I don’t have this problem :) https://mckinley.cc/blog/20220506.xhtml

I’ve started working on an update to that post at least 3 times in the past year, maybe now is the time to get it out.

The future of the Web, as of 2000: https://mckinley.cc/notes/20231013-xhtml-for-dummies.xhtml

@movq@www.uninformativ.de RFC 3339 is where it’s at

@darch@neotxt.dk Thank you, but the first four of those have no license. I only want to include software with a posted free software license on the list. I will add twtxt-php, though.

Everyone: If I’m missing anything on groovy-twtxt please let me know.

It’s also an opportunity to mess with btrfs, which I hear is also very cool.

@mckinley@mckinley.cc I am testing some of the ntfsprogs with the ntfs3 driver on a drive with unimportant data to make sure they can reasonably be expected to do their jobs. Yesterday evening, I started ntfsresize while SSHed from my laptop right before I realized I needed to go somewhere, with my laptop. Usually, I’m pretty good at starting a tmux session before doing something like that, but reptyr saved me and all the data is intact, which is very cool.

@prologic@twtxt.net Don’t forget https://git.mills.io/mckinley/groovy-twtxt !

@movq@www.uninformativ.de It’s an e-ink display, which makes it a little more practical from a design perspective, but it’s still completely ridiculous.

@prologic@twtxt.net In that paragraph, I was comparing it to iOS devices because you cannot install another operating system on them. That is the point of Microsoft® Secure Boot after all.

Another thing about i{Pad,}OS, it’s impossible to use it without an online account with the operating system vendor. Windows, of course, is getting increasingly harder to use without a Microsoft account. The goal is clear.

@prologic@twtxt.net I wouldn’t want to give away my location, now, would I?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s already the case where I live. There are also some DMV kiosks in public places, usually grocery stores, and you can renew your registration right there. If I remember correctly, it will even print your updated registration and give you the sticker for your license plate so you don’t have to wait for the mail.

That article links to this one.

So, you buy a new computer for $800 and you have to pay a subscription just to use it? There’s no doubt the subscription will start out optional, but if things continue the way they’re going we will get there. When that day comes, the general public will get out their credit cards and do what the computer says. I have no faith whatsoever that they won’t.

Of course, by that time, I imagine you won’t be able to turn off Secure Boot or enroll your own keys on most computers, making your computer an appliance completely owned by Microsoft, just like an iPad is completely owned by Apple.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org The thing is, if it didn’t connect to the Internet on its own, it would be basically fine. You could make a device like this that communicates directly with an app on your phone. The app would spy on you, I’m sure, but just about all of the user-facing features I can see could be done in the app alone and the plate could be updated over Bluetooth or something. You could prevent people from incorrectly changing their registration year or plate number with cryptographic signatures from either Reviver or the DMV, which I hope they’re doing already.

Of course, on a phone, you have all those pesky permissions that people can turn off.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yes, you can only get a number in the US or Canada for now.

@mckinley@mckinley.cc I figured it out: Digital License Plates Considered Harmful

Wireguard is incredible.

I have an old smartphone but it doesn’t leave my house. I plan to switch to jmp.chat soon and start using my laptop instead.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Maybe you just got better at the game. I hope 2005 isn’t considered “retro” yet.

QOTD: Aside from work, what technology related events do you attend in the real world? Are you part of any social clubs dedicated to technology, e.g. user groups?

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci If Google is suggesting you do something, it’s probably a good idea to do the opposite.

@prologic@twtxt.net It’s more likely that someone gets unauthorized access to your computer and deletes your account through the web UI. You should probably have to type in your password to delete your account.

@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no I don’t have anything to report. I was wondering if anyone was having a more interesting weekend. Is a busy weekend an interesting one?

@darch@neotxt.dk Maybe I don’t have the right idea of what lists are. Why do they need to be in a user’s public feed in the first place? I thought it was just a function of Yarn as a twtxt client that would allow one to sort their followed feeds into lists to make it easier to digest your timeline.

@darch@neotxt.dk So, the format is based on the metadata extension? Why not just $NICK\t$URL\n?

What are we up to this weekend?

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I’m glad it’s not just me.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I will occasionally get some command (or even certain arguments for a command) in muscle memory and type it by accident instead of the one I want. It hasn’t been disastrous yet, but it has cost me some time.

I also find that I compulsively type ‘ls’ whenever I’m in a terminal, even if I don’t need it. It’s strange.

I’ve been using Grim to take my screenshots on Sway since I started using it in April 2022 and I don’t recall giving it explicit permission to do so. This issue suggests Sway doesn’t yet support restricting screencopy.

@adi@twtxt.net Huh, you’re right. I never thought about that.

@adi@twtxt.net I see where you’re coming from. There is something to completely understanding a piece of software, reading all the documentation, and writing a config file by hand. However, if you aren’t doing it as a hobby project and you aren’t being paid a lot of money to do it “right” I definitely see the appeal of Docker. I started using it for some of the more annoying software packages when I set up my home server.

@prologic@twtxt.net There’s always Jabber :)

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Thank you very much. I am paying an absurd amount to my current phone provider and it’s time to start considering other options.

I came up with a few more questions.

1. Are you hosting your Jabber server yourself or are you using the hosted Snikket instance?
   
2. Does group texting work? The FAQ says it’s in beta. If so, how does it work? Is it just an MUC?
   

If any other JMP users see this, please chime in.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Are you still with jmp.chat? If so, are you still as happy as you were before? Have you experienced any reliability issues, especially with receiving phone calls?

This is the best way in my opinion, at least for small children. I wouldn’t trust any of the Algorithms with my children.

@prologic@twtxt.net Discord is awful and it’s a tragedy that so much information that used to be readily accessible on forums is now locked in a Discord group.

@prologic@twtxt.net Protocols using TLS could probably share ports via SNI multiplexing. If you’re using a plain text protocol or can’t use SNI for some reason, you might have the option to get exclusive use of a random port for an extra fee. You could maybe even request specific ports for a larger fee on a first come, first serve basis. One IPv4 address can go a long way.

Virtual hosting is another reason why it’s so cheap to run my website. NFS puts dozens of websites on each IPv4 address.

@prologic@twtxt.net I had to do some research for this one. The answer is yes, in theory, as long as the client or server supports XEP-0368. However, this seems like the kind of thing that would be skipped by lazy implementations. I would be interested to see how this looks in practice.

SRV records are used in the XMPP core specification to determine the domain and port to which clients and servers (for s2s connections) should connect. XEP-0368 is an extension to the spec detailing how servers and clients should handle SRV records in relation to TLS connections. It says that the “Client or server MUST set SNI TLS extension to the JID’s domain part.”

As an aside, SRV records alone can be used, in theory, to change the default port used in c2s or s2s connections. If the ports were assigned randomly from the hosting provider, they could be specified in the SRV records and everything would hopefully just work. Again, I don’t know how well this is supported in practice.

I might have a use for something like this right now, actually. I want to set up an XMPP server for a few people without giving out my home IP address. It would probably handle 20 messages per day on average. I really don’t have a use for a VPS beyond this and I would be paying for a lot more than I need.

How will ports be allocated? Web traffic can go through a reverse proxy to share ports 80 and 443, but what about other protocols? Will it be possible to request specific ports like 5222 and 5269 for XMPP?

@prologic@twtxt.net I’m glad I could help. You’re working on a service similar to NearlyFreeSpeech in its usage-based pricing model but built around docker containers instead? It seems very useful. How will you handle payment? Will there be privacy-friendly options like Monero or cash-by-mail?

To get such a low price, I am forgoing the ability to open a private support ticket. Any questions I’ve ever had were answered by the very thorough FAQ, but if one wanted that ability they could pay an additional $5 per month for a subscription membership.

I would also like to add that their entire Web portal works without JavaScript and it has all the features you would expect and more.

@prologic@twtxt.net I am on the “Non-Production Site” plan with NearlyFreeSpeech which means I’m limited to 1 GiB per day of bandwidth and am occasionally subjected to “low-risk tests and betas”. The implication is that there may be downtime on my site but I haven’t noticed any since April of 2020 when I began hosting with them. It’s 1 cent per day as a base cost for that plan.

I also pay $1 per gigabyte-month for storage and I am using 9.29 MiB which means I pay a little less than one cent per month. It used to be even less than that, but since I started using Git the complete Git history is stored on the server as well as the live copy of the site.

There is an additional charge of 1 cent per 44.64 “RAUs”, their measurement combining CPU and memory usage over time. On the Non-Production plan, only resources used by processes other than the Web server are counted. I don’t believe I have ever been charged for this.

Here is my billing report for 2023 so far.

@prologic@twtxt.net They clearly have no line. I’m asking the reader where his line is. Many people realize that Microsoft and friends are poison but choose to stick with them anyway for various reasons. I was there, too. It’s not a sustainable position.

@mckinley@mckinley.cc I had a few more words to say about this: How Microsoft’s Trickery Works

@prx@si3t.ch Nice, but I usually use https://icanhazip.com/ because it’s the only one I can remember.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de That memory usage rivals Electron, which runs an instance of Chromium for each program. What do you need shaders for, and why can’t you turn them off?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I agree with you. I don’t think PDF is the right tool for the job, but it’s an interesting experiment. Even the homepage of lab6.com used to be a PDF.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I use https://www.html-tidy.org/

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I could probably get away with HTML 3.2. I think HTML 2 is much more limited, though, and I’d be forgoing CSS.