#contentwarning #content-warning #cw #longpost #nsfw #istilldkWhichOfTheseWorkOnTheFediverse

It's been 10 months since my last post on quitting big internet, so I suppose here's my checkin on the status of things!

Apple, Facebook, & Amazon were previously reduced to a minimum, and that hasn't changed. The only real challenge here continues to be AWS. I've gotten a bit of practice with openstack, and I'm actually really excited about a couple of projects I have down the way working with it.

Microsoft: LinkedIn continues to be the main issue. I've installed Linux Mint on my gaming PC and tried to make it as gaming friendly as possible. Steam's Proton compatibility layer works fantastically for most of the games I've tried, but VR continues to be a sticking point. I've also had to go back to Windoze in order to run decryption programs for some hard drives I've found to be infected with Teslacrypt. I was able to find software to decrypt these drives, but they only run on Windows for some reason.
I also was able to convice a community center to convert their computer lab (mostly for elementary-age kids, but also for adults) from Windows 7 to Linux Mint, in advance of Win7 EOL. I will probably write up a post about that, but it's so far been an excellent experience. Non-profits that target kids stand to benefit SO MUCH from FLOSS - educational software is really a shining point of the libre world.

Google: Again, we subdivide here because Google is such a beheamoth.

Android: Nothing has changed here. A way to root my phone has possibly appeared, but it seems incredibly sketchy, and there doesn't appear to be a way to actually sideload another ROM onto it. So, I'm stuck looking forward to a future Pinephone or possibly a PyraPhone.
I also have a Lenovo Yogabook with android, which I've rooted and installed AnLinux & XServer, so that I may have a debian environment in it. I actually love this setup a lot, though I'm still trying to get things to be to my taste.

Google Maps: i'm in a similar place as to 10 months ago, but with some slight improvements. Nextcloud now features a "map" extension, so I can mark locations and such within my private cloud. It's not the best experience on mobile, but there's active development, and I'm super hopeful. There's even routing once you connect to an OSRM server! I plan to deploy one of my own, potentially.

Google Voice: LOL no progress at all. Hilarious bc this is the most privacy-concerning one.

Youtube: I've actually gotten a good place here! Using youtube-dl I've written a script to get 1080p+ videos downloaded as a cronjob, with three kinds of categories:
- Subscriptions are handled by tinytinyRSS. Using the generated feeds feature, the script will look for new videos and download them. Using tinytinyRSS has the added bonus of being able to filter channels for only videos that match certain criteria.
- Music videos, lols, and miscellenous interesting videos are queued in a text file, to_dl. The script looks for URLs here, and will download them to the corresponding directory.
- Channels are handled a bit differently. Because some channels have a ridiculous amount of videos, instead of downloading each video, the script will just grab the URI of each video, convert it into a kodi-readable m3u playlist file.
I then just add these folders to kodi/jellyfin, and voila! This actually works as a _better_ experience than before. All my media is now centralized.
There is a major ethics consideration here, however. Since each video is only downloaded once, but potentially watched multiple times, creators are robbed of some views. They also do not get any analytics. Most of the content I watch is primarily funded through patreon and such, but this is still something to think about.
Discovery also goes down, but that could also be considered a plus, since the recommendation engine does not come into play at all.

Anywhoo, continue to decentralize, y'all! peace ❤

#cw #content-warning #longpost #nsfw

This is a repost of something I had written up about a year ago, back when keybored.me was humhub { https://www.humhub.org/en }. I've revisited this, and the github issues page I mention has gotten SPICY in the last few days { https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/6374 }. The keybase team is especially resistant to releasing the server-side software under any free license. There is no change in my concerns regarding forced arbitration.
----------------------------
Can we take a few to talk about binding arbitration agreements and "open source" projects?

Binding arbitration has been something I've been watching creep more and more into all Terms of Service I've agreed to - and even more I've declined. They're usually buried deep in the terms, often near the end - but almost never AT the end. Sometimes they offer an opt-out, usually via a complicated write-in snail-mail method. They're often conducted by ADR [https://www.adr.org/]

It's clear they're reaching an ubiquity - more often than not I'm agreeing to one or declining a service due to this clause. I've even been seeing the process portrayed in popular media - see Silicon Valley S02E09, or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia S12E06 for examples.
But why is this an issue that keeps me up at night? You are agreeing to give up your right to a court in case of any harm done by the company. In the TV shows mentioned above, this is actually portrayed as a good thing. Courts are an ordeal, they say. Arbitration is more one vs. one, more efficient. This is indeed how ADR spins their services. But there are a few things to consider, namely that the right to a trial by jury is essential and in the Bill of Rights. Waiving it should not be taken lightly, especially where online services are increasingly central to folk's lives. I should not even have to say that the only way an individual wronged can even feign to have equal footing versus even a medium-sized company, nevermind multinational corporation, in dispute resolution is collective action in a court of law.
In some circumstances, it might make sense. I'm still unconvinced of any case where I'd be okay waiving that right - the idea of an individual going up against a corporation that is contracting the very juror is {kafkaesque, dystopian, absurd}. But I'm willing to concede that an individual with full understanding of arbitration vs court has the right to sign such a clause.

Which brings me to what instigated this post - Keybase {https://keybase.io/}. I have no reason to believe these developers are bad actors. Indeed, they sure seem inticing with their software and branding. And, hey! Right there on their front page
For the geeks among us: it's open source and powered by public-key cryptography

Then you're ready to sign up - and at the terms of service, you must sign a Binding Arbitration clause.

In many ways, the free software movement has anticipated this - there are many actors that do not wish their users have full freedom, whether software freedom or freedoms enshrined in such documents as the bill of rights. And there has always been that contention of open-source vs free/libre. This is just another example.
The Binding Arbitration was just the start of my sleuthing - once you start digging around their GitHub repositories, you'll find only the client and client-side implementation of the filesystem are open source (3-Clause BSD. A fine license, even if I prefer the GPL.) I understand there are difficulties in open-sourcing backend server software, but I also do not see plans to open it up, nor discussion around it. There is one "self-hosted" mention in the guthub issues, but it does not look like it's going to be replied to by the main keybase staff.

Ah, well, the search continues for neat encrytped libre projects.

#contentwarning #content-warning #cw #longpost #nsfw #idkWhichOfTheseWorkOnTheFediverse

There's been a bunch of articles lately on ditching the Big 5 - namely on Vice and Gizmodo, but also on a handful of fellow-minded blogs. That is, to not use Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google products (alternatively, FAANG is a thing but replaces Netflix with Microsoft. It is easier to avoid Netflix than to avoid Microsoft tho)

I've been feeling this way for several years, but my personal trajectory of this is a bit different. I (usually) don't want to give control of services to other companies, especially if I know how to do it myself. Of course the trick is to make these online services as reliable and pain-free as possible (lol).

I also have a different relationship to these companies that the average _consumer_. To wit I'd like to chronicle some of the ~adventure that ditching big internet companies has been like, and spotlight some alternatives or self-hosting options. As a sort of intro, here's my current starting place with the five, in a weighted order:

Apple: I've never bought or owned a single Apple product in my life. Actually, within my immediate family, I think only my brother owned an iPod for like a month before it was stolen. So yeah. Winz?

Facebook: I quit facebook back in 2012(ish), and permanently deleted the account some years ago. My social media use in general is sparse.
I do not use WhatsApp.
My VR of choice is the Vive. Steam has its own issues we'll get to eventually...
I have an instagram for a thing that I have posted to exactly once - it will probably serve as some kind of publicity at some point but I'd rather give it a go with pixelfed.
Also I am main-ing this self-hosted friendica atm as a social/blog/picture...thing.

Amazon: I permanently deleted my Amazon.com account in late 2017. No regrets. However... I have noticed that even some seemingly personal-seeming accounts on eBay have shipping fulfilled by Amazon. Buying direct from manufacturer or some distributors may also be fulfilled by Amazon. I also assume some purchases made in real life have Amazon involved at some level up the chain, considering just how DEEP the penetration is.
I also don't watch Twitch, nor buy Whole Foods since the acquisitions.
AWS is worthy of its own post, but it would probably devolve into spacey stoner-like rants. I'm trying to grow my skillset in OpenStack vs learning even more AWS lock-in nonsense.

Microsoft: I've been using various distros (starting with Red Hat) as my main desktop OS since 2002(ish), but M$ has been proding at me - about 8 years ago I build a gaming desktop and at some point in the last 4 relented and actually bought a Win10 license for games - specifically VR. I don't really believe I "own" this OS, but it is installed. I just keep it tucked away in the grub just in case I want to play a game that super doesn't work on my main linux install.
I never really used my github account, and either way I'm trying to be active on gitlab and my own gitea.
No azure use, no office365, no outlook/hotmail/msn/???, no xbox.
I do have a LinkedIn for capitalism purposes, and I hate it so much. I filter its emails and check it roughly once a month, where I usually find that the cool recruiters messaged me 3 weeks ago, and today a fintech company feels like I'd be a great value-add for them.

Google: This one is the toughest. Like many, I was a Google fanboy once upon a time. I mean, hey, it was THE open source smartphone option. Then reality set in, and I'm only somewhat in the process of getting away from Google... not entirely sure how possible it will be. To date I've made these replacements:
tinytinyRSS for Reader
searX for search {plugs into all the engines, including startpage, which plugs into Google. so... cheating? yacy kinda sucks to use rn}
protonmail for mail (really the only thing I'm fine with leaving un-self-hosted atm.)
nextcloud for drive, cal, pics upload, location tracking, notes,
rocketchat for chat

This is really where this series is going to start I suppose. I have some tentative plans for ditching BigInternet, but Google is clearly going to have to be the main focus to start.

Android: My main phone is an LG G6, a peculiar variant that does not have root. Root may be on the horizon, so that I may try LineageOS with no gapps. I mean, the Librem 5 is on the horizon but I also do not exactly want to buy a brand-new phone model, for environmental reasons, so I'll try to squeeze as much life out of the G6 as I can.

Google Maps: The alternatives are wanting, but mapkeep has incredible promise for the desktop. On my phone, I started trying out OSMand. It's OK, but not the most ideal. I still find myself looking at GMaps from time to time.

Google Voice: This will be a series of posts; I'm sure of it. I actually transferred my main historical number to Google so many years ago. Best idea I have right now is to transfer my number to a gateway provider and self-host like FusionPBX? I do not look super forward to that process but I'm sure there will be lots of lern. It is handy to know how to do VOIP things

YouTube: I use RSS feeds to keep track of my "subscriptions", but I do keep my ded google account to actually sub to the accounts I really believe in. I use invidious on my laptop to de-googlify content, but like all(?) 3rd party youtube apps, resolution is limited to 720p, and it's also not 100% effective. I could download videos at full res, but that's an extra step. So right now, I don't have a better alternative to play 1080p yt videos in my living room than to just watch from youtube itself.

So yesss. Next post will probably be either regarding Android or GVoice, depending~