João Azevedo @joao@librem.one
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Joined Apr 2019
<1/3>
One of the things that is kinda irritating for me, in the "Linux distro model" debate (traditional packages vs immutable+flatpak) is the characterization that some proponents of the latter model make of how stuff gets packaged to "traditional" distros, phrases like:
"The distro grabs all the software they want their users to have access to."
As if distros had some central committee that make those decisions in an arbitrary way. And acted as a middleman that wants to keep control.
João Azevedo
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I’m cross posting this because I think I stumbled on a good explainer about how the Fediverse works for people who haven’t quite figured it out. Someone on kbin thought they could log in to Mastodon using their kbin account, and were confused about why it didn’t work, so this was my attempt to explain it. #kbin #Mastodon #Fediverse
From: @stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/t/136233/-/comment/531804
João Azevedo
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🚨 Kolektiva.social SECURITY ALERT 🚨
This is an alert for Kolektiva.social users. Please read this post in its entirety!
In mid-May 2023, the home of one of Kolektiva.social's admins was raided, and all their electronics were seized by the FBI. The raid was part of an investigation into a local protest. Kolektiva was neither a subject nor target of this investigation. Today, that admin was charged in relation to their alleged participation in this protest.
Unfortunately, at the time of the raid, our admin was troubleshooting an issue and working with a backup copy of the Kolektiva.social database. This backup, dated from the first week of May 2023, was in an *unencrypted* state when the raid occurred and it was seized, along with everything else.
The database is the heart of a Mastodon server. A database copy such as the one seized may include any of the following user data, in this case up to date as of early May 2023:
- User account information like the e-mail address associated with your account, your followers and follows, etc.
- All your posts: public, unlisted, followers-only, *and direct ("DMs")*.
- Possibly IP addresses associated with your account - IP addresses on Kolektiva.social are logged for 3 days and then deleted, so IP addresses from any logins in the 3 days prior to the database backup date would be included.
- A hashed ("encrypted") version of your password.
🚨 👉 As a precaution we highly recommend that all users on Kolektiva.social *change their password immediately* to a new, unique, and strong password.
We sincerely apologize to all our users and regret this breach. In hindsight, it was obviously a mistake to leave a copy of the database in an unencrypted state. Unfortunately, what would otherwise have been a small mistake happened to coincide with a raid, due to bad luck and spectacularly bad timing.
We understand that our users and other people on the Fediverse will have a lot of questions. We will try to answer them as best we can, but please be patient and bear in mind that we may be overwhelmed with messages, and may be delayed in responding or unable to provide answers to certain questions for legal or technical reasons. As a security culture reminder, it can be extremely harmful to the individuals charged and to our community to openly speculate on the Internet about alleged criminal activity or about what law enforcement may be able to do with seized data. Our present awareness is that the seized Kolektiva data is unrelated to the federal investigation and prosecution and we are exploring legal avenues to have the seized data returned and copies destroyed.
Thank you for your understanding and solidarity 
👇 Please see our replies to this post for additional information (1/?) 👇
João Azevedo
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Today
* Reddit ends free API access.
* Twitter turns off anonymous reading.
* Youtube is talking about banning ad-blocking users.
The tech industry was living on cheep money and low interest rates, and now they're all afraid to let their precious content get used for AI training.
The walls are going up, the lawful corporate web is collapsing in on itself.
@evan they are not judges. They are political activists.
And we kinda know that. Why else do we need to know their political opinions at their confirmations sessions.
Why else do we refer to the number of conservatives vs dems on that court as if we where talking about MP of political parties in a parliament.
The court and how it works should be rebuilt.
There are cases where hardware enablement or work with a specific framework is still necessary, for a reason or another before it can run an upstream distro out of the box. And in such cases having a spin, can be necessary to do that work before upstreaming.
Linux on mobile for the past 6 years comes to mind. (One Plus 6, Librem 5, pinephone, Volla phone)
But I am not sure if that falls into your category of a "spin".
ok... Why do you think laptop manufacturers make their own downstream spins of debian/ubuntu/fedora etc?
João Azevedo
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I’ve updated my article on "Killing a Decentralised Network (Such as the #fediverse)" to include a link to the very important mail exchange between Meta and @kev .
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Thanks Kev! You set a precedent where the only and sane way to react is to be open and transparent while they tried to take you in an "off-the-record" meeting.
We have only one weapon and it’s transparency. If we lose that one, we lose everything.
João Azevedo
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A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model
João Azevedo
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The worst thing that ever happened in software engineering was when Kirk asked Scotty how long something would take and Scotty said thirty minutes and Kirk said you’ve got five and Scotty got it done in five and impressionable children watched this and grew up to become managers.
João Azevedo
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João Azevedo
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We're going to post something that isn't allowed on Twitter: a brief history of the term "cisgender"...
@primalmotion I just hope they were not accidentally DDOSed again by Manjaro.
João Azevedo
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When #META invites you to secretive talks about the #fediverse and you are told to not share anything about those talks, be it by spoken agreement or an NDA — remember admiral Ackbar. It's a trap.
João Azevedo
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"De la merdification des choses", une tentative d’expliquer en français le concept #enshitification lancé par @pluralistic
Santos Populares #lisbon 2023 :)
One of the many street fests on that night. Not everything on that night is about sardines:
https://www.tasteoflisboa.com/blog/santo-antonio-how-to-celebrate-lisbons-sardine-festival/
recorded on #librem5
