Late Night Blog

Here to share things I think about late at night.

Collection of things I shared on social media over the last few months

Books

Blog Articles

Videos

News Articles

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

Some news of an extension in Chrome that gives any Google domain access to special APIs is going around. Secret is perhaps somewhat clickbaity as they were part of the repo for the last decade but most including myself were unaware of them.

The tweet that started it all

Credit to DM_Ronin@mstdn.social for the screenshot

Simon Willison’s Weblog breaks it down well. In short it gives basic telemetry and trouble shooting data.

There was a Hacker News discussion as well. I would give my thoughts but the conversation I stole a screenshot of expresses them perfectly.

hacker news discussion

A short post but thought it was worth sharing. No major scandal but another example of Google and their monopoly on the web.

#chrome #google #privacy

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

Ladybird was recently announced. It's a new browser engine being built from scratch with no planned revenue from defaults or ad. It's new enough the have not even released binaries yet but people have been sharing screenshots of it working on simple sites.

So far a lot of promise and development is being shown and this is very good news. Chrome is Chrome. Enough said. Mozilla is making in-ideal decisions. An unhampered FOSS option option is very great.

How we're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible is a post by Andres Kling (the lead developer of the project) that's a great breakdown of their goals and strategy. Certainly worth a read.

That is all on that specific topic. If you just want to hear about the new engine close off now. No value is truly going to be found by reading my commentary on internet drama.

Internet Drama Ladybird was announced and everyone cheered. Then came the drama. First came the policy on contributing.

Ladybird policy states it is politically and religiously agnostic as an organization

Policy link

You know the deal. Left wing fringe need left wing tool. Right wing fringe need right wing tool. Anything not explicitly left/right is woke or fascist respectively. I quite like this policy, there is no need a browser engine to tell you what appropriate tax code is or how many genders there are.

There have been some arguments that everything is political and FOSS software is especially political. The statement might not be wrong in a vacuum but a FOSS browser engine is very far removed from left v right politics so those should be irrelevant when it comes to browser development.

A stance on access to source code? Please. A stance on Google's business practices in the browser space? Sure. A stance on abortion? Please no.

With such a policy some people on mastodon started trying to dig up dirt on him. The worst they could find was a commit to change to gender neutral language that was closed in 2021.

commit screenshot

Followed by this response a couple days ago

response on twitter

Women do exist too so it probably would have been a good change. The reply was also a little prickly though he acknowledged that.

My thoughts are if this is the worst you can find on him then he's a pretty good guy to lead a FOSS team. But come to your own conclusions.

As luck would have it when I did research to find what people are saying about the controversy it looks like only a small number of people are powering the freak outs and harassment. A few dozen people federated with my Fedi server complained or hurled insults.

Lol he was literally called a Nazi for the no politics comment or commit rejection.

A few others spammed the git repo. Otherwise every video I've seen has just been celebrating it and every blog I've seen has only been celebrating it or condemning the unearned hate. Most people are just excited to see a good project come to being.

😀

#ladybird #foss #firefox #mozilla #chromium #google

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

The EU just withdrew from voting on the chat control bill. It's not gone forever but is a sign that they may not posses the political capital.

On the off chance you think it is good remember EU officials want exemption. Either 1: Those officials are child abusers or 2: government mandated backdoors are an abuse of power and they know it.

Nuff said

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy

“Better insights, same privacy” “Innovation and privacy go hand in hand here at Mozilla”

  • Beyond the built in Google Analytics
  • Beyond the on by default telemetry
  • Beyond the ads
  • Beyond Pocket collecting your browsing history
  • Beyond upcoming Fakespot collecting your location
  • Beyond laying off their developers while giving millions to fringe political activists

Now we can have our searches tracked too.

Bite the bullet. Install LibreWolf.

#firefox #librewolf #privacy

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

This is an addendum to my previous post philosophy of my alt.

Pseudonymous discussions have played a significant role in shaping the society we live in today. In earlier times, anonymous pamphlets, coffee shops, and taverns were bustling hubs of intellectual discourse, where people discussed everything under the sun. These conversations led massive societal changes and the overthrowing of many kings.

All manor of fun hyjinks

Fortunately there aren't kings to overthrow at the moment. However pseudonymous speech continues to hold value in today's world. I recall all the large platforms banning individuals for expressing ideas that were later endorsed by the government (example: the lab leak theory).

There are increasing instances of harassment and doxing on both sides of the political spectrum. Strict laws concerning speech and expression are also being enacted across Europe as the world's tensions continue to rise.

Also the life expectancy of a Russian or Chinese journalist is not the highest.

I still believe psudononymous speech has value today. This does not mean one should be an ass and the worse should be shunned to their respective corners like Gab and Tanky Mastodon instances. But it's still important to be able to discuss all manor of things. That's yet another philosophy behind using my alt/pseudonym.

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

Recently I posted Bread to cheer me up and it has got me thinking about pseudonyms in general. This one's new but all my life I've been on some forum or social media under some form of pseudonym.

Sometimes the platform went kaput and sometimes I just stopped using it because I got busy or bored. I can't say how long I will stick around here.

My reasoning is everything I post is partitioned off into my own nom de plume. While a criminal investigation would probably link me to my account, anybody with a search engine or even who gets my IP won't be able to find me from my account.

In reality I'm fairly uncontroversial. I may have re-posted a slightly edgy meme. I also said that people having a meltdown over bridges over on fedi are being overly dramatic. But that's about it.

Like excuse me? You're talking about calling a lawyer because somebody made an instance on a federated network. Yes it's copying your posts like literally everything else on fedi. If being on fedi isn't legal consent to federate then fedi itself is illegal. Get off of here and go talk to yourself on an unfederated instance you dufus.

Okay I was a little nicer than that when interacting with others. Funny tangent aside time to get back on topic.

In one way writing microblog posts and regular blog posts is just easier when you're under a pseudonym. I can talk about my feelings and share wacky articles with the confidence of psudonymity. Even talking in person with people you totally trust there's always a hint of ego or fear of judgment.

There is also the lack of repercussions to things I do or say. This is not to say I intend to be mean or hateful. I still want to bring value, or at least indifference, to those I communicate with online. Still I have a few ways in which there could be trouble.

Talking about feeling down is a good way to get a firearm possession/carry permit revoked or have current or future access to sensitive technological systems reconsidered. Likely not the mundane “Bread to cheer me up” but there are always outlier cases.

Or perhaps a future potential employer see a slightly edgy meme and is unhappy about it. Younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be the first to have an entirely online life. Who knows how it will turn out but I intend to avoid that.

Or perhaps future ideas change. If meta becomes the next gab to the fediverse could I end up on some eternal blocklist for supporting federation? Fedi citizens are sometimes overly dramatic like that. Refer to tangent above.

Precautionary as apposed to a specific need to hide my thoughts. But still peace of mind and insurance against a touch employer or friend with a search engine. I might be an anonymous troll demon according to Jordan Peterson. I might also be doing something that should be illegal according to Nikki Haily.

In reality? I'm just a dufus sharing feelings and half baked philosophies on the internet.

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

A personal post tonight.

I been in sort of a rut lately. Personal stuff. I would hesitate to call it depression, if I did it would only be the garden variety. Calling it anything more would be an insult to people suffering from the real deal.

If it was caused by things I could fix (or at least mitigate) then I would be doing something about them. In my experience distracting yourself from problems you can fix leads to more trouble down the line. But it's not unfortunately.

So as the title states I plan to make some bread tomorrow night. I already added chocolate chips and raisins to my shopping list and I plan to make probably three or four big loaves with different flavors.

Can't have too much bread in the freezer and multiple loaves decreases the work to bread ratio. Besides cooking is always more rewarding when you plan to drop some off with family or friends.

I'm not exactly sure there's a moral to this post. Aside from me getting thoughts off my chest as a pseudonymous internet user. If there is it would probably be to try plan something if you're in a rut. Especially if you don't have a specific reason or do but can't do much about it.

If you can make your situation better then just a distraction is probably not ideal but an accomplishment of some form from cleaning to a walk has always been good for my mind. Same goes for a post like this I guess.

Hope you're all doing well internet strangers.

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

Listen for free

^ YouTube via Invidious

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man paints a picture of the use of debt to extract value from developing economies. It covers John Perkins's claimed involvement in the process and his thoughts on the morality of such.

It is important to note some of the claims in the book cannot be verified. The book however offers a unique perspective not talked about in the North West and for that is still worth a read.

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi

A compilation of all links I shared over the last couple of months. Each is sorted by the date I posted it unless it's an update to something.

I would consider each worth checking out.

Blog Posts * Is materialism really such a bad thing? * Why the tech media taste all the same? * Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany * App Defaults

News Articles * We Aren’t Posting on Social Media as Much Anymore. Will We Ever? * GEN Z KIDS APPARENTLY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW FILE SYSTEMS WORK * Google agrees to settle $5bn lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked users * Digital herd immunity * YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers * YouTube Lets You Sort Videos By Color Now, for Some Reason * ‘They thought they were doing good but it made people worse’: why mental health apps are under scrutiny * AI chatbots tend to choose violence and nuclear strikes in wargames

Videos and Audio * Somebody Got Arrested * ^ statement from friendlyjordies * Rendezvous with Rama Abridged Audiobook * drowning in entertainment: the age of distraction * The biggest challenge to walled gardens yet

Other * Remote user impersonation and takeover

Follow me on Nostr where I shared these.

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The Socials Nostr – Fedi