ocdtrekkie

Privacy advocate, sysadmin, geek. Born and raised on the mean streets of the Chicago suburbs. Contributor to the Sandstorm self-hosting project.

GitHub: https://github.com/ocdtrekkie
Website (lol): https://ocdtrekkie.com
Sandstorm: https://sandstorm.org

Public Key

npub16wazt7uxw7ssuxz97gelpcd2ha8hjt8fyfd4n2r0uqtk6uyfagrsxjl0ak

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsd8w39lwr80ggwrpzlyvlsux4t7nme9n5jyk6e4ph7q9mdwzy75pcprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntu4mq6p

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub16wazt7uxw7ssuxz97gelpcd2ha8hjt8fyfd4n2r0uqtk6uyfagrsxjl0ak

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Last Notes

2026-01-10 17:44:08 GMT

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This single change may not be that big an issue you for you, but the problem is structural: You are dependent on an ad company for handouts for your platform to survive. At any time, Google can alter the deal and since compatibility with Google's proprietary version is your key selling point, you are always subject to their whims.
This cannot last. And all of the effort put in will eventually be for nought. Effort that could've been spent making a proper alternative OS.

2026-01-09 00:00:20 GMT

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Artisanal, all-natural salt! Not bleached! Someone's gotta buy into how "natural" it must be straight from the cave!
We are in an era people want raw milk straight from the bottom of the cow!

2026-01-08 23:38:00 GMT

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Like on one hand, ew, but also like... you have to wonder, right? And salt's used as a preservative, it should be safe...

2026-01-08 23:24:01 GMT

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I am aware it would be very unsanitary... but how many people try to lick the wall and see how salty this is?

2026-01-06 22:50:10 GMT

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Every developer hour spent on Android forks is a wasted hour that could've been spent contributing to open platforms.

2025-12-27 05:46:39 GMT

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This is hilarious. Almost all computers at work are 8 GB, we just started buying some 16 GB machines for the first time this year. (Old ones will remain in service likely 6-8 years yet.) Most of our server VMs run on 2-4 GB of RAM.
You making bad software choices does not make 16 GB "unusable".

2025-12-23 15:41:55 GMT

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This is a wild take. What firewall *would* you expose to the Internet?

2025-12-13 06:01:17 GMT

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Nearly three years ago for an immense amount of money: https://www.gamesradar.com/amazon-has-reportedly-bought-the-rights-to-the-tomb-raider-franchise-for-600-million/

2025-08-02 00:00:04 GMT

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It looks like it was an intentional feature people unintentionally used: https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/chatgpt-chats-are-showing-up-in-google-search-how-to-find-and-delete-yours

2025-07-18 01:41:33 GMT

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I love the natural consequences of convincing your crazy supporter base not to trust the government and then becoming the government.

2025-07-11 17:57:25 GMT

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This poet's talent is wasted on mere web development.

2025-05-16 23:39:10 GMT

Getting a dust storm warning on all our phones as an alert is... new.

2025-05-07 02:03:51 GMT

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I believe in two classes of Windows laptop. The $350 Acer which you can replace when you drop it and it snaps in half. And a Dell Latitude (now Dell Pro Plus) which is designed to survive a decade in the business world.
Buy nothing in between.

2025-04-21 13:25:39 GMT

The AP News app has the eulogy articles about the Pope followed by a handful of articles about the Harris campaign from before the election. It seems like their algorithm dragged up stores from when they probably prewrote the eulogy.

2025-04-18 00:48:36 GMT

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I have had so many conversations with conservatives about "liberal censorship" because Facebook deleted their posts, while they see the AP getting banned from the White House for using "Gulf of Mexico" as "just funny".
People choose when they believe the rules matter. Mostly based on when they want them to.

2025-04-17 06:52:53 GMT

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Arguably if they aren't concerned about business interests in Turkey, and at the worst case... don't plan to have any staff ever visit Turkey where they could be arrested... they certainly don't *have* to.
But it certainly feels like they got a very eager head start into obeying authoritarians way earlier than they likely would be truly compelled to in any meaningful way.

2025-03-27 13:05:51 GMT

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I honestly am not positive it was the company so much as I remember it was the era of "hubs" instead of "switches" so packet collision was still much more a thing than it practically is today. Things have changed so much.
MacOS 7.x is good memories though.

2025-03-27 00:57:33 GMT

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Farallon brings back memories of home networking so bad we gave up and ended up just plugging one computer into the Internet at a time.

2025-03-24 00:46:15 GMT

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That could be better handled by anti-SLAPP-type laws. Blanket immunity absolutely prevents lawsuits, by also eliminating the ability to pursue legitimate ones.
Section 230 would be like saying "all speeding is legal" and then being glad it protects people from getting tickets for going 5 mph over the limit.
Section 230 *has killed people*, but it also prevents some people from having to have a lawyer once in a while.

2025-03-24 00:11:38 GMT

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The idea that Section 230 protects you and I, and not mega corps, is one of the most impressive bit of media manipulation on the Internet. To the point most people "prove" 230 is a good thing by quoting a paid Big Tech lobbyist who pretends to be a journalist.

2025-03-24 00:10:45 GMT

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On the contrary, Section 230 only helps Big Tech. Generally the law has a concept of reasonableness, an independent owner is not going to face a legal complaint because someone posted something on their site while they were asleep. But Google and Facebook use 230 to protect them when they knowingly allow illegal activity on their platforms because it is profitable.

2025-03-03 03:02:26 GMT

I wonder how many laid off software engineers will build competitors that take down entrenched companies. You'd think good businesspeople would account for the risk of making too many good software engineers available on the cheap.

2025-02-11 02:48:23 GMT

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Honestly once you get used to non-Google Maps, you'll wonder why you tolerated such ad-laden garbage so long.

2025-01-17 16:10:22 GMT

The big takeaway from the TikTok ruling should be that, once again, it is bipartisan. Unanimous, in fact, but throughout the entire multi-year discourse, it's been clear that everyone who has seen the evidence understands the risk it poses. #tiktok #tiktokban

2025-01-13 16:20:50 GMT

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Isn't there like... already this whole network free from billionaire control that half this list of people has already been on?

2025-01-01 03:15:49 GMT

So Google and Facebook's "Jedi Blue" collusion contract is finally public, and they actually explicitly included a termination clause for "the law found out about the contract".
When you create a contract that you explicitly know is illegal and has to have such a clause, everyone involved needs to go to prison. #Google #Facebook #JediBlue #Antitrust

2024-12-22 23:24:42 GMT

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AirBnB is actually the example of a different type of startup: Redefine an existing business with a different label so it can claim to be exempt from existing laws. Profit until the law catches up to the business.
AirBnB is really just unregulated hotels, Uber is unregulated taxis, etc. All will collapse once the law catches up to prohibit unsafe or exploitative behaviors.

2024-12-20 16:35:48 GMT

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Promotion of HTML will continue until you run out of trolls, I presume? :D

2024-12-15 16:05:43 GMT

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My favorite point to remind people is if your provider backs up your data, if they administratively delete your account they'll probably delete your backups at the same time.

2024-12-01 18:53:57 GMT

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The number one reason I have stuck with the iPhone is not having to spend time fighting it/customizing it to make it not actively hostile. Every time I see the modern Android experience (usually helping people with personal devices), I recoil in horror.
I still miss Windows Mobile tho.

2024-12-01 16:41:16 GMT

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I suspect this will end up your shortest lived device when the experience of moving back to Google hits. Good luck.

2024-11-29 00:50:52 GMT

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It's secure because it doesn't work.

2024-10-29 03:39:10 GMT

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The part where "this close to election day" may be an unfortunate nonissue: "To vote in Pennsylvania, you must first register to vote at least 15 days before the election."
He might lose a couple people who were going to vote for him, but it's too late for anyone who wasn't planning to vote to register to do so.

2024-10-21 02:52:27 GMT

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Some dudes just buy a car for their midlife crisis... Matt's gotta to burn down half the web for his.

2024-10-10 03:33:45 GMT

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The first I knew of "whitequark" was just "that place I go see what people said in IRC today".

2024-10-02 12:31:16 GMT

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Eh there's a pretty huge difference between maintaining access to legacy platforms and pirating currently sold gaming systems and games.

2024-09-29 17:26:48 GMT

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Okay Elon.
I don't think it's a "trick" for someone to respond but also simultaneously decide they do not want to revisit that conversation or that user after. Everyone has a right to control when they disengage.
Resist the burning voice of entitlement to the last word.

2024-09-22 00:31:08 GMT

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I think if you need to ask for or extract an apology, that means not much at all. But genuinely felt and expressed, an apology can be a different and powerful thing.

2024-09-22 00:29:53 GMT

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Eh, I've had someone say something messed up to me before, and later they apologized and owned it. Like a real "that was awful of me and I feel awful about it" genuine apology, and I respected the heck out of that person afterwards.
Maybe it was having a narcissist for a mother, but I find someone really owning their mistakes to be pretty rare and worthwhile.

2024-09-09 07:37:15 GMT

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I mean I'm hoping nobody cares in four years.

2024-09-05 00:25:07 GMT

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Libraries don't make infinite copies of the works they lend. This is the predictable outcome of something everyone told the Internet Archive was a bad idea, and they did anyways. This is just hubris and stupidity of one person, who desperately needs to get out of the way of the IA's actual mission.

2024-08-26 20:22:47 GMT

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I mean I'd reserve the verb "fathered" for people who have actually met their kids.

2024-08-17 12:53:44 GMT

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From my understanding, a large portion of it is legal. The fediverse spews a lot of data in a lot of directions very casually, and a lot of the individuals who run servers can be kinda fast and loose about that... but to someone like Facebook that could be a multibillion dollar liability.

2024-08-15 03:12:15 GMT

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You gotta appreciate his commitment to the bit at least. He was a terrible person when he ran Google and he's still focused on being a terrible person now.

2024-08-12 16:53:29 GMT

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As someone also married to a Chrome user, I understand. But I'd at least recommend she look into the media autoplay permission.

2024-08-12 16:39:36 GMT

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Does her work computer prohibit her from switching to a web browser where ad blocking is effective?
At minimum, under site permissions it should be possible to block media autoplay.

2024-08-10 18:53:48 GMT

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I would like to loudly argue that MAU is a useless statistic and the amount of actual interactions you have is far more worthwhile. MAU is probably most useful as a metric of how focused bot accounts are interested in a platform.

2024-08-10 18:46:33 GMT

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"Your role has been impacted" is so callous.
I have been at roles where voluntary separation incentives have been offered, or people have been furloughed to reduce hours until some staff found other roles, but the whole "sudden elimination round" approach just seems designed for cruelty.

2024-08-07 02:54:23 GMT

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What makes this so much more true is that the whole Vance couch thing was fake. So now our own VP candidate is making jokes on TV based on Internet memes.
How far we've fallen. I really hope once we beat Trump we can try to grow up again a bit.

2024-08-04 22:30:04 GMT

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This would be nice but it also requires a lot more forethought: The domain is the least important part of a server. It's direct access to everyone's data, being handed to someone the users did not entrust it to.
I sort of wish there was a trustworthy "service" one could hand-off an otherwise-shutting-down instance to in order to keep it alive with clear accountability or something, but if people didn't think about that up front... shutting down might be the "safest" choice.

2024-07-30 05:45:33 GMT

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I would bet blocklists will not be super useful for election interference though. I would imagine professional trolls will all be coming from large open registration instances.

2024-07-30 05:41:28 GMT

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You will definitely want to pay attention to [@Seirdy](https://pleroma.envs.net/users/Seirdy ) and [@gardenfence](https://sunny.garden/@gardenfence ) and look into what @npub1y2r…kvzk is working on with FediCheck and CARIAD. Oli has, AFAIK, stepped a bit back out of day to day blocklist management.

2024-07-30 04:41:24 GMT

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I love the part about specifying that even if your account is banned, they'll still keep charging you for Twitter Blue unless you also go cancel it.

2024-06-29 18:54:46 GMT

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Been running stuff at work the old-fashioned way and so far the only pain point has been me occasionally having to explain to a non-tech person how the cloud will not magically make all the problems go away.

2024-06-29 16:28:44 GMT

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Let's Encrypt is a beautiful gift of free certificates to everyone and also a horrifying single point of failure that happily issues certs to any impersonator with a lookalike domain name.

2024-06-29 16:16:52 GMT

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These idiots are more concerned about "we accidentally issued a certificate valid for one second too long", when they really should be focused on determining how to not break the web when a certificate is likely not compromised to ensure real warnings are taken more seriously.

2024-06-29 16:12:15 GMT

Hey guys, I just need to throw something out there: The folks who insist on breaking the web for inane reasons like "this completely uncompromised certificate expired less than one day ago" and not making people safer. They're building a fragile house of cards designed to place more reliance entirely on them. And the effect is largely that people from ordinary users to engineers, disregard certificate warnings as a matter of routine.
PKI controls the entire web and it's in insane hands.

2024-06-28 17:29:49 GMT

This might be a compelling option for those of us still running ancient hardware at home that still "runs fine": https://betanews.com/2024/06/27/0patch-will-keep-windows-10-secure-for-at-least-five-more-years-after-microsoft-abandons-it/
It will be less than half Microsoft's cost the first year to do the same first-party, and it doesn't look like they intend to ratchet the price up annually either.

2024-05-10 02:31:55 GMT

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So the argument I have heard is basically that yes, he is autistic and that he feels irrationally compelled to defend his positions based on what his brain is processing. As a medically diagnosed autist, I understand this compulsion! I say a lot of unpopular truths (password managers are bad for security!) but I (and RMS) also have the ability to learn and accept new data. And also just when to shut up.

2024-05-10 00:25:37 GMT

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I can't even see that commenter from this server.
I try not to apply that label to him because we haven't seen actual evidence of it. But like... it would be weird for someone who isn't to have such strong opinions in favor of the topic, wouldn't it?

2024-05-10 00:16:03 GMT

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Yeah, I'm not speculating as to why, all I'm saying is there is a long and frequent history of him coming to the defense of pedophiles. It's well-documented, and mostly in written form!

2024-05-09 23:58:24 GMT

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The wild thing is that the FSF has other board members, other staff. They could do just fine without him *or even by relegating him to an advisory role*. But they are absolutely incapable of not making a guy a *board member* who repetitively and persistently defends every pedophile he can think of.
Like if RMS shut up about things not free software, he would still be gross but he keeps digging a bigger hole.