I still have this dream/hope that I can achieve the goals of our 200 for TROM campaign https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ - like now I am trying to find ways to make money (was trying upwork these days...); in the summer I will probably work in cleaning for a little bit. And for the past 2 weeks I worked on a website for WebApe...
Man I wish I can focus on TROM and TROM only. I have a bunch of things on my to-do list like trying to update Friendica (figure what's the issue with the update), talk to video creators to join our Peertube, start a video series for TROM, add new features for TROMjaro....
I wish that was my "job".... and it is doable. I only need to convince 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month to support the so many projects that we are doing at TROM. Because I can and will do more, but without a financial support that's nearly impossible...
It is frustrating because I know I can
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I still have this dream/hope that I can achieve the goals of our 200 for TROM campaign https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ - like now I am trying to find ways to make money (was trying upwork these days...); in the summer I will probably work in cleaning for a little bit. And for the past 2 weeks I worked on a website for WebApe...
Man I wish I can focus on TROM and TROM only. I have a bunch of things on my to-do list like trying to update Friendica (figure what's the issue with the update), talk to video creators to join our Peertube, start a video series for TROM, add new features for TROMjaro....
I wish that was my "job".... and it is doable. I only need to convince 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month to support the so many projects that we are doing at TROM. Because I can and will do more, but without a financial support that's nearly impossible...
It is frustrating because I know I can do a lot more and I want to do, and I only need the minimum support to do it. But even that seems so hard to achieve...
Anyway, I'll see what I can do, but I feel it is such a shame to not focus on TROM and the so many ideas I have. For that matter it is a crime that so many are in this situation....
200 people x 5€/month = TROM FOREVER 76 200 for TROM 50 of 200 donors Donation Amount: 5 € Monthly CARD Select Payment Method Stripe Personal Info First Name * Last Name Email Address * Make this an anonymous donation.
Recently a backdoor was discovered in a core package that pretty much all Linux distributions use. Read more here. Since TROMjaro is a Manjaro fork (thus Arch) is very likely to no be affected by it. However it is better to be safe than sorry.
These days I will start to post snippets from TROM II on our Peertube and auto-reshare on our TROM Friendica page. There are around 50 such snippets and are all relevant.
I was planing to do this for some time.
Let's see if anyone wants to help out to share them on ytb and fb too, just in case... But I will not touch those platforms. We still have some legacy TROM accounts there that are not quite managed/updated but let's see...
I will do as much as I can by myself, however I need help to do more than I currently do. I do not have several heads with brains, and multiple arms....
This project argues that trade is the origin of most problems: from climate change to slavery, waste and pollution, corruption, crime, you name it. And if we understand the cause, we have a chance ...
Our Friendica was never as fast and awesome as it is now :D - the introduction of Channels may be overwhelming at first, but can be super awesome.
Listen.
Go to Settings - Display and then open Timelines:
Now you can enable different channels and make them available under the top bar.
For example I have enabled:
Latest Posts (so to see in chronological order the posts from the people I follow). Personal for the posts I am part of - either commented or posted these. Starred - those that I added to my favorites. Followers - since at times I want to see what the people following me post, in case I want to follow back some that I have not. I am thinking if some are following me, maybe we have common interests. Images/Videos - as an easy way to only sort out the p
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Our Friendica was never as fast and awesome as it is now :D - the introduction of Channels may be overwhelming at first, but can be super awesome.
Listen.
Go to Settings - Display and then open Timelines:
Now you can enable different channels and make them available under the top bar.
For example I have enabled:
Latest Posts (so to see in chronological order the posts from the people I follow). Personal for the posts I am part of - either commented or posted these. Starred - those that I added to my favorites. Followers - since at times I want to see what the people following me post, in case I want to follow back some that I have not. I am thinking if some are following me, maybe we have common interests. Images/Videos - as an easy way to only sort out the posts that contain either. Lastly Global - to see what's happening in the fediverse.
I can switch between these with ease and it is so fast. I love it!
And in Settings - Channels you can even create your own channel with your own rules.
It is super great to be able to have such a control over what you want to see, but I think it is overwhelming. We have: Circles - which can have multiple entries. Groups - multiple choices Archives...
If you use our Friendica instance https://social.trom.tf/ you will see older posts popping up in your newsfeed - it is because the 300.000 or so unfinished "jobs" in the queue are finally dealt with by our system after the latest Friendica update. In a sense that's great since I was wondering what can we do about those, why can't our system "finish" those jobs. And by jobs I mean things like getting the posts from that friend, getting the updates from the other, etc..
Soon (perhaps today or tomorrow) all should go back to normal and our Friendica should work better in that regards.
I am working on the new themes for our Friendica. From scratch and this time with the least amount of changes so that they will be compatible with future changes to the core friendica theme. And I will share these ones with the Friendica devs maybe they wanna include them in the official Friendica release or get inspired idk.
I think I will be done with them in a day or two.
So for now the friendica update went well. All seems to work. Except that I see a ton of processes in the queue...
The old issues....will have to check these days in more detail. I hope Friendica won't collapse because of that 😄
If you are using our Friendica instance you can already use the TROM Red Light theme that's almost done. And the "Test" theme that's the dark variant of it - but that's not fully done.
I see that now the Friendica YNH package has finally added the Daemon feature I was waiting for for so long - https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/friendica_ynh - thanks to OniriCorpe for the amazing work! These days I will give it a shot and see how it goes. I will have to redo our Friendica themes customizations and such, but that was a must needed work since the themes I created were a mess in terms of the CSS code, and Friendica seems to have improved their default themes a lot.
Anyway, these days is about some WebApe work, TROMjaro new ISO release today, Friendica update. Continuing my work.
@Tio please consider switching and contributing to friendica default theme. maybe it won't fit perfectly with trom branding but your time will be well spent, reach many more users and help improve the overall platform for all users.
100% yes! I will for sure. Sorry I said I will but then I got busy with other work. And yeah our only "branding" is the replacement of the Friendica logo with ours, the rest is just about the themes. So yeah will do! I need to remember where I have to do that :)
❤️ whenever you have capacity and feel like doing some theme improvements: just reach out to friendica developers group and I am sure you'll get all the support needed to get things started.
TROMnews News is a bit overwhelming now, and I am going to try and fix it these days. I will try to add the news into categories such as health, tech, science, environment, so it is easier for people to follow the news. Now we get tens of news a day....overwhelming.
Monday I have the written driving exam, so today and tomorrow I am preparing more. I fuck hope I'll pass it. I learned a lot and out of the online tests they gave me I have passed more than 90% of them. Thousands and thousands of questions....so let's see. Considering the deplorable state of the english translation for these tests, I may fail it....
I want to start a video series but first I need to see how's with the riving exam on Monday....
Telemarketers is an American true crime documentary series directed and produced by Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern. It follows two office workers who stumble upon the truth of their work at a telemarketing center and are determined to expose the industry.
Stay tuned for a new TROMnews! :) - today or tomorrow. I worked so hard today to bring it back, and bring it in a new more interesting way :P #tromstuff
TROMnews needs a revamp....and that may take some time...unfortunately the plugin we used before stopped working so there are no more "news"....I am trying to fix it these days and move to another plugin which may be a good idea anyway since I wanted to get rid of the plugin that we originally used.
Man it is a shame that I cannot get enough financial support for TROM, because I could focus on these things fully, and do more....let's see how this year's going to be, but I need to focus on making some money somehow. If there were were 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ I could relax and focus on these tools. I could create new video series, new projects, and scream more. Plus do new things with the project.
Sometimes I feel guilty for not doing more, but then I have to remind myself that I can't fully focus on TROM with 300 or so Euros a month.
Anyway, it is also that I was crazy busy with learning for the driving school. I should go for the
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TROMnews needs a revamp....and that may take some time...unfortunately the plugin we used before stopped working so there are no more "news"....I am trying to fix it these days and move to another plugin which may be a good idea anyway since I wanted to get rid of the plugin that we originally used.
Man it is a shame that I cannot get enough financial support for TROM, because I could focus on these things fully, and do more....let's see how this year's going to be, but I need to focus on making some money somehow. If there were were 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ I could relax and focus on these tools. I could create new video series, new projects, and scream more. Plus do new things with the project.
Sometimes I feel guilty for not doing more, but then I have to remind myself that I can't fully focus on TROM with 300 or so Euros a month.
Anyway, it is also that I was crazy busy with learning for the driving school. I should go for the bloody written exam in a week or two - am waiting for them to call me to basically go for it. From what I've heard it is quite hard to pass that exam in Spain and many need to try 2-3 times (more money, more time). But let's see....they tested me with 2 random exam tests today, at the driving school, and I passed them perfectly fine. But will see about the real exam.
200 people x 5€/month = TROM FOREVER 44 200 for TROM 46 of 200 donors Donation Amount: 5 € Monthly CARD Select Payment Method Stripe Personal Info First Name * Last Name Email Address * Make this an anonymous donation.
So ridiculous how people think that they are "free", when in fact we are all imprisoned by rules and laws, many of which are entirely harmful and primitive.
So ridiculous how people think that they are "free", when in fact we are all imprisoned by rules and laws, many of which are entirely harmful and primitive.
When nine-year-old Maya Kowalski was admitted to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in 2016, nothing could have prepared her or her family for what they were about to go through. As the medical team tried to understand her rare illness, they began to question the basic truths that bound the Kowalskis together.
@gnutelephony This is just inhumane..... There is no other way to describe it and I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Often times when people bring up issues regarding racism and such I've never seen many of them mention this one, maybe there needs to be more awareness about this issue 'cause it's an important one.
I will be mighty busy with the driving school exams and such for this rest of the month. So the work I do for TROM should be a bit less. But I am trying to film some stuff for a future video, about these stupid tests and all that. Will see. #tromstuff
TROMjaro Layout Switcher revamp In this release we are bringing the new TROMjaro Layout Switcher. @rokosun rewrote the entire application in the Nim programming language with use of owlkettle library for GTK.
Is there a way to force a system upgrade to the current ISO version? sudo pamac upgrade gave me the updated Layout Switcher, but nothing else covered in your article.
This is a rolling release so no need to upgrade to any new version, you'll get the right updates directly to your system. The other changes are not that important I'd say and can be easily done by anyone who reads the release notes. Like in this release we replaced some default apps and I linked to the ones that we replaced so you can simply install them. But that's all.
So I replaced SMplayer with Celluloid, Gnome Usage with Resources, GUV with Cameractrls, and qTox with Jami. It is very very rare that we replace our default apps. So no, you do not have to do anything other than keeping your system updated and install whatever apps you want form the ones we replaced.
I mean recommend different things in a streamlined way, that would be built in to the place where you want to recommend them to. sort of like in GitHub, only without version control.
I actually meant exactly that: https://www.directory.trade-free.org/submit/ (found you sent it to me in Element when was about to send you a voice message) but it doesnt seem to work so good.. couldnt submit because of some error.
WARNING Because we need to verify each such submission, we can only do that for English-based goods/services, so please do not submit goods/services in another language. I hope you understand. Please complete the required fields.
Tomorrow at 21:00 Madrid time I will do a TROMcast live. A few hours of streaming, about what we did this year, some personal updates, plus what are my/our plans for the next year. ;) - I will share the live Peertube link tomorrow.
I think on the 30st this month I will do a long livestream for TROM to explain some stuff about the future of this project, my plans, etc.. And to try and get more people to join our 200 for TROM if possible - https://www.tromsite.com/donate/
200 people x 5€/month = TROM FOREVER 200 for TROM 34 of 200 donors Donation Amount: 5 € Monthly DONATE 5 EUROS A MONTH Select Payment Method Stripe - Credit Card Paypal - Credit Card Personal Info First Name * Last Name Email Address * Make this an a…
Here's a very cool documentary https://www.videoneat.com/documentaries/25925/arctic-drift/ - a massive research center on the ice. 10 years of preparations, scientists from all around the world. No competition, no bullshit. Pure science. Explorers. Thinkers.
That's how we all should be. To go explore, discover, solve problems.
Unfortunately they were there to research the impact that humans have on the climate....so this is not about exploring as much as it is about figuring out how fucked we are when it comes to the changes in climate.
Anyway, this is a great documentary to also showcase the potential that humans have to organize themselves and do a lot of important work, regardless of the tribe they were born into.
Here's a very cool documentary https://www.videoneat.com/documentaries/25925/arctic-drift/ - a massive research center on the ice. 10 years of preparations, scientists from all around the world. No competition, no bullshit. Pure science. Explorers. Thinkers.
That's how we all should be. To go explore, discover, solve problems.
Unfortunately they were there to research the impact that humans have on the climate....so this is not about exploring as much as it is about figuring out how fucked we are when it comes to the changes in climate.
Anyway, this is a great documentary to also showcase the potential that humans have to organize themselves and do a lot of important work, regardless of the tribe they were born into.
Please consider adding it to your https://joinpeertube.org/#find-peertube-videos website as a showcase of original Peertube releases if you think it is worth it. We have it subtitled in a few languages already and it is basically about why the bad things that happen in the world (where do they originate from), but also about how we could maybe change that. It is about open source, volunteers, and overall treating people as humans and helping them. To help each other.
Please consider it and maybe our instance too - https://videos.trom.tf - dedicated to science/technology/activism.
We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
In this video Adam Conover argues that people cannot leave Twitter because everyone is there and Mastodon is hard to use. He thinks that the best is to transform Twitter into a nationalized, gov-owned public good platform.
Well...
He may be right that people are not going to leave Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and the like since "everyone is there". Which, let's be honest, is an indirect way of saying that humans are mindless sheep who will go to the popular party regardless if they are fucked in the ass all day. So let's not brush this aside. Humans are mindless idiots, at least most of them. And busy for that matter. That should scare the shit out of us and to make us try to find a solution for that, not a solution for Twitter and the like.
Second, Mastodon is not the fucking "fediverse". The fediverse is a big network made up of many different platforms. It is like calling the mail, GMAIL. As if it is only Gmail. Also, if Mastodon is hard to use, and for that m
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Video:
In this video Adam Conover argues that people cannot leave Twitter because everyone is there and Mastodon is hard to use. He thinks that the best is to transform Twitter into a nationalized, gov-owned public good platform.
Well...
He may be right that people are not going to leave Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and the like since "everyone is there". Which, let's be honest, is an indirect way of saying that humans are mindless sheep who will go to the popular party regardless if they are fucked in the ass all day. So let's not brush this aside. Humans are mindless idiots, at least most of them. And busy for that matter. That should scare the shit out of us and to make us try to find a solution for that, not a solution for Twitter and the like.
Second, Mastodon is not the fucking "fediverse". The fediverse is a big network made up of many different platforms. It is like calling the mail, GMAIL. As if it is only Gmail. Also, if Mastodon is hard to use, and for that matter other platforms like Friendica and so forth, then humans must be true idiots because it takes you a minute to understand how these work. They are as "complicated" as Twitter, Facebook and the like. The people who think that using Linux or a federated platform is "hard", are those that need any little excuse to not change their habits. When people start to use new platforms like Zoom, TikTok and the like, they put up with whatever new interfaces they have to navigate, just to use them because "these apps are trendy and everyone uses them".
Lastly, a gov owned social network is not like a gov owned educational network like PBS....PBS produces specific content that it controls. A social network is made up of the content that people produce....if the gov would control that, it would be censored like hell. Terrible idea!
The solution is decentralization. Else you have a giant company or gov that decides what we are allowed to post. Therefore, small instances of locally-moderated groups of people, that create a giant network. Welcome to the Fediverse.
Now let's continue to educate people about it rather than dreaming about the gov taking over a multi-billion dollar ad-based company and making it usable and free for all of us.
It's no secret that Elon Musk has absolutely tanked Twitter, so why haven't we all left? Despite the site becoming an apocalyptic hellscape, there's a surpri...
From now on, and for the next few weeks, I will work on adding a lot more apps to our TROMjaro APPS library https://www.tromjaro.com/apps/ - lots of cool apps :). But takes some time because for most of them I am designing an icon that will be part of the Zafiro icon theme pack (so that we contribute to this open source icon pack - we already made hundreds of apps so far), but I also need to test more these apps, make screenshot for them and all that.
In TROM-Jaro you can find thousands upon thousands of applications. Pretty much every single application that is available for Linux is available in Add/Remove Software in TROM-Jaro. On this page …
Since the latest changes and optimizations I did some 2-3 weeks ago for Friendica, our instance became so fast it is unbelievable. Go from one page to another in less than 1-2 seconds, at times it feels instant. Amazing! #tromstuff
Friendica
relies heavily on worker processes for doing things like federation, cleaning up the database, and many other tasks. It can either be run as a periodically running system cron job or in a daemon mode.
I was running all of our websites - see https://status.tromsite.com (plus our personal ones) from 2 servers paying 68 Euros a month. On TROM.tf I was at the limit of our storage space. Now I run the same websites with some 72 Euros a month and double the storage space, via 2 hosting companies (never put all eggs into one basket) - Webdock and Hetzner.
Plus I need to pay 270 Euros a year for backing up all of our servers to BorgBase. 4TB of data.
Lastly I pay 13 Euros a month for my and my family's personal files backups (5TB - plenty of storage for years to come).
A few days ago someone was asking me over email how can I sustain TROM financially with so many services and projects. Well it is because I work a lot to manage these servers and backups, else it would be 5 times more expensive. And thanks to @YunoHost I am able to provide the many services we provide via TROM.tf. Wi
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I was running all of our websites - see https://status.tromsite.com (plus our personal ones) from 2 servers paying 68 Euros a month. On TROM.tf I was at the limit of our storage space. Now I run the same websites with some 72 Euros a month and double the storage space, via 2 hosting companies (never put all eggs into one basket) - Webdock and Hetzner.
Plus I need to pay 270 Euros a year for backing up all of our servers to BorgBase. 4TB of data.
Lastly I pay 13 Euros a month for my and my family's personal files backups (5TB - plenty of storage for years to come).
A few days ago someone was asking me over email how can I sustain TROM financially with so many services and projects. Well it is because I work a lot to manage these servers and backups, else it would be 5 times more expensive. And thanks to @YunoHost I am able to provide the many services we provide via TROM.tf. Without them there would be no TROM.tf. I wish I had more money to support them too, a little bit. But TROM is far from being financially sustainable.
But damn I love that we have our own social network, video platform, cloud for files and collaboration, chat, and more. Thanks to the open source projects like Friendica, Peertube, Matrix, Nextcloud and so forth.
I am getting close to being done with my technical to-do stuff. From servers to websites and everything else. The last thing I need to do is to move all of the personal backups, for me and my family, from borgbase to hetzner and use Kopia for the backups. So far I am so impressed by Kopia, it is the best backup app I've tested. And I test a lot for TROMjaro. I backed-up 2TB of data, encrypted and compressed, in less than 24h on my Hetzner box via Kopia. Would have taken many many days to do that with Vorta plus Borg.
I want to give it a few more testing days and setup all of the other family computers to use it, then I'll make an article about it.
After that I will shift gears a bit. I want to cut bits from TROM II and share them individually because some make sense on their own and we may make other people more curious to see the entire documentary. I want to make a tutorial about how you can sync a youtube channel with peertube and then invite relevant creators to our peertube. I want to grow our Peertube in terms of content now that we have a lot more storage space
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I am getting close to being done with my technical to-do stuff. From servers to websites and everything else. The last thing I need to do is to move all of the personal backups, for me and my family, from borgbase to hetzner and use Kopia for the backups. So far I am so impressed by Kopia, it is the best backup app I've tested. And I test a lot for TROMjaro. I backed-up 2TB of data, encrypted and compressed, in less than 24h on my Hetzner box via Kopia. Would have taken many many days to do that with Vorta plus Borg.
I want to give it a few more testing days and setup all of the other family computers to use it, then I'll make an article about it.
After that I will shift gears a bit. I want to cut bits from TROM II and share them individually because some make sense on their own and we may make other people more curious to see the entire documentary. I want to make a tutorial about how you can sync a youtube channel with peertube and then invite relevant creators to our peertube. I want to grow our Peertube in terms of content now that we have a lot more storage space and the ability to easily expand.
Then slowly, getting those out of my way, to start and work again on that book about the Internet. And make more TROMcasts.
The new servers are doing very well. Everything works. All good so far!
What consumes a lot of my time with TROMjaro is to test and fix the GTK and QT theme sync...oh and fix the Libadwaita ones....and the Flatpak ones...damn such a mess! It is fucked up that you do not allow the system to wrap/hug your app window so that we can have the same damn window bars and borders for all apps for functionality/usability and style reasons. idk who thought it is a good idea to force their own window wrapping....terrible!
Plus to not respect the system's theme....
So at times I wonder if I should give up and not fix this. Let people have a wide variety of themes, buttons, colors, shadows, borders....and embrace the mess. idk....but currently we have to do a LOT of dancing in TROMjaro to sync this with that, check the system's theme, copy the contents there, do the same for icons, check the font....WTF.
In what sane Operating System is it that apps look different in terms of their windows and buttons from what the System uses, or be unable to change the font for all apps or icons...like...why are some people killing the theming in Linux!?
I am changing my mind a little bit about the theming apps and websites sort of thing. A system-wide theming is cool and should be an option, but what I would like to see is a sync of light/dark themes that comes from the system. So that an app uses the dark theme, its own, when the system is setup to use dark themes. This way the app developers can make sure their light/dark themes are bugs-free ;).
I would still love to see them having a 3rd option to allow the system to theme their apps, but I do understand that this can create inconsistencies.
Speaking of that, I tried to kinda force our TROM.tf apps to look the same and I made some a bit buggy, like TROM Files (Nextcloud). Therefore I will try to only minimally theme these services from now on. I restored Nextcloud to its default and only kept our main accent theme for TROM.tf. Looks much better and no more weird layout bugs. Little by little I will try to do this for all of our services. Makes sense to let the developers theme them as they fit better, and only do minimal changes on our side.
It will take som
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I am changing my mind a little bit about the theming apps and websites sort of thing. A system-wide theming is cool and should be an option, but what I would like to see is a sync of light/dark themes that comes from the system. So that an app uses the dark theme, its own, when the system is setup to use dark themes. This way the app developers can make sure their light/dark themes are bugs-free ;).
I would still love to see them having a 3rd option to allow the system to theme their apps, but I do understand that this can create inconsistencies.
Speaking of that, I tried to kinda force our TROM.tf apps to look the same and I made some a bit buggy, like TROM Files (Nextcloud). Therefore I will try to only minimally theme these services from now on. I restored Nextcloud to its default and only kept our main accent theme for TROM.tf. Looks much better and no more weird layout bugs. Little by little I will try to do this for all of our services. Makes sense to let the developers theme them as they fit better, and only do minimal changes on our side.
It will take some time do it, but I will do so eventually.
This has always been my stance in regards to theming, I'm not a big customization freak or anything so I mostly just go along with the default theme of the distro I'm using, but if the apps don't respect my dark theme or font sizes then my eyes are gonna suffer - this is not about customization it's about accessibility.
For the past days I worked on optimizing the Synapse (Matrix) database. Pain in the rear-end. I managed to reduce it from some 300 GB to around 100 GB. Still insane how huge the database is. idk if I can do more...
Now I will try to optimize the Friendica database and start the move to the new servers, little by little. A lot of work ahead.....
It is a complicated issue with Matrix... see https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/3364 - many are having similar issues. The database does not store any media file and yet it is so massive.
... which are filling up my disk :( To check if you are also affected, run this query: select count(*) from state_groups sg left join event_to_state_groups esg on esg.state_group=sg.id left join st...
I had the same issue. It got 60gb on a single user instance and the images were offsite on R2. I stopped hosting one when infosec.exchange went up with their own
Man'o'man optimizing the Matrix 280GB database is a LONG and painful process. It may take days....but now I am also working on that ZDay article. Maybe I will publish it tomorrow. After the article is publish all focus is on moving our websites to the servers. We will update about that soonish. #tromstuff
This is one of the things I am talking about in regards to big changes, Take transport. Imagine if we make all public transport as trade-free (that should be the goal), then why would people ever use cars? Sure some may, but most won't. And the better you make this transport system, the less reliance on individual boxes on wheels aka cars.
Yes perhaps we need to introduce these things in such mix-and-match schemes, but if we keep the goal clear, then we can have a real impact.
Imagine if you could hop into any train, bus, tube, and go anywhere, for free. No tickets, no ads, no data collection, no bullshit. Imagine the streets transformed into parks and walking pat
This is one of the things I am talking about in regards to big changes, Take transport. Imagine if we make all public transport as trade-free (that should be the goal), then why would people ever use cars? Sure some may, but most won't. And the better you make this transport system, the less reliance on individual boxes on wheels aka cars.
Yes perhaps we need to introduce these things in such mix-and-match schemes, but if we keep the goal clear, then we can have a real impact.
Imagine if you could hop into any train, bus, tube, and go anywhere, for free. No tickets, no ads, no data collection, no bullshit. Imagine the streets transformed into parks and walking paths. Green, healthy, cozy. Imagine the parking spaces transformed into playing grounds for kids and adults. This is one of those changes that we can do NOW and can have a massive impact for people and the environment!
I wish people would be aware of the practice of trade and how that's the force behind most of the idiotic decisions that we take in our world, like the car-centric model.
These news are a rarity of real and positive news.
And now ditch the ads Germany! Because you don't understand that ads = attention and data trading. And that leads to more consumerism, and to more pollution and destruction and waste. So the goal is to not make them "free" but "trade-free".
I started a conversation with @Roma about optimizing our Matrix database and we ended up talking about carpets. Go figure! That was weird haha.
But hey I am optimizing our Matrix database. Currently at 240GB which is insane! May take 1-3 days to do it. It is slow....but I've heard you can reduce it by a fuck ton so let's see....
The plan: optimize the Matrix and hopefully Friendica database. Move our websites, except trom.tf, to a different server (will take many days); then test to see where we can move our trom.tf.
It will be a lot of server work these next weeks. But we need to run away from Contabo, run run.
I've been struggling these days with the work on TROM. I worked in parrallel on TROMjaro, to find a way to make TROM.tf sustainable in terms of the server and specifically diskspace, and I also work on an article about the ZDay experience. Oh and I tried to improve the ZDay audio and all that...
And I did not have too much success but I am progressing. TROMjaro ISO released, 30% of the ZDay article done, but the solution for TROM.tf is still floating in mid-air....
The main issue is that we are running out of diskspace. So we urgently need to do something about that. Peertube eats by far the most, around 800GB and the saner solution is to move the storage to an Object Storage. I tried and tried and tried and had partial success.... So it is either that I will move our Peertube to an Object Storage or I move the entire TROM.tf server to a server that has more storage space. Problem is, I found such a server, and would be cheaper overall, but it is from Contabo and they seem to refuse to sell me any new service because of the
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I've been struggling these days with the work on TROM. I worked in parrallel on TROMjaro, to find a way to make TROM.tf sustainable in terms of the server and specifically diskspace, and I also work on an article about the ZDay experience. Oh and I tried to improve the ZDay audio and all that...
And I did not have too much success but I am progressing. TROMjaro ISO released, 30% of the ZDay article done, but the solution for TROM.tf is still floating in mid-air....
The main issue is that we are running out of diskspace. So we urgently need to do something about that. Peertube eats by far the most, around 800GB and the saner solution is to move the storage to an Object Storage. I tried and tried and tried and had partial success.... So it is either that I will move our Peertube to an Object Storage or I move the entire TROM.tf server to a server that has more storage space. Problem is, I found such a server, and would be cheaper overall, but it is from Contabo and they seem to refuse to sell me any new service because of the conflict we had a while back.
I got kinda tired these days. My eyes hurt. I even forgot to mention that I've also tried to test stuff for the Friendica YNH package and submit issues/changes/ideas to the devs to make sure we make the YNH Friendica reliable.
Too many things man....and a lot of computer-things that is....and with computers and so many projects there is ALWAYS something to fix/improve. IDK if I like this....I LOVE the end result tho. Us having our own video platform, social network, OS, and so forth...
Well, keep calm and work. Try not to stress. Go out sometimes. Thanks for the advice :)
Our first example of forced takedown has to do with our Nitter instance. Nitter is a front end for Twitter, a proxy service. All it does is requesting a page from Twittter on your (the visitor) behalf. It will only display the Twitter content, without trackers and using its own (more humane theme). It is not storing any data on the server.
No page on https://bird.trom.tf/ exists unless you visit it to generate it. Remember this.
On 11/8/22, 17:35 we have received this from our hosting provider:
Dear ******,
We have received complaints about your VPS XL SSD, specifically about the following IP address(es):
*******
Please see the forwarded e-mail below for more details. Apparently, your VPS XL SSD is used for phishing which is strictly forbidden by our ToS.
Abuse is a serious threat in the Internet and can cause a huge amount of damage; thus, we ask for your understanding that once an ABUSE case is reported to us, we must handle abuse strictly and with no tolerance.
Please take immediate action to stop the ongoing server misuse. It is required that you solve the problem within the next 12 hours, and that we receive your reply within this period, too. Your reply must contain all information which enable us to understand exactly which measures you took to stop the abuse and prevent such or similar incidents in the future.
We will suspend access to your VPS XL SSD if we do not receive your reply within the given time frame, and if the problem is not solved in due time; both is essential - the solution and your response. The reactivation of a VPS XL SSD always demands a reactivation fee of at least €36.30. Please respond in due time to save these expenses.
We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter.
Original complaint from tfp.report.ctac@appgate.com Subject: Unauthorized Use of Trademark
The original complaint that was sent to our hosting provider was this:
Greetings, This is an official message from AppGate, on behalf of our Banco del Pacifico G.F. We need your cooperation in the removal of the content located in the site: https://bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC The target site is the following URL(s): https://twitter.com/BancoPacificoEC We kindly ask you to shut down this content as soon as possible. We expect a prompt and affirmative response.
Thanks for helping make the Internet safer.
Sincerely,
DTP Team - Appgate
We replied:
Dear Contabo,
For one https://bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is a front-end access to the twitter page https://twitter.com/BancoPacificoEC. It is not a content that is available on our server. We are using Nitter a Twitter front-end https://github.com/zedeus/nitter . Like thousands do. How can we be responsible for the Twitter content now? This is not something we can ever remove since it is not on our server. Please understand.
Second, did you check to see if this bank account is phishing? https://www.bancodelpacifico.com/ - they have a verified Twitter account and all that. They seem like any other bank...
Please get back to me on this or put me in contact with the ones who filled the complain.
Cheers!
I thought for sure that they accuse us of mirroring a real Twitter phishing account.
But well, we were worried that they will shut down our entire server that hosts 20+ Open Source services that thousands of people use, so the same day we sent another email because no one would reply:
So this is a proxy service, mind you. If the ones contacting you are the owners of that Twitter account please make them aware that it is legal to host proxies and we do not host any materials from this proxy on our server. Here is a discussion about Nitter and DMCA https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/482
Sent one more because we were stressed by the 12 hour deadline they gave us:
Hello,
bird.trom.tf hosts Nitter, a private Twitter front-end, meaning it is simply a proxy to access Twitter assets and user generated content without tracking from Twitter. Thus, all content is proxied from Twitter and is not stored on our servers and if Twitter chooses to remove an asset, it will no longer appear on our site.
Our bird.trom.tf is hosted in the European Union, so the European Union's laws apply. Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, "temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable: a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary" is allowed, and legal.
As such, all takedown requests must be sent to Twitter, as we don't have any control on the data that they have on their servers.
Thank you,
After several hours of no reply we sent one more:
So please be mindful and do not remove our server. The link https://bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is not phishing. You gave me 12h to fix the problem and since you have not replied for the past hours I am concerned about that short deadline. I may not be available for the next 10 hours from now on, simply because I may be asleep, so please do not remove our server as it has not breached any of your ToS.
We got no reply until 22/8/22 10:46. 11 days later! We got this:
Dear ****,
So, where is the final solution? We will give 12 hours to finally close this case.
If you have any questions or need help, please do not hesitate to contact us.
And we replied:
Hello,
bird.trom.tf hosts Nitter, a private Twitter front-end, meaning it is simply a proxy to access Twitter assets and user generated content without tracking from Twitter. Thus, all content is proxied from Twitter and is not stored on our servers and if Twitter chooses to remove an asset, it will no longer appear on our site.
Our bird.trom.tf (Nitter) is hosted in the European Union, so the European Union's laws apply. Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, "temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable: a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary" is allowed, and legal.
As such, all takedown requests must be sent to Twitter, as we don't have any control on the data that they have on their servers.
I am waiting for your response.
Cheers!
An hour later, no reply. We emailed again:
Please reply today so we can settle this. If you want you can even call me. My phone number is in my account details. I would be illegal under the EU law to remove my server because of a legal service. A proxy one that does not store any data on your servers.
I am waiting for your reply!
2 hours later, no reply, we emailed them again:
I could also seek the advice and involvement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about this case, because if you decide to remove our server for something that is legally protected, then the precedent is dangerous and needs to be addressed.
I have contacted you a few hours ago and you did not reply, yet you gave me 12h to solve this issue and/or to contact you, which I have done.
So please reply to me and please do not remove the server.
Two more hours later, no reply. Being concerned that they will remove our entire server we decided to make that Nitter link not accessible via Nginx. That's the best we could do. We were forced to do that because no one at Contabo would even engage with us over this. We had no options. It was a mafia style "non-discussion", "do as I told you" approach by the Contabo company.
We emailed:
The URL https://bird.trom.tf/BancoPacificoEC is now gone. This is an illegal request and I felt bullied into removing a link that did not host anything phishing related and no content at all. This is not ok and I will contact several organizations to help me with this abuse.
You should understand that what the complaint requested was an illegal request, but since I was threatened with the closure of my entire server in less than 12h, and thus over 20 websites hosted there, I was forced to remove that URL.
Now that the URL is gone, you can close this case. I will contact you soon in regards to this decission.
And emailed again:
Tomorrow I will not be home for most of the day, and now that the link has be removed (unfairly) you have no reason to delete our server. I hope you are reasonable people and act the same. And not forget that I've been forced to remove a link that was neither phishing, nor did it store any content. It was a proxy link from a very popular proxy service called Nitter.
They replied:
Dear ****,
Thank you very much for your response.
The complaint seems to be solved; thus, we have closed this case and no further steps are requested from your side at the moment. If we should receive further complaints about your used services, we will contact you again.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Fuck them! "thank you for your cooperation"....motherfuckers. There was no cooperation. It was them forcing me to remove a URL that was not a phishing URL as it was claimed to be, nor did it store any content.
I replied:
Dear Contabo,
This was far from "cooperation", I was forced by you to remove a link that was not phishing, nor did it contain any content. You refused to reply to any of my arguments or look into this.
I am terribly disappointed in you, and I will stop recommending Contabo to anyone.
I will do my best to forward this case to different organizations that could help me pierce through your silence, because you have been bullied by whatever company contacted you, to remove a legal link, and thus abuse people like me who are paying for your service.
Do you have any comments in regards to your decision to force me to remove that URL?
And now I will try to contact EFF or other similar organizations about this issue. If anyone can help, please let me know. If this becomes the norm, then any link from any of our website, can be subject to removal.
This is unacceptable.
UPDATE.
25.08.22
The company:
Thank you for your response.
There are new changes in Germany regarding copyright violations that forced us to remove all domains from our network that are providing protected contents.
Either you provide for us and every visitor the declaration of consent of the right holder to each individual product or its confirmation that you are the right holder. Otherwise, we will be forced to remove this website. This comes also in action for redirections, quotes and shared posts.
We know that this is strict, but we are bound by the law and hope for your understanding.
Us:
Would would be kind to tell me what set of laws we are talking about? This is extremely strict. Sounds like you are not allowed to host anything but your own personal photos for example.
Second, are these laws only applying for the servers hosted in Germany by Contabo? Would it be better to migrate to a different region?
Them:
Thank you for your e-mail.
Yes, the German copyright law is really very strict, and affects all companies based in Germany, including in our case our data centers in other countries.
The copyright law states that content may only be uploaded if its creator or owner has explicitly confirmed this.
Us:
Hi,
I felt like I was given no chance to defend myself when you contacted me. And I contacted others for legal advice and I was given some, but you had ignored it. You did not address it at all. I showed you that proxy services are legal in all of the EU "Under the directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001". So how am I going to know if what you did was legal or not if I am not provided any details about your decision?
Do you understand my frustration?
Right now, based on my experience with Contabo, you guys can any day ask me to remove any link at your will, and I cannot do a thing about it. This is truly disturbing to me.
Now can you please take your time and explain to me under what exact law does it say it is illegal in Germany to host a proxy service that uses the official API of Twitter, which allows exactly for what we are doing with bird.trom.tf (Nitter).
Please take your time and explain to me. I think it is fair towards me to have an explanation of this.
Thanks
Them:
we don't have to have a legal debate, because I don't think there's a lawyer sitting on either side right now. It is also completely irrelevant: We don't want our network to be affected, by repeated complaints. We are allowed to protect our reputation, and that is what we are doing here. Besides, it's perfectly clear that you can't use someone else's copyright.
It is clear by now that they just bend to whoever contacts them with an abuse report. They do not want or have the resources to do anything more than bully their "clients" into taking down whatever it is requested. Not surprised...
I tried to test the Object Storage for our Peertube and yeah it is a bit complicated. But it failed. Incompatibility between the S3 I chose and Peertube (see).
I will try more but anyone knows a reliable and very cheap Object Storage that won't bullshit you with downloads, access, and all sort of fees?
Describe the current behavior We're trying to deploy peertube on kubernetes with the new s3 native support (yeah! congrats on that). As described in coopgo/peertube-k8s#2 (we're trying to use the e...
R2 and B2 will charge for ingress but not egress. (B2 free egress starts oct. ) both are pretty cheap but come with their own set of challenges. But if you’re up for it, maybe it’ll work for you :)
We do not have a better audio, I am sorry. We did not know that they would not record directly from the mic itself so we used the camera's mic. If we knew, I would have taken my lavmic.
Anyway I edited it a bit. I hope you enjoy it and I hope I can do more!
We do not have a better audio, I am sorry. We did not know that they would not record directly from the mic itself so we used the camera's mic. If we knew, I would have taken my lavmic.
Anyway I edited it a bit. I hope you enjoy it and I hope I can do more!
ZDay: How to Grow a Saner Society. A Lifetime Adventure (bad audio)
On 26th of August, 2023, we presented TROM at the annual ZDay event in Prague. This was the last ZDay after a decade long of making them every year.
Our presentation was focused on showcasing in a unique way how our society works and how trade is at the core of most of our issues. In the second half we focused on the positive side: how we and others create trade-free good and services and why this can become a tsunami movement if more of us engage into it, in a decentralized way.
We put a lot of effort into creating a simple narrative and interesting slides with animations, to make it all more fun and easy to understand.
This was the first presentation for Tio and we hope more to follow.
You're invited to talk on Matrix. If you don't already have a client this link will help you pick one, and join the conversation. If you already have one, this link will help you join the conversation
The ZDay event and the fun days with the fun people are over now. I am just with @Roma and we will chill, relax, and plan for the future of TROM 😀. Well, he has to work....unfortunately.... I wish he would not have to.
So everyone left. Well, except one girl who is from Prague and came to the event because of TROM. That was super cool. She, Lenka, is such a nice person and we spent a lot of time together. This week we will for sure meet again. I will still stay in Prague for a week or so.
I will work on the presentation video and I will perhaps make a bigger post about the entire experience. Stay tuned! #tromstuff
I had to restore a snapshot of the server to get back to a working Friendica. We almost did it but the loading times for Friendica were terrible. I opened an issue here https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/13373 but I need to wait after my Prague presentation in 2 days time to try and update, else it is pretty stupid to present Friendica when our instance does not work properly 😁
Updating the Friendica YNH package was always a huge mess and I should not do it before such an event.
Some data that was created for the past 10h on trom.tf may have been lost. This was something that I had to do. Sorry about that.
This is something so weird and I still do not understand it. Context. This is our instance https://social.trom.tf . Our database is around 30GB in size. We use a daemon for Friendica with these con...
The latest FreeTube release is amazing! https://freetubeapp.io/ - Now all works perfectly fine even with a local API so no need for 3rd party like Invidious. Now you have the option to replace the clickbait titles with community generated titles so that you know wtf a video is about.
You can replace the thumbnails too and also skip all sponsored and BS parts of a video.
If you wanna watch Youtube and stay sane and enjoy it, FreeTube is absolutely amazing. Get to see how a trade-free youtube can look like.
Maybe I want to do an experiment when I will do the Prague presentation. What if we try to stream it to our Peertube via a mobile phone? 😀 Is there a FOSS app that allows us to directly stream RTMP to @PeerTube ? Anyone knows? Am curious.... #tromstuff
EDIT: Ok I can stream with the awesome Peertube Live app https://codeberg.org/Schoumi/PeerTubeLive but they need to update it to support the new Peertube API. If they do it in time and I can create permanent lives and with transcoding, we can give it a shot and stream the Prague presentation to our Peertube.
@futureisfoss I have no experience with PeerTube, but from a quick look at the docs for that I guess it should work with their "Import with URL" option?
@futureisfoss There are also native Android and iOS apps for it, but not sure if they are preferred over the browser version...
While the VDO.Ninja browser-based app version is suggested for most users, this native Android app version has a few key advantages: - Can stream video while running in the background or with the screen off - Screen sharing is supported, including the sharing of third-party apps - Works on certain devices that won't support webRTC via the browser
TROM II: A Message to the Aliens Year: 2023 / Duration: 4 parts, 5 hours We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
Tio
in reply to Tio • •Xantulon :mastodon: :pixelfed: likes this.