It’s not a long time that I’ve been using Nextcloud. Before that, I had to host everything locally on encrypted drives. Google Drive (and apps) were available all the time but I didn’t want to use them because not swimming at all is much better than swimming in pool full of shit.
The situation remained the same until I found out about Nextcloud. Nextcloud is a complete solution for people like me who are careful about the software they use and how their privacy is affected.
Continue readingAlmost all of our Android phones come with a modified Android OS that uses Google services. As you (probably) know, Google is not much of a privacy-respecting company to trust. I personally suggest deGoogled operating systems such as /e/ or LineageOS but if you can’t replace your Android phone OS with such operating systems, you can at least start using free software apps on your phone and get rid of Google.
F-Droid is a community-maintained software repository for Android, similar to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free libre software apps. Applications can be browsed and installed from the F-Droid website or client app without the need to register for an account.
I believe the best app store for free software Android apps is F-Droid. You can download its APK file from their site. F-Droid supports many languages so if you want your app store in your language, you probably won’t have any problems.
You also don’t need to worry if the app you want isn’t on F-Droid. You can always find a free libre alternative app. For example, instead of GMail, you can use K-9 Mail (website – F-Droid) which are compatible with OpenKeychain (website – F-Droid) for encrypting your messages. Even if you don’t want K-9 Mail, you can have many other libre alternatives. There’s a libre software app for every need.
There’s even clients for Facebook Messenger if you still don’t want to leave it. i really suggest you to start using privacy-focused services but if you don’t want to, you still have libre clients to use with F-Droid.
I’ve been watching Solar Opposites series and the second episode (season 1) mentions privacy in funny ways. You should watch it.
In 2006, the United Nations established World Migratory Bird Day to be held on the second weekend of May every year. The event was founded as an effort of the UN’s Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds to raise awareness of the migratory linkages between regions of the globe. World Migratory Bird Day events have been held in 118 nations. Each year, the United Nations announces a uniting theme for official events.
It’s important to raise people’s knowledge about migrant birds as many of them are in danger of extinction or at least the loss and destruction of their habitats.
For example, “Omid” (literally means Hope in Persian) is the last Siberian crane that wings his way to Iran for years in the first week of the Iranian calendar month of Aban falling on the last week of October. Every year, there are concerns about the extinction of this very special migratory bird as it’s the only survivor of this species.
Thanks to great KABI.tk server, my weblog is now being published using WordPress. I couldn’t move everything here for now but I’m doing my best. URLs are changed and pages are not accessible the way they used to but it’s not hard to find what you want.
Currently I miss IndieWeb Webring which will be available again soon and I need to fix some metadata issues but everything else is working fine.
UPDATE: I Moved to WordPress
Since few years ago, I’m building my blogs using Jekyll static site generator. Now, after some years, I’m deciding to move to a WordPress blog as I travel a lot and I want to be able to update my blog using different devices. As I explained on some toots, I can’t pay for a service based outside of Iran as my homeland is under heavy sanctions from U.S. and its allies. We can’t even open a bank account outside of Iran.
I don’t want to use a hosting service based in Iran as all of the providers have to follow rules/laws and it can be led to closing my blog if I write something that the government doesn’t like. I’m searching for someone or a foundation that can provide a host that I can install WordPress on and connect my domains to it.
My current website is kindly hosted by amazing Autistici/Inventati and they’re privacy-focused and use free software. It’s important to that the hosting service uses free software and doesn’t violate people’s rights about privacy.
If you’re interested in helping me, please drop me a message.
In a stunning victory for nonprofits and NGOs around the world working in the public interest, ICANN today roundly rejected Ethos Capital’s plan to transform the .ORG domain registry into a heavily indebted for-profit entity. This is an important victory that recognizes the registry’s long legacy as a mission-based, non-for-profit entity protecting the interests of thousands of organizations and the people they serve.
We’re glad ICANN listened to the many voices in the nonprofit world urging it not to support the sale of Public Interest Registry, which runs .ORG, to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The proposed buyout was an attempt by domain name industry insiders to profit off of thousands of nonprofits and NGOs around the world. Saying the sale would fundamentally change PIR into an “entity bound to serve the interests of its corporate stakeholders” with “no meaningful plan to protect or serve the .ORG community,” ICANN made clear that it saw the proposal for what it was, regardless of Ethos’ claims that nonprofits would continue to have a say in their future.
The sale threatened to bring censorship and increased operating costs to the nonprofit world. As EFF warned, a private equity-owned registry would have a financial incentive to suspend domain names—causing websites to go dark—at the request of powerful corporate interests and governments.
In a blog post about its decision, ICANN also pointed out how the deal risked the registry’s financial stability. They noted that the $1.1 billion proposed sale would change PIR “from a viable not-for-profit entity to a for-profit entity with a US$360 million debt obligation.” The debt was not for the benefit of PIR or the .ORG community, but for the financial interests of Ethos and its investors. And Ethos failed to convince ICANN that it would not drain PIR of its financial resources, putting the stability and security of the .ORG registry at risk.
“ICANN entrusted to PIR the responsibility to serve the public interest in its operation of the .ORG registry, and now ICANN is being asked to transfer that trust to a new entity without a public interest mandate.”
ICANN was not convinced by the token “stewardship council” that Ethos proposed in an attempt to add an appearance of accountability. Echoing EFF’s own letter, they noted that “the membership of the Stewardship Council is subject to the approval of PIR’s board of directors and, as a result, could become captured by or beholden to the for-profit interests of PIR’s owners and therefore are unlikely to be truly independent of Ethos Capital or PIR’s board.”
Many organizations worked hard to persuade ICANN to reject the sale. We were joined by the National Council of Nonprofits, NTEN, Access Now, The Girl Scouts of America, Consumer Reports, the YMCA, Demand Progress, OpenMedia, Fight for the Future, Wikimedia, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Consumer Reports, FarmAid, NPR, the American Red Cross, and dozens of other household names. Nonprofit professionals and technologists even gathered in Los Angeles in January to tell ICANN their concerns in person. The coalition defending the .ORG domain was as diverse as .ORG registrants themselves, encompassing all areas of public interest: aid organizations, corporate watchdogs, museums, clubs, theater companies, religious organizations, and much, much more. Petitions to reject the sale received over 64,000 signatures, and nearly 900 organizations signed on. Joining them in their concerns were Members of Congress, UN Special Rapporteurs, and state charity regulators [pdf].
A late development that affected ICANN’s decision was the letter [pdf] from California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra. Citing EFF and other members of the coalition, Becerra’s letter urged ICANN to reject the sale. Although ICANN received many last-minute appeals from some parts of its policymaking community urging the organization to ignore Becerra’s letter, ICANN acknowledged that as it is a California nonprofit, it could not afford to ignore its state regulator.
Because PIR is incorporated in Pennsylvania, that state’s courts must approve its conversion into a for-profit company. Pennsylvania’s attorney general is investigating the sale, and may also weigh in. In its rationale, ICANN states that it will allow PIR and Ethos to submit a new application if they are able to get the approval of this other body with authority over the deal. But all of the reasons behind ICANN’s rejection of the sale will confront Ethos in Pennsylvania, as well.
This decision by ICANN is a hard-fought victory for nonprofit Internet users. But the .ORG registry still needs a faithful steward, because the Internet Society has made clear it no longer wants that responsibility. ICANN should hold an open consultation, as they did in 2002, to select a new operator of the .ORG domain that will give nonprofits a real voice in its governance, and a real guarantee against censorship and financial exploitation.
Don’t watch TV coverage of Covid-19! (Or “social media”; the details are different.) Watching repetitive coverage of something frightening can interfere with clear thinking, even traumatize people.
TV news coverage of a crisis struggles to fill 24 hours a day with “information”, notwithstanding the fact that the actual flow of new information about the crisis is nowhere near sufficient to fill that time. What do they do? They repeat. They present tangential and minor details. They make the same points in different ways. They belabor the obvious. They repeat.
If your goal is to be informed, you don’t need to dwell on the crisis for hours every day. Not even one hour a day. Getting your news in this inefficient matter will waste a lot of time — and worse.
In addition, it will make you more and more anxious. Someone I knew in 2001, who lived in California. spent all day on Sep 11 and following days watching the TV coverage. Afterward perse was afraid to go outside, watching for terrorist airplanes. TV made it possible for per to be traumatized by events 3000 miles away.
That was an unusually strong case. Most people did not get so traumatized as that. That does not imply it did not affect them. I suspect that the TV coverage may have shifted millions of people’s perceptions, so that they overestimated the danger of terrorism while downplaying the danger of laws that take away freedom. This would have smoothed the path for careless passage of the dangerous USA PAT RIOT Act and its massive surveillance.
In any a good, general textual news site, you can read the things you really want to know about Covid-19 in 10 or 20 minutes a day. Then you won’t fall behind on your work, and you won’t be brainwashed into panic.
Keep calm and carry on!
There’s daily reports about violating people’s privacy during Cornoavirus pandemic and some of these violations are happening because of proprietary apps published by governments which keep track of people. The idea of government keeping people safe by forcing them to stay home is something I can understand (yet disagree with) but governments are not trustworthy and there’s a high risk that they keep these data/profiles even after pandemic to misuse.
Continue readingCriticism of violating people’s privacy is not limited to a particular organization or individual. If any service (etc.) violates users’ privacy rights, it should be criticized. Doesn’t matter if it’s libre, proprietary, governmental, or private. People’s privacy should be respected no matter what service you’re providing or how your service is working. If you can’t respect people, change your service and if you can’t change it then stop.
We should all agree that most people in the world don’t know how their private life and privacy is being violated and there’s some people that spread disinformation in support of these services. We should also stop calling these data-hungry companies “services” because what they provide is a platform to steal people’s data and it’s not a service.
We don’t encourage people to stop using Google because we don’t like Google (I mean we don’t like it but it’s not the point), we tell people stop using Google because Google and other similar evil corporations are violating people’s rights (and that’s why we don’t like it). If a free software service tracks people or violates people’s privacy rights in any way, it should be criticized too. We should not have double standards or differentiate between services; specially when it comes to libre services as such services may create a bad impression of free software among users.
