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43 Posts

Queer computer user with a desire to help bring about the different, better world ey can see out of the corners of eir eye.

Some common mushrooms likely have more than 17,000 genders; your human pronouns are no match for an underground fungus.

Pronounsey/em, or she/her
Politicsantifascist, libertarian socialist, transfeminist
LanguagesEnglish, Deutsch, Français, Nederlands

I've only recommended one VPN service, ever (and no, I don't have any financial relationship to them): Mullvad. They have always seemed to be one of the few entities that practices the mantra, "You don't have to protect what you don't collect."

This is quite a press release:

"Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant. Customer data not compromised
20 April 2023 NEWS

On April 18 at least six police officers from the National Operations Department (NOA) of the Swedish Police visited the Mullvad VPN office in Gothenburg with a search warrant.
They intended to seize computers with customer data.

In line with our policies such customer data did not exist. We argued they had no reason to expect to find what they were looking for and any seizures would therefore be illegal under Swedish law. After demonstrating that this is indeed how our service works and them consulting the prosecutor they left without taking anything and without any customer information.

If they had taken something that would not have given them access to any customer information.

Mullvad has been operating our VPN service for over 14 years. This is the first time our offices have been visited with a search warrant."

Source: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised/

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/07/a-deep-dive-into-the-residential-proxy-service-911/

Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant. Customer data not compromised - Blog | Mullvad VPN

On April 18 at least six police officers from the National Operations Department (NOA) of the Swedish Police visited the Mullvad VPN office in Gothenburg with a search warrant.

Mullvad VPN
I guess I owe people an update, but there's very little to say. I'm still severely disabled but I'm looking for another tech job because it turns out that with the skyrocketing cost of living and low executive function, disability isn't enough to live on.

I have a friend who is blind, but I met her online and her lack of user picture really weirded me out at first.

I got over it, realized people don't need to use visual metaphors to represent themselves if those are useless to them. Being sighted gives me access to a whole host of experiences that I try to be more conscious of.

Ironically, it also means I associate a randomly generated color - a bright, sunny orange - with that friend, because it's the background for her default user icon.

The #repairproject is going... Poorly. I just contacted a charity which distributes laptops to see if I could donate my machines, and they didn't want any.

The reason is simple: the people who don't have ready access to computers aren't particularly computer literate, and the literacy they do have is Windows-based, so the machines need to be able to run at least Windows 10.

I think I understand, but I don't know enough to disagree. Maybe it's "computer as a multitool" vs. "computer as hammer".

Whoa, I recommended citadel to a friend, and she responded really vehemently.

Turns out she has a good reason to. "Got woke? Get lost." Their really brief "code of conduct" makes it very, very clear that software isn't what this project's about.

https://www.citadel.org/code_of_conduct.html

citadel.org

Apparently I'm getting some #pixelart of one of my favourite characters by my favourite pixel artist for Christmas!

Or after Christmas, I suppose, since he's swamped with work at the moment. Still pretty happy.

That's probably gonna be a new userpic, and since I don't think he's on Mastodon, a fair bit of promotion.

Apparently Scott Nesbitt is closing the books on the Plain Text Project, the website that first took me down the rabbit hole that is the small internet and that led to #permacomputing

Godspeed, Mr. Nesbitt.

https://plaintextproject.online/articles/2022/12/21/closing.html

Closing Shop

Not working on computers today!

I finally actually wrapped it up and pushed it out: the hopefully-soon-to-be-peer-validated paper MUSICAL STRUCTURE OF GEOMETRIC ELAMITE

do you like mysterious undeciphered tablets? do you like maybe the literally oldest music in existence? boy do I have the PDF for you https://www.academia.edu/93268214/Musical_Structure_of_Geometric_Elamite

I also have the MP3s for you, though I ask that you at least glance through the paper for context before listening to them https://soundcloud.com/0xabad1dea/sets/geometric-elamite

Edit: direct pdf link https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/687724695759749423/1054495658977009724/Musical_Structure_of_Geometric_Elamite.pdf

This has been consuming my life for about nine months now so I guess that makes it my baby

Musical Structure of Geometric Elamite

The Konar Sandal "Geometric" tablets, written partially in Linear Elamite and mostly in an otherwise unknown script of simple geometric shapes, have resisted linguistic explanation. Their structure is better explained not as written

Managed to install #bunsenlabs on the #F5RL ahead of Christmas... However, whenever I try to log into my Google Account, Firefox crashes? That's less than ideal.