Bonum Certa Men Certa

Self-Hosting Where Feasible, Decentralised (P2P) Where Practical, World Wide Web for the Rest

Video download link



Summary: Hosting a site and disseminating vital (but potentially sensitive or suppressed) information isn't easy; we now use several protocols in parallel and in conjunction (part of a largely automated workflow) to make censorship more difficult, both technically and legally

THIS month has been very productive compared to last month. If we didn't write as many stories as we had planned and hoped, that's mostly because we were busy porting the site over to Gemini (similar to Gopher but better), creating new programs/code in the process (it's in self-hosted Git), and speaking to people in "Gemini space" while customising our capsule to have feeds and getting it listed, indexed etc. So far this week more than half a million connections were made to our Gemini capsule, mostly to scan and index it. We still have about half the site to covert to the capsule -- a process that takes about half a day for each year (there are 15 years in total).



"Those justifying the censorship are a lot more powerful than us (some even write books about climate change while owning and flying four private aircrafts; they also try to ban encryption, except when they use it), so we need technical means to stifle their agenda. The political means are bought and paid for."Digital independence and technological simplicity remains key to durability of information. As we noted earlier this year, Groklaw had gone down in October and only came back online some time in January. This is the sort of scenario we hope to avoid. There's a lot of planned obsolescence in software and complexity -- sometimes artificially-introduced -- contributes to it. It's not a made up or a 'superficial' problem; it's very widespread even outside the realm of software. Companies want to sell and sell... (even the same thing, again and again)

The above video isn't much but an extension of a video taken with an external webcam to show an ARM laptop and SBC which manages IPFS and Gemini for us. This video shows the remaining 3 computers (3 dual-head laptops), which make a total of 5. My wife uses a dual-head laptop, but I'm not counting that. She mostly runs Tux Machines, which shares the same physical server as the Techrights site. Almost every night this past week Tux Machines was under DDOS attacks, with times of attack varying somewhat (I assume to catch us asleep, off-guard). We cannot serve 30,000 pages in 30 seconds, sorry....

Seeing the nature of attacks on the World Wide Web (ClownFlare is not a solution but part of the problem) and growing levels of censorship (typically justified by the mass media by associating the censored with "threats", "violence" and so on) we need to put our eggs in more baskets. Those justifying the censorship are a lot more powerful than us (some even write books about climate change while owning and flying four private aircrafts; they also try to ban encryption, except when they use it), so we need technical means to stifle their agenda. The political means are bought and paid for.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Hiring for Tech Roles Based on Perceived Loyalty is No Better Than Hiring to Meet Diversity Quotas
What we're seeing right now is a national security disaster and it is almost purely about technology
S.E.O. SPAM by Serial Sloppers With L.L.M. Garbage is Hurting Linux
We continue to run Slopwatch
IBM Says That Half of Its "Assets" is Basically Pure Fiction ("Goodwill")
It times get tough, IBM can sell "Goodwill" at the local pawn shop and pay back the lenders, right?
 
Links 01/02/2025: Belated Happy New Year 2025 and Gabbro 0.1.2
Links for the day
Links 01/02/2025: Administrative Chaos and Aviation Disasters Persist
Links for the day
Arrested: Albanian Outreachy whistleblowers, Sonny Piers GNOME & Debian connections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 1/2/2025: LLM Hype Revisited, Linuxwashing by Oumi
Links for the day
Growing Evidence That the Patent Industry Has Become a Major Scam
Seeing that the patent "industry" has turned to serious crimes (sometimes to cover up corruption) and seeing that the net negative is clearer for all to see, people who argue for abolition of all patents will have a field day
Planet Ubuntu Overrun by LLM Slop? Faizul "Piju" 9M2PJU Seems to be Publishing Fake Articles About "Linux"...
Maybe it is "assisted" by LLM slop, but slop is slop and it introduces many problems
Gemini Links 01/02/2025: LLMs, Analog Computer, and BorgBackup
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 31, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 31, 2025
Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
LLM slop season
Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025