along learning some Python basics, and now I am drawing shapes like I use to on my calculator in high school?\nIt only took me 10 minutes to realize that I could do this all day. It is akin to learning how to use a Bescherelle . It is dry, it is not intrinsically fun, you would never brag about it, but it gives you some fundamental skills that allow you to progress. Most importantly, though, it is novel when you have no skill whatsoever. This is one of the most captivating things I have done with a computer since getting a Raspberry Pi, or flashing a new ROM to my phone. The steps are few. The requirements are low. But, there is a little voice asking if it will work; when I click the button, a moment of anxiety as it starts to load; and a spark of joy upon seeing shapes and colours on the screen.\nOf course, I won\u0026rsquo;t be able to dork around with Turtle forever. In a few weeks, I will have likely forgotten how I managed to solve the problem and get things to work per the instructions, but I will not soon forget how wonderful it is to spend a little more time than necessary on the beginner exercises.\nWould it be cliché to end with a call to action to never stop learning? To say learning is fun? What about a little, if I can do this, so can you?\nYes, yes, and yes.\nIt should, however, go without saying that being a beginner is not to be frowned upon. In a few weeks \u0026mdash; if I continue down my path of trying to expand my skills, and these beginner exercises get further behind me \u0026mdash; I suspect the quale of the experience shall remain present.\nNow, back to drawing shapes.\nturtle — Turtle graphics — Python 3.10.2 documentation \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/02\/beginner-joy\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/02\/python-lottery\/": {
"title": "Learning about the Lottery",
"tags": ["Programming",],
"content": "I had a busy week. It seems that the busier the week, the easier it is to get distracted by everything.\nAs is the case with nearly every person I have ever met, my head is filled with information that, albeit cool, is less than useful on a daily basis. I remember a large quantity of the dialogue from Transformers: The Movie (1986), and bits and pieces of my high school AP math classes, for example.\nThis week, a student asked about the chances of randomly guessing their way to a perfect score on a multiple choice test. I don\u0026rsquo;t know why they would ask the English teacher, but my brain gave them the answer:\nIf there are 200 multiple choice questions with 4 options each\u0026hellip;\n$$\\frac{1}{4^{200}} = \\frac{1}{2.58224987809e+120}$$\nThat is a big number, and it put them on the path to studying.\nUnfortunately, it put me on the path to thinking about the lottery.\nI come from the Maritimes , in Canada. We have a lottery there called Lotto 6/49 . As the name suggests, you choose 6 numbers out of 49 possible numbers.\nSo, I sat with my calculator (i.e. computer) and started figuring things out with a little help from the web\u0026hellip;\nCalculating Chances and Combinations The formula for calculating chances looks like this:\n$$C(n,r) = \\frac{n!}{r!(n-r)!}$$\nThis might be called the r-combination or \u0026ldquo;n choose r\u0026rdquo; or the binomial coefficient.\nThe formula gives us the number of ways a sample of r elements can be obtained from a larger set of n distinguishable objects, where order does not matter and repetitions are not allowed.\nUsing all 49 numbers $$\\begin{align*}C(n,r) \u0026amp;= \\frac{49!}{6!(49-6)!} \\cr \u0026amp;=13,983,816\\end{align*}$$\nThere are 13,983,816 possible combinations. You would have one chance in 13,983,816 of guessing this number.\nUsing only Odd Numbers There are 25 odd numbers between 1 and 49, so there are 177,100 possible combinations.\n$$\\begin{align*}C(n_\\text{odd},r) \u0026amp;= \\frac{25!}{6!(25-6)!} \\cr \u0026amp;=177,100\\end{align*}$$\n13,983,816 (total possible combinations) - 177,100 (possible combinations with odd numbers) = 13,806,716 losing combinations! That doesn\u0026rsquo;t bode well.\nUsing only Even Numbers There are 24 even numbers, so, 134,596 possible combinations.\n$$\\begin{align*}C(n_\\text{even},r) \u0026amp;= \\frac{24!}{6!(24-6)!} \\cr \u0026amp;=134,596\\end{align*}$$\nThat leaves us 13,849,220 losing combinations. Again, not great.\nUsing 3 Odds and 3 Evens According to How to Win the Lotto 6/49 According To Math , you can choose 3 odd and 3 even numbers to up your chances.\nThe author states there are 4,655,200 ways to win.\nWhile I can see that that number is the product of these r-combinations:\n$$\\begin{align*} \\frac{25!}{3!(25-3)!} \\times \\frac{24!}{3!(24-3)!} = 4,655,200\\end{align*}$$\nI am unsure of the logic here. I believe it, but I admit that I lost some interest at this point.\nAnd\u0026hellip; my interest went in another direction.\nHow long would it take to win? (and what would it cost?!)\nLotto 6/49 has two draws per week. A single \u0026ldquo;line\u0026rdquo; or chance costs $3.00 CAD.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s imagine I will play one line per draw and play the same numbers for both of those draws.\nAnd, let\u0026rsquo;s also imagine that the payout never changes and is based on the payout from 29 January 2022 :\nMatch Prize 6 Mains $7,102,956.40 5 Mains + Bonus $60,724.30 5 Mains $2,595.10 4 Mains $87.10 3 Mains $10.00 2 Mains + Bonus $5.00 2 Mains Free Play (=$3.00) I slapped together some sloppy Python, which I am only in the process of learning, so be kind:\nimport random import babel.numbers # 6/49 ASK FOR 6 NUMBERS BETWEEN 1 AND 49 (Inclusive) YOURNUMBERS = [] YOURBONUS = 0 print(\u0026#34;Choose 6 numbers between 1 and 49\u0026#34;) x = 1 while x != 7: CHOICE = input(f\u0026#34;Number {x}/6: \u0026#34;) if int(CHOICE) \u0026lt;= 49 and CHOICE not in YOURNUMBERS: YOURNUMBERS.append(CHOICE) x += 1 else: pass # Get a Bonus while True: RANDOM49 = random.randint(1, 49) if RANDOM49 not in YOURNUMBERS: YOURBONUS = RANDOM49 break else: continue print(f\u0026#34;Your Bonus is {YOURBONUS}\u0026#34;) # Payout Calculations WINNING_BONUS = 0 PURCHASES = 0 WINNINGS = 0.0 WINNING_NUMBERS = [] MATCHES = [] while len(MATCHES) != 6: MATCHES.clear() WINNING_NUMBERS.clear() y = 1 while y != 7: CHOICE = random.randint(1, 49) if str(CHOICE) not in WINNING_NUMBERS: WINNING_NUMBERS.append(str(CHOICE)) y += 1 while True: RANDOM49 = random.randint(1, 49) if RANDOM49 not in WINNING_NUMBERS: WINNING_BONUS = RANDOM49 break else: continue for num in WINNING_NUMBERS: if num in YOURNUMBERS: MATCHES.append(num) if len(MATCHES) == 0: WINNINGS += 0 if len(MATCHES) == 1: WINNINGS += 0 if len(MATCHES) == 2 and YOURBONUS == WINNING_BONUS: WINNINGS += 5 if len(MATCHES) == 2 and YOURBONUS != WINNING_BONUS: WINNINGS += 3 if len(MATCHES) == 3: WINNINGS += 10 if len(MATCHES) == 4: WINNINGS += 87.10 if len(MATCHES) == 5 and YOURBONUS == WINNING_BONUS: WINNINGS += 2_595.10 if len(MATCHES) == 5 and YOURBONUS != WINNING_BONUS: WINNINGS += 60_724.30 if len(MATCHES) == 6: WINNINGS += 7_102_956.40 PURCHASES += 1 # print(PLAYS) TOTALCOST = babel.numbers.format_currency(PURCHASES * 3, \u0026#34;CAD\u0026#34;, locale=\u0026#34;en_CA\u0026#34;) GROSS = babel.numbers.format_currency(WINNINGS, \u0026#34;CAD\u0026#34;, locale=\u0026#34;en_CA\u0026#34;) NET = babel.numbers.format_currency(WINNINGS - PURCHASES * 3, \u0026#34;CAD\u0026#34;, locale=\u0026#34;en_CA\u0026#34;) WINNING_NUMBERS.sort() YOURNUMBERS.sort() print( f\u0026#34;\u0026#34;\u0026#34; My Numbers {\u0026#39; - \u0026#39;.join(YOURNUMBERS)} + {YOURBONUS} Winning Numbers {\u0026#39; - \u0026#39;.join(WINNING_NUMBERS)} + {WINNING_BONUS} You would have to buy {PURCHASES:,} tickets before winning the grand prize. The cost of playing would be {TOTALCOST}. You would GROSS {GROSS}. Your NET winnings would be {NET}.\u0026#34;\u0026#34;\u0026#34; ) And went about playing with it.\nAs I am writing, I just received this output:\nChoose 6 numbers between 1 and 49 Number 1/6: 2 Number 2/6: 20 Number 3/6: 42 Number 4/6: 7 Number 5/6: 33 Number 6/6: 49 Your Bonus is 36 My Numbers 2 - 20 - 33 - 42 - 49 - 7 + 36 Winning Numbers 2 - 20 - 33 - 42 - 49 - 7 + 25 You would have to buy 15,731,789 tickets before winning the grand prize. The cost of playing would be $47,195,367.00. You would GROSS $35,228,605.40. Your NET winnings would be -$11,966,761.60. I have run this script about 20 times. On one occasion I had a positive net win. But, as you can see, I would have to play more times than possible in a lifetime.\nThe Takeaway It is much more interesting to save $6 every week, or only play from time to time just for fun, than it is to try the same numbers every week. I suppose I could also try playing a random set of numbers every week. That might improve my chances.\nThe Next Distraction Adding KaTeX to my blog\u0026hellip; which I will write about in a future post.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/02\/python-lottery\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/01\/learning-python\/": {
"title": "A Month of Python",
"tags": ["Technology","Education","Programming",],
"content": "A month ago today, I began pondering what to do with my time off. My schedule from now until the end of the school year has provided me with a day off. In contrast to previous years, when I would have gone out and found another employer, I wanted to learn something.\nTeaching the Teacher My employer provides us with training. We just have to ask for it and convince our manager, and it is approved (most of the time, if it isn\u0026rsquo;t too ridiculous). Personally, I have nothing against learning something new. I was \u0026ldquo;school smart\u0026rdquo;, and I really enjoyed my studies. On more than one occasion, I have signed up for training. Three times, in fact. Three times I took the same course: Spanish.\nThe first year started out fine, and I felt some progress, until my schedule changed, and I was unable to continue attending the class. The next year, the same thing. The following year, I took a Spanish course online. It was a disaster. A total joke. Many language courses start off with a test to determine your level, and very good online training software uses computerized adaptive testing to continuously evaluate the learner. The online course I took did not have this option, and the initial test was a multiple choice test about colours and numbers. It was determined that I have an excellent level of Spanish, which is not the case. I completed the 20 hours. It was confusing and difficult, and I learned nothing that I can use in daily conversation.\nLearning Spanish is on the back burner for now.\nI dove deep into the available options. I had several options:\nTake a course provided by my employer Take a course available through the \u0026ldquo;Compte personnel de formation \u0026rdquo; (a French financing scheme for training) Take a course and pay for it myself Learn by myself Taking courses through my employer is an exceptional idea, but I missed a deadline. I began preparing a shortlist on my CPF. There are too many courses to even think about, but I managed to find quite a few that met my criteria (hours, cost). I searched for courses that were not available through the first two options, but found it hard to determine which training courses were reputable, worth my money, or total scams.\nI hesitated even thinking about learning my myself. As mentioned above, I was \u0026ldquo;school smart\u0026rdquo;, but the context is different now. I am not a student, I don\u0026rsquo;t have deadlines or homework. Would I even bother? Hard to say.\nThen, while doing my research and preparing my lists and weighing my choices, something dawned on me. I liked being a student, and I need that regular (weekly) dose of learning to maintain a sense of progress. I know from my job that it takes more than an hour or two per week to progress. Finally, learning something new by myself is not that crazy. It is what teachers and professors do regularly when given a new subject to teach.\nSo, that is what I have been doing the past three weeks.\nI am trying to learn Python.\nHow? By preparing a lesson plan, creating my own exercises (so I feel less inclined to give up and just go look at the answers), and presenting it as a course that I would teach .\nYes, I am aware that the beginner teaching beginner thing is very cliché. I cannot argue with results, though.\nA Month of Python These past few weeks have been very enjoyable. I have not enjoyed sitting in front of a screen this much since I first installed Linux. I have been making slow, but steady, progress.\nThe last time I tried programming was over 15 years ago at university. It was Java. This is a summary of how it went:\nExcellent in-class experience with great professors Great labs with good projects and fun TAs Challenging, but not impossible, homework assignments Exams that made me think I sat down at the wrong table! I still remember leaving an exam, going back to my dorm room, and looking through my notes. The last lesson was easy. So, how did we get from \u0026ldquo;Make an input box that asks for your birthday and prints your age\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;Make Tetris\u0026rdquo;? A mystery for sure, and a very low grade. Second semester, it was the same. The exam was far more difficult than the class, but I was ready. I did not produce anything close to a program. I just wrote out everything we had learned in class, and made sure to comment it to prove I knew what I was doing, but didn\u0026rsquo;t know how to get all those things to work together. I got a B+ and decided that programming wasn\u0026rsquo;t for me.\nClearly, I have been putting this off for too long \u0026mdash; both learning Python, and publicly keeping track of that learning.\nLesson Building A favourite class when I was a student was learning about teaching. There was a lot of theory, which is what one would expect. At the time there was a lot of talk about online learning (this was around 2002), and the approach to online learning was meant to be the same as what was applied in face-to-face learning (i.e. instructional design). There are variations on these methods. The one I always found easiest to apply was ADDIE model.\nADDIE \u0026mdash; analyse, design, develop, implement, evaluate \u0026mdash; dictates that I (paraphrasing here) look at my needs first. Well, that is easy. Close to zero programming know-how, so, I start at the beginning. Then, I would need to design and develop. So, I looked at a rather nice collection of books, comparing their table of contents and proposed learning paths to see a common thread. I also looked at what MOOCs recommended, along with the previously mentioned courses provided by my employer and other services.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t follow the model to the letter here. I did not sit down like I would when preparing my real lessons. I did no storyboarding. I prepared no definitive bibliography. A lot is based on the work of others.\nCurrently, I am in the implementation phase: doing the actual work. I have had to backtrack a few times due to unfamiliar concepts that required me to review fundamentals.\nMy personal learning path can be broken down as follows:\nPre-requisites (not actual Python, but computer science notions that I stop and look into) Fundamentals (basics, but the easiest of basics) Basics (where things become more challenging, still in progress) Intermediate Advanced While I know what I will be doing in the latter sections, I don\u0026rsquo;t know how I will feel about it. I do need to go back and review the previous sections and think of different exercises to test myself.\nEarly Success Without even getting beyond the beginner chapters, there are already a few things of which I am particularly proud. They are not beautiful, colourful, or elegant. They work, and they made me think.\nThe Witch (the what?!) If you have ever played the Witch Drinking Game , you know what this is about. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. The game is not as hard as it appears.\nWhat I enjoy about this game is not the drinking. It is an example that I use in class with my students. I have them do this game as an icebreaker. What happens when I describe it is confusion. My students are not native speakers, so they initially think they misunderstood something. Then, when they play, it all makes sense.\nLearning Python is analogous to this, for me at least. I read, I try, I doubt my understanding, I try again, and things turn out fine.\nSo, I gave myself a challenge . It is just a script that generates a dialogue, and I found a solution that works. It is very motivating. Initially, I did not think I understood, or would be able to do it. Then it started working. At the end, I smiled and laughed. Much like my students. A tiny success; an immeasurable win.\nMonth Two As I continue learning, I continue having new ideas. And, accordingly, the idea that I have requires what I planned on working on next. I like the challenge, and what it highlights: despite being relatively good with computers, there are notions that are foreign to me.\nThe goal of learning this is coming into view. If I continue down this path, I will be able to put this tool to work at my job and automate a few tasks. Alternatively, I can show what I have learned to my managers, and they may allow me to develop a course that I can teach. Who knows? Personally, and professionally, I can see how learning one of the most popular programming languages will help me in the future.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/01\/learning-python\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/01\/computer-know-how\/": {
"title": "Computer Know-how",
"tags": ["Technology","Education",],
"content": "Discussions with my colleagues and students regarding computers and knowing how to use them are both similar and different. We have the colleagues on one side who complain, among other things, that the students are useless and lacking in creativity when put in front of a computer. On the opposing side, the students, who proudly claim on their CVs (which I have the honour of reviewing and correcting on occasion), that they are not just \u0026ldquo;proficient\u0026rdquo; with computers, but in some cases \u0026ldquo;expert\u0026rdquo; users of certain software.\nNow, those same colleagues, who are teachers, mind you, consider themselves to be pretty decent computer users. You can probably imagine what my young students think of their teachers\u0026rsquo; computer skills. Spoiler: They are not impressed.\nRecently, I had the pleasure of coming across an article, titled Who is the target user?, in which the author discusses the skills of the average computer user 1. He immediately brings up a table-top role-playing game and the skills one could acquire within the game regarding computers.\nBelow is the table (paraphrased):\nSkill Level Table\nThis knowledge represents the ability to operate and program computers, as well as the savvy to keep up with the latest technology.\nSKILL LEVEL DESCRIPTION ● POINT AND CLICK ● ● PROCESS DATA WITH RELATIVE EASE ● ● ● DESIGN SOFTWARE ● ● ● ● MAKE A LIVING AS A CONSULTANT ● ● ● ● ● BLEEDING EDGE I cannot claim to know what the students know, but I have a strong hunch based on years of watching students struggle through basic tasks, that (with the exception of my engineering students) they do not get beyond a two-dot score. On the other hand, I can make some claims about what my colleagues know. I know this because I asked them. It was fun because the results turned out much like we could have imagined.\nSeveral years ago, one of my employers decided to play catch up and carry out a much-talked-about digital transformation. People were hired. VR headsets were bought. Good times. Things were changing, and teachers were tasked with participating in this change. So, we were divided into groups. One of the groups was tasked with the technology side of things.\nIt was put forward that training was needed. Training in what, though? \u0026ldquo;At least Office and a few other basics\u0026rdquo;, said I.\nQuestionnaires were sent out. We asked about their knowledge of things on this list: \u0026ldquo;The 20 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher should Have \u0026rdquo;. They provided answers, claiming training was not necessary. They were OK!\nThat is exactly what was expected. Much like our students, we consider ourselves to be more proficient than we actually are. How are we to know better? So, more questionnaires were sent out. We asked them to describe their skills as weak, intermediate, or very good. Most ranked themselves as intermediate and very good with Word and PowerPoint, Excel had some weaker users.\nWe then asked specific questions about the software. Things like, \u0026ldquo;Do you know how to include a Table of Contents automatically?\u0026rdquo; (65% no) and \u0026ldquo;Do you know how to include a bibliography in a document?\u0026rdquo; (77% no). Excel, being the most difficult and least used, had mostly negative responses. PowerPoint got off easy.\nThe other questions highlighted the obvious. My colleagues were, for the most part, unable to create or edit audio or video files, and certainly had no idea how to share large files on the Internet. Screencasting was probably a mean question to ask too.\nAlmost 60% of my colleagues were still using DVDs in class!\nI could go on. I will sum up the pages and pages of questionnaires and responses and analysis for you: they all asked for training.\nThey were (and might still be) somewhere between one and two dots on our skill assessment chart above.\nMy students, the next generation, the Zeds, are supposed to be \u0026ldquo;digital natives\u0026rdquo; (that term is one of my pet peeves, by the way), but, study after study proves that it means nothing:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve heard it before: Today\u0026rsquo;s kids are “digital natives,” raised in a world of technology that they know like the back of their hand. As it turns out, that\u0026rsquo;s not necessarily true about Generation Z (the demographic cohort following the millennials born in the mid- to late 1990s).\nResults were recently released from the International Computer and Information Literacy 2018 study, and they were sobering: Only 2 percent of students scored at the highest levels implied by digital native status, and only another 19 percent of the 42,000 students assessed in 14 countries and educational systems could work independently with computers as information-gathering and management tools. 2\nThe \u0026ldquo;International Computer and Information Literacy 2018 study \u0026rdquo; mentioned above is a fascinating read.\nNow, back to the dots\u0026hellip;\nThose dots I am maybe a two-dot user. I am working on getting to three. I know this fact. I have only met two people in my life who are four- or five-dot users. They are scary when it comes to computers. So scary. Finding that table, with the dots, and the accompanying article felt so nice. But, it also affirmed an overwhelming idea: many of my students will not get beyond one-dot. They struggle with any software that doesn\u0026rsquo;t give them a template to work with, they don\u0026rsquo;t bother looking through menus to see what the software can do. They don\u0026rsquo;t use their computers for more than typing and Netflix.\nThe nice part is what I want to focus on to wrap things up.\nI have always liked computers. When I was younger it was the buttons and screen combination. Press a button, see a result. Just typing out things that didn\u0026rsquo;t need to be typed out was pleasing when I was young. Too bad I had to wait until I was 15 or 16 to have a computer in my house! I didn\u0026rsquo;t imagine I would ever bother with programming after university, but, as I mentioned above, it is something I am working on.\nWhat if I get to three-dots?\nWell, that\u0026rsquo;s the neat part. There are still more dots to get.\nSee Nate. \u0026ldquo;Who Is the Target User?\u0026rdquo; Adventures in Linux and KDE. November 30, 2021. https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/29/who-is-the-target-user/ .\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nSee Strauss, V. \u0026ldquo;Today\u0026rsquo;s kids might be digital natives — but a new study shows they aren\u0026rsquo;t close to being computer literate\u0026rdquo; The Washington Post. 19 November, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/11/16/todays-kids-may-be-digital-natives-new-study-shows-they-arent-close-being-computer-literate/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2022\/01\/computer-know-how\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/2021\/": {
"title": "2021",
"tags": ["Listicle","EOY",],
"content": "Satisfied.\nI feel satisfied.\nDid I do everything I planned?\nNo. Far from it.\nWhat do I feel satisfied?\nBecause. That\u0026rsquo;s why. Just, because.\n2021 felt like the fastest year ever. It flew by. I gave myself different things to do. I didn\u0026rsquo;t fully complete them, but I had a good time learning about these things.\nBut first!\nI am a music person. I like listening to new music whenever I have the chance. So, I will start off with my\u0026hellip;\nMusic Recommendations Off the top of my head, here are a few albums that I listened to a lot this year:\nArchspire - Bleed the Future (Link ) Aquilus - Bellum I (Link ) BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory (Link ) The Bug - Fire (Link ) The Bug feat. Williamson, Jason - Treetop (Link ) Ekulu - Unscrew My Head (Link ) Hollywood Burns - The Age of the Saucers (Link ) IDLES - CRAWLER (Link ) Ishihara, Shigeru - TEWARI (Link ) The Masamune - The Masamune (Link ) Mastodon - Hushed and Grim (Link ) Necrofier - Prophecies of Eternal Darkness (Link ) 박혜진 (Park, Hye-jin) - Before I Die (Link ) Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life (Link ) Radiohead - KID A MNESIA (Link ) Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs (Link ) Tipper - Insolito (Link ) Youth Code / King Yosef - A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression (Link ) ZillaKami - DOGBOY (Link ) Most of these albums can be found on Bandcamp . Consider waiting until the next Bandcamp Friday, so you can support the artist.\nThings I tried The Fediverse Not being the most social person in the world does not mean I don\u0026rsquo;t need some sort of social network.\nUpon discovering Mastodon, and the different instances, I jumped on the Fosstodon instance. I will probably stay put there. I haven\u0026rsquo;t looked at other instances, but there might be one that makes more sense for me.\nFurthermore, I made an account on Bookwyrm, but still haven\u0026rsquo;t left Goodreads. I like their recommendations feature, and knowing when new books by my favourite authors are released.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t bothered with Pixelfed yet, but I might next year.\nBlogging, Hosting, etc. I got out an old Raspberry Pi and, with much help, got Nginx serving a Hugo blog. Then I paid a couple Euros for a domain name.\nThat domain will expire in about a month, and I won\u0026rsquo;t renew. I don\u0026rsquo;t blog enough, and srht has a nice hosting solution.\nI fiddled with the Gemini protocol. Awesome fun. Easy too. For now, since I have unplugged my Pi, the server is gone. Maybe I will bring it back to life in 2022.\nTime Wasting I read some books. Not as many as previous years. I could probably make a very short book list. Right now, I recommend Andy Weir\u0026rsquo;s Project Hail Mary and Martha Wells\u0026rsquo; Fugitive Telemetry.\nI tried to watch all of King of the Hill. Mike Judge\u0026rsquo;s amazing animated series from the 90s. I laughed so hard. The jokes still work today. I haven\u0026rsquo;t finished it yet. It is 13 seasons and a few bonus episodes. Some of the subjects he touches on are still debated today.\nI used a Raspberry Pi 400 as my main computer for the better part of a year. It lead me to find new ways to waste time, like recreating my dozens of PPT lessons as Beamer slides. Totally worth it, except now I need to figure out LaTeX. Pandoc is awesome, but there are some occasions when I need a little more flexibility.\nExcellent time-wasting indeed!\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s next? It is time to learn something. After making a longlist, and a shortlist, I have decided that 2022 is the year for me to learn a little programming.\nThe \u0026ldquo;how to learn\u0026rdquo; part came to me in a discussion with some colleagues, when they asked me how I know about [something]. I responded that I had to learn it to be able to teach it, because that is my job. That was the lightbulb moment.\nIn order for me to learn, I am going to pretend that I have to teach the subject.\nThe subject is Python.\nIn order to keep things organized, I have started doing something over on framagit codeberg.\nIf you click on over to my \u0026ldquo;Learning Python\u0026rdquo; project you will get my full name, and a look at my personal learning path for Python. Once things really get rolling, I will probably come bother the Fediverse for some original challenges.\nThe goal of this is purely personal, but if I can also put something on my CV, why not, right?\nHappy New Year to everyone who made it this far.\nBe safe, and have fun.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/2021\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/guide-pandoc-cv\/": {
"title": "Making my CV with Markdown didn\u0027t turn out as expected...",
"tags": ["Pandoc","Markdown","Guide",],
"content": "You\u0026rsquo;ve been there.\nIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t, you will be.\nA lead on a job! Hurrah! Get out the old CV (or résumé) and drag and drop, and Bob\u0026rsquo;s your uncle.\nAlas, a minor error is noted. Easy fix. Open up the file in your favourite word processor, no muss, no fuss.\nThe file loads and\u0026hellip; That\u0026rsquo;s not right. Everything is out of place. It was just a few weeks ago that I changed this. No major updates have occurred since. Why is that like that?\nWhy can\u0026rsquo;t we just send plain text files as CVs? They are just going to be fed into some Applicant tracking system anyway.\nAnd so begins the easiest thing. Making a CV using a text editor.\nAN ATTEMPT WAS MADE Right. Open the old text editor, throw in some words and dates, put a little Pandoc spin on it, and share the PDF.\nMarkdown and Pandoc are the two things I use the most on my computer. Sad, really, that I haven\u0026rsquo;t even tried to do some of the more advanced things Pandoc is capable of. But, also lucky. After spending the better part of this past year remaking all of my course material as Markdown files, I have searched enough and seen enough that I saw the problems before they hopped up and bit me.\nThe content of the CV is easy enough, the layout is the little bump in the road.\nI will be in need of columns, and I will need to be able to flush right certain elements.\nThis calls for the multicol package . That means I will have to deal with some LaTeX. In fact, it means that my CV will be some Frankenstein hodgepodge of a Markdown file.\nTHE HEADER \\begin{multicols}{2} \\begin{huge} \\textbf{FIRST LAST} \\end{huge} Title \\vfill\\null \\columnbreak \\Begin{flushright} Address 1 \\\\ Address 2 phone number \\\\ email address \\\\ website or linkedin \\End{flushright} \\end{multicols} So far, so good. I have my basic info at the top of the page.\nEXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION Originally, I started out with something like this:\n\\textbf{Company Name} \\hfill \\textbf{City, Country} \\textit{Job Title} \\hfill \\textit{MMM YYYY -- Present} Details, details, details. \\\\ But, it dawned on me that that is a lot of effort. So, I added this to the front matter:\n\\newcommand{\\xp}[5]{\\textbf{#1}\\hfill\\textbf{#2} \\\\ \\textit{#3}\\hfill\\textit{#4} \\ \\textendash \\ \\textit{#5}} This let me achieve the same results with fewer keystrokes:\n\\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021} Details \\\\ SKILLS I am lucky. My skills are\u0026hellip; Let\u0026rsquo;s just say it doesn\u0026rsquo;t take up much space. I have lots of transferable skills, and I definitely know what I am doing. But, how can I, a language teacher, give some proof that I am OK with computers? Public speaking? I don\u0026rsquo;t do conferences. I don\u0026rsquo;t publish. As such, I am able to squeeze the necessary into a few lines.\nGETTING DISTRACTED I did it. It didn\u0026rsquo;t take long. It isn\u0026rsquo;t exactly beautiful to look at, but it is what I wanted: a CV made with a plain text file.\nI was wrapping things up, and sorting out things in my Downloads folder, when I came across the manual for tcolorbox , another LaTeX package that provides an environment for coloured and framed text boxes with a heading line. Pretty soon I was on page 200-and-some, and the notion of a 10-minute CV rewrite was risible.\nTHE RESULT FRONT MATTER --- documentclass: letter lang: en-GB geometry: - margin=1.5cm mainfont: FreeSans fontsize: 11pt papersize: A4 header-includes: - \\usepackage{multicol, tcolorbox} - \\tcbuselibrary{skins} - \\newcommand{\\xp}[5]{\\textbf{#1}\\hfill\\textbf{#2} \\\\ \\textit{#3}\\hfill\\textit{#4} \\ \\textendash \\ \\textit{#5}} - \\newcommand{\\hideFromPandoc}[1]{#1} - \\hideFromPandoc{ \\let\\Begin\\begin \\let\\End\\end } --- BODY \\pagestyle{empty} \\begin{multicols}{2} \\begin{huge} \\textbf{FIRST LAST} \\end{huge} Title \\vfill\\null \\columnbreak \\Begin{flushright} Address 1 \\\\ Address 2 phone number \\\\ email address \\\\ website or linkedin \\End{flushright} \\end{multicols} \\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Experience,fonttitle=\\Large\\bfseries] \\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021} Details \\\\ \\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021} Details \\tcblower \\begin{small}\\color{gray} \\xp{Old Company}{Old City}{Old Job Title}{MAY 1999}{OCT 2020} Did some stuff \\end{small} \\end{tcolorbox} \\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Education,fonttitle=\\Large\\bfseries] \\xp{Univeristy of X}{Shitty Town}{Expensive Degree}{2000}{2004} \\end{tcolorbox} \\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Skills,fonttitle=\\Large\\bfseries] \\textbf{Language}: \\textbf{Computer}: \\end{tcolorbox} OUTPUT CONCLUSION A weekend well wasted!\nI was able to apply to some different jobs. I will make it look a little nicer once inspiration strikes. Not only that, but I will have to get around to learning LaTeX for real. Is that something teachers put on their CVs?\nSkills: LaTeX Hobbies: Latex\nNuance is everything.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/guide-pandoc-cv\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/freak\/": {
"title": "Freak",
"tags": ["Short story",],
"content": "\u0026ldquo;Momma, look!\u0026rdquo;\nA little boy is trying to get his mother\u0026rsquo;s attention. She is staring off into space.\n\u0026ldquo;MOMMA!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Honey! What is it? Mommy\u0026rsquo;s busy, sweetie.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Momma, look, the man!\u0026rdquo;\nI look over to see the mother slide her glasses down and look over them at me. She could be the same age as me. Perhaps younger. Too far away to tell for sure. Close enough, though, that I see her expression. She makes one of those, \u0026ldquo;huh, would you look at that\u0026rdquo; faces. She knows why her son is staring and pointing at me. A can feel other eyes on me, so I know that attention has been drawn.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t take heightened situational awareness. Just experience. Going out in public means eyes on me. Some younger and less accepting individuals have called me names since I was in my teens. \u0026ldquo;Freak\u0026rdquo; is the most common.\nThe mother puts her glasses back into their position and continues ignoring her son, who, from the corner of my eye, is also staring off into space. I continue on my freaky way. Hunger beats humiliation and public shaming. There aren\u0026rsquo;t too many places for people like me now, and walking is a little less humiliating than taking the bus.\nThe sound of boots on pavement catch my attention. Ahead and to my left, I see three police officers jogging in my direction. Like most people, freak or not, I am tempted to glance over my shoulder to see what could be the reason for their speedy response. Having just passed through the square, I know there is nothing that would merit their attention. Well, almost nothing.\nI stop in my tracks and take my hands out of my pockets.\nThe police officers slow down. One walks around behind me. Another approaches me head on. The third stays back, mumbling something into her radio.\n\u0026ldquo;Hello, sir. We\u0026rsquo;ve received several reports that someone fitting your description has been disturbing the peace. We need to ask you a few questions.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Go ahead.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Do you have any identification on you?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I do not. Sorry.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Nothing at all?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. I only have my wallet with me. I am going for lunch across town.\u0026rdquo;\nThe officer closest to me holds up his phone and points the camera at me. He looks at his partners and shakes his head.\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ll have to come with us, sir. And, you will need to be restrained.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I understand.\u0026rdquo;\nFor freaks like me, this is life.\nTheir van isn\u0026rsquo;t far away. Once we are seated inside, they remove the restraints.\n\u0026ldquo;So, sir, are we going to the station or the store?\u0026rdquo; asks the officer who stayed in the back with me. She takes off her hat and looks at me, sincerely, because she already knows what I will say.\n\u0026ldquo;Sorry, officer. But, I think we might have to do the paperwork again.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;It doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to be this hard. We can help you. We can\u0026rsquo;t stop you every week because people are afraid of you. Everyone is losing here. Just let us take you to the store.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t see how this can be a crime. Being different used to me celebrated. Now, I am treated like a freak. All because I don\u0026rsquo;t want to give my money to a company? Because I don\u0026rsquo;t want their damn glasses and phones and watches? Because I can walk down the street with two free hands and see things through my own eyes?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Right. So\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nShe huddles up with her partners for a moment.\n\u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s lunch?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Pardon me, officer?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Where are you going for lunch\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;The café, near the museum.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll drop you off.\u0026rdquo;\nBefore I can speak, the vehicle is moving, silently and swiftly, in the direction of the café. In a matter of minutes, we are there. The officers hop out. I move to follow, getting ready to thank them.\n\u0026ldquo;Oh, no. You can stay here. Watch this.\u0026rdquo; Says the third officer.\nThe three officers walk into the café and come out almost immediately, dragging the owner behind them.\nThey slide the door of the van open and place the café owner\u0026rsquo;s hand on the latch.\n\u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;ll ask again. Do you want to go to the store, or not?\u0026rdquo;\nConfused, and taken aback, I hesitate. Too long. They slam the door on the owner\u0026rsquo;s hand.\nBlood splatters across the inside of the van, and across my face. The owner screams. He looks at me, then the police officers.\n\u0026ldquo;He\u0026rsquo;s not welcome in my café. None of those freaks are allowed any more! I promise! Please, let me go!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Let you go? But, our friend here hasn\u0026rsquo;t answered yet\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nThey force his other hand onto the latch.\n\u0026ldquo;Well, freak, what\u0026rsquo;ll it be? Will we go to the store, or will we charge you with assault and take you to the station?\u0026rdquo;\nFour sets of eyes stare at me. All hateful, but one also pleading.\nI hang my head. \u0026ldquo;The store,\u0026rdquo; I say.\nToday is the day I stop being a freak, and become a sheep.\nJw wrote a piece inspired by this story on his blog, so1o: A Question of Price\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/12\/freak\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/latex\/": {
"title": "LaTeX",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/latex\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/using-markdown-and-pandoc-to-make-a-simple-invoice\/": {
"title": "Using Markdown and Pandoc to make a simple invoice",
"tags": ["Pandoc","Markdown","LaTeX",],
"content": "For the past few years I have had a reasonable solution for my invoicing needs: a spreadsheet. LibreOffice Calc, in my case, is really all you need. I only have to send a single invoice per month, 8 months of the year. You don\u0026rsquo;t need a spreadsheet to do that math.\nI had looked into using LaTeX or Markdown to make my invoice before, and decided it was not worth the time. I saw that there were lots of templates available, some of them even looked nice. And, again, I felt that it was too much hassle for something I can do in a spreadsheet.\nThen I came across The Plain Text Project by Scott Nesbitt . Inspired by all of the different links, I decided it was time to see what I had learned over the past few months.\nI have not learned LaTeX, so things may get a little bumpy. You will notice that a good portion of this document is made up of LaTeX commands.\nRequirements for my invoice I use my invoices for billing one of my employers, a school, as an auto-entrepreneur or micro-entrepreneur. It sounds a little cooler than it is, trust me.\nThe invoices that an auto-entrepreneur uses in France must contain certain information. The pictures and the Markdown that I will use in this example are in French, but you will get the idea.\nAddresses of the recipient and the sender Date Breakdown of the payment (name of good or service, dates, quantity, rate, total) Bank information (in a box) Some legalese An invoice number (in a box) I wanted to present this information as follows:\nMy contact information: Left column, top of page The company\u0026rsquo;s contact information: Right column, top of page Invoice number and dates: Right column, top of page, above recipient address Breakdown below columns Legalese below breakdown Vertical fill until bank information Bank information Small footer in a box containing invoice number and a page number (this might be important if I ever make a two-page invoice) Invoice Frontmatter The YAML frontmatter for Pandoc is fairly complete (see manual ), combined with the fact that some LaTeX can be incorporated, a basic invoice should be easy enough (it also helps to be able to search for things on the Internet, because I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have had the patience to guess my way through some of this).\n--- lang: fr-FR geometry: - margin=1.5cm documentclass: letter mainfont: FreeSans monofont: Hack fontsize: 12pt header-includes: - \\newcommand{\\facture}{2021-001} - \\usepackage{multicol} - \\usepackage{tcolorbox} - \\newcommand{\\hideFromPandoc}[1]{#1} - \\hideFromPandoc{ \\let\\Begin\\begin \\let\\End\\end } --- From top to bottom:\nSets document language to French (use en-GB for English) Sets the margins to 1.5 cm Sets the type of document to \u0026ldquo;letter\u0026rdquo; Sets a font Sets another font Adds some LaTeX commands to the header during conversion creates a new command called \u0026ldquo;facture,\u0026rdquo; which means \u0026ldquo;invoice,\u0026rdquo; changing that number changes it throughout the document lets Pandoc use the \u0026ldquo;multicol\u0026rdquo; package for columns lets Pandoc use the \u0026ldquo;tcolorbox\u0026rdquo; package for the grey boxes makes a minor modification (I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I actually need this?) It is possible that you will need to install something to make all of this work. On Debian, I haven\u0026rsquo;t found myself unable to perform conversions, but it is possible that having installed many of the texlive packages helps with that.\nCreating two columns We will use the multicol package to acheive this.\n\\Begin{multicols}{2} Left column content \\columnbreak Right columns content \\End{multicols} To get everything lined up nicely, in the vertical sense, we will need an extra command or two.\nBy calling the \\vfill\\null command between the last line of the address and \\columnbreak we can avoid a tiny issue: without that function, the second paragraph of the contact information, if there is any, will align with the bottom of the column. I don\u0026rsquo;t want that. So, the columns now look like this (again, sorry for the French, I might make an English version later):\n\\Begin{multicols}{2} **BBBHLTZ** \\ **SIREN** : 987654321 321 rue Une \\ 99000 CITY \\ Tél : 06.06.99.99.99\\ [email protected] \\vfill\\null \\columnbreak \\Begin{tcolorbox} \\Begin{center} **Facture Client** **n°** \\textbf{\\facture{}} 05/12/2021 \\End{center} \\End{tcolorbox} \\Begin{center} **novembre 2021** \\ 01/11/2021 → 30/11/2021 \\End{center} **COMPANY** \\ 123 rue Deux \\ 99000 City \\End{multicols} You will also notice that I used \\tcolorbox. That just adds a grey box around that section.\nThe table Using Markdown, we can make a five-column table showing the required information. The first column will be aligned left, the others right.\nThe titles can be bold, and before the total we can add a blank line.\n| **Désignation** | **Dates** | **Qté** | **PU HT** | **TOTAL HT** | | :------------------------------- | -------------: | ------: | ----------: | -----------: | | Class or Lesson | 24/11/2021 | 3,5 | 46,00 € | 161,00 € | | | 25/11/2021 | 1,5 | 46,00 € | 69,00 € | | | | | | | | | | | **TOTAL HT**| **230,00 €** | Some small print It is a requirement that my invoice contain a sentence about taxes, late fees, and method of payment. I have decided to put these all in small print, but they look fine at normal size as well.\n\\Begin{center} \\tiny TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI ◦ En cas de retard de paiement, indemnité forfaitaire légale pour frais de recouvrement : 40,00 € ◦ Mode de paiement : Virement \\End{center} The only thing left to do is the bank account information. Before we do that, we need to tell the document to put it at the bottom of the page using \\vfill.\nBank information The last bit is also in a coloured box, and I wanted it to be monospaced as well. No explanation required here.\n**Coordonnées bancaires** \\Begin{tcolorbox} ``` Bénéficiaire MR BBBHLTZ RIB NUMBERS BANK IBAN NUMBERS BIC NUMBERS ``` \\End{tcolorbox} \\pagestyle{empty} To finish things off, I tell the document to have no page number with the \\pagestyle{empty} command. If my invoice is ever over one page, I can change that easily.\nIf all goes well, a quick pandoc --pdf-engine=xelatex invoice.md -o invoice.pdf so give us something like this:\nYou can download the Markdown file here .\nLinks Pandoc Markdown ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/using-markdown-and-pandoc-to-make-a-simple-invoice\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/ecology\/": {
"title": "Ecology",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/ecology\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/the-eco-conscious-tech-sham\/": {
"title": "The Eco-Conscious Tech Sham",
"tags": ["Ecology","Technology",],
"content": "It is our responsibility, as humans, as earthlings, to do as much as we can to prevent disaster. Companies have been reminding us of that fact for around 50 years now. They claim to hold up one end of the bargain, and have grafted the buzzword du jour, sustainable, to every concept of their business. We must hold up our end, and do our part, for example, by monitoring our carbon footprints and controlling our consumer habits.\nThe tip of the iceberg Jutting out of the ocean of tech is the tip of an iceberg. It is a majestic thing. Get your camera, take a picture, when will you get the chance to see one again, right? Most of us learn at some point that little factoid about how we can only see 10% of the iceberg, so we keep our distance and marvel at these companies.\nApple, a company started in a garage. Google, two guys with an idea to organise information. Microsoft, another garage. Facebook, a bitter college student. Amazing. They grew and grew. Now, they have so many eyes on them, they must make an effort to appease their loyal clients.\nThey have given us the things we want. Sometimes, they even do it for free with their search engines and social networks. They exchanged goods and services, and reap the profit. Profit is one of several bottom lines in today\u0026rsquo;s world. There are also people and a planet involved. Customers must remain loyal, and employees must not leave. The planet should be taken care of as well. Corporate social responsibility, a not-so-new notion, has been a bane and a boon for these behemoths of the tech world.\nSo, what\u0026rsquo;s a company to do when they are told to clean up their act? Make promises, of course, answer to the shareholders, try harder, do better. They all have a plan, those companies. Most of them have come up with the same solution:\nBe carbon neutral Use sustainable energy Recycle something Invest in carbon removal Reduce water usage, save trees Make products last longer Reduce e-waste Be part of the circular economy Fight climate change at every turn Use ethical labour and ethical sources We could go on. All of those are mentioned somewhere on Apple\u0026rsquo;s Environment page . We know similar promises can be found on Google\u0026rsquo;s corporate page, and Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s, and the other company sites as well. They have the financial flexibility to do these things, and it is in their interest to be transparent. Can we trust them? That\u0026rsquo;s not the focus here. Opinions vary on the subject, and we know that shareholders can make things happen, like they did with Apple very recently .\nFor the sake of this post, we will give them the benefit of the doubt. We will say they are, at least, doing everything they can, and at most, honestly giving it their best. The rest is up to us.\nWhat lies below In 1971, we were given the gift of \u0026ldquo;The Crying Indian .\u0026rdquo; An ad, brought to us by Keep America Beautiful, a non-profit, told us that, “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. And some people don\u0026rsquo;t.” We were left with a call to action, People start pollution. People can stop it.\nPure genius. Pollution is not the fault of the producer, but rather that of the consumer. Problem solved, for both parties. In an alternate reality, that would have been the end of it, but as Finis Dunaway tells us in Seeing Green:\n[KAB was founded] in 1951 by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, a corporate roster that later included the likes of Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup Company, KAB gained the support of the Advertising Council, the nation\u0026rsquo;s pre-eminent public service advertising organization.1\nLuckily, for the companies, that sort of news doesn\u0026rsquo;t stir up consumers as much as a new flavour of some drink, or the newest flagship device from Apple or Samsung. In fact, the play-book was passed around. Such a deceptive PR stunt cannot be wasted, no, it must be reused and recycled.\nIn 2004, the good folks at BP (the company formerly known as The British Petroleum Company) decided it was time for us to go on a low-carbon diet, and began using the term \u0026ldquo;carbon footprint\u0026rdquo;, and gave us the first \u0026ldquo;carbon footprint calculator.\u0026rdquo;\nIn 2021, this is laughable. We are too aware now, just slightly less naïve, to fall for that garbage. In 2004, those who saw through the deception didn\u0026rsquo;t have the platforms we have today. And so, once again, the blame was placed on the consumer.\nBP wants you to accept responsibility for the globally disrupted climate. Just like beverage industrialists wanted people to feel bad about the amassing pollution created by their plastics and cans, or more sinisterly, tobacco companies blamed smokers for becoming addicted to addictive carcinogenic products. We\u0026rsquo;ve seen this manipulative play-book before, and BP played it well.2\nFor the consumer, at least a mildly eco-conscious one, sleep deprivation might be setting in.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ve ever tried doing your own taxes, think back to that convoluted task and multiply it by 10. That is carbon accounting, a practice so mind-bogglingly complex that it is hard to imagine anyone but the Big Four consultancy firms, or cloud giants like Salesforce Inc. and SAP SE, doing it properly.3\nWe have been beguiled by 50 years of propaganda, targeted at the average consumer, leading us to believe that we are the problem. We get a gadget, they get money; that\u0026rsquo;s totally fair. And two years later, they release a gadget again. If we take the argument made by Keep America Beautiful and British Petrol, it means (in a way) that by buying the new device, we are dropping the ball. Our end of the deal is not being upheld. They are doing green things, and we just created waste. Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t we wait five years? Why couldn\u0026rsquo;t we buy a reconditioned phone if we wanted something new? Why are we destroying the planet?\nThe twilight zone This dive is getting a little deep, we are well below the iceberg. The ocean twilight zone is full of curious creatures. The world of tech as well.\nThere are a few beacons of light. There are companies giving us options. Fairphone is an example. They create phones that are meant to be repaired. There is also the e-foundation, creators of /e/OS, who sell some refurbished phones . There are also the countless individuals who make the conscious efforts to keep their devices as long as possible, buy refurbished or used devices, make smart decisions, and use their tech in a humane way.\nA little can go a long way. A dim light in a dark ocean can draw an audience. The right company, the right personality, the right moment can make waves.\nAnd then there is this asshole4:\nThat ugly SOB is an anglerfish. They have a little light they use to draw in prey. They are cool, and different, and they can\u0026rsquo;t be blamed for doing what they do. They didn\u0026rsquo;t want to be like that. Still, though, they exist.\nThere are some anglerfish in the world of tech too. And if you have made it down this deep, you will have guessed that it must be companies that have found a niche market in the world of tech in the same way the anglerfish has evolved to hunt in a niche way.\nThe niche The landing page has all the hallmarks.\nAlegria -styled corporate art Minimalist design with white space Some links to social platforms An about us page with a \u0026ldquo;philosophy\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;ethics\u0026rdquo; section They tell us that the \u0026ldquo;understand that what [they] do and the decisions [they] make affect many people around the world,\u0026rdquo; and their \u0026ldquo;products are built to last\u0026rdquo; because they want to \u0026ldquo;lessen their impact on the environment and take a stand against the over-production of rapidly obsolete consumer goods.\u0026rdquo;\nPunkt. anglerfished their consumers this week. Punkt. had them wrapped around their finger because they were naïve. Without warning, Punkt. informed their followers that The MP02 New Generation 4G voicephone would soon be available for pre-orders. The OG MP02 was released in 2019, just two years ago. Now, along comes the New Generation?\nThe New Generation is very nearly the same phone, with a different OS, a little more power, a €350 price tag, minimised packaging leading to a 40% reduction in transportation CO2, and no charger in order to reduce e-waste. No, the older version will not be updated.\nThis tiny example, from a tiny manufacturer of a tiny phone, shows us that no matter how big you are, no matter how good you want to be, you can make a bad decision. Punkt. made a device that had its flaws. Instead of finding a solution, they made a new one. They claim they are reducing e-waste, by not bundling a charger, but will create e-waste if some of their customers decide to buy the new version. The older version will not longer receive updates, so informed consumers will probably not buy it.\nThey have created a scenario where they technically did nothing wrong, and where the blame can be placed on us, the consumers.\nResurfacing Apple does it. Samsung does it. Any tech company that makes a new version and abandons the old does it. The company can maintain their eco-consciousness at the end of the day, we have to make a decision that could hurt the planet.\nThe PR campaigns, the empty words, are what make this a sham. The companies know that we cannot resist a new gadget. That is why they don\u0026rsquo;t do what needs to be done:\nMake things that last a least 5 years!\nThat is all there is to it.\nMake a device. Make it last. Make a new device, take back the old one, recycle it. That is the circular economy.\nStop making the consumer feel guilty because you made a gadget that is newer, better, and faster. You knew they would get rid of the old one. \u0026quot;Ending is better than mending.\u0026quot; That\u0026rsquo;s what Huxley was talking about in 1932.\nThe jig is up. It has been for a long time.\nAn Excerpt from Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images by Finis Dunaway \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nThe devious fossil fuel propaganda we all use \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nCommentary: Tech startups could close greenwashing loopholes - Portland Press Herald \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/anglerfish \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/the-eco-conscious-tech-sham\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/damasio\/": {
"title": "The Brutal New Worlds of Alain Damasio",
"tags": ["Books",],
"content": " I wrote this before knowing what I know now about the author. I will continue to read their work\u0026mdash;because I like science-fiction, not because I agree with their views.\nDystopia in literature is common. The worlds of Huxley and Orwell, when first described, seemed so far away. Today we read them and find ourselves surprised, shocked and even disgusted by how similar these fictions are to our reality. Companies with immense power; governance and leadership leveraging technology in unethical manners; and our social lives falling apart are common themes in many dystopic fictions.\nAlain Damasio is a French author. While he may not be known throughout the world, he clearly falls into the same category as our dear Huxley and Orwell. Over the course of 20 years, he has published three novels, two of which we will look at. Not wanting to spoil anything in the event that you decide to procure a copy, or find a translation, I will do my best to keep the details of the actual stories limited and focus on specific details.\nLa Zone du Dehors was published in 1999, and Les Furtifs in 2019. The former is a story that takes place on a moon, the latter in France. Together, they describe things that have come to pass and things that have yet to pass. We can therefore look at these works as a diptych in which the themes of totalitarianism, social-democracy, mass surveillance, social hierarchy, freedom, multinational companies, technology and control (to name a few) play a major part of the story.\nThings that have come to pass La Zone du Dehors was written in 1999, before the arrival of social networks, before society began worrying deeply about mass surveillance, and certainly before terms like \u0026ldquo;social credit\u0026rdquo; became part of our working vocabulary. This work of fiction can be considered rather prescient today for different reasons. The major theme throughout is tracking and tracing: all citizens are tracked. Their actions, their interactions, their associations are all tracked and can be used against them.\nCreating a Social Hierarchy Much like in Huxley\u0026rsquo;s Brave New World and Orwell\u0026rsquo;s 1984, there is a social hierarchy in place in Damasio\u0026rsquo;s Zone (a place called Cerclon). This hierarchy not only decides how you circulate and where you can go, but it also decides your name. The \u0026ldquo;president\u0026rdquo; is, of course, named \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; and the world is controlled by this person and the other single-letters. The two-letters have a little less power, and it goes down to the 5-letters. The protagonist is \u0026ldquo;Captp\u0026rdquo; and he associates with other 5-letters like \u0026ldquo;Kamio\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Bdcht\u0026rdquo;.\nYour name is therefore your social ranking.\nIt wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be fair, however, if you were born a 5-letter and had no chance of social mobility, would it? So, there is a system in place. A voting system. The citizens rank each other. There are votes or elections that take place and your name, which is your rank, is corrected (Damasio uses the portmanteau of class and caste for this vote: the Clastre). You might move up, or down. It is others who decide. Like something from Black Mirror, only in real life. Like being an influencer, but being treated as special in real life because random people decided you were special.\nObviously, there are similarities here to a certain social credit system we can see in the east. I have not been to that particular country, so I won\u0026rsquo;t attempt to draw parallels. We can all agree, though, that a system that rewards someone for reporting a social faux-pas does exist today, and in that system your circulation can be limited according to your social credit. It is also the basis for our social networks, which many of us consider part of ourselves. Reddit has upvoting and downvoting and a karma system, and Instagram and Facebook use different algorithms to decide who sees what first. This virtual karma-point system has spilled over into real life, where an action, whether recent or not, can result in \u0026ldquo;cancellation\u0026rdquo; and job loss when the hordes of the Internet and mass media decide to wage war, and the companies that employ those individuals fear loss of profit.\nThis concept has become a reality since publication. While the majority of people would never let a system like this dictate who they can be friends with (good for them!) there are some people who do. Since 1999 we have been witness to hate against groups and minorities. Thanks to (and I say that positively) the rise in access to the Internet, we have been made aware of this hate that we once thought rare, or something our grandparents\u0026rsquo; generation had done away with. We can also look at the younger generation and how they treat each other in public based on style or the brand of smartphone they own (look it up, there are kids bullied at school because they have Android instead of Apple).\n(Another real example is the recent arrival of immunity passports for COVID-19. In Damasio\u0026rsquo;s world, the concept is put forward as a method for controlling circulation: certain citizens have access to certain places that others do not. There is a slight difference with Damasio\u0026rsquo;s idea, but the parallel remains: there is a group that can and another that cannot. I will come back to this idea below.)\nFinally, on a larger scale, gentrification has forced some families to live in areas with access to less adequate education and therefore less access to higher paying jobs. Social mobility has been reduced in such a way that it took a pandemic to highlight this phenomenon in a clear and understandable way: think of the students who were unable to attend online classes because they did not have access to Internet or a computer in their homes.\nThe Place of Technology Glorious technology! Praise be to its creators!\nSteve Jobs, a college dropout that lied to his best friend, never programmed anything, and did not know how to build a computer (correct me if I am wrong) is seen as our saviour. Besmirching his name is a sin, blessed be his name, and all hail the iPhone. Mark Zuckerberg, who studied computer science and psychology, created a website to rank students on their appearance and grew into the largest social network, Facebook. This network collects and sells data (through brokers) that can be used by companies and governments to leverage power, and also spread lies. He is power, he is fear. He sat in front of congress and was treated as a peer. He is untouchable. Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world (depending on the day of the week), worked in fintech and a hedge fund before borrowing money from his parents and banks to start a company that did not see profit for years. He pays his workers low wages and expects them to never take a break. Amazon kills local businesses and hurts the planet. He \u0026ldquo;got big fast\u0026rdquo; by investing in infrastructure, some of which is used today as a service by other companies. Beware Bezos, his blood runs cold. Elon Musk is not really a self-made man, and did not really found Tesla Motors. Our image of him is the new cool guy that smokes blunts, but he has been on the scene since the 1990s. Is he a genius? Is it all marketing? Is he just in it for the money? Approach with caution; do not follow on Twitter. In the time since La Zone du Dehors was published, technology companies have become the new oil. A successful piece of technology or software can launch a company or individual to newfound glory and privilege. Amazon\u0026rsquo;s Alexa is a key example, as is Instagram.\nIn this story, many citizens have a small black, voice-activated, box in their homes. Sometimes it doesn\u0026rsquo;t understand what you say, requiring you to yell at it (sounds credible today, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?) in order to turn on the television, make a phone call, or read the news. The generalization of voice commands, to paraphrase the author, is both \u0026ldquo;magical\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;insidious\u0026rdquo;:\nIt had taken away the once common relationship with objects, the hand-to-hand contact, however stupid, with the machine, the buttons, the keyboard that we hammered away on\u0026hellip; We didn\u0026rsquo;t touch anything any more: we spoke, and the world activated. As such, we all saw ourselves as gods \u0026mdash; or as police [\u0026hellip;] The worst is that we developed a taste for it[.] [\u0026hellip;] It had become a common habit: command without resistance\u0026hellip;\nAnother gadget found in many homes is the amazing Mirécran, or Mirror-screen. Today, we have all heard at least one time the term \u0026ldquo;body dysmorphia\u0026rdquo;. In 1999, maybe not as much. Damasio foresaw something. Here is the elevator pitch for this remarkable device:\nYou have a mirror, the most normal of things. In fact, it is a vertical screen with a series of cameras behind it. When you look in the mirror, the cameras turn on and record your face from various angles. The recordings are filtered and retouched by a computer \u0026mdash; often erasing wrinkles, highlighting eye colour or lip contours\u0026hellip; The image is retouched and displayed on the screen. This happens in real time, to give you the impression that it is your face in the reflection\u0026hellip;when in fact it is a video. People buy this, you know! Have a crooked nose, pimples, wrinkles? Not a problem with the Mirrorscreen. \u0026ldquo;Mirrorscreen, the mirror that lies\u0026rdquo;. You laugh, but that is their slogan! I\u0026rsquo;m not making any of this up! Risky, isn\u0026rsquo;t it? And it works, very well I might add, people love it: they see themselves exactly how they want to be seen.\nHow is that not a description of Instagram, Snapchat and any other app that lets you filter and modify your appearance? That would have seemed cute and innocuous in 1999, but now we know what happens when people have access to this technology: they try to get plastic surgery to look like their fictional selves, and the celebrities sue to have unflattering images removed from circulation.\nLa Zone du Dehors also gave us a template for the connected shopping experience, where your eyes are tracked and everything is automatically charged to your account. Shoppers do not look at each other or speak because they are engrossed in their connected experience. While this hasn\u0026rsquo;t happened as described in the book, the other was right about many things. Eye tracking has been used and shopping has been optimized in ways that we are unaware of. We are not going to get to a point where we wear special glasses for shopping, or a little robot arm to pick and choose for us, but we are at a point where we never take off our headphones and keep one hand free for our phone \u0026mdash; this has removed any social aspect from shopping. It has also made the gesture of taking off/out your headphones at the cash the modern day equivalent of tipping your hat to be polite. We also have this now:\nInside Amazon\u0026#39;s Smart Warehouse We know that devices like Alexa, that record us non-stop, and software like Instagram, which can lead to serious social and behavioural problems, are negative. We also are aware that this is a much larger concern with technology: it can affect entire populations.\nLeveraging Technology for Power \u0026ldquo;Information Economy\u0026rdquo; is not a new term, but it was still closer to fiction in 1999 than it is today. In the world of La Zone du Dehors freedom and power are controlled through technology.\n\u0026ldquo;[\u0026hellip;] I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about controlling ideas, gentle propaganda or the idealogical models that we maintain \u0026mdash; what government doesn\u0026rsquo;t do that? I\u0026rsquo;m talking about a more subtle and powerful control, one that doesn\u0026rsquo;t simply cover you from the outside like a straightjacket, but one that comes from you, the root, to purify it. An internal control, intimate, in petto, that acts on the primary emotional centres: fear, aggression, desire, love, pleasure, unease\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo;\nThis is the play-book for politicians today. Use social networks to control citizens. Not directly, but emotionally. The information that advertisers and politicians can have access to from Facebook, to name one, has been used to \u0026ldquo;control the affective components of a motive to action\u0026rdquo;. Marketers use techniques that governments have since used to achieve what one character in the book calls the \u0026ldquo;peak of power\u0026rdquo;: An optimum alienation under the appearance of total freedom.\nTelevision is a notable tool in this undertaking, described in the book as something that \u0026ldquo;conforms more than it informs\u0026rdquo; allowing them to control us. Them? Who are they? We always say, \u0026ldquo;they control us,\u0026rdquo; and this story gives us a possible answer:\n\u0026ldquo;Who are they?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Me?\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You all, me, us. All citizens.\u0026rdquo; [\u0026hellip;] \u0026ldquo;Because some people or groups, due to their strategic position in the social network, boost this control more easily than others. They also suffer from it.\u0026rdquo;\nDamasio did not foresee the social networks that we currently have. He imagined television personalities as having that influencer power. Oprah-level power.\nDamasio\u0026rsquo;s La Zone du Dehors sounds like a call to action when read today. We are getting to the point where more people are asking questions about their private information because we learned the hard way what answering a quiz on Facebook could lead to.\nTechnology never stops. Things improve, accelerate, ameliorate. Since 1999, a large chunk of the world has gone from no Internet or low-bandwidth Internet, to high-speed Internet, to a wireless connected world. We now willingly carry tracking devices in our pockets. We share health data with companies, so they can feed us ads. There are numerous wireless protocols, drones, cameras, listening devices and other connected gadgets deployed around our towns and cities. What\u0026rsquo;s next?\nThings that have yet to pass 20 years after La Zone du Dehors, Damasio published Les Furtifs (\u0026ldquo;Stealthies\u0026rdquo;, in English). While not as blatantly tech-focused as the former, this latter work carries the same message: Fighting against tracking is a worthy fight. This message is expressed through a story that takes place in France, rather than on a moon, just 20 years or so in the future. The themes of the previous work are magnified, with an emphasis added to the role of multinational corporations.\nThe Role of MNCs Damasio\u0026rsquo;s vision of France in the future is one where entire cities belong to companies. The city of Orange belongs, accordingly, to Orange (a telecoms company). Paris belongs to LVMH, Cannes to Dysflix (Disney+Netflix). Outside of France, the same phenomenon: Brussels belongs to Alphabet, and is known as AlphaBrux. The role of the Multinational is that of control. Much like in Huxley\u0026rsquo;s vision, the MNC has \u0026ldquo;freed\u0026rdquo; the population by controlling them.\n[Orange] was born the 7th of December 2021, when 70 protesters from the Take Back collective were crushed under 200 tonnes of rubble. And the 29 families who still lived in the tower, whom they were defending. It was born from the bankruptcy of a city strangled by banks, downgraded to a triple C by the international ranking agencies, and forced to borrow its budget at 18% interest rates; of a city declared in arrears in 2028, abandoned by the State and auctioned off in 2030 on the free city market.\nFreed them from what? Bankruptcy. Bank loans. High interest rates. Take your pick. The cities were sold to the highest bidders. A \u0026ldquo;Free City\u0026rdquo; is free from the State, but wholly controlled by the company that purchased it. The mayor is chosen by shareholders. The cities then privatize services, and offer subscriptions in order to gain access. Certain streets are reserved for those who can afford.\nThe privatized cities are filled with AI-controlled taxis, drones keeping tabs on you, and panhandlers known as \u0026ldquo;vendiants\u0026rdquo;, which is a French portmanteau of \u0026ldquo;vendeur\u0026rdquo; (seller) and \u0026ldquo;mendiant\u0026rdquo; (beggar) which I will call \u0026ldquo;sellhandlers\u0026rdquo;.\nThe sellhandlers panhandle their sales. They don\u0026rsquo;t even beg for themselves, like our old beggars: they beg for their brand, their product, their masters, for a platform floating in the cloud where they will never meet a single manager or see, except maybe on a phone, the start of a head of sales.\nMost citizens wear a ring, which contains their profile, allowing the sensors to know their preferences. Without the ring, you will be solicited non-stop. Progress doesn\u0026rsquo;t stop, however, and a newer and better\u0026mdash;and more expensive\u0026mdash;ring is always around the corner.\nAs soon as you go out in the street, in any privatized city, you are systematically hit by three waves: taxiles, sellhandlers, and drones. [\u0026hellip;] Without a ring, you have no ID according to the sensors, the network. No profile, no preferences, no possible personalization with regard to solicitation or being left alone.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Technococoon\u0026rdquo; and Controlling Citizens Politicians maintain control through scrupulous and calibrated techniques. None of them are novel, but rather enhanced by technology. Different segments; different words; different promises. Affecting and fiction scripting, provoking emotional responses and controlling the narrative, are leveraged to the point of being a weapon. As such, it is possible to manipulate the population into choosing the next leaders.\nSuch a feat would not be possible without mass surveillance, and tracking.\nWithout tracking, control is not possible [\u0026hellip;]. You know it. No sustainable security. And without tracking, our algorithms cannot personalize your experience in the city. How can we give you the city you deserve if we don\u0026rsquo;t know what you like? If we don\u0026rsquo;t know about your habits, your preferred routes, your tastes?\nAnd so, the citizens of these cities wear rings and use apps\u0026ndash;like MOA (My Own Assistant). The publishers behind Les Furtifs, La Volte, even took the time to show us what this is like:\nMOA: My Own Assistant Chilling, if it were not already underway today with our current selection of social networking applications.\nThe choice is yours, however, to wear the ring and use the application. Your choice, until it isn\u0026rsquo;t any longer. You can be forced to wear the ring as punishment if you commit a crime, for example.\nThe citizens of this speculative future live in an \u0026ldquo;electric smog,\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;technococoon,\u0026rdquo; where they remain a chrysalis, and never become a \u0026ldquo;butterfly\u0026rdquo;. They keep themselves there, living their lives in a second, \u0026ldquo;ultimate\u0026rdquo;, reality where they feel they are the masters.\nIn the ultimate reality, an individual can choose the people and animals they see. The first reality, the banal one, cannot be shared like the ultimate reality. The second reality can be individualized to the point of being a product. Gadgets and applications were just the foot in the door, the ultimate reality, a sort of metaverse, was the real invasion.\nLoss of Freedom and Social Decay Saying the words, \u0026ldquo;technology studying behaviour,\u0026rdquo; however common it already is, sounds creepy. Saying, \u0026ldquo;technology knowing your tastes, desires, and anticipating needs,\u0026rdquo; is also creepy, but can at least be useful. They are one and the same, obviously, and not in any way synonymous with \u0026ldquo;freedom.\u0026rdquo;\nIt is easy to imagine a world where the majority of the population is, in one way or another, addicted to something like a phone or a social network. When Apple produces a new device, or microfiber cleaning rag, people line up like automatons getting a recharge. When I go to the park, many of the parents are on their phones. I would be too, if I had a smartphone, and if my son wasn\u0026rsquo;t keeping me on my toes.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s bump it up a notch and give our kids addictive gadgets too. Like a virtual Pokémon or Tamagotchi that they can see, and let others see, through connected contact lenses.\nThe ring, it\u0026rsquo;s like a hand. Losing it, that\u0026rsquo;s an amputation! [\u0026hellip;] [The children] take their virtual toy everywhere, they see it everywhere, in the school yard, on the bus, in the cafeteria\u0026hellip;\nUpdate: The idea of virtual children is being looked into. See the Soul Machines website.\nSome parents in Les Furtifs go as far as naming their children after a company. Why? Royalties.\nHuxley\u0026rsquo;s Brave New World talked about this possible future as well. A future where we are given complicated, addictive, entertainment machines. The machines don\u0026rsquo;t come cheap. You need to work for them, and the update, and the upgrade, and the next disruptive gadget. Technology keeps people working.\nBetween working to pay for new things, and the time spent using new things, we will lose something: the art of the encounter. Meeting new people. Socializing. Damasio\u0026rsquo;s future is one where socializing is decaying, and he is opposed to that.\nThe need to socialize is not gone in his story, though. There are even virtual cabbies that chat to you about subjects of interest. Socializing, meeting, encountering, discovering new things, is the last thing keeping us alive.\nConclusion I\u0026rsquo;ve been working on this little write-up for a few months. A sentence here. A correction there. Over the past few weeks I\u0026rsquo;ve found myself motivated to complete it, but also distracted, by the drama surrounding Facebook . The concept of a metaverse has been visited many times in science-fiction, most notably by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (1992), and is soon to be a real thing. Seoul announced they will soon \u0026ldquo;join the metaverse \u0026rdquo;:\n\u0026ldquo;Seoul\u0026rsquo;s metropolitan government will develop its own metaverse platform by the end of 2022. By the time it is fully operational in 2026, it will host a variety of public functions including a virtual mayor\u0026rsquo;s office, as well as spaces serving the business sector; a fintech incubator; and a public investment organization. [\u0026hellip;] The future of the metaverse is being built almost entirely by companies. Microsoft, Nike, and Facebook\u0026rsquo;s parent company Meta are all staking claims to digital real estate. South Korea is among the only governments attempting to recreate the virtual public square. But if they can, it could expand the utility of the metaverse to millions of citizens whom might otherwise be excluded.\u0026rdquo;\nSome of what Damasio envisioned in La Zone du Dehors has come to pass, and now it seems that the future imagined in Les Furtifs is on our doorstep. I am at odds. The cynical angel on one shoulder has thrown in the towel, stating that \u0026ldquo;we are all screwed\u0026rdquo; between the companies taking over, and the climate crisis. The optimistic angel, on the other shoulder, has his fingers crossed, hoping that we will snap out of it.\nThe optimist, much like Cal Newport argues in The New Yorker , and Ray Nelson in \u0026ldquo;Eight O\u0026rsquo;Clock in the Morning,\u0026rdquo; hopes that we will see things clearly and ask the right questions. There is another way. We do not need to give ourselves, and our souls, to companies . We are allowed, on an individual and collective level, to say no and call bullshit when people in power begin to use powerful, complicated, technology to do unethical things.\nA utopia isn\u0026rsquo;t the answer, or a possibility for the moment, but let\u0026rsquo;s not aim for a dystopia.\nThese books are published by La Volte, an independent publisher.\nAs far as I can tell, they have not been published in other languages. If you want to read them in a language other than French, you may have to wait.\nYou can find more information, in French, on Alain Damasio on lavolte.net . You can also follow La Volte on Mastodon , Telegram and Peertube .\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/damasio\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/punkt-update\/": {
"title": "Update: Punkt MP02",
"tags": ["Technology","Review",],
"content": "UPDATE: THE PUNKT. MP02 IS NO LONGER DU JOUR AND THERE WILL SOON BE A NEW GENERATION RELEASED. THE INFORMATION HERE IS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL 2019 MODEL.\nIn April 2021, I wrote a quick review of a telephone , the Punkt. MP02. This is an update to that review.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s new\u0026hellip; Since my last post on this device, an update has been pushed. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really bother to look under the hood until today to see what\u0026rsquo;s going on.\n\u0026hellip;under the hood? In April, when I checked the number of installed packages, there were 94 installed (not counting the Signal clone, Pigeon). I made a point of noting that:\nAs we could have guessed, it is close-to-stock Android with the necessary Qualcomm bits, a couple Punkt. apps, a single BlackBerry app, and some \u0026ldquo;who knows?\u0026rdquo;\nPunkt. has since debloated the device, reducing the number of installed packages to 79.\nandroid.ext.services (ExtServices.apk) android.ext.shared (ExtShared.apk) ch.punkt.mp02.appmgr (AppManager.apk) ch.punkt.mp02.calendar (PunktCalendar.apk) ch.punkt.mp02.personalise (base.apk) com.android.backupconfirm (BackupRestoreConfirmation.apk) com.android.bluetooth (Bluetooth.apk) com.android.bluetoothmidiservice (BluetoothMidiService.apk) com.android.calculator2 (ExactCalculator.apk) com.android.carrierconfig (CarrierConfig.apk) com.android.carrierdefaultapp (CarrierDefaultApp.apk) com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver (CellBroadcastReceiver.apk) com.android.certinstaller (CertInstaller.apk) com.android.contacts (SimcomContacts.apk) com.android.cts.ctsshim (CtsShimPrebuilt.apk) com.android.cts.priv.ctsshim (CtsShimPrivPrebuilt.apk) com.android.defcontainer (DefaultContainerService.apk) com.android.deskclock (DeskClock.apk) com.android.dialer (SimDialer.apk) com.android.documentsui (DocumentsUI.apk) com.android.emergency (EmergencyInfo.apk) com.android.externalstorage (ExternalStorageProvider.apk) com.android.gallery3d (Gallery2.apk) com.android.htmlviewer (HTMLViewer.apk) com.android.inputdevices (InputDevices.apk) com.android.keychain (KeyChain.apk) com.android.launcher3 (SimLauncher.apk) com.android.location.fused (FusedLocation.apk) com.android.managedprovisioning (ManagedProvisioning.apk) com.android.mms (Mms.apk) com.android.mms.service (MmsService.apk) com.android.mtp (MtpDocumentsProvider.apk) com.android.music (Music.apk) com.android.onetimeinitializer (OneTimeInitializer.apk) com.android.packageinstaller (PackageInstaller.apk) com.android.pacprocessor (PacProcessor.apk) com.android.phone (TeleService.apk) com.android.providers.blockednumber (BlockedNumberProvider.apk) com.android.providers.contacts (ContactsProvider.apk) com.android.providers.downloads (DownloadProvider.apk) com.android.providers.media (MediaProvider.apk) com.android.providers.settings (SettingsProvider.apk) com.android.providers.telephony (TelephonyProvider.apk) com.android.providers.userdictionary (UserDictionaryProvider.apk) com.android.provision (Provision.apk) com.android.proxyhandler (ProxyHandler.apk) com.android.server.telecom (Telecom.apk) com.android.settings (Settings.apk) com.android.sharedstoragebackup (SharedStorageBackup.apk) com.android.shell (Shell.apk) com.android.sim (CIT.apk) com.android.simnote (SimNote.apk) com.android.statementservice (StatementService.apk) com.android.stk (Stk.apk) com.android.systemui (SystemUI.apk) com.android.systemui.theme.dark (SysuiDarkThemeOverlay.apk) com.android.webview (webview.apk) com.blackberry.bide (BlackBerryBide.apk) com.dsi.ant.server (AntHalService.apk) com.dtinfo.tools (SystemFota.apk) com.iqqijni.dv12key (Kika.apk) com.qti.confuridialer (ConfURIDialer.apk) com.qti.launcherunreadservice (LauncherUnreadService.apk) com.qti.qualcomm.datastatusnotification (datastatusnotification.apk) com.qualcomm.embms (embms.apk) com.qualcomm.location (com.qualcomm.location.apk) com.qualcomm.location.XT (xtra_t_app.apk) com.qualcomm.qcrilmsgtunnel (qcrilmsgtunnel.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.callfeaturessetting (CallFeaturesSetting.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.ims (imssettings.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui (com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.simsettings (SimSettings.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.telephonyservice (QtiTelephonyService.apk) com.qualcomm.qti.uceShimService (uceShimService.apk) com.qualcomm.simcontacts (SimContacts.apk) com.qualcomm.timeservice (TimeService.apk) com.quicinc.cne.CNEService (CNEService.apk) org.codeaurora.bluetooth (BluetoothExt.apk) org.codeaurora.ims (ims.apk) Gone are the packages that serve no purpose on a device like this: the call logger, the Wi-Fi login tool, the companion device manager, the android email client and MS Exchange package, calendar storage, quick search widget, the sound recorder, VPN tools, wallpaper tools, and the FM radio.\nI guess my original comment vis-à-vis radio can be struck through as well:\nInclude an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something.\nOh, well.\nAll in all, this is a positive thing. Any device touting itself as something for minimalists should be working to lower the number of apps and packages installed on said device.\n\u0026hellip;my experience The booting is still fast. The device is still easy to use.\nCalculator: Fixed\nMy complaints about the calculator are no longer valid. It works as it should now.\nSince April, my little phone has not gone unnoticed. My students and a few others, are not sure if I am joking when I tell them that it is my phone.\nNew app: Personalization\nIt allows you to add your name to the lock screen. I find it useful.\n\u0026hellip;Pigeon? I gave up with Pigeon. The delays for a message were too long. The scrolling was not as effortless as it should be.\nOnce again, they are aware of the problems, and there is a nice list of them available on their website .\nThe Bottommost line 75% \u0026mdash; very good work overall, noticeable improvement has been made, keep up the good work!\nConclusion and Recommendations Revisited What I said about the Punkt.MP02 still holds true. It is truly a device that I am happy to walk around with. My previous recommendations will now be reviewed:\nCalculator needs to be fixed Notes needs an export feature (maybe with Markdown support) Give the Wi-Fi another purpose (Internet radio? Podcasts? Some sort of management software for our computers?) Include an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something. The FM radio package was removed Increase the volume Pigeon audio and video messages need volume control and an easy way to activate the speaker I don\u0026rsquo;t know if anything has changed here Pigeon should have been called Pigeon Beta or Testing to avoid too many complaints Pigeon needs to work with the desktop app (I haven\u0026rsquo;t tried, but comments on forums make it sound like it does not) Give us a roadmap for updates Give us a place to submit issues for the different apps \u0026mdash; even GitHub would be good. Or, give the community a blog. When the device reaches EOL, open up the code and let us root our devices. Now that the calculator has been fixed, and I have used the device a while longer, I can add a few more recommendations:\nContact editing still requires work Adding or removing of prefixes (like Dr.) More fields A few more notification sounds Make it easier to block numbers ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/11\/punkt-update\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/technology-whales\/": {
"title": "Technology, Ecology, and Whales",
"tags": ["Technology","Ecology",],
"content": "Yes. Whales. But also tangents that have nothing to do with whales.\nWhy whales? On the 15th of April, National Geographic published a feature on their website, Groundbreaking Effort Launched to Decode Whale Language (link ). It is an interesting read; interesting enough that the link made it to Slashdot in their Science and Communication categories.\nIf you are not in the mood to read the entire thing, here is the summary:\nThey want to decode sperm whale codas (communication patterns). That is cool. And it is noted at the end that:\n“It\u0026rsquo;s not about us talking to them, [it] is about listening to the whales in their own setting, on their own terms. It\u0026rsquo;s the idea that we want to know what they\u0026rsquo;re saying \u0026mdash; that we care.”\nSo, the goal isn\u0026rsquo;t conversation, just understanding. It is still a great endeavour.\nHow will they do it? Science, baby! Computers and science!\nSome buzzwords are peppered throughout the article: AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics.\nNo surprises there. NLP is a very cool branch of AI. Looking up the definition, it is not so difficult to understand. But, videos are nice too, especially when they have concrete, real world, applicable examples. This recently published TED Talk gives us a clear example .\nWho is doing this? The Avengers I guess? A dream team of scientists \u0026mdash; experts in linguistics, robotics, machine learning, and camera engineering \u0026mdash; are name-dropped:\nShane Gero: biologist, 13 years spent tracking and studying sperm whales. David Gruber: explorer, City University of New York professor of biology and environmental science, developed robots. Shafi Goldwasser: fellow at Harvard University\u0026rsquo;s Radcliffe Institute, computer scientist and one of the world\u0026rsquo;s foremost experts in cryptography. Michael Bronstein: chair of machine learning at Imperial College London. Roger Payne: a MacArthur Award winner, popularized the mesmerizing songs of humpbacks in the 1960s and 1970s Robert Wood: Harvard roboticist who worked with Gruber. Daniela Rus: MacArthur recipient, director of computer science and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Gruber also did a TED Talk about this very subject .\nAnd, like the Avengers, new members will show up later.\nCorporate Social Responsibility: Greenwashing My personal opinion on the project is very positive. I think whales are amazing, and one of my dreams in life is to see whales. It won\u0026rsquo;t be easy for me because I am afraid of deep water. National Geographic is all about saving the planet and the animals that live on it, so again, nothing negative to say about that. The negative is that I feel like the entire feature on National Geographic is a form of sponsored content. It is a call to action to remind people like me that National Geographic documentaries are available on Disney+. And, what new documentary was released this month, on Earth Day?\nYes. A 4-hour documentary called Secrets of the Whales, a Disney+ original series from National Geographic.\nI watched it. It is remarkable. It has everything we want from nature documentaries: drones, underwater shots, slow motion shots, time-lapse, whale poop, a narrator, and a comment from the executive producer at the end. Basically, it is an Attenborough clone. Except, without Attenborough, it isn\u0026rsquo;t the same. Unless, of course, you bring out the big guns:\nSigourney Weaver: awesome, kills aliens, saves gorillas, busts ghosts, talks to blue people, has timeless catchphrases, narrates this documentary. James Cameron: Canadian, made some movies , likes submarines, executive produced the documentary and talked for 5 minutes at the end of each instalment. Now we\u0026rsquo;re talking! Scientists are cool, but anybody growing up in the 90s knows that a large part of the population thinks that scientists are boring or a source of mockery. Think Ross on Friends or the first few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Give us Weaver and Cameron, who only mentions once that he is currently filming Avatar 2 and 3 in New Zealand, and now we might tune in.\nWhat we\u0026rsquo;re tuning into is visually stunning, and doesn\u0026rsquo;t force-feed us the depressing stuff we know about. There are only two brief mentions of pollution, and two dead whales. It is also a prime example of a tried and true documentary technique: repetition.\nInstead of telling us not to eat seafood, to boycott the fisheries, to stop polluting, Disney and National Geographic tell us over and over again that whales have culture. Whale behaviour isn\u0026rsquo;t learned; it is culture. It isn\u0026rsquo;t imitated; it is culture. It isn\u0026rsquo;t simple animal instinct; it is culture. After 4 hours of cetaceous delights, we get it. Whales have culture. The call to action is indirect, but it is there: whales are like us, and we need to save them. Disney wants you to know that this is part of its mission statement.\nEcology and Technology It has come to this. Getting people interested in something as obvious as saving the planet requires marketing, propaganda, pandering, celebrities, technology, and a subscription to Disney\u0026rsquo;s streaming platform. The money and the technology required to make all of this possible may outweigh the benefits (unless you are Disney and money is one of your goals). Could that money have been better spent on preservation efforts? And what about the CO2 footprint of all of this? Sending film crews around the world for 3 years, streaming it all, storing the videos on servers around the world? We need to hurt the planet a little just to save it. I know, I am nitpicking, but things add up after a while.\nThe Last Drop Every little thing we do is a drop in a glass, including what we do on the net. A drop is nothing. We do it again and again. We let the tap run while we brush our teeth, or leave a light on, or use our car to go fetch the mail instead of walking. These things are visible, and tangible. Our digital activities are drops too, and they are easily ignored.\nA lot of us are aware of this and actively fight against it. We try our best. We choose the eco-friendly option when it is available. It is not always easy, however, and sometimes we make exceptions. We might leave our PlayStation on by accident, or chose the wrong function on our dishwasher. Other times, the choice isn\u0026rsquo;t available.\nOur jobs might require us to use email. My employers remind us very frequently to delete our old emails and use the cloud as much as possible when sending files. This makes sense when everyone in our company is sent the same PDF, because we have heard again and again that emails use C02 and have other environmental impacts :\nA 1 MB email sent to one person:\nuses as much energy as a 60W bulb left on for 25 minutes; emits up to 20g of CO2. This is because the sender and receiver are using energy, along with the data centres.\nMy house has multiple power-strips with energy sucking things plugged into them, but if I unplug them, then it resets everything. This website is running on a Raspberry Pi attached by USB to my router/modem,, and it is never turned off. The computer that I am using might not use a lot of power, but there is a monitor and speakers and a PLC that potentially do.\nIn order to watch that wonderful documentary, it required a computer to make the Disney+ account, a PlayStation attached to a TV, a router/modem, a remote to control it, a server to control it, an ISP, etc. Disney+ has around 100 million subscribers worldwide; that is a lot of drops. At some point, surface tension will give way and our glass will overflow.\nConclusion Clearly, I am overthinking and oversimplifying things. I am not a researcher, a journalist, or an editorialist. I am just a teacher. I like watching documentaries, no matter what the call to action, no matter what the opinion of the person preparing it. The point I am getting at, which should have been mentioned in an introduction somewhere (see, a researcher or journalist would have done just that), is that if a media company wants to play the green card, they should be 100% credible.\nCredible would have been pointing the finger at those responsible for the damage. Credible would have been naming names. Credible would have been refusing to work with people, companies or nations that do this damage.\nIf we ever decode what the whales are saying, it will be amazing, even if we only figure out a word or two. Will it make us, as humans, become better consumers? Will we say to ourselves, \u0026ldquo;hey, this product or company hurts animals, and animals are earthlings like me.\u0026rdquo; Will something like this ever lead the majority of the population to consider the environmental impact of a selfie on Instagram.\nNo. And it shouldn\u0026rsquo;t, either.\nIt isn\u0026rsquo;t the consumer at fault here. Social media companies give us technology that they know is addictive. Media companies make us pay for their services and gain, financially, from our attention. They should be the ones limiting our use.\nWhales have been around for tens of millions of years. They survive extreme conditions. They rely on each other. We rely on technology for too much, and have trouble surviving something as natural as boredom. I hope that when we decode their codas and songs, we will be able to take a step back and re-evaluate our priorities.\nUpdate: See The Dominica Sperm Whale Project for updates!\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/technology-whales\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/privacy-security-rabbit-hole\/": {
"title": "The Privacy-Security Rabbit Hole",
"tags": ["Privacy",],
"content": "Have you heard? The web is crawling with unscrupulous characters. The web is controlled by those unscrupulous ne\u0026rsquo;er-do-wells!\nFor a long time, you assumed your up-to-date computer and phone with ad-block installed was enough to keep you safe from their prying eyes and sticky fingers. After all, you have nothing to hide. Then, you clicked on a YouTube video or post from a friend. Perhaps someone in your entourage gave up the Facebook (shock waves of awe rippled throughout the friend group). A thought coalesced in your brainbox: \u0026ldquo;Maybe I\u0026rsquo;m\u0026hellip;vulnerable?\u0026rdquo;\nWarily, you enter your query on the Google: \u0026ldquo;how to privacy web security\u0026rdquo;\nDrats!\nQuickly you learn that you have already made a mistake. The Google is evil. Big tech is bad. Corrupt! Cronyism runs through their Silicon Valley DNA. Your nascent research has filled your head with definitions that require deep-diving into a wiki-hole. Nobody is to be trusted.\nBut, right there, off in the distance. A twinkling, sparkling, light? A mirage perhaps? Carefully you creep. Yes. There is something. Squinting, the words take form, although you are confused as to how this relates your initial question.\nFree\u0026hellip;Libre\u0026hellip;Open-source\u0026hellip;\nNO!\nYou have leaned in too close.\nYou are falling\n.\n.\n.\ndown\n.\n.\n.\nthe rabbit hole.\nThe sweat beading on your forehead, fingers flying across your keyboard, you act!\nChange your browser. Your email provider. Should you self-host? What search engine is best? What is 5-eyes? 9-eyes? 14-eyes!? Should I get a new computer? Change my OS? Is Apple safe? F-droid? Degoogle? Signal? No, Telegram? No! Briar! Block this, block that, blocklist, containers, threat models, hot single models in your area? Wait? How did that get through my impenetrable system? There is a weak link. But where?\nClick, click, click\u0026hellip; Down, down, down\u0026hellip;\nA hooded figure appears.\n\u0026ldquo;Psst\u0026hellip;hey\u0026hellip;you\u0026hellip;yeah, you! Come here. I gotta tell you something: Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Linux, Github\u0026hellip;follow the money.\u0026rdquo;\nAnd, just like that, he is gone.\nWeird fellow that one, he has been down the hole too long. Got a little tinfoil hat and everything.\nBut, your fingers are already caressing the keys or the screen in front of you.\nFollow the money\u0026hellip;\nNo. No. No\u0026hellip;\nThat browser pockets money from the Google, that site is owned by Microsoft, that one shares your data with Bing, the founder of that one is a massive douche, and a lot of these are hosted on Amazon\u0026rsquo;s servers.\nDefeated. They have won. How do you go up against Goliath when your slingshot is made by Goliath, Inc.?\nYou could join them? Or just stop using their tech altogether? Maybe that is a solution. But, how to keep in touch with friends and family? A phone is all you need. A copy of Tails on a USB flash drive. A recycled laptop that you ripped the webcam and microphone from.\nDown to the local rip-off shop you go, because Amazon is evil, and ordering by Internet requires a credit card, an address, a phone number, an account. Aisle by aisle, you peruse the plastic confections of Asian origin to find your pleasure: a basic phone.\nYou queue up, ready to buy that little gizmo and\u0026hellip;\nNope.\nThat must be a mistake.\nThis one has Google on it. And Facebook. Qualcomm SoC too. Back to the aisle, you go to discover that the cancer has spread to these devices as well. Their fingers are in every pie. This basic phone is just Android. That one even has WhatsApp. Adjacent, you see another section of ye\u0026rsquo; olde gizmo and gadget shoppe: Portable music players. There too you see it. Google everywhere.\n\u0026ldquo;You look like you need some air, friend. Come with me.\u0026rdquo;\nIt is your wise Facebook-quitting friend.\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not strong enough\u0026hellip;how did you do it?\u0026rdquo; you plead.\n\u0026ldquo;Do what?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Get away from big tech? Use the web privately and safely without giving up your personal information to those companies?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Come. I\u0026rsquo;ll tell you a few things.\u0026rdquo;\nYou follow your wise friend to a place. Neither here nor there. Not the rabbit hole, but not not the rabbit hole. They sit you down. They tell you what should have been obvious all along:\n\u0026ldquo;There is no perfect solution.\n\u0026ldquo;If you push hard, it makes you more unique to the companies you want to avoid. You can still be profiled without an account.\n\u0026ldquo;You have likely already done more than most to keep yourself safe and your personal information private, what with your decentralized platforms and encrypted everything. But if you keep digging, you will go insane, because there is always shit to be turned up. And shit stinks.\n\u0026ldquo;It is one big stinky situation.\u0026rdquo;\nStill, you do not understand.\n\u0026ldquo;So, we lose. They win.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. It isn\u0026rsquo;t a win-lose thing\u0026hellip;but if you want to talk about that, tell me something: You quit social media, hardened your devices, blocked cookies and JavaScript and trackers; is there anything that you miss?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;No. Not at all.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;That, my friend, is a very big win. But, by the look of you, this is more of an obsession than anything else. How much time do you spend a day looking into this topic and interacting with strangers on the web?\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Five or six hours. Maybe more.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;That is unhealthy. Stop doing that. Do something else with that time, and you will truly win.\u0026rdquo;\nThe first days were difficult. Your friend was right. It was an obsession, but you did it. Months have gone by since you were pulled from the rabbit hole. You feel healthier, stronger, taller, even. You walk some days, see friends on others \u0026mdash; real friends. You shared your knowledge with your friends and family, they too wanted some distance from the evil-doers. You still read the different articles on privacy and security, but you no longer obsess over every possible point of attack or take the time to comment or reply with your hot take on the subject.\nYou use the Internet; it doesn\u0026rsquo;t use you.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/privacy-security-rabbit-hole\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/punkt-mp02-review\/": {
"title": "The Punkt. MP02 Minimalist Mobile Phone",
"tags": ["Technology","Review",],
"content": "TO SEE INFORMATION ON THE UPDATE, CLICK HERE For the past week I have been using a new (old) phone. The Punkt. MP02. Here are my thoughts on this minimalist designer phone\nIntroduction If you already know about this phone, you can skip straight to the end for my very short review. If you are of the uninitiated, it might be interesting for you to read about the company and the product before reading my thoughts.\nI have only been using this phone for a week. It was not provided by the company for review, it is just a gadget that I have wanted to try for some time.\nFor the privacy-conscious: This is not the phone you are looking for. Read Spy Phone: Hands On With The Punkt MP-02 for more information.\nCompany Punkt. is a Swiss company that makes designer consumer electronics. The company was established in 2008 and released its first product, a cordless phone (the DP01), in 2011. Since then, they have developed a handful of products including mobile phones (the MP01 and MP02), cases for those phones, an alarm clock, a USB charger and an extension cable.1\nEthics play a key role in the company and they claim they only use suppliers wih a \u0026ldquo;proven environmental track record\u0026rdquo;. They also emphasise that they make their products to last.2\nProduct The MP02 is a \u0026ldquo;feature-less\u0026rdquo; phone. Clearly, the picture above tells it all. It is distinctly Swiss in design: Buttons, arrows, a little screen. Black is the only choice for colour. It uses USB-C. You might be surprised, however, to know that the instruction manual for this device is 57 pages long (plus another 23 pages just for Pigeon) and there are security features provided by the immortal and trustworthy BlackBerry.\nAlthough they do not really market this device as a \u0026ldquo;digital detox\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;digital minimalism\u0026rdquo; device, it has been typecast as one. From a marketing perspective, they have made the right choice. Trends are ephemeral, Punkt. products are supposed to be long-lasting.\nFunctions Beyond calling and texting, you can:\nmanage your contacts; set alarms; use a timer and stopwatch; set reminders using a simple calendar; do simple maths using a calculator; connect to Wi-Fi; use the phone as a hotspot; get OTA updates; take simple notes; switch languages; use predictive text; use Bluetooth headsets; send and receive group chats; communicate with your friends who use Signal using the Pigeon app. You can also set hotkeys to access some of those functions without needing to go through the menu. All in all, this is positive (there is some negative to come). When you buy a phone like this, you don\u0026rsquo;t want to have links to Twitter, Facebook or random games that you cannot delete. All of the options, or lack thereof, are present by design. And design is what you are paying for here.\nDesign, Cost, Pricing €329 is what this little chunk of plastic will cost you. Let\u0026rsquo;s say €330 to make things easier.\nMany people reading this knew beforehand that Punkt. phones are expensive. If you are discovering this now and checking the price online to make sure I am not punking you, you may be thinking, \u0026ldquo;who would buy that?\u0026rdquo;\nWho would handicap themselves in this world of constant pings and beeps and notifications? People who have had enough! Remember, there are people out there who don\u0026rsquo;t use email because they have had enough of it. The target market here is not young people. The target is people who want a nice (different) looking device to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. It is the people who do not want to become their phone. It is people like myself, who like gadgets, who have jobs, who take the time to look into the different options on the market.\nWhen you buy an iPhone or an expensive pair of headphones, you are not just paying for the material and the markup. You are paying for the design. Design could be up to 50% of the cost of the product 3. Think about it. Well-designed products are like well-scripted movies.\nUX teams, UI teams, engineers, the whole crew, must sit down and create \u0026ldquo;user stories\u0026rdquo;. Mudita, another company working on a minimalist phone that hasn\u0026rsquo;t been released yet (priced in the €300 range), also talks about the importance of this necessary design step:\nIn order to visualize the features of MuditaOS and create the requirements, we needed to develop user stories - a complete list of all the functionalities and actions that the system needs to include from a user perspective.\nAll of the teams were involved in this process. We prepared a list of general functionalities that Mudita Pure should have, and then divided them into particular applications and tools.\nFor each application, we prepared a separate diagram, which not only showed the functionalities, but also the connections between them and the possible paths that a user could take. In total, we defined 450+ user stories! 4\nAfter preparing these stories, the product needs to be made possible through the magic of engineering. Parts need to be sourced; programmes written; prototypes tested. You pay for all of that.\nIf we imagine that 50% of the price is design, with something like an 80% markup, then the phone might cost about\u0026hellip;(€330/2/8)\u0026hellip;€20 to make! That seems reasonable for an Android device. Yes, you read that right: the Punkt. MP02 is an Android phone (more on that later).\n(EDIT: there is a teardown available on fccid.io )\nIt is also reasonable for another reason. If you price your product low, the perception changes. It also means that more people will buy it. More customers means more complaints. It also makes it a disposable device, which is not the goal here.\nUnder the Hood The phone runs Android, but what is it running? Android means we should be able to access developer options. Developer options means we should be able to inspect the device with the Android Developer Tools and perhaps see what role BlackBerry is playing and how many fingers Google has in this pie.\nSettings - About - *Click on Build Number a bunch of times*\u0026hellip;SUCCESS!\nPackage Name # Description android.ext.services # Notification ranking service (I think?) android.ext.shared # Android Shared Library ch.punkt.mp02.appmgr # Guessing this is the appmanager for the MP02 ch.punkt.mp02.calendar # Calendar App ch.punkt.mp02.registration # Phone Registration App com.android.backupconfirm # Allows backup/reset/restore operations com.android.bluetooth # Bluetooth com.android.bluetoothmidiservice # Bluetooth com.android.calculator2 # Calculator com.android.calllogbackup # Call logging com.android.captiveportallogin # Wi-fi login tool com.android.carrierconfig # Configures telephony features based on carrier com.android.carrierdefaultapp # Carrier toolkit com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver # Registers system and application events com.android.certinstaller # Credential storage com.android.companiondevicemanager # Manages companion devices (Bluetooth, etc.) com.android.contacts # Contacts manager com.android.cts.ctsshim # Compatibility Test Suite: solves problems between versions of Android com.android.cts.priv.ctsshim # Compatibility Test Suite: solves problems between versions of Android (private?) com.android.defcontainer # Package access helper for installing and uninstalling apps com.android.deskclock # Clock widget com.android.dialer # Dialer com.android.documentsui # file picker (I\u0026#39;ve deleted this on other phones by accident, results are as you can imagine) com.android.email # Email for some reason? com.android.emergency # Emergency dialer for when the phone is locked (required by law) com.android.exchange # MS Exchange? com.android.externalstorage # Handles access rights between content providers com.android.gallery3d # Photo gallery com.android.htmlviewer # HTML viewer com.android.inputdevices # Probably does what it says and listens for input devices like the USB earbud com.android.keychain # Provides access to private keys and credentials com.android.launcher3 # Punkt. Launcher com.android.location.fused # Location com.android.managedprovisioning # Sets profiles for device com.android.mms # MMS com.android.mms.service # Handles MMS (even though the phone cannot receive MMS...) com.android.mtp # Media Transfer Protocal com.android.music # Music app (needed for ringtones) com.android.onetimeinitializer # First boot initialisation app (onboarding) com.android.packageinstaller # Package installer com.android.pacprocessor # Proxy auto-config: defines the proxies if used com.android.phone # Phone app com.android.protips # Provides tips on homescreen com.android.providers.blockednumber # Allows phone number blocking (very useful!) com.android.providers.calendar # Calendar storage com.android.providers.contacts # Contacts storage com.android.providers.downloads # Another content provider app com.android.providers.media # Scans and stores media file info for quick access com.android.providers.settings # Settings app com.android.providers.telephony # Provides core Android functionality related to MMS and SMS messages com.android.providers.userdictionary # User dictionary com.android.provision # Required service: is needed when the user\u0026#39;s phone moves from one cell-tower to the next, networking and Wi-fi. com.android.proxyhandler # Proxy handler com.android.quicksearchbox # Quick search widget (useless?) com.android.server.telecom # Manages phone calls, among other things com.android.settings # Settings app com.android.sharedstoragebackup # Works as part of the backup/restore system com.android.shell # Provides shell com.android.sim # SIM manager com.android.simnote # Unsure, but it is required and is related to the SIM com.android.soundrecorder # Sound recorder com.android.statementservice # App for the privacy statement com.android.stk # SIM Application Toolkit: manages the SIM card (contacts, etc.) com.android.storagemanager # Handles storage com.android.systemui # System UI com.android.systemui.theme.dark # Dark Theme for System (is there a light theme?) com.android.vpndialogs # Dialogs for connecting to VPN com.android.wallpaperbackup # Wallpaper handler? com.android.wallpapercropper # Wandles wallpapers as well (useless?) com.android.webview # Webview (useful when there is a CAPTCHA) com.blackberry.bide # BlackBerry Integrity Detection: monitors the device for known security vulnerabilities com.caf.fmradio # There isn\u0026#39;t an FM radio app so...useless for now? com.dsi.ant.server # ANT HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) Server (?) com.dtinfo.tools # OTA updates com.iqqijni.dv12key # I think this is the \u0026#34;Kika keyboard\u0026#34; app...provides predictive text and emoji com.qti.confuridialer # Conference call service; could be removed com.qti.launcherunreadservice # Works with or is part of launcher com.qti.qualcomm.datastatusnotification # unsure what it does; needs permissions to send sms com.qualcomm.embms # background service for carriers to use to send you stuff?; can be removed com.qualcomm.location # Location service (GPS off by default) com.qualcomm.location.XT # Location service (GPS off by default) com.qualcomm.qcrilmsgtunnel # Worrks with the phone dialer app com.qualcomm.qti.callfeaturessetting # Not mandatory; can be removed com.qualcomm.qti.ims # Redundant IMS (?); needed for VoIP com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui # WHO KNOWS? com.qualcomm.qti.simsettings # Allows settings for SIM cards (names, colours) com.qualcomm.qti.telephonyservice # Sound processing for phone calls com.qualcomm.qti.uceShimService # Unified Communications for Enterprise com.qualcomm.simcontacts # Access to SIM contacts com.qualcomm.timeservice # Soes something with the clock; no touchy com.quicinc.cne.CNEService # Automatically switchs between Wifi/3G/4G depending on network performances org.codeaurora.bluetooth # Handles Bluetooth org.codeaurora.ims # Needed for VoIP If you see mistakes here, could you let me know by sending me an email or on Mastodon?\nAs we could have guessed, it is close-to-stock Android with the necessary Qualcomm bits, a couple Punkt. apps, a single BlackBerry app, and some \u0026ldquo;who knows?\u0026rdquo;\nWithin the \u0026ldquo;who know?\u0026rdquo; category we have the package called com.iqqijni.dv12key which, when pulled from the device, is Kika.apk. I am unsure if this is the Kika keyboard app, but if it is the case Punkt. should consider replacing it somehow. It is probably there to provide predictive text features or emoji (see entry on εxodus ). I uploaded the APK to Pithus to confirm that it is a 12-key keyboard from Kika.\nIt is easy enough to disable/uninstall a few of these, and for now I won\u0026rsquo;t go messing around.\nReview There are plenty of review available for you to read. The phone does its job. The newest feature, Pigeon (which is Signal) needs detailing.\nMy Experience This is not my first Punkt. phone. I had the MP01 in 2018 just before this model was released. I was not at all surprised to open the stylish box and extract the rather heavy phone from its neat, tilted, place of rest. The box contained what is expected. The earpiece is nice. It is USB-C and is just a single earbud; I didn\u0026rsquo;t have one like that!\nThe differences became apparent after booting.\nBooting is fast. I knew that I would need to update. I went through the options to find the Wi-Fi options, connected, found the update firmware option and waited.\nIt seemed a little long. There was no true visual to let me know if something was happening or even working. Finally there was a progress bar, then it rebooted, there was another progress bar, and I was up-to-date.\nQuick Tour of the Punkt. Menus 5\n(I don\u0026rsquo;t know why some of these screenshots are tinted green)\nInterface and Experience\n(not counting Pigeon)\nThe main part of the interface is the device itself. It is solid and has a decent amount of heft. I think I may have preferred the texture of the MP01 over the MP02. The MP01 had a unique dimpled golf ball pattern on the back (as well as some other physical buttons). The unique shape of the phone is not awkward to use. The bonus is that it looks nice when sitting on a desk.\nNavigating the phone is not unpleasant. It is actually quite snappy most of the time and there are some animated effects. Using the buttons to get around is intuitive and it the choice to include a special message and contacts button is a good one. Speaking of the buttons, they are a good size, even for my big fingers.\nMoving around with just up, down, back, and OK is not at all hindering\nThere are occasional delays. Since we don\u0026rsquo;t always have some sort of visual or icon to let us know something is happening, it might lead us to think that it isn\u0026rsquo;t working. A good example is when you reboot the device and are asked for the password and SIM password. It is just long enough to begin asking yourself if it is working.\nMessaging and Contacts\nThese are the two main apps on the device. As you can imagine, they work the way we want. The contacts app lets us add all the info we might want to have \u0026mdash; first and last name, nickname, email addresses, address, notes, and phone numbers.\nMessaging on the MP01 was not threaded. It was fast, for sure, but if you forgot what the conversation was about it was a little challenging. Users complained and so the MP02 has threaded messaging. It is better, but the text can get a little tiny. Luckily as you scroll up and down the text pops out and each message is contained in a little call-out or speech bubble.\nThere are a series of predefined templates that you can add to. This is something that most users should take advantage of, especially if you frequently use a word that is not in the dictionary, like the name of a shop.\nThe text input works much better than something like KaiOS, and is similar to what most of us remember from pre-smartphone days. You can input tap-by-tap, numbers, or use the predictive text mode. You can easily switch between languages, which I have to do all the time. I did need to use the guide to figure out how to do all caps.\nThere is also the standard set of characters that you can access with the * key, and the Android Emoji too (by holding the * key).\nIt is a good thing that these two apps function correctly now. I updated my device before use, but when you see the changes introduced you can see that the previous version was somewhat less usable:\nText input\nAn updated version of the text input software package has been installed. User dictionary has been reintroduced. When long pressing either the UP or DOWN keys in a text input field, the cursor will rapidly scroll through the text instead of jumping immediately to the start or end. Several pages of ideograms have been added. Default mode in the Input method has been reviewed and improved in numerous use cases. The apostrophe and quote marks have been corrected on the special characters input panel. Bug entering a new line instead of displaying the contextual menu when pressing the Punkt. key is now fixed. Contacts\nWhen searching for contacts, the original search term is now displayed until the search has been cleared. The contact list now only shows contacts stored on the handset. SIM contacts are accessible in the SIM contacts menu. When using the Call or Message keys to contact a recipient with multiple phone numbers, it is now possible to select the desired number. Calendar\nThere is nothing to say about this app. It is a calendar. It shows the calendar with days of the week and week numbers. That is all.\nClock\nYou can set the clock with this app, and list different time zones. The thing I like about the clock app is the graphical map for time selection. It is a nice touch.\nNotes\nJust like on older devices, there is a notes app. It is useful because you can use it to set reminders. The reminders are then listed as notifications on your home screen.\nWhat is missing here is an export feature. I would like to be able to access the notes when the device is attached to my computer. Similarly, it would be nice to be able to prepare a long note and then send it as a message.\nCalculator\nThis app is broken. My CASIO calculator watch works better. What can be broken in a calculator you wonder? The decimal key, of course!\nIf zero is the first number, you cannot type a decimal after. So, if I want to type 1.9+0.1 I get this:\nThis is because the same button is supposed to let you cycle through different inputs:\nBut, it does not want to let me put a decimal after a zero. That is one of the six main apps that does not work.\nSettings\nSettings have all of the preferences you would expect for connections, setting the date, sounds, installing Pigeon, setting the voicemail number, caller ID, etc. You can set the hotkeys here as well, but I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to delete them.\nThere is a security option that just shows you this:\nAnd of course, the expected Android about info that lets you know you just exchanged your hard-earned dough for Android 8.1.0.\nPigeon A surprise email landed in my inbox on April the 8th. Signal was available on the Punkt. MP02! The version on the Punkt. phone is called Pigeon but is still org.thoughtcrime.securesms. Punkt., as far as I can tell, released no media to show off this feature except for a few tweets and Instagram posts that tell us nothing.\nThe features are there: text, voice, call (no video, obviously). And, it can receive audio, video, and photo messages. Groups work, with a few caveats.\nThe main menu gives you access the the basics, and each conversation has its own menu and settings.\nYou can get to Pigeon with a long press on the message button or through the menu. As soon as you start messaging with Pigeon, one thing becomes clear: this app was not ready for prime time. I suppose the only way to work out bugs is to throw the app to the wolves. This app wouldn\u0026rsquo;t survive an attack by puppies.\nSure, it is great that I can send voice messages to my mother in Canada. And I can receive some pics from friends. How I can get them off of the phone is a mystery for the moment. The app is, however, an exercise in frustration most of the time.\nIf you are having a conversation, you might not notice the problems. But, as soon as you want to look through your conversation, it scrolls randomly. Sometimes you can land on the message you want, and expand it to read the entire thing, sometimes it is hidden behind the input box. There are also instances of the text going outside of the dialogue balloon boundaries.\nThat is not even the bad part. The bad part is that you sometimes don\u0026rsquo;t get messages until much later! So far, while testing with my partner, the difference can be anywhere between 4 and 50 minutes. It usually requires cycling the aeroplane mode to get those messages to download.\nPunkt. is aware of these problems, among others:\nKnown issues in Pigeon v1.0.0777\nDisplaying images: when selecting received images in a message thread, the screen becomes darker. Forwarding a video or document file: this sometimes causes the MP02 to return to the Home screen. Exiting Pigeon: this may occasionally cause the system to freeze for a limited period. Accessing a new message from a notification: the message is highlighted but its font size may not be enlarged. Notifications: these may sometimes be produced with a slight delay, especially if the MP02 is locked. Incoming calls: these may occasionally not be received, especially if the MP02 is locked. Groups: it is not yet possible to appoint a group member as an additional Notifications options screen: this currently has a scrolling issue. Calls: an echo is heard in some circumstances. Message thread: moving through a message thread will sometimes cause the highlighting to jump too Confirmation messages: some of these still appear in English, despite the MP02 being set to a different language. That is essentially a problem with nearly every aspect of the app! What they call \u0026ldquo;moving through a message thread will sometimes cause the highlighting to jump too\u0026rdquo; is what I mentioned above. Super jumpy.\nOver on Reddit, the critiques are similar:\nMeh, pretty unelegant. It was such obvious solution to me to integrate it into the SMS app, maybe with an indicator for Signal threads, that I didn\u0026rsquo;t expect something like this. Breaks all the design principles. Edit: Also, bad usability. I can\u0026rsquo;t scroll through threads properly, making some messages unreadable. Edit2: Also, messages are delivered with half an hour delay. No Pigeon for me thx\nvia /u/gruetzhaxe Bottom Line Outside of Pigeon, the phone is a good phone. Texting, calling, other bits and bobs are working correctly. Pigeon is a step in the right direction. The phone has Wi-Fi, so we might as well use it for something. The phone makes for a very good companion device for weekends when you want to focus on family and friends without being attached to a smartphone. The benefits of this device are somewhat opaque. Limited features should mean limited benefits, but the perceived value of the device could be very high, depending on the type of person you are.\nIf design matters to you, then this might be something to think about. If you want to give someone a nice designer gift, this might be an idea. If all of your work and socialising is done via calls and SMS, and you want to have a designer gadget to do this with, then this is an OK option. Anything this phone does, a cheaper Android can do better. The only difference will be the appearance of the device.\nI like the device, despite what my comment above may imply. I like the appearance and the limited functionality. I like having a very light device in my pocket and I am very happy to have the MP02 because I also liked the MP01. But, I like gadgets. I like things like portable music players, Raspberry Pis, pedometers, calculator watches, and any type of end-user gizmo that I can find a use for. I think that with a few tweaks and fixes, this device could be much more user friendly, especially where Pigeon/Signal is concerned.\n65% \u0026mdash; good work overall with noticeable points of improvement\nIf you are thinking about this device, and reading this, do some research. Get on the subreddit and see what people are saying. Read the reviews. Remember that this thing came out in 2018 and consider other options too. The phone will likely reach end-of-life in 2 years.\nConclusion and Recommendations If anyone from Punkt. ever comes across this, here are my TL;DR notes disguised as a conclusion:\nThe Punkt. MP02 is an attractive device with a purposefully limited set of features that make it wonderful to use. Seriously. It is light and easy and provides you with the joy of missing out that we have all forgotten about over the years. Future updates need to address glaring issues:\nCalculator needs to be fixed Notes needs an export feature (maybe with Markdown support) Give the Wi-Fi another purpose (Internet radio? Podcasts? Some sort of management software for our computers?) Include an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something. Increase the volume Pigeon audio and video messages need volume control and an easy way to activate the speaker Pigeon should have been called Pigeon Beta or Testing to avoid too many complaints Pigeon needs to work with the desktop app (I haven\u0026rsquo;t tried, but comments on forums make it sound like it does not) Give us a roadmap for updates Give us a place to submit issues for the different apps \u0026mdash; even github would be good. Or, give the community a blog. When the device reaches EOL, open up the code and let us root our devices. https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://www.punkt.ch/en/about-us/punkt/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nI don\u0026rsquo;t remember where I read this, but if I come across it again I will update this article.\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://mudita.com/community/blog/adesign-awards-and-update-on-the-operating-system/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nif you want to pull screenshots from your Punkt. MP02, you can do it with adb using the commands adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/scrot.png and adb pull /sdcard/scrot.png\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/04\/punkt-mp02-review\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/design\/": {
"title": "Design",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/design\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/03\/linuxlogos\/": {
"title": "Linux Users Like Lovely Logos",
"tags": ["Linux","Design",],
"content": "NOTE: I haven\u0026rsquo;t gotten around to resizing these images\u0026hellip; Sorry!\n\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t judge a book by the cover\u0026rdquo;\nThis is a maxim to follow, and any one of us can think of examples ad nauseam. For the sake of procrastination however, let us judge the logos of some popular Linux distributions based solely on their logos.\nThis is not an exact science, so one would not expect things to match up perfectly. To begin with, I will outline the meanings of different shapes, then I will look at a few distributions. In additions to the shapes, we will also consider the colours used.\nShapes, Colours and Their Meanings According to different sources, most of which state nearly the same thing (see example ), shapes express meaning.\nThe shapes we see regularly in logos are as follows:\nCircles\nfemininity this is not femininity in the sense of male vs female, but rather tough vs tender, or, if you prefer, forgiving vs unforgiving security continuity protection Rectangles and Squares\nreliability stability strength efficiency professionalism Triangles\nstability ingenuity Vertical lines\nstrength courage dominance progress Spirals and Organic Shapes\nunique inviting wellness The Distributions I am not a masochist, so I won\u0026rsquo;t be looking at every distro. I randomly selected some distros from the Distrowatch Rankings based on no criteria at all besides seeing them mentioned regularly on different social networks and YouTube channels.\nArch Description: Arch Linux adheres to the KISS principle (\u0026ldquo;Keep It Simple, Stupid\u0026rdquo;) and is focused on simplicity, modernity, pragmatism, user centrality, and versatility. In practice, this means the project attempts to have minimal distribution-specific changes, and therefore minimal breakage with updates, and be pragmatic over ideological design choices and focus on customizability rather than user-friendliness.1\nThe Logo: The logo for Arch is a triangle. It is common usage in logos to use a triangle to represent the letter A. As stated above, the triangle is supposed to represent things like stability and ingenuity. In the case of Arch, that could be fitting. While it is a rolling distro, there are plenty of users who state that it is stable. It can also be considered ingenuous due to its nature; minimal but customisable. The choice of colour, in this case blue, is apt. According to \u0026ldquo;The Logo Company\u0026rdquo; (and other sources), it is the colour of trust, dependability, and strength.\nVerdict: There is a bias here, of course. I do not use Arch any longer, but I did in the past. Despite initial installation surprises I had no issues using Arch. Once you jump through a few hoops you can have yourself a dependable operating system. The nature of the operating system is not user friendly, but does force the user to read the documentation resulting in a deeper understanding of how things work; the user gets stronger, in a sense, and the distro does reflect some of that strength. I therefore approve the choice of logo and colour.\nPeppermint OS Description: Peppermint OS is a Linux OS based on Lubuntu, which itself is a derivative of the Ubuntu Linux operating system that uses the LXDE desktop environment. It aims to provide a familiar environment for newcomers to Linux, which requires relatively low hardware resources to run.2\nThe Logo: It is a circle. Circles represent femininity (i.e. tender and forgiving) and protection. The distro markets itself as familiar and requiring lower system resources. That, for me, is a good example of femininity. Relying on an Ubuntu base with some bits from Mint helps with this. I have never used it, but based on their website, the vocabulary used to describe it, the traditional out-of-the-box interface (and the choice of LXDE as a DE) I would expect a fair amount of hand-holding while using this distribution. The choice of colour, red here, is supposed to represent youth, boldness, and excitement. At first glance, that does not seem to represent what Peppermint is about. But, if you think about different companies that use red in their logos (Coca-Cola, Nintendo, McDonald\u0026rsquo;s), they are the types of companies that give us what we expect.\nVerdict: I have never used this distro, but perhaps when my computer gets a little older I will take it for a spin. Judging it just on the logo, I would expect to find something user-friendly with no surprises, that would make an older computer feel snappy and fast. I accept this logo.\nOpenSUSE: Tumbleweed and Leap Description: Tumbleweed is the flagship of the openSUSE Project. A stable and tested Rolling Release, which receives new software each day, and which is basically unbreakable: if a fault occurs as a result of system updates, a snapshot function allows users to revert to a previous system state. Tumbleweed is preferred by openSUSE users as a desktop system.\nLeap is a classic stable distribution approach, one release each year and in between security and bugfixes. This makes Leap very attractive as server operating system, but as well for Desktops since it requires little maintenance effort. Online release upgrades are mostly so unspectacular and trouble-free that the community already proposed, the next release should be called \u0026lsquo;boring\u0026rsquo;.3\nThe Logos: Some variations here, and combinations too. The main chameleon logo would fall under the organic category above, and should inspire feelings of uniqueness and invitation. Having never used any version of this distro, I do know that it has some unique features such as the reputation of being unbreakable. The Tumbleweed logo could be interpreted as having the continuity of the circle family of logos, and the uniqueness of the spirals. The Leap logo, on the other hand, echoes the promise of the distro through its square shape: stable, reliable, and efficient. Colour-wise, the green logos convey a sense of peace and growth, while the Tumbleweed logo leans more toward the trust and strength of blue.\nVerdict: OpenSUSE is certainly unique, so using an animal shape with a spiral tail is fitting. The Leap logo is particular precise in the emotion it conveys. Like with Arch above, the rolling release Tumbleweed, went with a bluish tint to give us a feeling a trust, while also telling us that it is safe and inviting. I don\u0026rsquo;t believe I have ever tried OpenSUSE, but the Tumbleweed variant does seem tempting. I really like these logos, and I think that there was some thought put into them. I say yay.\nVoid Description: Void is a notable exception to the majority of Linux distributions because it uses runit as its init system instead of the more common systemd used by other distributions including Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mageia and Ubuntu. It is also unique among distributions in that separate software repositories and installation media using both glibc and musl are available.\nDue to its rolling release nature, a system running Void is kept up-to-date with binary updates always carrying the newest release.4\nUnlike trillions of other existing distros, Void is not a modification of an existing distribution. Void\u0026rsquo;s package manager and build system have been written from scratch.\nVoid focuses on stability, rather than on being bleeding-edge. Install once, update routinely and safely.5\nThe Logo: I would say that there are two things going on here. First of all, there is the circle. We have already seen circles, so no need to go over that again. Void is about security, continuity, and protection. There is also some vertical lines in the lettering that to underline strength and progress. The shades of green that are used might not be the most obvious choice, certainly for something called Void, but like the circle shape and its continuity, the green speaks of growth. For a distribution that is built from scratch, growth and continuity hopefully mean that Void is here to stay. The lettering is black, expressing balance and calm.\nVerdict: I have been tempted to try Void after reading many different things. The thing that I was interested in the most is that is does not use systemd. I have since stopped worrying about that because there are other things to worry about. I feel that this is a decent logo (based on the shape, I thought it would be an Ubuntu derivative). Not perfect, but certainly well-adapted to Void\u0026rsquo;s promises. Initially, when I first read about Void, I expected something darker as a logo. If these ideas about shapes and colours are true, however, I have no choice but to applaud the designer\u0026rsquo;s choices.\nDebian Description: Debian is composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions, most notably Ubuntu.\nOne of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kernel, the project is coordinated over the Internet by a team of volunteers guided by the Debian Project Leader and their foundational documents.6\nThe Logo: The reddish circle-spiral is supposed to tell us that it is inviting, safe, and forgiving, with a touch of youthfulness. Stability is not conveyed through this logo, as we would expect. In 1993, when the project began, this was a bold and exciting distribution. The swirl was selected by vote after a contest in 1999 to replace the original chicken .\nVerdict: Debian\u0026rsquo;s logo does not scream \u0026ldquo;NEW AND EXCITING\u0026rdquo;. I suppose in 2021 we are used to seeing shapes that we can easily reproduce with InDesign and Inkscape. As a Debian user I do agree that it is a forgiving distribution with lots of documentation and a large community making it rather inviting. I would grade this logo as \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; but in need of rejuvenation.\nLinux Mint Description: A community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu (in turn based on Debian), bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose (by ticking one box during its installation process) to include proprietary software such as multimedia codecs.7\nThe Logo: I guess we call that a squircle . It should combine elements of circle-emotions and square-emotions. I did use Mint for a time and can confirm that, at the time, it delivered on those promises. The ease of installation also lends a feeling of peace (which is green) and balance (the white lettering).\nVerdict: Excellent choices all around based on our colour and shape theories (mint is green, so the colour choice is a no-brainer). Bravo.\nManjaro Description: Manjaro has a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility, and the system itself is designed to work fully \u0026ldquo;straight out of the box\u0026rdquo; with its variety of pre-installed software. It features a rolling release update model and uses Pacman as its package manager.8\nThe Logo: Square. Rectangles. Vertical lines. Strength, stability, and progress. Manjaro is all of those things, like it or not. Sitting at number 2 on Distrowatch\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;hits per day\u0026rdquo; ranking and 28 on their \u0026ldquo;visitor ratings\u0026rdquo; ranking is a good example of strength for a 9-year-old distro. Green is about peace and growth.\nVerdict: I used to use Manjaro. I was never fond of the logo. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want it on a t-shirt or even as a sticker on my laptop. I started using Manjaro when there was an Openbox edition and I absolutely LOVED it. The first time I used it, it was like having a new computer. The installation was efficient. The user experience, with the consistent visual theming, was always stable. Despite my unjust dislike of the logo, it cannot be denied that it represents Manjaro. It is no wonder it was chosen to be one of the default distros for Pine64\u0026rsquo;s Pinebook Pro, for example. Very good overall.\nUbuntu Description: Ubuntu is named after the Nguni philosophy of ubuntu, which Canonical9 indicates means \u0026ldquo;humanity to others\u0026rdquo; with a connotation of \u0026ldquo;I am what I am because of who we all are\u0026rdquo;.\nUbuntu aims to be secure by default.10\nThe mission for Ubuntu is both social and economic. First, we deliver the world\u0026rsquo;s free software, freely, to everybody on the same terms. Whether you are a student in India or a global bank, you can download and use Ubuntu free of charge. Second, we aim to cut the cost of professional services - support, management, maintenance, operations - for people who use Ubuntu at scale, through a portfolio of services provided by Canonical which ultimately fund the improvement of the platform.11\nThe Logo: Circles and more circles. Using Ubuntu is like getting a hug from an old friend. You are hesitant at first, and then you feel protected. Ubuntu is the gateway drug of Linux distros. It is safe. The continuity can be seen through their very consistent update schedule. Ubuntu is a friendly and confident, like the colour orange.\nVerdict: The year was 2006. I downloaded an ISO and burned it to a CD. I booted from that CD and that was when I stopped using Windows. The Ubuntu logo is just right. It is what we expect from the distro; something safe and friendly to use or recommend to friends. Excellent work.\nGentoo Description: Gentoo Linux was named after the fast-swimming gentoo penguin. The name was chosen to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization, which is a major feature of Gentoo. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, and flexible. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution because of its adaptability, in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to the system and the applications they use.12\nThe Logo: I guess it depends on the angle you look at it. It is a letter g, but stylised to appear as a squircle or even rounded triangle? And, there is some blue. I suppose it could be a way to convey uniqueness and stability. The blue tinting could also be interpreted as strength and trust.\nVerdict: I have never used Gentoo. I might have visited the website once and decided that Gentoo is not for me, and I may have been right. Over on Distrowatch the description for Gentoo tells us that it is \u0026ldquo;a versatile and fast, completely free Linux distribution geared towards developers and network professionals\u0026rdquo;. I am neither of those things. This logo does not scream, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m friendly, let\u0026rsquo;s hang out!\u0026rdquo;. In that sense, it is a good logo. If they had gone with an actual penguin, it would have been too inviting.\nFedora Description: Fedora has a reputation for focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies early on and working closely with upstream Linux communities.\nFedora users can upgrade from version to version without reinstalling.\nThe default desktop environment in Fedora is GNOME and the default user interface is the GNOME Shell.13\nThe Logo: Lots of blue. A teardrop/squircle. An infinity symbol. Judging Fedora by this alone, we would expect to find a dependable and stable distro, that is inviting but also professional.\nVerdict: Linus uses Fedora. Fedora\u0026rsquo;s website uses words like freedom, innovation, easy, and mentions that it is \u0026ldquo;created for developers\u0026rdquo;. I have never used Fedora, but I do like their website. It is clean and professional, and uses white space to keep things focused while not being off-putting for beginners. I think the logo is great and not too pretentious. This makes me want to try the distro. Very good.\nRaspberry Pi OS Description: Raspberry Pi OS is highly optimized for the Raspberry Pi line of compact single-board computers with ARM CPUs. It runs on every Raspberry Pi except the Pico microcontroller. Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified LXDE as its desktop environment with the Openbox stacking window manager, along with a unique theme. The distribution is shipped with a copy of the algebra program Wolfram Mathematica and Minecraft: Pi Edition, as well as a lightweight version of the Chromium web browser.14\nThe Logo: It is a raspberry. No surprise. Red, green, some circular shapes. Even without looking at what the shapes and colours mean, most people would expect something fun with this distro. Something easy, or, at the least, something nice looking. Red for boldness and excitement, green for growth and trust. That inviting organic shape filled with tender circles should mean that most users, certainly beginners, would be at home with the distro.\nVerdict: I am writing this this blog on my Raspberry Pi400 and hosting it on an older Raspberry Pi 3B+. It may come as a surprise that I don\u0026rsquo;t think this logo is suitable for the distro. It is easy to get up and running, it boots directly to the desktop and comes with helpful tools, and it is forgiving; if you mess up, you just have to flash the microSD again. But, it is also lacking. Yes, you can do lots of things with a Pi, but this logo is too bold and the out of the box experience is not entirely exciting. I mean, LXDE, I love it and use it on my other computers, but youthful and exciting it is not (unless you are into ricing). My verdict is is \u0026ldquo;satisfactory\u0026rdquo;. The Raspberry Pi Foundation will continue to use a raspberry as a logo, and I hope that as the SBC technology improves, the OS will catch up with the sentiments of the logo.\nConclusions When I began writing this I thought I would be writing more negative comments. Globally, the Linux logos (at least the ones here) match up very well, sometimes extremely well, with the proposed theories of shapes and colours. Whether by accident or not, they are examples of good design. Further analysis (e.g. looking at which fonts and typefaces are used) would be required to fully determine which distribution\u0026rsquo;s visuals are the best. I know I have left out many excellent logos and distributions, but I am pretty sure you can analyse by yourselves. Whether it be the unique styling and calmness inspired by elementary or the hexagonal dependability of Zorin , it is good to know that people are putting effort into these projects.\nWell done, and thanks to all the logo creators and icon makers out there for keeping our desktops looking good.\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppermint_OS \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSUSE \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_Linux \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://voidlinux.org/ \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjaro \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\na UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects\u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://ubuntu.com/about \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system) \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS \u0026#160;\u0026#x21a9;\u0026#xfe0e;\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/03\/linuxlogos\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/03\/pandoc2021\/": {
"title": "The Show Must Go On: Making Slides with Markdown and Pandoc",
"tags": ["Pandoc","Markdown","Design",],
"content": "Notes on PowerPoint This is not about being anti-Microsoft. I have nothing against them. They did something amazing: getting people to pay for an operating system at a time when the average person could not justify owning a personal computer. This is not really being about anti-PowerPoint. PowerPoint has been around since the late 80s for a reason: there was and still is a need for that software. What this is about is the fact that I have had it with PowerPoint.\nI was definitely using PowerPoint before 2002, but for the sake of this blog let\u0026rsquo;s say I became a heavy user around September 2002. This was because I started university at that time. All university students know (well, at least those at my university in Canada do) that if you are studying anything in the arts you will be giving a lot of presentations. By my count I made at least one PowerPoint slide show per week of university (minus, obviously, exam weeks, reading weeks, etc.).\nMy PowerPoint skills grew and grew. I became aware of the deepest secrets of the apps. I willingly helped others, shared my knowledge, and worked with them to craft awesome slides. It was a passion, some might say. But, my skills reached their limits with a presentation for a French class about Raoul Duguay and L\u0026rsquo;Infonie. The PPT file was about 80MB. The sound files were embedded. The slides were timed to advance without any user input, which made the presentation of the song lyrics all the better. The colours were carefully selected. It was magnificent. I guesstimate that I spent about 5 hours putting just the slides together, not counting the research and practice. Who knows, maybe I put 10 hours into that monster. It didn\u0026rsquo;t matter at the time. It was all about those grades and being a difficult act to follow.\nThat was the peak of my skills. It was around 2006.\nSince then, I have stopped trying. It isn\u0026rsquo;t worth it. I am talking about the medium, not the content of course.\nThis is not a guide for students Originally, I wanted to write a guide for students on making PowerPoints. In particular, I wanted to show students how to use Masters in order to make nice slides and save time. Other tips were about white space, using (or not using) bullets, different notions like staying under 25 words per slide. All that stuff we have been hearing for years. I am positive that someone would find it helpful, but lots of students would not bother.\nThe alternatives to PowerPoint today are varied. I myself have used the following software to make slides over the years:\nMicrosoft PowerPoint OpenOffice LibreOffice Scribus Inkscape Prezi Google Slides Office365 \u0026hellip;I feel like there is one missing\u0026hellip; Why Bother With Beamer? Why make slides, at all, is a better question. I love whiteboards. I like it when students take notes. Most of what I teach is very introductory and general. I know for a fact that using computer-based slides is less helpful for student learning than, say, writing on a board, or having a discussion in class. Alas, post-secondary education and slide shows are two things that go together and I must bow to the wishes of my directors and managers. Nearly every class I teach has a slide show to go along with it. That wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be so bad except all of the classes that I teach are 3 hours long.\n3 hours is too long, but who will listen to the professors?\nI have a work-provided Windows laptop. It comes with PowerPoint. I could use that. I also have LibreOffice Impress, which does the trick too. Who in their right mind would even fathom recreating all of their slides in another format? Especially since I have already done it twice! Once, when I stopped using Dropbox and switched to Google Drive and remade all of my slides in that format (not as bad as it sounds). Then again when I quit Google and began the switch back to LibreOffice. I will answer the question with another question: What is important in a slide? The only answer is, the content. After the content comes a very short list of requirements.\nHere are the things that I require in a slide show:\nContent Titles, sections, subsections Slide numbers Images Tables (rarely) Columns (rarely) Consistency \u0026amp; Simplicity I do not need animations, boxes, arrows, embedded media or even emojis. My university has a template that is horrendously busy. I just want to be able to sit down, type a few sentences, press a button and have a slide show. This is possible with Beamer.\nBUT\u0026hellip;I don\u0026rsquo;t know LaTeX.\nThere is, however, Pandoc. Pandoc is a nice little package that converts certain documents to other types of documents. One type that it works well with is Markdown. It is quite likely that you know what Markdown is, but in case you don\u0026rsquo;t it will be used in an example later on (it is dead simple). So, once you know Markdown, you just have to type. Why bother with Beamer? Because, with Markdown and Pandoc, it is much easier.\nRTFM Pandoc, Beamer, and Markdown have guides and manuals online. I would have saved lots of time had I read them thoroughly. It has taken me several weeks to come to a final decision on how to prepare my slides. I feel as though they are, at least, 96% acceptable for what I am doing. The rest would require me to learn how to make a custom theme and style which I am not going to do unless I come across a nice guide or reread the manual (probably too busy to do that).\nThe Workflow I have a 2-step workflow for creating my slides.\nPrepare my content in a text editor or IDE (Geany works fine for me and was pre-installed so\u0026hellip;why not?) in Markdown. Build the slide by running a command (in Geany I can just press F8 and it does this for me). I have shortened it to two steps by making a template file (workslides.md) in my ~/Templates folder with some front matter.\nThe Front Matter There are a certain number of options a variables that can be passed to Pandoc from the Markdown file. After a good amount of head-scratching I have settled on including the information required to:\nhave a title slide with a title, subtitle, my name, the year, my school name, and a graphic; set the colour, theme, and fonts. I could also include the table of contents, but that is not always necessary. 13 lines of text (not code, just text) is sufficient. The rest is all content, which is the important part.\nThe Content Markdown is easy, so all content can be specified with the following markup:\n# Section Heading ## Sub-heading ### Block (sub-sub-heading) * list * items 1. numbered 2. list 3. items *italics* **bold** { height=70% } % that bit sets the image to 70% of the vertical space available, you can use whatever you want but you need those spaces within the braces! [link text](link) ::::columns :::column column content ::: :::column column content ::: :::: +-------+ | TABLE | +=======+ | blah | +-------+ Example I made a fake set of slides for this example. I didn\u0026rsquo;t put a lot of effort in. Don\u0026rsquo;t judge me.\nThe Title Page Above you can see that the front matter does some of the work for me by setting up a consistent theme for the rest of the slide show. There are different types of themes available and this was one of the details that lead me to remind anyone reading this to read the manual.\nThere are full themes (called theme in the front matter), inner (innertheme), and outer (outertheme) as well as the colortheme which can be full, inner, or outer. You can see the themes here .\nComplete themes are (mostly) named after flying animals: albatross, beetle, dove, fly, monarca, seagull, wolverine, beaver, spruce. Inner themes are generally named after flowers: lily, orchid, rose. Outer themes are sea animals: whale, seahorse, dolphin. There are also presentation themes that take care of most of those details. They are named after cities. After lots of fiddling I decided not to use one because I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find a nice balance. All of this information can be found in the Beamer User\u0026rsquo;s Guide .\nIn my example, the colortheme: whale option tells the slide to set the outer colours to blue, along with the block around the title. The outertheme: infolines option gives me the header and footer. The innertheme: rectangles does something not seen in this slide: putting little boxes as bullets for lists.\nOther Slides The slide above shows a combination of an image, a sub-sub-heading, and a list (with little rectangles triggered by innertheme: rectangles)\nThis slide also has a picture and a link. Clearly, I cannot include a video in the slide show. I can put a link and a title card. You can get the title card of a YouTube video using the youtube-dl --get-thumbnail command (if you use youtube-dl). It doesn\u0026rsquo;t look awful and if I am teaching I can choose to skip the video and do something else.\nTricky Bits Most of my slides don\u0026rsquo;t need a lot more detail but I have run into a handful of annoying situations.\nCJK Fonts If I want to write Coca-Cola in Chinese (which I have had to do) I cannot just copy-paste 可口可乐 and be done with it. I needed to add two lines to the front matter to tell Pandoc what to do:\nusepackage: xeCJK CJKmainfont: Noto Sans CJK SC Regular Pseudo-Animations Sometimes it is nice to have things appear one-by-one. That is easy. There is more than one way to do this, I do it by added a \\pause like this:\nyadda \\pause yadda \\pause yadda The slide will launch with one \u0026ldquo;yadda\u0026rdquo; and end with three.\nDoing the animations bottom-to-top, though, can be a pain because you must do it with LaTex markup like this:\n\\uncover\u0026lt;3-\u0026gt;{yadda} \\uncover\u0026lt;2-\u0026gt;{yadda} \\uncover\u0026lt;1-\u0026gt;{yadda} Some Extra Colour Adding text to a colour is pretty easy, you can use the \\alert{text} markup and it will be red. Or you can use \\textcolor{colour}{colourful text} and choose a colour for yourself:\n\\alert{ALTERTED YADDA} \\textcolor{violet}{VIOLET YADDA} Bigger or Smaller Text LaTex has some built-in sizes if you need theme. You can get more info on this wiki :\n\\tiny{yadda} \\scriptsize{yadda} \\footnotesize{yadda} \\small{yadda} \\normalsize{yadda} \\large{yadda} \\Large{yadda} \\LARGE{yadda} \\huge{yadda} \\Huge{yadda} Finishing Up Once the content is ready, it is time for the moment of truth: building that slide show.\nI am lazy so I have been doing this is Geany. My final front matter has changed a little and I have added some things since we\u0026rsquo;ve started. I have also set a Build Command in Geany so I can press F8 and the PDF is made for me without going into the command line. I usually leave the PDF open in Zathura so I can check for inconsistencies.\nEither way, when I am ready I run a quick pandoc -t beamer --pdf-engine=xelatex -o output.pdf input.md and I have myself presentation.\nYou can download the Markdown file I have used here and try it for yourself. Or, download the PDF .\nLimitations and Unanswered Questions Obviously, there are a few limitations to this method. One being that you need to install Pandoc and some LaTex libraries on the computers that you will use for creating your presentations. Another is you cannot just copy and paste an image from a website like you would with Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress. Perhaps that is a good thing, it will force you to think about whether or not you need that image.\nMy next quest will be to figure out how to make my own themes and styles. If you know how or have a nice, simple, guide, let me know.\nUPDATE: Using pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update Conclusions As I am someone who likes to find reasons to plop myself down in front of a screen, it was normal for me to become attracted to something like this. It is neither too basic nor too complicated. I like markup languages, and a simple one like Markdown is just right for me. This process has lead me to be more focused and conscious of what I am doing and the information I am trying to convey to my students. I have found mistakes too. Many mistakes.\nIs this something that other teachers should do? Maybe. If you already have a set of slides, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I would recommend that you start converting them one by one. If you are just starting out and plan on teaching anything that requires formulae, then you might want to consider LaTex and Beamer. I have noticed that since switching to this method, more students have downloaded by slides (Moodle tells me that). I also see some of them using their iPads to take notes on the slides. They didn\u0026rsquo;t do that before!\nEverything you have read here can be found in one of the references below. If, however, you have any questions, or comments, let me know over on Fosstodon.\nFurther Reading Pandoc Manual Beamer User\u0026rsquo;s Guide Beamer Theme Matrix Joel\u0026rsquo;s Blog (if you ever need to include a nice bibliography) LaTex Wikibook ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/03\/pandoc2021\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/guide-reports\/": {
"title": "Tips for Students: Report Writing",
"tags": ["Education","Guide",],
"content": "1 Important Shortcuts (Windows)! CTRL+B for Bold\nCTRL+U for Underlined\nCTRL+I for Italic\nCTRL+Z for Undo\nCTRL+Y for Redo\nCTRL+C for Copy\nCTRL+X for Cut\nCTRL+V for Paste\nCTRL+SHIFT+V for Paste Without Formatting\n(This shortcut is maybe my most used keybinding. It is useful when borrowing text from online sources because it will erase the formatting and any hyperlinks too.)\nCTRL+F for Find\nCTRL+W to Close a Window\nCTRL+A to Select all\nCTRL+RETURN insert a Page Break\n1.1 Navigating in the document can be done with just the keyboard as well. Hold SHIFT and use the arrow keys to select text. Hold SHIFT+CTRL and you can select word-by-word. Hold CTRL and use the arrow keys to move around in the paragraph; CTRL+UP, for example, will take you to the start of the line. Of course, that would mean holding CTRL+SHIFT and using the UP and DOWN keys will let you select text line-by-line.\nNow you are almost ready to type something. Just a few minor things to go over first.\n2 Outline You cannot write something like an internship report without an outline. You can begin the outline as soon as you begin your internship. It will help you keep track of important details, avoid repetition, and help with flow.\nBuy a cheap paper journal that fits in your pocket so you can jot ideas on the go without the distraction of your phone.\n3 Prepare Your Document Before You Start Typing Open your favourite Word Processor. Do not just start typing. Do not worry about fonts, formatting, footers or any of that stuff yet. We are not ready. Several moments of patience will save you some time in the end. You are going to do three things before you start typing:\nSet up the page. That means set the margins if you need to. Set up the page numbers, and make sure that the first page does not have a number on it. (This is in the basic options for footers and page numbering).\nadditionally, the preliminary pages should use Roman numerals, the body Arabic numbering Set the header to a small logo of the school and the title of your report. Set the footer to the page number (see above for more on page numbers).\nSet the language for the document. This is important for spell-checking later.\nInstall LanguageTool (we will come back to this later). Now your Word Processor is ready to go. It knows the language. We do not care about the fonts or the overall appearance yet.\nGo ahead and type what you need to type. Remember, no formatting required just yet.\n4 What to Write Here is a list of suggestions for topics to include in your report:\nTitle Page\nGive your report a title Include your name and internship information Acknowledgement Page\nInclude a quick thank-you (teacher, academic advisor, etc.) Table of Contents Page\nInclude the acknowledgements in the ToC Also include graphs and charts Summary Page\nInclude a brief summary of your internship. Keep this short and sweet. The Body\nThis is the main part of your report. Include sections like: Introduction, Description of the Internship, Organisation of the Company, Internship activities, Reflections on the Internship, Conclusion, etc. Each section of your report needs a title or \u0026ldquo;heading.\u0026rdquo; Your introduction should expand upon your summary and include facts about your employer. You should describe what part of the organisation that you worked for. Your responsibilities should be detailed. Try and honestly answer the question: What did you learn at this internship? You can critique the organization you worked for, but be as fair and neutral as possible. Think about how you performed during the internship. The Bibliography\nInclude an APA/MLA/Chicago formatted bibliography (⇐ yes, formatting counts!). The Appendix (a separate file)\nThe appendix section is for journals, published works, photos, recordings, and any other supplemental material you have. The amount of material you have will differ depending on your internship duties. Try to include some material to give the reader a taste of your accomplishments during the internship. e.g., if you worked in communications, include press releases, ads, or letters you worked on. This is also where you might include an org chart. 5 Set Your Styles Styles are your Headings, Subtitles, Normal Text and Titles for your document. Why would you bother with styles? Well, for starters, it saves you loads of time. For instance, let\u0026rsquo;s say you want to change the font or size of all of your headings: if you use styles you can do that in one click. Or, what if you want to insert a table of contents in one click? Styles help you do that do.\n(if you are unclear how to use styles, hit up YouTube for some tutorials )\nOnce you have typed everything that you need to type you can go about choosing fonts and setting up your Title, Subtitle, Headings, and Subheadings.\n6 What NOT to do Include lots of graphics: graphics and pictures of any variety make your document look trashy and immature. All visuals should be put in the Appendix Use poor quality graphics: Do not \u0026ldquo;screenshot\u0026rdquo; something you can recreate using Excel (simple bar charts, org charts). Attempt to cheat by changing your font size from 12 to 12.2 or slightly changing your margins. If your document is a page short, so be it. Cheat by borrowing from a previous student: all of our documents are scanned using Urkund which compares your document to anything found on the web, including translations, as well as any document any student has ever submitted. Use clipart, text ornaments or fancy fonts (They are lame!) Format as you type: it will slow you down. Wait until the last minute. Forget to review, spellcheck, and review again! 7 Review and Review Again Hooray! You have finished a draught of your internship report. Congratulations are in order. Now, save that file, turn off your computer, and go out for a little bit. You need a clear head for reviewing.\n7.1 Use the Tools The first thing you want to do is run your text through LanguageTool (do not use their website, download and install the standalone app or use Google Docs). Make sure you tell LanguageTool which version of English you are using (British, American, etc.) and launch the tool. LanguageTool will highlight possible spelling mistakes as well as grammar, style, and formatting errors (like spacing or punctuation mistakes).\nAfter LanguageTool, you will want to use something like Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s Plagiarism Checker. Using the free version will not tell you where the mistakes are, but it will tell you how many mistakes and if plagiarism is detected.\nUPDATE 27/07/2021: Thanks to Sarah for suggesting this list of other plagiarism checking websites \u0026mdash; LINK 7.2 Your Review When you review a large document that you wrote yourself, you should start at the end. Print your document (yes, bad for trees) and start reviewing paragraph by paragraph starting at the end. Here are things you are looking for:\nExpressions that you do not understand\nReplace them with things you understand Vocabulary that you do not understand\nReplace with words you do understand Repetition\nPunctuation errors\nCapitalisation errors\nRun-on sentences\nIf it is too long it might be confusing Paragraphs that are too short\nThere is no official rule, but a three-sentence paragraph looks nice Subheadings, Headings, Titles, Subtitles, Footnotes: does everything look the way you want it to?\nWhen you get back to the start, read it out loud to yourself. If you get stuck there is probably a tiny problem\n7.3 3rd Party Review Have somebody read over your report. Tell them to check for mistakes but also to see if it all makes sense. Do not be afraid of being judged.\n8 External Tools and Websites Here are some useful (and free) tools:\nDeepl Translator\nSlightly better than Google Translate\nhttps://www.deepl.com/translator WordReference\nExcellent online Dictionary\nhttp://www.wordreference.com/ GrandDictionnare\nFor those complicated terms\nhttp://www.granddictionnaire.com/ LanguageTool\nStyle and Grammar Checker (there is a free stand-alone version for Windows and Mac along with versions for Google Docs and LibreOffice)\nhttps://www.languagetool.org/ Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s Plagiarism Checker\nWill check your document for mistake and plagiarism (the free version will not tell you where they are, but it helps nonetheless)\nhttps://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker UPDATE 27/07/2021: Thanks to Sarah for suggesting this list of other plagiarism checking websites \u0026mdash; LINK 9 Finalise Your Document Before exporting your document to PDF, double-check everything. We tend to forget the easy things, like:\nputting our names on the title page, page numbers, headers and footers, formatting the bibliography, making sure you understand everything in the report, looking at the instructions one last time to make sure you did not forget anything. Save your document with a title. Not just \u0026ldquo;report.docx\u0026rdquo; and export it to PDF.\nOpen the PDF file on your computer and your phone to make sure things look the way you want. Pictures and page breaks do not always work.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/guide-reports\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/information-technology\/": {
"title": "Information Technology",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/tags\/information-technology\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/listicle-film-tv\/": {
"title": "Listicle: Documentaries, Films, And Series About Information Technology And Its Influence On Humanity",
"tags": ["Listicle","Information Technology",],
"content": "Below is a list of documentaries, films, and series that have a point in common: They all, in one way or another, address our relationship with technology. In some cases, the the link is not as direct or as obvious as in other cases, but the link is there.\nDocumentaries make up the better part of this list but there are also some fictional examples that make for decent watching. Regarding the series, you will notice some comedies that play on the tropes surrounding Silicon Valley and the people that work in IT.\nFor more information, you can look up these films and series on TMDB or TheTVDB .\nDocumentaries After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News (2020) American Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself (2020) Bitcoin Big Bang: The Unbelievable Story of Mark Karpeles (2018) Citizenfour (2014) Digits (2016) Don\u0026rsquo;t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (2019) The Great Hack (2019) HyperNormalisation (2016) The Internet\u0026rsquo;s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America\u0026rsquo;s Elections (2020) Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Nothing to Hide (2017) (Available for free on Vimeo and on Peertube ) The Perfect Weapon (2020) Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013) The Social Dilemma (2020) TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard (2013) We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012) Films Ex Machina (2015) Series Betas (2013) Black Mirror (2011) Brave New World (2020) Devs (2020) Halt and Catch Fire (2014) The IT Crowd (2006) Mr. Robot (2015) Philip K. Dick\u0026rsquo;s Electric Dreams (2017) Silicon Valley (2014) Stand-alone Episodes The Amazing World of Gumball - S06E38 - The Web (2019) ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/listicle-film-tv\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/listice-books\/": {
"title": "Listicle: An Annotated List of Science-Fiction Books",
"tags": ["Listicle","Books",],
"content": "Where do innovators get those ideas? Sometimes it almost seems like a work of science-fiction. Sometimes that is the case. If you are in an entrepreneurial spirit and you are looking for inspiration, here are 10 of my favourites.\n“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley (1931)\nThemes: Concept of companies that have political sway, complicated entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production, power maintained through technological interventions. “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (1949)\nThemes: Loss of freedom, use of surveillance technology. “The Shockwave Rider” by John Brunner (1975)\nThemes: The Internet, everyone on a network. “True Names” by Vernor Vinge (1981)\nThemes: Hackers, NSA, Privacy concerns, VR, social network, “true death\u0026quot; is what we call \u0026ldquo;doxxing\u0026rdquo; today. “Neuromancer” by William Gibson (1984)\nThemes: More hackers, VR, augmentations, the word “Cyberspace”. “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (1992)\nThemes: Private organisations with lots of power, mandatory reading for Microsoft and MIT, modern online video games (the creator of \u0026ldquo;Fortnite\u0026rdquo; was influenced by this book), MMORPG, social networks, Second Life, etc. Stephenson has worked for NASA, Amazon and Magic Leap. All of his books are excellent. \u0026ldquo;Daemon\u0026rdquo; [Series] by Daniel Suarez (2006,2010)\nThemes: Artificial Intelligence runs amock. \u0026ldquo;Nexus\u0026rdquo; [Series] by Ramez Naam (2012, 2013, 2015)\nThemes: Nano technology used to link humans (BCI). \u0026ldquo;Children of the New World\u0026rdquo; by Alexander Weinstein (2016)\nThemes: Social Media, VR, robotics, dependance on technology. \u0026ldquo;Cumulus\u0026rdquo; by Eliot Peper (2016)\nThemes: Tech giant (Social Network) with too much power. ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/02\/listice-books\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/01\/guide-browser\/": {
"title": "Tips for Students: The Browser",
"tags": ["Education","Guide",],
"content": "Hello Internets. This is a guide for the average student, particularly students in the first year of post-secondary education. If you are a power user or generally geeky person, nothing here will be of particular interest to you.\n0. Introduction Good day all,\nMy name is at the top of this blog, but that does not tell you who I am. I am a professor at a business school in France. Over the course of 14 odd years of teaching I have become frustrated with how my students use their computers. This series of blog posts (there will be at least six) will address those frustrations.\nSo, what frustrates me? Not that much, in fact. It varies from the rather basic things like having loads of icons on your desktop to things that should be straightforward, like how to double-space a Word document and take a screenshot (no, it is not taking a picture of your computer with your phone). I have had several students that don\u0026rsquo;t know how to do either.\nBeing a person born in the 80s I have been using computer for roughly 30 years. I experienced the glorious arrival of the web and Wi-Fi and watched as computers became mainstream for students in post-secondary education. In France, this was in contrast to what I had experienced in Canada where most, if not every student, used a computer or laptop while at university (even before the arrival of Wi-Fi and batteries that lasted more than a single lesson).\nThis experience left me with very general knowledge that I always considered common knowledge, but now I have committed myself to blogging a little and I will share with you at least six sets of recommendations:\nusing your browser using your word processor for report writing (link ) making presentations (WIP) taking notes and being organized (WIP) using the keyboard (WIP) recommended software and other sundries (WIP) Any software used will be free software, but the recommendations and tips can be applied to proprietary software used on Windows, Mac or Linux.\n1. The Browser General Rules As a student there are a few things we should keep in mind. In order to have a nice workflow I have always been a SOUP enthusiast.\nWhat is SOUP?\nSimple: Giant, resource-heavy, complicated software will slow things down. One App; One Purpose: You shouldn\u0026rsquo;t need several browsers installed, the apps you use should be good at doing that one thing you need them to do. Up-to-date: You should keep all of your software, and operating system, as up-to-date as possible. Pay it forward: You should show your friends how to do things when possible, otherwise you will become the \u0026ldquo;PowerPoint Guy\u0026rdquo; or the \u0026ldquo;Premiere Pro Girl\u0026rdquo;.\nTabs and Toolbars If your browser is open right now, at the top of your screen you will see a title bar, an address bar, maybe a bookmarks bar, and a list of open tabs. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to be too annoying or pedantic, but when I look at a student\u0026rsquo;s screen and see just how many tabs they have open and hear them complaining about how their computer is slow or their connection is bad, I want to grab them and shake them vigorously.\nOf course things are slow! Your browser has over 20 tabs open, and it looks like at least four of them are Facebook.com, I see a Messenger.com, LinkedIn, two Zoom tabs for some reason, Teams, Outlook, Gmail, a Google Doc, and many Google searches, AND Netflix!\nI am not an expert, and there are things that I cannot always explain clearly despite being a professor. I have, time and again, tried to get this message across. Yes, your browser can open multiple tabs, but each tab is like opening a new browser. You have several browsers running inside your browser. Each one uses some memory. Websites today require more processing power and memory than some apps.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at some numbers.\nThese screenshots come from a Raspberry Pi which is not a powerful computer\nHere is the Task Manager of my browser with one tab open:\nThe Task Manager and the New Tab use some memory. All of those puzzle piece are extensions, and they eat up a little memory for each tab too.\nIf we look at my system Task Manager we can see that the browser is using a certain percentage of CPU but also memory (RSS is \u0026ldquo;the portion of memory occupied by a process that is held in main memory (RAM)\u0026rdquo; but we don\u0026rsquo;t need to know that because I\u0026rsquo;m going to make those numbers go up a bit later). The extensions, too, are using some memory.\nSo, that is a browser doing nothing. Let\u0026rsquo;s do some stuff, OK? I think I need to open my personal email, my work email, Teams, and why not IMGUR too. Strangely enough, my weak little Pi doesn\u0026rsquo;t even show one of the tabs that are open, but Teams and Outlook use between 5 and 10x the memory of a page like IMGUR.\nAnd system-wide you are starting to use up RAM.\nWell, you are clearly thinking the obvious. This is what computers are meant to do. So, why not, right? I certainly agree with you. Your fairly recent, probably expensive, laptop computer should be able to have many tabs open, but when things start slowing down, it is likely your fault and not because your computer is dying. Let\u0026rsquo;s hit up Facebook and see how much memory we can use. YouTube can come along for the ride. Screw it, Google Drive and a Google search for \u0026ldquo;chocolate chip cookies\u0026rdquo;.\nI will be naughty and launch TWO instances of Firefox with TWO tabs each.\nI think you get it. Numbers go up. Your RAM is not infinite. Combine this with perhaps Zoom or even Adobe Acrobat and things start to slow down. You can close some tabs.\nBut, then I\u0026rsquo;ll lose my place\u0026hellip; Yes, you will, but there is a super feature in your browser called bookmarking.\nThe main browsers that people generally use are Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. They all have cousins whose names are Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium, and Opera. Those browsers have bookmark managers. So, bookmark the hell out of the pages you want to keep. You can even make folders! That way things stay organized. Those bookmarks can sync across devices. Now and then, sit down and Marie Kondo your bookmarks. Delete the just, organize the other stuff.\nSpeaking of bookmarks, you might have a bookmark bar at the top of your browser. This is a nice place to put the links you use daily. One thing that lots of people do, but a few people do not, is set just the icon on their bookmark bar. It is easy. Bookmark a site, set it to the \u0026ldquo;Bookmarks Toolbar\u0026rdquo; or whatever it is called on your browser, and delete the name. Done. Just an icon. Yay.\nYou can also put folders on that bar. For students, I have seen some good ideas. Some students have a folder for each day of the week. Others for each class. Some students have their personal folder, a school folder, and a work folder, and others have the important links as icons on the toolbar, and a folder for \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo;.\nFinally, we get to extensions. I will have a post later on about some recommended extensions that I use. Right now, you just need to apply the same rules to extensions as you do tabs on your browser and apps on your phone. They take up some space and use memory. Not all extensions are good. Some extensions are useful but use a lot of memory. You are allowed to uninstall or disable them. Do not just keep them there out of complacency and laziness.\nThere are only two extensions that you should have: an adblocker and a password manager. You should never, ever, under any circumstances use the built-in browser password manager. Especially on a computer that you might leave on a table in a library. It is too easy to get passwords. Chrome, if I recall correctly, even has a password export feature. And you can access the passwords within the settings too. I would recommend using uBlock Origin as your adblocker, and Bitwarden for passwords. They are both free. uBlock uses a little less memory and is up-to-date, it also has loads of options we can discuss in another blog post. Bitwarden has desktop applications, mobile phone applications, and an extension. It can also import your Chrome and Firefox passwords.\nConclusion Keep it SIMPLE: You don\u0026rsquo;t need lots of tabs or lots of extensions. Use ONE browser: You can uninstall the others. Unless it is Edge. I think you are stuck with that, but I haven\u0026rsquo;t checked in a long time. UPDATE your browser: This is good for security. You can also update the extensions. PAY IT FORWARD: Give your friends advice when you can.\nI hope somewhere, some student finds this useful. If you did, be sure to bookmark the blog. The next instalment is about writing documents and word processors.\nTake care.\n",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/blog\/2021\/01\/guide-browser\/"
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"title": "Categories",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
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"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/contact\/": {
"title": "Contact",
"tags": [],
"content": " Framapiaf (Mastodon) Beehaw (Lemmy) OpenStreetMap ListenBrainz / MusicBrainz Email (PGP ) ",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/contact\/"
},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/more\/": {
"title": "More",
"tags": [],
"content": "Credits for this site Theme Hugo Dead Simple Theme by barklan Tools Hugo (https://gohugo.io/ ): an open-source static site generator. Simple.css (https://simplecss.org/ ): framework to make a good-looking site quickly. Tabler Icons (https://tabler-icons.io/ ): free and open source icons Hugo Cloak Email (https://github.com/martignoni/hugo-cloak-email ): a theme component to cloak email address Dark Visitors (https://darkvisitors.com/ ): a list of known AI agents on the internet to help make your robots.txt file. Tutorials Used mogwai\u0026rsquo;s tutorial for applying Simple.css to Hugo A human-readable RSS feed with Jekyll by Minutes to Midnight Admonitions in Hugo by Bounded Infinity Adding meta tags in Hugo blog by Erin Jeong Three Steps to Improve Hugo\u0026rsquo;s RSS Feeds by Joseph Heyburn Hugo - Selectively Add Table of Contents to Post by Justin James Hosting This blog is hosted on Codeberg Pages (https://codeberg.page/ ). Other software For more information on the software I like to use, click here . Blogroll I have a small Blogroll you can check out. ",
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},
"https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/stats\/": {
"title": "Statistics",
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"url": "https:\/\/bbbhltz.codeberg.page\/stats\/"
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