MAGA:

• Make
• America
• Gamergate
• Always

D’oh!

I wrote it one way (full words), then changed to the abbreviation… but obviously ballsed it up. 😊

You know what… it is 😉

Given that the US government has recognized how unprotected technology (like unencrypted messaging) leaves its individual employees vulnerable to Chinese snoopers, I wonder if China is starting to realize just how vulnerable its pervasive unencrypted tech could leave it to US snooping.

Chinese fintech giant Alipay has for some years now had the “Smile to Pay” system: Alipay users can pay for something by just smiling into the camera in an Alipay “Smile to Pay” POS terminal. IIRC KFC was the first place to have it.

In China, many operators of public toilets seek to prevent theft of toilet paper (I shit you not 😉) by having some kind of rationed dispenser (a certain user can only receive a certain amount of paper in a certain amount of time) or a vending machine.

Public toilet + toilet paper vending machine + “Smile to Pay” = facial recognition in toilets.

• https://chinahandsmagazine.org/2019/11/01/your-toilet-knows-non-surveillance-uses-of-facial-recognition-in-china/
• https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3112836/facial-recognition-toilet-paper-dispensers-china-put-hold-privacy-concerns

In fact, I think a few wanted fugitives have been caught (out?) by the cameras on toilet paper vending machines.

That was something I liked about ZeroNet; in addition to it being incredibly easy to universally block a specific user, there were also block lists anyone could create or subscribe to.

(Although IIRC ZeroNet blocks would only mean you didn’t see blocked users; others could still see that person’s comments etc on your content.)

In 8 years, anyone not mainlining Truth Social through their compulsory Neuralink will captured and euthanized.

So… Zuck stans the guy who ended the Republic and turned it into a monarchy that pretended to still be a republic?

Well, that’s not concerning at all.

Yeah, me too. Never used it since.

So I was glad when Opera co-founder von Tetzchner announced Vivaldi, and I did use it for a couple of years. But I don’t want to become dependent on something not completely FLOSS, so lately using mainly Firefox mods like Floorp, Zen and Firedragon.

IIRC it was something to do with the difficulty of getting the browser to use hardware acceleration/GPU in the countless variations of Linux, to the point where they don’t even bother trying because of the infinitesimally small market share of each distro.

But I’m not 100% sure of that.

(Giving me flashbacks to the days of the Slyck forums!)

As first torrents, then cyberlockers, and then streaming came to dominate, the other P2P networks and programs did one of the following:

• Shrunk to a much smaller number of users but still linger on.
• Software stopped being developed, domain name lost
• Purposely closed down to avoid legal consequences
• Pivoted to something else (like legal downloads or streaming e.g. Napster, Audio Galaxy, or a different P2P network, e.g. Limewire went from Gnutella to BitTorrent to… web file transfer?)

Every now and then, I try a Kad/ed2k client but soon return to torrents. E.g. a few months ago I tried out aMule on Linux… and got a LowID. 23 years after I first started using it, I still can’t dodge LowID 😂 It does have content, though.

Compared to previous times I revisited Kad/ed2k, some sites/services with ed2k links have now finally disappeared: MoTV (Ministry of Television), TV Underground, ShareTheFiles. I think VeryCD is still going though.

Shareaza is still a thing (at least, a fork of it is), still claiming to be the one P2P app to rule all the networks. One of only three clients left (according to Wikipedia) that still access the Gnutella network.

Just to see what’s up, I installed Gtk-Gnutella (last updated March 2024). I can find a few things in searches, but still waiting for them to begin to download. UPDATE: One just started downloading, although the speed is max 50 Kib/s, ETA is at least a few hours.

I might give a Soulseek client a try, as a hard drive full of music I got from Soulseek in 00s recently died (yes, it lasted 15 years!), and Soulseek seems to be the music P2P that never dies (and has a Linux client).

PS I don’t think Retroshare is a “new iteration”; it’s been going since 2006!

You’re welcome. I’m still trying out a few, including Yep and the SearchXNG instance that comes built into Firedragon browser.

Back when I used to watch Netflix in a web browser, I had a browser extension that gave me lots of different capabilities, including all kinds of playback speeds.

I can’t remember the name of the extension I used then, but I see there are still plenty of extensions available. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?q=netflix

You’re welcome.

I don’t know about hosting costs. I do know that Firedragon is a side project of Garuda Linux, a volunteer-developed distro with a Donate page.

One thing: Turn off your phone’s WiFi and Bluetooth when travelling.

Anyone looking into the search history of Trump administration officials, Secret Service, DC police, US Marshals etc?

A whole bunch of alternatives here, a few federated, quite a few open source:

https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

(Found via https://marginalia-search.com/ )

IIRC major streaming services like Netflix and Prime do not offer 1080p or 4k streams to Linux browsers, mainly for technical reasons. You have to use some tricks (special extensions or add-ons?) to get anything above 720p.