Category Archives: Digitality

Browsing in private mode

There’s a lot of reports that some web sites are blocking users’ access if they are on private browsing mode. One of these web sites is The Washington Post, who chose “Democracy Dies in Darkness” as its motto. It’s very funny that the very news agency that claims to fight for democracy and freedom is tracking its users and collects their personal information.

If you visit The Washington Post web site with private mode activated on your browser, you’ll see such notice:

We noticed you’re browsing in private mode.

Private browsing is permitted exclusively for our subscribers. Turn off private browsing to keep reading this story, or subscribe to use this feature, plus get unlimited digital access.

I do support asking for subscription or limiting the amount of articles a user can read on free plan but limiting people from using private mode is not acceptable. The point of private browsing is to not being recognized nor  followed.

This is actually much more worrying that this is a bug from browsers. A browser should not let websites know if a user is browsing web in private mode. Not being tracked should not be a luxury. A user should be in private browsing mode by default and if they wanted, they can turn it off.

Tracking people in private mode should be considered as a violation of people’s privacy and browsers should be forced to put more effort to make private browsing much more safer and easier for users.

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Save Internet Freedom

There’s some crazy internal US politics right now that threatens Open Technology Fund, who funded Let’s Encrypt, Certbot, Tor Project , Guardian Project, Signal, and a lot more.

Looks like a couple proprietary software companies are trying to take over this free software money. Please sign on to the campaign to try to stop it.

Password sample image

About passwords

For years, we have used passwords to protect our security. We used different kinds of passwords. From mechanical locks and keys to digital ones and of course current passwords for our accounts.

Setting passwords helped us to secure our accounts but as we had progress in safe passwords, others made progress to break them. For years, we protected our accounts and goods against humans but what we’re facing now is computers.

We’ve been trained to set passwords hard to remember for humans but easy for computers to find. This should be changed.

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GNU and Linux banner

How to move to GNU+Linux

You may have notice that one of my emphasis is the use of free software and GNU operating system. Almost all of GNU distros come with a Linux kernel so we’ll call it GNU+Linux, and not only GNU.

Free software is one of the most important parts of my digital life. There’s no proprietary software running on my computers but what makes that happen is the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel (GNU+Linux).

For some people, migrating to GNU+Linux is easy and some even know the benefits. However, some people still don’t know why they should migrate to GNU+Linux. If you feel your computer works fine but you are

  • tired of major unwanted forced updates
  • tired of your slow operating system
  • tired of not being able to use a new technology
  • tired of viruses and spywares
  • tired of your privacy being violated
  • tired of being limited
  • tired of not owning your software
  • tired of not being free (as in freedom) about your software

then GNU+Linux is a wise choice for you. If you don’t know how you should start using free software and a free (as in freedom and most of the times as in price) operating system, then this small guide would be helpful.

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Discriminatory laws must be broken

As a person who lives in a country under heavy U.S. sanctions, I know how discrimination feels and looks. What the United States has done to us is a good example of how discrimination affects people. My country is under heavy sanctions from U.S. and even basic stuff are facing troubles for import or export.

Whenever I talk about computers or software services, people suggest me different stuff to use or buy and every time I explain how I, like another people here, are deprived from having those stuff because of U.S sanctions.

U.S has the power over a lot of countries to force them do what it likes but this is unacceptable. I agree that Unites States wants to make sure they and their allies are safe but setting unfair laws and rules is not only unacceptable but also a terrible way and reason.

After Microsoft owned GitHub, a lot of Iranian users were banned from using it because of U.S. trade laws. A lot of people from different countries are still unable to use private repositories or buying GitHub plans.

What might they do? Storing nuclear codes or programs in private repos? This is what I’m talking about. A lot of rules and limitations are only ridiculous. I wrote about the GNU+Linux distro Fedora and the notice on its download page before. What? Iranians may use Fedora to build a nuclear bomb and they won’t download it because if this notice?

Some rules are only stupid and ridicules. They are discriminatory and offensive to human beings. Currently, the software community of Iran is experiencing a lot of difficulties and suffers from these discriminatory laws.

I believe discriminatory laws should not be respected. We should not obey them. We should fight for better.

About IndieWeb

If you follow this blog using your web browser, you probably realize blog’s theme and some other stuff are changed. My blog is now compatible with IndieWeb via these changes. You probably saw the “IndieWeb” links in the footer before, those links will forward you to another member of IndieWeb randomly.

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”. IndieWeb is a community of individual personal websites, connected by simple standards, based on the principles of owning your domain, using it as your primary identity, to publish on your own site (optionally syndicate elsewhere), and own your data.

IndieWeb tries to help people make their domain their primary online identity. This can help us to have our own identity no matter what services we use and no matter the services we use last or not. Our domains are our passports to IndieWeb.

IndieWeb has its principles to build a community of individuals who don’t want to be owned by corporate web. This community tries to have its own freedom and independence.

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Do as you say to make people believe you

One of the problems in the libre community is that some (or many) people still use proprietary and nonfree software while they’re encouraging others to use free software.

It was few years ago that It’s FOSS reported that Jim Zemlin, the executive director of The Linux Foundation, is not using a [GNU+]Linux desktop and uses Apple’s macOS. This is what I’m talking about.

How can we expect people to use free software on their computers when some of the key people of libre community are using proprietary software? There’s a lot more than that.

I know many people who are using GNU+Linux desktop and only run free software programs on their personal computer but also use some proprietary stuff such as Microsoft’s Xbox.

We can’t be free software advocates and use proprietary software too. If we believe in software lire, we should use free software always. Free software is not just about operating sytstems such as GNU or libre kernels such as Linux.

If we believe in a libre community we should avoid proprietary stuff all the time. Liberating our community and devices is not something easy nor cheap. It’s something hard and necessary. We should fight for it and sometime sacrifice some stuff, such as some of our hubbies, to make people believe it can be achieved.

We can achieve complete freedom for our world and software if we all support free software and libre community and if we avoid proprietary stuff.

Some people say that achieving this goal is far or dreamy. Even if it’s true, it’s not a good reason for us to use proprietary stuff. Being far from our goals only means we should put more effort to it and continue fighting for it.

If a sculptor finds a hard rock, it won’t stop making sculptures. It’ll put more effort and tries more to prepare the hard stone to make a brilliant sculpture.