[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 5 points 2 months ago

No I know you’re being genuine.

So this is going to sound really weird, because I think you’re talking about the experience of debating troll farm accounts - understandably really frustrating - but I’m talking about the people, the voters, the weird family members you can’t talk about politics with any longer. (I have some of those - they’re in rural Illinois while I’m in blue-dot Omaha, I love them very much, and I absolutely hate that we can’t talk politics any more.)

But I think you need to give them more sympathy. (The IRL humans, not the online trolls.) The worst of them grew up in a system where they only see minorities as risks, because (a) brains look for patterns, for free, factory firmware, and (b) they don’t realize evil people set things up long ago so that minorities had things on Hard Mode. And maybe (c) fighting against your factory defaults takes work and practice.

Like, because TLOU is back on TV I’ll share something uncomfortable. S01E03 was really uncomfortable for me to watch. I was a nerdy kid, teased for being gay in high school when I was not and am not gay. So I have some homophobia I haven’t gotten rid of yet. I’m trying. But I still look away whenever men kiss. My wife doesn’t love that part about me, but she still loves me.

Do you give up on me because my journey isn’t complete there? Am I to be hated because I look away, lumped in with the people who vote against gay rights? Clearly not. Mostly because I’m clearly making an effort.

Some people who voted for Trump don’t wear red hats. They were on the fence and they went one way and not the other. And I promise they’re not the people you’re tired of debating. They deserve your positive thoughts. Don’t let the troll farms steal those thoughts. Please.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 5 points 4 months ago

Yes you will make it easier for kiwifarms to create an ALPR network if you GPL it. Also social change activists, news stations, “news” stations, nosy neighbors, overseas companies interested in obtaining intelligence on US citizens, people who hate racing on public roads, neighborhood watch, people who want to make ALPR bans functionally impossible by making them indistinguishable from dashcams, people who want to make rich people sweat by tracking their movements.

If you don’t GPL it, you’ll demonstrate that a small team can create an ALPR system, so, they might think, why not give it a try?

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 6 points 4 months ago

I love this, and I’m definitely going to use it when describing enshittification to relatives. Kudos, genuinely.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 5 months ago

Scrooge McDuck is an employee of his companies too.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago

BBS software. Nerds always find a way. I guess if I have to be a sysop now…

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 5 months ago

They would enforce the rules of their payment card network. Once they’re aware of a violation they take action. If they become aware of a series of violations they take further action to ensure the merchant complies in the future.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago

I host my own for mspencer dot net, used this 15-ish step walkthrough from linuxbabe dot com. Only maybe three instances of spam in two years, gmail and outlook receive my messages just fine, etc. (Successful spammers were using legitimate services, and those services took action when notified. Greylist delays emails by a few minutes but it’s extremely effective against most spammers because they never come back to retry messages after a few minutes, while legitimate senders will.) I don’t know if I would accept blanket advice against self hosting.

Fundamentally if your mail server can see the addressee, it can see the content. SMTPS encrypts both in the same channel. So at the point where you accept messages and store them in a mailbox, the messages have to be readable.

Encrypting them at rest isn’t something I currently do, but if you’re going to later serve those messages to an email client that expects to receive clear text, your server needs both the keys and the messages. They can be stored in different places.

Most of your needs could be met with full disk encryption on the box hosting Dovecot. If you’re worried about being compelled to decrypt, there’s always the deck of cards trick: The pass phrase for full disk encryption consists of a memorized portion plus the letters and numbers of the top N cards in this deck of cards you keep by the server. If someone were to shuffle that deck of cards, and the server were powered down, the encrypted volume would be impossible to recover.

I’m eager to learn what other Dovecot tricks people can recommend to improve security.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 6 points 10 months ago

Advice from most to least certain: If you want very long standby time (a reliably perfect first print after literally months of inactivity) and you have the space for an ugly cube of a printer, laser is the only option. Ink tank printers have unexpected wear parts, like internal ink sponges.

Black and white laser is stupid simple. Color laser “prints” four times in series onto an intermediate transfer belt (ITB) and then puts that onto the paper, still super reliable but bulkier, and your prints get watermarked with yellow dots because FBI or something. I’d go color.

Toner lock-in is becoming more common, not just for HP. If your page count is going to be low, just pay full price for name brand toner. If you don’t want to do that, like your use case could involve printing a single page or entire binders of paper between months of inactivity, read on.

Start your printer research by shopping for cheap off brand toner, get a sense for what they’re selling the most of and what that’s compatible with, and see what printers they support.

Some aftermarket toner just works, out of the box, because the printer isn’t crazy locked down. Those cartridges have normal sounding instructions. Some aftermarket toner requires you to transplant a chip from a first party cartridge, and their instructions include this. Avoid those printers.

And consider used printers. I have a used HP LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw that I love, but I would never ever buy another HP printer, especially not one made later than this one. Be very careful before buying any HP printer, especially one made in the past 6-8 years. Even wear items (like the ITB) have modules with firmware and compatibility requirements, and I’m worried I could be one replacement component away from suddenly having a locked down printer.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 11 months ago

I use a USB BD-R burner and disks for this. I don’t have a solution for Bad USB protection though unfortunately.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 11 months ago

I think I was in favor of this four months ago. https://programming.dev/comment/8513741

Oh. That’s why they do that. Ok good to know.

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hey no botting!

NEW

[-] mspencer712@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Start early in the commit history, see if you can understand the general shapes and concepts the project was using at the start.

Then sort of binary-search your way forward in different sized jumps and see how quickly you can get to present day without sacrificing your sanity. Completely at least.

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mspencer712

joined 2 years ago