Text

|

Using software libre is always important, no matter what kind of computer you use. Whether it’s a laptop or a mobile phone, our computers should do our computing the way we wish.

Using proprietary software makes corporations and computers do what they like, not what we want. However, software libre gives us the power to control our computing and own our systems.

One kind of computers we use daily is our mobile phones. Mobile phones are also computers so they should also run software libre. An important part of our mobile phones’ software is the operating system.

Now, Android itself is software libre but usually phones come with a Googlized Android. Googlized Android is no longer software libre but there’s something you can do, use LineageOS.

Continue reading →
Text

|
Pixelfed: Photo sharing for everyone

I created, changed, moved, and deleted a lot of accounts on fediverse, I’m not going to lie. Some of them were Pixelfed accounts. Since 2018, Pixelfed is bringing photo sharing to people without violating their rights. Pixelfed is software libre and has much better privacy settings than Instagram.

I’ve had quite few Pixelfed accounts before but photo sharing was not my thing but since I’m trying to be more socialized and connected to people, I try to keep this account. I’ve explained about fediverse before, here’s a small note about Pixelfed.

Continue reading →
Text

|

Update: You may also want to read this too regarding my problem with Fedora.

I’ve been a user of Fedora for a long time but I recently noticed a statement on Fedora download page:

By downloading Fedora software, you acknowledge that you understand all of the following: Fedora software and technical information may be subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (the “EAR”) and other U.S. and foreign laws and may not be exported, re-exported or transferred (a) to any country listed in Country Group E:1 in Supplement No. 1 to part 740 of the EAR (currently, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan & Syria); (b) to any prohibited destination or to any end user who has been prohibited from participating in U.S. export transactions by any federal agency of the U.S. government; or (c) for use in connection with the design, development or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or rocket systems, space launch vehicles, or sounding rockets, or unmanned air vehicle systems. You may not download Fedora software or technical information if you are located in one of these countries or otherwise subject to these restrictions. You may not provide Fedora software or technical information to individuals or entities located in one of these countries or otherwise subject to these restrictions. You are also responsible for compliance with foreign law requirements applicable to the import, export and use of Fedora software and technical information.

I believe this statement is an obvious violation of freedom of software. They didn’t talk about Fedora trademarks, they have only said that some people who are determined by U.S. government won’t have the right to use Fedora “software”.

This is the end for me and Fedora. I do encourage you to move away from Fedora (if you’re using it) and install an other libre distro. There’s a good list of free (libre) distors on gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html.

I’m very disappointed. Fedora was one of my favorites. I should mention that I continue to use QubesOS.

Text

|

I’ve been informed that there’s many apps in various app stores to track people during coronavirus pandemic. Right now (May 24), there’s more than 5.3 million cases of coronavirus and near 350 thousand people are dead.

I believe many of them were also tracked, not only by these apps, but by Google and Apple too. Apple and Google are helping governments to track people‘s location status. This tracking technology release is an obvious violation of privacy.

People are convinced that these technologies and tracking is helping them but disadvantages of it is far more than its benefits. While people can be informed of the dangers in various ways that are not violation of privacy, these corporations are collecting personal information, obviously not to help people but for their own benefits.

People should be able to be safe without their basic rights being violated. Privacy is one these basic rights. Nobody should be forced to destroy its privacy. No matter what are the reasons.

Text

|
Free Software, Free Society

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is probably the best way to start a business. If your product is new to people, you need to make a sense of need for it. I believe in that sentence, however, I believe when we say need, we shouldn’t only think about the need for product.

People have different needs. For example, many people like to be famous, many people like to be rich, many people want political power, etc.

Continue reading →
Text

|
Général Toussaint Louverture

Few days ago, May 20, was the birthday of Général Toussaint Louverture.

Born 20 May 1743, Louverture was a former slave who would lead the Haitian Revolution that would defeat the French and Spanish colonizers and established the first free, Black republic shortly after his death in 1804. Louverture led the anti-slavery uprising in his country into a war for independence, using his political and military genius against colonial forces led by Napoleon, one of the greatest military commanders of all time.

Continue reading →
Text

|

I believe we should all work to ensure human rights and freedom of speech. Women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, black rights, workers’ rights, etc. All are human rights. We cannot forget other societies under the pretext of supporting one society.

What I do believe in is that every human being that fights for its rights, is a great soldier and a future maker. The war is not finished. This is a war against those who still can’t accept that slavery is over.

But today’s slavery is different. In today’s world, people are slaves of capitalism. People are slaves of those who believe women are less than men. We see this everyday in our lives.

Women are paid less than men in a same job. Women are still considered housekeepers by default. There’s still silly talks that men don’t have emotions. Workers are still being oppressed by the rich. Many people have sexuality that is not respected.

We should not fight for black rights; we should not fight for LGBTQ rights; what should we do is fighting for humans because we all are humans. Every human being, no matter what its job, sexuality, financial status, color, nationality, ethnicity, etc. is, should be respected and treated fair and equal.

Text

|
How VPN works

A lot of VPN services advertise their service talking about things that are not true. Or, at least, has been given more importance than it should be. For a lot of people, VPN is useless and they only buy it because they have been targeted with false advertisement.

Here’s why you shouldn’t, or probably should, buy a VPN.

Continue reading →
Text

|

I, personally, don’t read blogs that don’t provide RSS feeds. I think RSS is not still out of date and well, it’s still the best standard for subscribing to blogs.

RSS feeds make following blogs much easier. You just subscribe to a feed and it’s done. You open your favorite RSS reader and read your favorite blogs.

Please add a RSS feed to your blog. One of the reasons that social networks are popular now is that they provide a way of subscibing to people or topics. You can make your blog popular by providing such ability and that ability is for sure RSS.

I personally use Nextcloud News as my RSS reader but there’s a lot of popular and great tools. Mozilla Thunderbird, for example, is one of the bests I think.