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

Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
This is the Man Who's Attacking Linus Torvalds et al in "a Disease" (Social Control Media)
One thing that Richard M. Stallman and Torvalds can agree on is that Social Control Media should be avoided
Unlike GAFAM, Free Software Serves You, It Does Not Serve Governments and MElons (Overlapping Forces)
Tired of oligarchy controlling your life through gadgets and "apps"?
When It Comes to Social Control Media, Linus Torvalds is Channeling Techrights
GAFAM workers know exactly who to aim at
New EPO Paper: Promoting (Rewarding) People Who Grant Many Illegal European Patents to Make More Money (at Europeans' Expense) While Patent Courts in the EU Are Themselves Illegal
now the coup is sort of complete and even the "courts" are part of the corruption
Slopwatch: Carnival of LLM Slop and FUD Spewed by Bots, Pasted in by MaKenna Hensley and Day
Welcome to the Web in 2025. Articles about "Linux", "Security", and the Web (e.g. "Firefox") are fake.
 
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025
Links 08/02/2025: UK Back Doors and Religious Fundamentalists in Positions of Higher Power
Links for the day
Today's IBM (Red Hat) Isn't the Company That Fought a Microsoft-Sponsored SCO in Court
IBM is nowadays in a state of rapid disintegration
When You Simply Rebrand Almost Everything as "Hey Hi" ("AI"), "Hey Hi Workloads", "Hey Hi Datacentres" and Whatnot
The "growth" has been a growing lie for years if not decades
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12% in Myanmar
Remember that Microsoft is virtually 0% in mobile
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: "Thought Leaders" and Returns to Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 08/02/2025: MElon Coup, Mass Layoffs at Facebook, and PlayStation Network Down
Links for the day
On Wars Against Founders
We need to insist that founders remain
Links 08/02/2025: News Corp Admits Traffic Declines, Wildlife Trafficking Tackled
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: Lamp and Notions
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 07, 2025
Links 07/02/2025: Amazon’s Stock Collapses and US Government Being Dismantled (Still)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/02/2025: Mid-level Details and Simple Code
Links for the day
Links 07/02/2025: US 'Demolition Crew', e-ID Loopholes, and Sanctions
Links for the day
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constrains Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
Social Control Media is Narcissism
Nowadays there's a lot more literature and even press coverage explaining the harms of Social Control Media
Debian Left Twitter (MElon "X"), We Think the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Should Do the Same
What would the FSF really lose if it stopped posting there?
statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Share Doubling in China Over the Past Year
It'll be interesting to see what data in the coming months shows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 06, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 06, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Confirms Next Week's Talk in Europe
He gave at least 2 talks in Europe last month
Nationalism As A Service (NaaS) by Microsoft Azure, Gutting the US Government for Profit
Will Microsoft be receiving bailouts as a reward for all this?
Rumours of IBM Layoffs Apparently Confirmed Yesterday, IBM Canada Consulting Impacted (as Rumoured)
when IBM has layoffs we must also read it as Red Hat layoffs