keverets @keverets@librem.one

Organic Maps Turns 4 🎉

https://organicmaps.app/news/2024-12-20/organicmaps-turns-four/

- ~3M¹ users from all countries of the world
- ~15k ratings and reviews on AppStore and Google Play
- 4.8/4.6 average rating on AppStore/Google Play
- 10k+ stars on GitHub
- 10k (almost) issues + PRs on GitHub
- 1k (almost) forks on GitHub
- 7k+ git commits
- ~100 awesome contributors who made 5+ commits

Congratulations to all the users and contributors for your hard work and dedication! Thank you for being a part of this journey!

TIL about Crabeater seals, an animal that looks like every other seal out there, like the recipe was fifty percent chonk, fifty percent derp, moisten and add fippers, but then when it opens it's mouth you find out that it is secretly hiding the answer to the question, what if my teeth had teeth.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED BUT REPULSIVE", "WRONG BUT WROMANTIC", "FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD", "NOBODY BOTHERS WITH THIS BIT", "SHOULDN'T REALLY BUT WE WON'T JUDGE", "REQUIRED IN ORDER TO WORK AROUND EVERYONE ELSE'S BUGS", "YOU DO YOU", and "OBVIOUSLY ABSURD BUT VERY COMMON FOR SOME REASON" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

writing about the terminal is so funny because it's like "redirects are so useful! hooray!"

"okay and also `cmd file.txt > file.txt` will just permanently delete the contents of the `file.txt`”

lots of cool useful tools with the occasionally horrifying fact that you just need to keep seared into your memory

(please do not explain to me why this happens)

Important reminder, if you own a domain name and don't use it for sending email.

There is nothing to stop scammers from sending email claiming to be coming from your domain. And the older it gets, the more valuable it is for spoofing. It could eventually damage your domain's reputation and maybe get it blacklisted, unless you take the steps to notify email servers that any email received claiming to come from your domain should be trashed.

Just add these two TXT records to the DNS for your domain:
TXT v=spf1 -all
TXT v=DMARC1; p=reject;

The first says there is not a single SMTP server on earth authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. The second says that any email that says otherwise should be trashed.

If you do use your domain for sending email, be sure to add 3 records:
SPF record to indicate which SMTP server(s) are allowed to send your email.
DKIM records to add a digital signature to emails, allowing the receiving server to verify the sender and ensure message integrity.
DMARC record that tells the receiving email server how to handle email that fails either check.

You cannot stop scammers from sending email claiming to be from your domain, any more than you can prevent people from using your home address as a return address on a mailed letter. But, you can protect both your domain and intended scam victims by adding appropriate DNS records.

#cybersecurity #email #DomainSpoofing #EmailSecurity #phishing

"Working from home isn’t perfect, but it feels significantly less imperfect than returning full-time to the office. The fact that these great creative minds have still had no better ideas suggests that, rather than profit, these policies are all about power."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/08/employees-are-being-marched-back-to-the-office-but-why

There’s No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike

The pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free. Only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them.

Carbon fiber is light. It’s strong. It can be used to build everything from frames to seat posts to handlebars to cranks. And it’s one of the worst things that’s happened to bikes.

Now, to be clear, carbon fiber makes perfect sense for professional racing. Because it’s basically a fabric, builders can mold it into all sorts of aerodynamic shapes. Moreover, they can tune ride quality and maintain strength while simultaneously keeping the weight to a minimum in a way that’s not really possible with metal tubing. It used to be that racers had to choose between a light bike and an aero bike; now they can have both, all thanks to the miraculous properties of carbon fiber. At this point, there’s no reason for elite competitors to use anything else. Gift Yourself More Adventure

But here’s the thing: you’re not them. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you’re almost certainly incapable of milking the handful of seconds a wind tunnel-sculpted pro-level carbon fiber race machine might theoretically net you in certain situations. Moreover, the pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free; only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them. This means that, ipso facto, if you’ve purchased a carbon fiber bicycle, you’ve made a mistake.

“Okay, fine, I may not be Jonas Vingegaard,” you may be thinking. “Maybe I didn’t need a carbon bike. But how does that mean I’ve made a mistake?”

Simple: while you’re not able to extract carbon fiber’s small performance benefits, you are in an ideal position to experience its many drawbacks—and for normal people, carbon fiber bicycles have only drawbacks.

This is Bike Snob NYC writing for Outside Online, by the way.

@biketooter @cycling @mastobikes #cycling #bicycle #mastobikes #biketooter

Happy 20th anniversary with love to Mozilla's Thunderbird and Firefox suites, 20 years of strength and security in the world of FLOSS! #mozilla #thunderbird #firefox #floss https://micronews.debian.org/2024/1733431358.html #debian

#CANADA TO TRANSFER BANNED #FIREARMS TO #UKRAINE: Canada is negotiating with Ukraine to transfer some of the 324 firearms recently banned in the country. The Canadian government believes these weapons belong on the front lines rather than in the hands of hunters or sport shooters.

https://apnews.com/article/canada-firearms-ban-ukraine-81ccaa341badb74bb27d34fc4bb29b17

Over a year ago, I wrote ”A month using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat”.

For something like 15 months now, Sandra and I have used XMPP via @snikket_im for probably 99.9% of our calls, messages, and video chats, running on an Intel NUC.

We both use the Snikket mobile app, and I also use @dino and @profanity in Linux.

Perhaps a fun holiday / weekend project, if you want family-friendly, self-hosted, #E2EE communications?

#XMPP #SelfHosting #FOSS #Linux

TIL those flickering LED tealights are often made with music chips from old greeting cards as the source of "randomness" https://www.instructables.com/Listen-to-a-led-tea-light/

‘A new report on foreign interference in Canada has confirmed that a Russian disinformation operation has been producing content with the purpose of “boosting support for Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre and undermining support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”’

Foreign interference: Playing dumb doesn’t keep Canadians safe | CultMTL

#cdnpoli #canpoli

https://cultmtl.com/2024/10/foreign-interference-playing-dumb-doesnt-keep-canadians-safe/

Open source router firmware project OpenWrt ships its own entirely repairable hardware

'Forever unbrickable' Wi-Fi 6 box from Banana Pi comes packaged or in kit form Open source Wi-Fi router project OpenWrt and the Software Freedom Conservancy have delivered their first jointly developed hardware platform – the OpenWrt One – and are trumpeting it as a triumph of the right to repair mov…
#theregister #IT
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/12/02/openwrt_one_foss_wifi_router/

SFC and its OpenWrt project just released the OpenWrt One: the first router built from the hardware up by OpenWrt community. We begin today a new era in software-freedom-focused hardware design. The One puts your rights and freedoms first and an unbrickable device that will last.

OpenWrt One is available today for US$89. For every purchase of the One, a US$10 donation will go to the OpenWrt earmarked fund at SFC. If you're looking to shop for gifts today, as many in the USA are, we encourage you to put the OpenWrt One on your list!

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2024/nov/29/openwrt-one-wireless-router-now-ships-black-friday/
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007795779282.html

Time-lapse of the Sun circling the horizon at the South Pole during early March.

Video credit: Robert Schwarz
Source: https://vimeo.com/208466944

Yes, you can host your own PDS. You can also host your own blog. But try hosting your own PDS and NOT hosting a relay or AppView and you can't do much.

Blogs are decentralized, Google is not.
PDS'es are decentralized, Bluesky is not.

How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵

A thermostat using the #esphome climate platform.

Gets temp data from a #homeassistant entity that is the average of many temp sensors. If that's unavailable, it uses the on-board temp sensor.

Could be minimized to just the #esp32 and relay, and use home assistant's interface but I want a device that can also be used if my #homeassistant is down.

Parts: Lolin C3 pico, a relay, SHTC3 temp sensor, OLED display, buttons.

yaml: https://gist.github.com/tkroo/014696aeb0e760bbe80b2a31aa90603d

If you're on BlueSky and want to bridge to Mastodon, follow @ap.brid.gy

That's it. Nothing to install, no terms of service to sign, no complicated garbage. If you want to stop, just block @ap.brid.gy

Details here: https://fed.brid.gy/docs

If you want to bridge your account to BlueSky, simply follow this account: @bsky.brid.gy

Why am I encouraging this? Because when BlueSky inevitably goes bad, people there will have friends in the Fediverse to help them move here.