Melody Fwygon

Beehaw alt of @melody@lemmy.one

@fwygon on discord

  • 0 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 10th, 2023

help-circle



  • Ideally there’s not a whole lot of data that needs to be kept.

    Legitimately all that needs to be stored is a few things:

    • Location (GPS)
    • SSIDs (Wifi APs only)
    • Cell ID & MCC/MNC (Cell Towers only)

    and things they MUST NOT STORE OR SHARE like:

    • IPs of contributors for longer than a few days
    • un-hashed BSSIDs (Wifi/BT)
    • MAC addresses (Wifi/BT)
    • IMEI/IMSIs (or other cellular identifiers derived from them)
    • APs that don’t exist in a fixed location (Think mobile hotspot SSIDs) for longer than a fixed amount of time.
    • BT devices
    • Non-unique SSIDs or IDs that may indicate no user config took place and manufacturer did not differentiate device ID. (Things like “SETUP” with no unique number (SSIDs like"SETUP-be3fd34d" would be valid) or “[ISP]@HOME” or “[ISP]Wifi” which provide no meaningful discriminators)



  • I stopped using Termux in general because of this inanity where they moved off and stopped supporting the Play Store Version; now this happens where they’re unable to keep things from conflicting across the different APK sources?

    Yikes. Seems like a good time to continue staying away from Termux and not recommending it.

    It’s a shame since I really love the concept of the app; but each increment of Android has been rough on it and I can’t imagine it being useful with Google being stupid about their policies.

    …Unfortunately they’re often quick to blame apps they dislike for problems in the ecosystem, and they often directly attack them through nerfing APIs and system calls that the apps tend to use; which I think is absolutely a dogshit thing to do.

    Please, stop enshittifying our phones Google.



  • The largest barrier for me in FLOSS and FOSS applications is simply a lack of GUI tools for what is considered to be “Advanced” functions.

    Just because I can do it on linux doesn’t mean it’s easy or intuitive. Unfortunately a lot of FOSS and FLOSS applications are, of necessity, extremely limited in what tasks they are targeting. Frequently you cannot rely on the “alternative” to have a relied upon function or feature until deep in it’s lifecycle; when finally enough people have complained and the feature is implemented.

    Sometimes a feature is never implemented due to an entirely shifted paradigm in the way the program is implemented and the feature is “impossible” or “inconsistent with xyz”.

    One example of this is the number of GUIs and frontends written for ffmpeg; many of which simply are lazy GUI implementations of what the ffmpeg CLI binary itself will helpfully print out in the console when you ask it for help with the correct switch(es). Many are even less thought out than this and will often unhelpfully provide an obtuse box at the bottom for custom commands you wish to feed to the program…which is great if you know the command(s); but make using the GUI unhelpful when compared to just firing up a CLI and reading the output and figuring out the correct command for exactly what you want it to do.

    Keep in mind; I am not at all uncomfortable with using CLI interfaces; I just expect that a GUI doesn’t force me to fallback, or become so unusable that I am forced to fall back on an original CLI tool because I cannot possibly discern why it failed to work

    Frequently things that would be simply be an option buried deeply in the GUI menus only and are otherwise fairly simple are relegated as being only possible within a CLI interface; and I find that reality quite infuriating most often…as the limitations of a CLI oftentimes make the task I am trying to complete far less simple than it really should have been.



  • This. I like Beehaw and I respect it’s nature. I even maintain an account here just to separate my more boisterous posting personality from the one that I feel safer in expressing on Beehaw. While I do external-post from my other account; that’s usually to respond to either Beehaw users not behaving in a way I feel is consistent with Beehaw values or to address others from external instances.

    But I don’t want to see Beehaw closing it’s doors to the fediverse. If your staff team is getting swamped, you’re getting overwhelmed as admins, etc…then find more staff. You literally have the hugest pool of nice people right here on Beehaw, and I’m sure everyone who regularly posts here would likely be highly skilled at moderating somewhere on Beehaw if needed. Most of the time, Beehaw does not attract nasty people, and the hard work of the moderation done here shows.

    Spread the load. Don’t defederate or give up on Fediverse. Invest in mental health buffs for your moderation team as needed if necessary!



  • Personally I think a little fiscal conservation would be wise at this point.

    Costs can, and do eventually, rise. Hardware fails, and other things can happen as a surprise; and I’d rather that Beehaw not be insolvent when those things happen.

    While I get the wish to do fun things to enhance the community; I think we need to be keeping an eye on things too. A few bad months where users are squeezed and unable to contribute could also severely impact Beehaw; particularly in and around monthly costs. At no point should Beehaw admins be paying out-of-pocket for things if Beehaw itself as an organization has the funds to properly pay things.

    If we do genuinely have too much funding in excess; examining how we could expand Beehaw or make it better is another way you can responsibly re-invest the funds into making Beehaw better.

    Additional servers/services might be neat; things like:

    • A Mastodon server, if one doesn’t already exist
    • A Matrix homeserver, if one doesn’t already exist
    • A lightweight Pixelfed / image hosting/posting Service, if one doesn’t already exist
    • Various and miscellaneous game servers/services like Minecraft or other popular multiplayer game servers/sessions/instances.

    Of course such things could also require additional staff on hand, so I understand that you might want to entice someone to help manage these extra things first.






  • I don’t agree with the assessment of the OP or the original blog article. Grayjay is Open Source software.

    It is, however, NOT FREE SOFTWARE and I do know that organizations like the FSF and OSI do not consider it to be free.

    The free status of this software was never misrepresented by Louis Rossman. He blatantly explains that there is a cost to this software and that the license is how he plans to enforce his means of collecting this fee on the honor system.

    He also outlines how he cannot; and will not…stop anyone from forking this software and basically removing the payment bits of the code and just redistributing it under a different name. I strongly recommend someone does that…and maybe license that work under a much more unrestrictive free license that FLOSS-Only users might find more palatable.

    I get that nobody wants or needs to trust Louis to keep his word. He’s gotta run a business at some point…and distributing this software this way on the honor system might not pan out quite the same way he hopes it will. I do hope that at the point where he and his compatriots choose to stop maintaining the application; that they do immediately retcon this restrictive license; and re-release it under a new, free, and unrestrictive Open Source Software license.