The same people who say that Signal and Linux are usability nightmares would be shocked to discover that my mother who is nearing her 70s is perfectly happy using both Linux and Signal because actually it's not nearly as hard to deal with as the aggressive upselling everyone else is doing to steal your data
My new BT mouse came in. Gonna set it up with my Viture Neckband so I don't have to fiddle with the buttons on it when I'm walking around.
Main question is how I'll get keyboard input outside the on screen keyboard.
I kinda want to install custom firmware that would turn the middle button into a morse code device. Wish these companies published their source code!
Wrote up a gnarly sequence of hacks for downloading every video in a TikTok account, just in case anyone needs such a thing in the next ~24 hours
uv, yt-dlp, JS in the Firefox DevTools and optionally throws in mlx-whisper for generating transcripts too https://til.simonwillison.net/tiktok/download-all-videos
When I touch a website I don't really think of it in terms of boxes with text and buttons. I think of the data being pulled from the backend. This kinda opens your eyes to how much "validation" on the front end is just a flimsy layer of tissue paper. What's fun is JS-heavy apps are usually the easiest to subvert by sniffing on network traffic and pulling the raw data by duplicating requests.
So since #Github has decided to break their website with the latest website once you disable #JavaScript, it's worthwhile revisiting gh-cli. At first it baffles me how gh-cli can be an 80MB installable for what I hoped was a thin REST client ...
... until you realise that visiting a Github repo downloads 6.5MB of JavaScript. Then to visit the issues page it's another 10.5MB. Then to read a single issue it's 7.5MB. JUST JAVASCRIPT. Nothing else. Per page.
They Want You:
Worried
Stressed
Scared
Confused
Irrational
Impotently Angry
Directionless
Hopeless
People like this are easy to control, People like this stop trying. Sometimes it feels like, "What can I even do?!" Times like this I think about this quote from P.J. O'Rourke:
Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.
Small things matter, my life has been changed by small acts of kindness. We don't have to save the world, but we can make our small part of it better. A lot of you probably do this already, and you don't even think about it. Remember being kind includes being kind to yourself too!
beware of Proton (mail, VPN, etc)
resharing this after they deleted the thread. I think people might want to know that the CEO of the tool they are using to protect themselves with is a JD Vance fan...
(the whole thread is on https://web.archive.org/web/20250115164340/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833074076075466)
@jonny Web archives. Gotta love em!
https://web.archive.org/web/20250115164340/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833074076075466
The DIY FOSS Cyborg https://dustycloud.org/blog/the-diy-foss-cyborg/
Yes, I met a DIY FOSS Cyborg who lives in Emacs and Guix full-time. And YOU TOO can live such a life, if you dare!
10. This is like the final step in evolution for me. It's purely a controller meant to hook into external displays. Some folks have already managed to get Linux on it too. Main thing it's missing is a keyboard. If I could figure out a proper text input scheme with a controller and get that working with my LUKS encryption it'd be golden.
At CES I stumbled on this Linux ARM handheld from @mecha Systems You can switch out the IO with a keyboard and gamepad in the works. What do you all think? VIDEO: https://zurl.co/2ebET
Job opportunities
My organisation is looking for a Campaign and Membership Digital Infrastructure Specialist - someone who knows Action Network, and integrations like Airtable, on a contract. Figure there might be some of you around here!
Also, we are recruiting a Head of Operations, part-time, remote. It is mostly helping us work effectively online, tending to people, culture and governance.
Happy to answer any questions!
Occult Enby that's making local-first software with peer to peer protocols, mesh networks, and the web.
Exploring what a local-first cyberspace might look like in my spare time.