This article by @parisba is why #CommunityHosting and #SelfHosting need to be normalised. They are the only way we can stop scenarios like this happening:
You might think this couldn't happen to you, but it could happen to anyone. It's especially scary as most big tech companies are in repressive countries.
It's much easier and cheaper than you think to make your own online services. I've done a guide for non-technical people at growyourown.services
20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple
Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and…Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison (hey.paris)
Grymt likes this.
reshared this
Why do my neons have dark green parts? - All For Gardening
Has anyone seen this before? I’m worried that I will lose the neon coloration to the dark green, which would make me quite upset.Gardener (All For Gardening)
Salvini: "Io non prendo ordini da putin"
ordini? non è la prima cosa che viene in mente...
The 77-Year-Old Book That Helps Explain the MAGA New Right nytimes.com/2025/12/13/opinion…
reshared this
It would have been possible to reach Stockholm late tomorrow night if we'd continued on tonight north from Basel through Germany for a couple more hours, slept at a hotel and gotten up early. But it would have been a chore, and a single missed connection might have seen us in Malmö instead tomorrow. So we spend some extra time and money, have much better safety margins, and take the sleeper from Hamburg tomorrow night.
Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, AT&T High Seas Transmitter Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, with operators available to assist you, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/41…
High Seas Radiotelephone Antenna, Ocean Gate, NJ
28 November 2009. Abandoned AT&T high seas transmitter site (WOO), Ocean Gate, NJ. From the 1930's through 1999, AT&T operated a "high seas" radiotelephone service that allowed oceangoing ships to make and receive telephone calls over high frequenc…Flickr
reshared this
The ancient Palestinian town of Sebastia in the northern West Bank is a testament to 5,000 years of Palestinian history. Israel announced that it plans to seize the village and its archaeological sites.'
mondoweiss.net/2025/12/an-anci…
#westbank #palestine #zionist #warcrimes #genocide #ethniccleansing
The sadistic brutality of the British state on view for all to see!
“Families of #PalestineAction hunger strikers in hospital 'blocked' from contacting them”
by Katherine Hearst in Middle East Eye
@palestine@fedibird.com
@Palestine@masto.ai
@palestine@lemmy.ml
@uk_politics @BBC5Live
@BBCRadio4
@BBCNews
@guardian
@Independent @thetimes
@UKLabour
“NHS doctor tells MEE situation is incredibly serious & that one prisoner was chained to a prison guard in hospital”
middleeasteye.net/news/familie…
#Press #UK #Prisoners #HungerStrike
Families of Palestine Action hunger strikers in hospital 'blocked' from contacting them
Shahmina Alam spends her days glued to her phone. Along with her parents, she’s waiting for news of her brother Kamran Ahmed, a Palestine Action-linked prisoner hospitalised for a second time on Monday due to his hunger strike.Katherine Hearst (Middle East Eye)
Why does my new growth look like this? - All For Gardening
I’ve had this alocasia for over a year at this point and this past summer recently changed its soil composition and it had been getting better light, so itsGardener (All For Gardening)
Noem is arresting US Citizens, deporting Vets, & killing immigrants in ICE custody
Hegseth is killing defenseless civilians in open water
Patel is making up an "antifa" threat while ignoring the actual threat of white supremacy terror
RFK is endangering us all with an entirely preventable measles outbreak
Rubio is escalating war & destroying our alliances with Canada & Europe
Justice Roberts is ripping the Voting Rights Act & giving POTUS unlimited immunity
This is how you destroy America.
reshared this
@audreygwinter
I empathize with the feeling, but I think you were being a bit unfair here. People are:
- donating to #resistance like OP
- growing their own food #permaculture
- taking to the streets #noKings
- ...and many more direct actions
We need more of that, yes. Your help is more effective than your criticism. You can join any time you like 🙂
Rest in Power, Kuwasi Balagoon
abcf.net/blog/rest-in-power-ku…
"On this day in 1986, former Black Liberation Army & New Afrikan, anarchist Political Prisoner Kuwasi Balagoon died of complications from AIDS. We highly recommend reading Kuwasi’s writings at the link below, especially the Brinks trial opening and closing trial statement:theanarchistlibrary.org/librar…"
Day 13: Surprised myself with a sudden burst of creativity (while doing my laundry and having to get up), I wrote a total of 544 words today.
I think it had something to do with navigating a scene with a Druidic Healer that's smart, but mentally unhinged due to an experiment mishap.
Donovan is performing his Knightly duty and helping the Druid King in his time of need. Donovan is the type to be able to talk to anyone at a moment's notice. It's fun to write these interactions. Tomorrow, this scene will be further developed.
Sadly, the writing time frame will be a lot shorter due to work tomorrow.
"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.Brian Merchant (Blood in the Machine)
A Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) F-16 fighter jet conducted a guided air strike, dropping a bombs with a time-delayed fuze on the Thmor Da Casino location in Veal Veaeng District, Pursat Province, Cambodia on December 13th.
The action was taken after the casino building was found to be used by the Cambodian Armed Forces as a military operations site to launch attacks against theBYTESEU (Bytes Europe)
From Packt Publishing:
Julia High Performance
By Avik Sengupta
(Publication date: Apr 2016, Pages: 132)
Design and develop high performing programs with Julia
Get it at: packtpub.com/free-learning
Free Learning | Daily Programming eBook from Packt
A new free programming tutorial book every day! Develop new tech skills and knowledge with Packt Publishing’s daily free learning giveawayPackt
Grow Your Own Services ❄️
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •p.s. This part sums up a big problem in big tech:
"My Plea - I am asking for a human at Apple to review this case."
Big tech deliberately stops people being able to reach a human because they hate paying salaries to non-management. They try to automate everything.
By contrast, with community hosting you can always talk directly to the people who run your service. You might even know them in real life.
Similarly, with self-hosting you can fix it yourself or talk to people at hosting company.
LΞX/NØVΛ 🇪🇺
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •Pflege42
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •i.e.
hostsharing.net/
Cooperative Community Cloud
HostsharingMyView
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •Wow ...
Just losing my photos would be the worst for me ... and why I don't rely on any cloud service .... they are regularly downloaded from phone, stored on my personal computer and USB ...
Edited ... Heard this morning about a bloke called Evan Ratliff who started his own company using AI, no humans ...
He has a podcast called The Shell Game on ABC ... haven't listened to it yet but will later ...
Good luck finding any humans ...
abc.net.au/listen/programs/she…
Shell Game - ABC listen
ABC listenKevinOnEarth
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •Grow Your Own Services ❄️
in reply to KevinOnEarth • • •@Quantillion
Indeed, it's astonishing!
ArdentArchivist
in reply to KevinOnEarth • • •@Quantillion
TBH, we have to face the facts: show me a country that *isn’t* repressive these days.
The cloud concept is good in theory. It’s easy, convenient… and requires you to place your trust in tech companies to a frightening degree.
It’s not for me.
Grow Your Own Services ❄️
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •You don't need to use a big tech company to have a cloud! 🙂 I'd recommend checking out Nextcloud, it lets you very easily run your own cloud services: growyourown.services/beginners…
A Beginner’s Guide to Nextcloud – Grow Your Own Services
growyourown.servicesArdentArchivist
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •Duly noted - thanks.
Dave Hughes
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •(I wonder if the lockout is due to the size of the gift card, and whether someone at $bigstore has done something stupid in the authorisation).
Uncle Zak
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •dperkins
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •We also need to keep teaching people about brittle architecture. Your life is brittle enough, and you don't need to add extra badness by making yourself dependent on Apple (or Google or Microsoft).
I guess it's shocking that this dude couldn't recognize that mixing personal and professional is dangerous. But they are not alone. At least have two different providers, FFS.
rainey 🌻
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •I don't have the money to throw at self-hosting.
I am extremely entrenched in the Google ecosystem, and I would like a way to extract everything to local backup, if nothing else. And if I can't host my own, Proton can handle most of what I use Google for (except websites) and they seem quite a bit less evil.
ArdentArchivist
in reply to rainey 🌻 • • •Agreed. Start downloading & throw everything onto Proton as a backup. They’re fairly generous with storage allowances. 👍👍
rainey 🌻
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •The question is, how to efficiently download everything? Is there a way to automate it? Is there a handy tool I could use? I don't have the mental spoons to even think about doing it manually.
ArdentArchivist
in reply to rainey 🌻 • • •@raineyday
🤷♀️ Don’t use Google so can’t advise on that. But there must be a way to download all your stuff.
And if you have to do it the hard way - don’t stress, you’ve got a LOT more spoons than they want you to think you have! 😉
After reading this thread a couple of hrs ago, I decided to make use of my (previously unused) Proton Drive. I have 1GB of pics & vids for home insurance proof, all safely uploaded now. 👍👍
rainey 🌻
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •Check out the other reply to my comment. You might want to re-consider Proton.
rainey 🌻
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •@ArdentArchivist
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "you’ve got a LOT more spoons than they want you to think you have! 😉" This isn't a "society telling me what to think" issue. This is an "I know how my mind, brain, and body work, and I know my limits and what I can and cannot do or sustain."
ArdentArchivist
in reply to rainey 🌻 • • •Grow Your Own Services ❄️
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •Self-hosting through managed hosting doesn't cost as much as people think. It's about the same price as a paid plan from Proton, starts from 5-10 euros per month depending on what you want.
But when you use managed hosting you actually own the service, and you're not at anyone's mercy. You can move your service to a different hosting company if needed.
I don't trust Proton at all after they started praising Trump:
web.archive.org/web/2025011519…
Proton (@protonprivacy@mastodon.social)
Mastodonrainey 🌻
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •@ArdentArchivist
Oh FFS...
I still need to figure out how to extract what I do have on Google.
ArdentArchivist
in reply to rainey 🌻 • • •@raineyday
Yeah, but reading between the lines I question how much they actually 'support' Trump as opposed to supporting anyone who tries to implement antitrust legislation. I suspect they’ve seen the error of their ways in that regard. And even if they haven’t, they’re still the least evil option for cloud storage. Plus, your stuff is end-to-end encrypted, so not even Proton can read it. 👀
rainey 🌻
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •I have zero clue. All I know is that it's past my bedtime. 🛌
ArdentArchivist
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •@raineyday
Christ, I didn’t know about that.
But there’s also this:
rainey 🌻
in reply to ArdentArchivist • • •Are they playing both sides? Did they get a new CEO between these two things? Did they realize their earlier mistake? I have no idea how to approach this.
ArdentArchivist
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •I feel terrible for Paris - what on earth is going on at Apple?! There has to be some sort of recourse, some path to resolution. If it were me, I would prob find a way to get to Sydney, with all evidence/proof, and camp out at HQ until someone sane was willing to hear me out.
Shouldn’t be necessary.
Very best wishes to Paris for a good outcome. 🙏
This is (one reason) why I don’t use cloud services. Multi local backups. 👍
ArdentArchivist
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •eanopolsky
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •Erik
in reply to Grow Your Own Services ❄️ • • •wow what that fella is suffering is terrible!
And ofc a case for what you say, but mostly terrible for him