Our marathon hasn’t kept pace with Debian. During this writing, Debian Bullseye had been moved from OldStable to OldOldStable, while Trixie has been officially released.| wrongthink.link
Sometimes I find unwanted junk cards in my mailbox from organizations seeking to add vacation properties to their portfolio. They go straight into the shredder because A) I bought this place so that I could have a roof to sleep under and B) I am not morally bankrupt.| wrongthink.link
Buster marks the last Debian release made before stepping into this decade. And the first in a streak that I shall refer to as the “B’s”; Buster, Bullseye and Bookworm, a chain of releases that I reason were more iterative than revolutionary.| wrongthink.link
At last, software produced within the last decade is in our grasp. The first Debian to have an option for Wayland display server as well as the option for a rootless Xorg display server.| wrongthink.link
It’s been a while since we last checked in on the normies to see how their relationship with tech has been going.| wrongthink.link
Jessie marks the halfway point of our journey, from Sarge to Bookworm, from 2005 to 2025. It is here that I enter into more familiar territory, having only used desktop Debian since around the end of Debian 8’s life cycle.| wrongthink.link
With enough road now behind us, I finally took it upon myself to make a clone of the Upgrade-Journey drive so that I can save scum if the need arises.| wrongthink.link
As a self professed minimalist, I’ve long been a fan of the axiom “Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”, penned by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. When working with complex systems, one typically finds that the best solution to a problem is often the simplest. Already this is true in digital security, where complexity itself can stand at odds with the goals of securing a system. But also the operation of a system can suffe...| Wrongthink
The backward compatibility of interfaces has been nothing short of heroic. It is easy to forget that I’m plugging networking equipment and USB devices into ports that would be old enough to drink, and still they speak to one another without getting into fisticuffs. Vintage Debian may have been floundering with janky display drivers and broken audio but at least it was ready to transfer memes off of drives from the future! Anybody doing a complete upgrade marathon, starting with Buzz in the ...| Wrongthink
Finding computer equipment that respects user freedom and owner control can feel a lot like squeezing water out from stone. You may be one of a few of us who have tepidly followed the developments surrounding RISC-V since its inception last decade.| wrongthink.link
With two versions now behind us, it is a good time to start tracking a sort of “technical debt” as it accrues from upgrades. There are undoubtedly package selections made earlier in Sarge which wouldn’t have been present for users freshly installing Etch or Lenny. This is likely what happened with the oodles of KDE applets bloating up the system menus. Things are also missing, too. For one, SELinux will not get installed automatically in today’s Lenny upgrade. And I want to go easy on...| Wrongthink
There is something just so alluring about the picturesque, upper middle class suburbs as they are portrayed in film, with their neatly trimmed gardens flanking lawns and quiet network of roads meandering between them.| wrongthink.link
Last month marked the start of an experiment where I upgrade through historic Debian releases, starting with Sarge. I am going at my own pace as, believe it or not, we Linux folks do have lives and responsibilities.| wrongthink.link
Had I prioritised things better, I would have first begun learning Linux skills sometime during the Bush (W) administration. It has left me feeling as though I should make up for that lost time.| wrongthink.link
There are times when it becomes necessary to unfurl the sails and set to sea in search of spoils. Nowhere is it more poignant than when a piece of media has been made unavailable to your platform. And those rocking Linux often run into such aggrivation. Even more so when the underlying hardware is anything other than x86[_64] or ARM. Say you’ve resolved to experience a game. The weaker willed might reach for the WINE bottle, or the more adventerous look to engine reimplementations or full d...| Posts on Wrongthink
Network firewalls for the Linuxes have historically been application-blind. Which is a point of shame for a platform prided on security and privacy, especially considering that proprietary competitor Windows has had per-program discriminating firewalling so much sooner. A while back, I’d found OpenSnitch to be functionally ready. After using it on my daily driver for several months, I’m finally comfortable sharing some operational practices. Setting Up For First Use After pulling the open...| Posts on Wrongthink
While the internet has been taking well to IPv6 deployment, the same cannot be said for the domain name system’s authenticity mechanism, DNSSEC. It is currently only available on somewhere just south of ten percent of all registered domains. And, being the ‘be the change you wish to see’ kind of guy that I am, I decided to roll out DNS authentication for this site. Not the least of which because I do supply downloads containing executable software, as simple they may be. Those running a...| Posts on Wrongthink
Problem: You deployed a remote system that you access at a site which you may not physically visit for weeks, months or even years at a time. But it does not have a static IP. An unexpectedly changed public IP address essentially puts us into the same dilemma as a parent losing track of a child. You want to preselect a known location where both parties will rendezvous in the event of separation. The “normal” solution: A corporate IT professional might be quick to recommend dynamic DNS, or...| Posts on Wrongthink
For the longest time, I had unknowingly been reinventing the wheel. Cobbling together scripts and timers to notify of administrative concerns to the currently active desktop session. I wanted graphical dialogues, because that is what I’d grown up with. But how terribly uninformative it is for a dialog to appear that essentially says “Something is wrong, you should probably look into it”. /var/log trying to tell you for the 1,435th time that you're running out of disk space So many daemo...| Posts on Wrongthink
Linux Mint’s greatest strength is its aesthetically coherent GUI whose layout makes it ideal for those who find themselves arriving from a Windows environment. Mint was the distribution on which I first rode into desktop Linux full time, and had been my first choice for no-nonsense deployments to new devices. Especially to those of relatives who had solicited me for guidance. But this usually hassle-free distribution has lately found itself the source of some support woes. Linux Mint is a d...| Posts on Wrongthink
Each year I’ve made it a point to donate the value equivalent to what I would have once paid for Windows licensing to my most used Linux distribution. That is usually followed up by a one-off donation to some individual program of my choosing. Sometimes it would be through their donations portal, and other times directly to core developers who accept direct donations. It can be disjointed and I’ve found myself having to decide whether to send money toward a project’s web or forum hostin...| Posts on Wrongthink
I’ve decided I will no longer refer to Linux as GNU/Linux. Linux, with a capital L. I once thought it would lend itself to clarity and understanding, but it only leads to greater confusion. Most people already struggle to grasp simple concepts, so there is little point trying to subtly promote the details. And the real purpose behind the term ultimately serves to appease the sensibilities of Richard Stallman. Anyone with sufficient interest in Linux is already well aware of Stallman’s sig...| Posts on Wrongthink
Most of the content on Wrongthink assumes that readers are already competent with Linux and computers. There hasn’t been much here that speaks to the beginner, and we should respect that we all started out somewhere. If you’re just coming into the Linux and libre software side of things cold, with little familiarity to speak of, the starting hurdles can seem like unscalable walls. Some forum interactions had recently reminded me of this, so it’s time for me to try to put myself in the s...| Posts on Wrongthink
A frustrated individual recently vented some valid complaints over the intrusion of digital technology into daily life on her blog. Close, but missing the mark, I am both warmed at tech commoners waking up a bit and also disappointed in their predictably limited perspectives. Before I rip into the article I just want to acknowledge that Elayne is probably a lovely lady and I probably even agree with her on much of the state of digital affairs in the abstract. However, a set of boomer blinders...| Posts on Wrongthink
There has been so much online outrage over the historically recent shoehorning of ideolgical agendas into video games. The industry and the forces which fund them have been hard at work making gaming more palatable for the Inclusive™ crowd. “It just isn’t for you” they quip. And I fail to see how this is even a bad thing. Those who seek to erect safe spaces at your expense are actively taking up a passtime that is precision engineered to maximally distract and pacify its users. Your i...| Posts on Wrongthink
You have a file you would like to share with a friend, or to a colleague. Something personal. Or some damning information. Either way, you want to be certain that only the recipient is able to access the data. But it needs to traverse the internet. How can you do it in a way that minimizes opportunity for SIGINT, adtech or other adversaries to eavesdrop on your exchange? It’s really quite mundane. And I have shared file sets on occasion in such a way. Sometimes it was just because I didn’...| Posts on Wrongthink
Many contemporary devices still use the original network time protocol devised as it was in the 1980s. It is completely unencrypted and susceptible to time attacks. Disabling or removing the NTP daemon from a system does not workaround the issue since accurate system time is critical to cryptographic functionality. Luckily, there are projects that seek to address this issue. One being ntpsec, a reimagining of the NTP client into a modernized and encrypted solution. As of Debian Bookworm, ntps...| Posts on Wrongthink
An outfit in Bulgaria design and produce single board computers, microcontrollers and DIY laptop kits sold as TERES-I. I’d found so much success with other open source hardware that this kit was a must try. I really wanted to like it but there are some glaring issues. Olimex’s TERES I is an AllWinner A64 ARM (Cortex-A53) device with non-socketed 2GB DDR3L memory and 16GB eMMC internal storage. It drives a low resoltion display at 1366x768. That places it just at the threshold of what I wo...| Posts on Wrongthink
Much of what I compose never finds its way beyond the drafting folder. Under a bit of a melancholic mood, I put together what could be a letter to myself of fifteen or twenty years prior. But if it can be to the benefit of any soul who happens to be similarly positioned as I had, then I see no reason to keep it all to myself. Redacted a bit to preserve personal details. Dear self You do not require anyone’s permission, or anyone’s blessing, to go and pursue the things you want to do in li...| Posts on Wrongthink
In 2015 the aptly named “Discord” went about “solving” a problem that had already long since been solved: in-game voice chat. The role of voice chat had been fulfilled by Mumble since a decade earlier. What new innovations has Discord brought to the table? Let’s walk through some of its major features. Discord compels its subjects to surrender a phone number. So not only is any expectation of privacy or anonymity obliterated, but one is also confined to a single account. Subjects of...| Posts on Wrongthink
Web video content is gradually being lobotomized. Years ago it was foreseen that vertical video would be ruinous to viewing conditions. But it is not the aspect ratio alone that has sent web video spiraling down the pit of eternal stupidity. The rise of short form videos catering to zoombies with blown out dopamine receptors has accelerated the decay beyond anything I could have imagined. There are a few factors at play in this. Video Editing on Mobile Environments is Constrained Linear graph...| Posts on Wrongthink
Is it truly “sticking it to the man” to forge a way to continue to use a product which has had its original user-hostile features mitigated? As a classic example, those who go to lengths to get a Windows binary game running within a translation layer. You have still bought the game, financially rewarding a company that chooses to exclude you and your platform. Okay, what then if one pirates the title? You’re still giving that product your energy, attention and contributing one more acti...| Posts on Wrongthink
But does it live up to such a description? Going into it, I at first had configured OpenSnitch to intercept and restrict connections based on user ID, port number and destination address. But this proved to generate far too much notification activity. Excessive notification dialogues have a tendency to condition users to simply make exceptions uncritically in the wake of fatigue. Reducing these interceptions down to just destination addresses is much more practical while preserving the granul...| Posts on Wrongthink
Currently only one substantially complete antivirus kit casts itself among FOSS, ClamAV. It actually consists of several different programs. Clamscan, an independent CLI scan utility; Freshclam, a database updater; Clamdscan, a multithreaded scanning daemon; and Clamonacc, a realtime on-access file checker that feeds items into Clamdscan. Most guides to be found online only really ever cover the first two. Installing the clamav-daemon package will pull in the rest of clamav as dependencies. a...| Posts on Wrongthink
Whether you’re working with free or closed equipment, the underlying firmware can be a fragile beast. And neither are immune to the damages of human error. I’ll admit to putting my best foot forward on this site so I’m overdue to share some blunders which might serve as instructional material. Over the last couple weeks I had bricked some equipment in a bout of overconfidence. Some desktops and some routers each stricken down. Brick #1 While repurposing a media center desktop for a good...| Posts on Wrongthink
We shouldn’t refrain from admitting where we’ve lost ground or find ourselves on the losing side. It is something that may be obvious but is seldom formally voiced: spyware has been normalized. There was once a time where raising caution on the dangers of trusting centralization would yeild a degree of receptivity, or at least an understanding of the implicit consequences being raised. When the introduction of some new tracking method was once worth devoted attention from relatively mains...| Posts on Wrongthink
Many web blocker addons take the approach of selectively blocking resources based on finite blacklists. Some have limited methods to allow manually selecting items to block, but generally they allow everything by default and only block elements which match some known bad origin. In some cases, these pushover content blockers will even receive compensation to allow elements of which they otherwise claim to block. We can skip that entire rodeo by using a more robust, default-deny browser firewa...| Posts on Wrongthink
As OSes begin to entertain dropping “x86_64-v1” support in builds[1][2][3], the clampdown accelerates on generative computing. You vill submit to Intel ME and AMD PSP and you vill be happy! You might be forgiven if you had thought that the constant addition of new extensions was just engineering teams implementing more efficient instruction paths, and this may even be true some of the time, but it is ultimately due to the finite life of patents being fixed at twenty years. Intel undeniabl...| Posts on Wrongthink
Many of the same block lists used by ad blocker extensions can also be used globally by your hosts file to redirect all requests to that domain to a non-routable address. You may sometimes see this referred to as “blackholing” DNS. If a program initiates any lookups for cookielaw.org, and cookielaw.org is on this hosts file, it should be redirected to 0.0.0.0 which instantly fails out as unresolvable preventing the program from connecting to the actual destination. The concept of blackhol...| Posts on Wrongthink
There are a number of quality of life tricks for Debian that I wish I’d known when I was first learning the ropes. Mostly package management things. But they’re not expressly stated in the kinds of places that a first timer is likely going to see them. Some are dead stupid, but the ‘wrong way’ is still perpetuated to this day by techtubers who pump out video after video without double checking things beyond surface level. Such is the case with apt commands. It is apt, not apt-get. The...| Posts on Wrongthink
While there remains no ideal browser, there are a few decent options. One that I would have recommended, if not for some glaring issues, would have been the recent Mullvad browser. Unfortunately, Mullvad committed to the following design choices; Self-updating, foreign to distro repository Pre-built binaries only supplied for x86 architecture (and if you’re going to compile, you might as well just compile upstream Firefox using Mullvad’s selected compile flags) Pre-installed addons cannot...| Posts on Wrongthink
The industry has been struggling with how to handle securing DNS, an original protocol designed without encryption in mind, which is responsible for informing your computer which IPs map to any domain name. This creates a problem in which any observer between you and the resolver can see all lookups your system makes. Additionally, you place complete trust in the resolver not to manipulate or misdirect domain name responses. Browsers have taken to sending DNS requests over HTTPS which solves ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Update Q4 2024: The reliability of this method has raplidly deteriorated. Commercial search engines may have gotten wise to Tor proxied queries as formatted by SearX. I’ve tested without Tor proxying enabled and almost all engines I’ve tried still result in “Error! Engines cannot retrieve results”. YaCy may be the only currently “viable” privacy compatible search engine left. All too many resources suggest using smaller privacy respecting search engines, such as Duckduckgo, to avo...| Posts on Wrongthink
Some kind exchanges with readers have inspired a degree of introspective and I’ve since determined that we focus a bit too centrally on trashing the bad to be found in technology. I have resolved to refocus more on building and detailing solutions to the mountains of problems previously covered here at Wrongthink. In light of that, we’re well overdue to dig into a long held stash of internet tracking countermeasures. Criticisms are all welcomed seeing as I’ve tinkered within a vacuum fo...| Posts on Wrongthink
“If the oppossing faction’s candidate wins, then I’m moving to Canada/Mexico!” Had become a meme threat made by blowhards who find themselves on the losing end of a recent political [s]election. And I am always reminded of this third stage of grief in action whenever a new release of Windows looms on the horizon. You begin to hear a similar threat bandied all over the web: “If Microsoft adds $NEW_ANTIFEATURE/removes $THING_I_LIKE, then I’m switching to Linux!” ORLY? What is your...| Posts on Wrongthink
This is an assertion you’ve likely seen normies argue before. When called into question whether sites have a responsibility, as they say, to remove unfavorable posts or individuals, the normie will cite how large platforms depend on advertising to keep operations afloat. They go on to insist that if unsavory opinions (free expression, in sober parlance) are allowed to remian, then advertisers will pull their precious ads and send the big, poor site into collapse. “Oh no!! What are we to d...| Posts on Wrongthink
Concepts, features and creature comforts which existed within linuxes since long ago, that where only later adopted by Windows. Some small, others game changing. Cursor hover out of focus scrolling Clean cursor rollover on multidisplay Tiling window management Workspaces SSH Plug-n-play device drivers Software repositories (Done the wrong way officially, done the right way unofficially) Multi user File permissions Foreign file systems (and only in a roundabout way) Bash shell (again, only in ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Some more lines in the streak of command line$THING editing, I’d like to now cover handling images. And here we will naturally lean into the excellent imagemagick. Even though the documentation suggests that imagemagick can be invoked with magick, this does not appear to be the case across distributions. At least not mine, which rather breaks imagemagick up into individual invocations. Resize an image Supplying the change as a percentage is the fastest way to maintain aspect ratio. mogrify ...| Posts on Wrongthink
ActivityPub has slowly been siphoning user capital away from giant corpo walled gardens, much to my delight. And like with many other free and open endeavors, the fediverse tends to emulate existing commercial platforms rather than produce formats of their own origination. Simply federating some SNS format under a libre development approach is no gaurantee that it will be free of the problems which that thing it is seeking to replace. The underlying issues of conventional SNS formats get conv...| Posts on Wrongthink
Municipal libraries have been given special exemption to operate outside of typical copywrong framework through a lending right scheme. And I welcome any chink in the armor of the monopolistic copywrong industry, even if it happens to be done so through the means of state sanctioned robbery. The earliest libraries were vehemently opposed by publishers who thought it as a way of undercutting their profits. And yet, centuries later there is still a thriving industry for books to be authored. It...| Posts on Wrongthink
If you grew up in the ’90s you may have found yourself witness to such ongoings as parents denying their children Pokemon cards or Harry Potter books on the grounds that they are ‘unchristian’. It is possible that such was simply a convenient excuse to avoid dropping money on frivolous expenses, but there were undoubtedly those who made the assertions in earnest. Which raises a really apt observation: In order to believe that stories or toys about magic represent a genuine threat, one m...| Posts on Wrongthink
Instead of relying on the good graces of some other host, I have finally gotten around to establishing a PeerTube instance to call my own. At the moment it doesn’t follow other instances although I would like to take advantage of the features enabled by federation. For now, there are only two channels; main and other. I’m not really sure yet what I plan to upload. Or whether to reupload anything from my old channel. Before deciding on PeerTube, I had considered MediaGoblin or just making ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Blacklisting tools need to resist the temptation to centralize their blacklists. Sometimes it is not done intentionally, but that makes it no less harmful to user privacy. Barring instances where it is infeasible to distribute such a list due to size, referenceing a list of blocked resources should be possible entirely within the end user’s device. As example of things done the wrong way see blacklisting DNS providers. I didn’t even know this was a thing until I stumbled across it while e...| Posts on Wrongthink
The hundreds of informational resources aggregated largely under the efforts of a good acquaintance, 12bytes (12bytes.org), comprise the Alternative Information Directory, or ‘AID’. Some potential logistical issues that cropped up with hosting as a codeberg page meant that the directory needed to find a new location for the time being. So I am honored to offer a space for it at aid.wrongthink.link. These graphical buttons are available in the Downloads section at AID should you wish to em...| Posts on Wrongthink
POV: You are a sociopath. It is the late aughts-mid teens decade. And you have a problem to be solved. The Problem: You and your industry buddies would love to pull off a scam against the global public in order to force them, to the maximal extent, to use your products. But you know that the perceptive and inherently distrusting minority of the population will, using the internet, swiftly identify and call out your scam, alerting others, as you begin to roll it out. This poses a serious risk ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Today I am uploading my edits and additions made on top of xiMatrix as ‘paraMatrix’. It has a way to go before it can be considered webworthy. So I’m not yet dogfooding the extension although it will be a pet project of mine for the forseeable future. And anyone is invited to collaborate in its development! There really are no explicit goals with paraMatrix aside from being an insurance policy against the disappearance of existing web request blockers. I am painfully aware that the curr...| Posts on Wrongthink
File hosts that accept uploads with minimal friction come and go. So it is a positive find that Catbox.moe, unofficially Voat’s “Imgur”, has maintained some longevity. “But Catbox uses proprietary javascript!”, I can hear you say. But it doesn’t. An upload page has been built specifically for js blocking Chads. Although this introduces a limitation, only one file may be uploaded at a time. However, we don’t need to hand control over to some javascript to recover this functionali...| Posts on Wrongthink
A half dozen or so extensions sit happily running along in your browser dutifuly, according to the various “privacy” sites that recommended them, foilng trackers. Surely, gathering these tools is just like collecting Poke’mon, right? If the knowledgeable folks pushing them have taken the time to scrutinize their operation, they just might have posted fair warnings to their individual caveats. Often, extentions end up stepping on eachother’s feet. One such case can be found in running ...| Posts on Wrongthink
It may not currently be possible, using only libre toolsets, to extract podcasts hosted on Spotispy into local audio files. I had no idea how bad it really was because I’ve dutifully avoided the big tech[nocrat] disservices. So I haven’t tried to interface with Spotify until I recently needed to try pulling down a podcast which doltishly decided to choose Spookify to host their work. It was no shock to find that no direct download link is provided on the page. “No problem!”, I thought...| Posts on Wrongthink
Enough time has elapsed that stragglers to the old neocities site should have gotten the message by now that wrongthink.link has replaced it as the primary site. I have pointed all neocities pages to their new counterparts here. If you also operate a site that has migrated away from neocities, and would like to do the same with your own hugo markdown files, here’s how I programatically rewrote all the pages: for item in * ; do sed -i '1,/---/!d' $item ; echo "Article has moved to https://my...| Posts on Wrongthink
According to a writing by a presumably younger netizen, the turning date for when the web went to shit was “around 2015”. Almost an entire decade later than when I would have judged it to be. Could it be that the gradual tightening of control over the web is causing each new generation to view the internet of their childhood through their own brand of rose tinted glasses? Or was the web of the 90s and early aughts even really as free as we often make it out to be? Instead of relying on my...| Posts on Wrongthink
You may be running some hotrodded addon suite that blocks the various attack vectors which the modern web likes to throw at you. But are you blocking quite enough? A colleague and I exchanged thoughts on the best defaults for which web resources to deny and he was surprised to learn that I even strip the style sheets (CSS) out of visited web pages. CSS is commonly thought to be useful just for formatting and for the basic beautification of web pages. But it can be capable of so much more. Tha...| Posts on Wrongthink
This is a friendly critique of James Corbett’s known online research loadout. Actually just things that he has suggested, but some are clearly his go-to tools. My thoughts in cyan . Feedly James personally uses feedly.com (Really Simple Syndication Solutions Watch) to keep a queue of articles to be read. Categories: Climate MSM News (Independent News) OpEd Users of Feedly rely on an external service. Feedly know in detail everything you read, which articles specifically you access, can infe...| Posts on Wrongthink
Some express grievance over needing SIM cards, phones and Google to navigate in unfamiliar places, but it doesn’t need to be this way. First of all, Google is not necessary to have access to detailed maps. Please check out Open Street Map. OSM data has been integrated into various other products and services, although it can be used directly for your own personal use case. One great application which makes use of Open Street Map is Marble, which can functionally replace the spyware known as...| Posts on Wrongthink
After receiving unwanted flack from astute critics, an only-partially awake tech normie had recorded a diatribe lamenting how he just has no choice, woe is me, but to continue to use software which continues to dictate his operations. Jody Bruchon’s rationalizations boil down to strained analogies, bargaining (the third stage of grief), false equivalencies and self-guided assertions. The text is pulled from the video transcription, but the video itself can be found here if you’re looking ...| Posts on Wrongthink
A threshold was crossed once the opinion moulding echelons had succeeded in getting the public to begin referring to “a mask” as “my mask” and “the shots” as “your/my shots”. It’s the same trick pulled as when using “we” when describing an event in order to subtly involve the audience into the hypothetical group. They are not “your” injections. They are the injections sold, using stolen money, to the largest mafia in your geographical area who then try to force the p...| Posts on Wrongthink
In 2014 Voat became a destination of migration for groups who found themselves banished from REEddit. It was superior in a number of ways including a point rationing system to reduce vote induced groupthink, being open sourced (at a time when REEddit, which began as OSS, started closing their code up). It had better visibility and engagement with posts by virtue of having a smaller userbase, an open stance against censorship by the administrators (Atko, PuttItOut), and was self/community fina...| Posts on Wrongthink
The average user, if you can believe, continues to decline in their capacity to understand how to use the technology they find in their hands. It was once thought that this was an age thing and that newer demographics would take to digital tech with excellence, a failed prediction which I take a look at in Refuting Computer Literacy. Here are some of the factors which I blame for this decline: The emergence of voice assistants Everything is now obscured from end users “The Internet” is a ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Richard Barnet was covering topics such as government monopolies on violence and technocracy decades before those terms would ever come into the forefront of today’s discourse. In his book, Roots of War, he wastes no time diving straight into the state’s monopoly on crime. While parsing through it, I had to keep reminding myself that the piece was originally published in 1972! Individuals get medals, promotions, and honors by committing the same acts for the state for which they would be ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Using an alias and keeping secret the whereabouts of one’s property are a good start for anyone putting themselves out there in the name of truth, however please respect that opsec needs only a single slip up in order to be compromised. Let’s take a look at how easily an adversary can pinpoint an individual. This example vlogger (who will remain unnamed) shares content about his hobby vehicle, which we will use as the first point of data. Mistake #1 he films this video from his place of r...| Posts on Wrongthink
Without accounting for level of technical aptitude, and assuming one seeks security as in security from corporate or dragnet state surveillance, there may be a few hardware options out there. Desktops: Assemble a workstation using boards flashed with liberated firmware, or pre-flashed from a company that will do it for you., [1] Assemble a workstation using boards flashed with (mostly) liberated firmware, or preassembled from a company that will do it for you. System76 purportedly uses their ...| Posts on Wrongthink
If you’re a libertarian anarchist and you use proprietary technology then you might not be practicing what you preach. Also that’s very sad. Here’s a logic blockchain for you: You cannot be free if you can’t exercise free thought. You cannot exercise free thought if you don’t have privacy in which to explore ideas. And you cannot have privacy so long as you use proprietary malware. Because a person’s digital device is essentially an extension of their own mind, if somebody else ca...| Posts on Wrongthink
If you are “helping” somebody, perhaps a friend or family member, by setting them up with Linux or some free software tool and leaving them to swim on their own, you may be doing more harm than good. I think of the proverb “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”. The recipient needs to first comprehend the value of liberated software. Otherwise, you can await the inevitable “Why isn’t my Netflix working? Gawd, this loon...| Posts on Wrongthink
Whispering under one’s breath. Replacing words with codewords. Garbling certain terms. These are the behaviors of an obedient gigacuck. Some speakers are so hell bent on sissifying themselves for their masters in order to remain within centralized corporate playpens that they will seriously preempt censor mechanisms by modifying their own speech. As an onlooker, this is both frustrating and sad that those in the freedom movement try so hard to continue using blatantly censorious hosts. Dude...| Posts on Wrongthink
This might be stating the obvious, but there is no doubt a disproportionately high number of transexuals (See: UNIX trannies) within the computer industry and hobbyist spaces. I can only offer hypothesis on why this is. It could be totally wrong, but having an inquisitive exchange is all but impossible when that demographic is so ready to blockade anybody who can see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. Some observations: Eroding contact with female peers and inceldom This is particu...| Posts on Wrongthink
It was during the age when everyone knew it unwise to share real names and information anywhere online. Some of the wisdom driven by overly anxious boomer parents while most was basic common sense precaution. Privacy by default. It was the internet I remember hopping onto multiplayer skirmishes or perusing forums back when they were populous enough that refreshing the page would always yield new topics and posts. Slinging insults was more of an expected greeting to anyone who hadn’t yet bec...| Posts on Wrongthink
A scary thing is happening. Everyone is beginning to talk about it. It’s plastered all over the media. Discussions in your friend circles and familiar online spaces are being dominated by the new topic. You’ve seen it all before. Another media blitz. But how can you persevere through this new hysteria with your perception of reality intact? Here’s a look at ways one can ensure their access to information remains as uncorrupted as possible through the next big psyop. Prefer primary sourc...| Posts on Wrongthink
Phones suck, and so does the new expectation to have one or otherwise be excluded from family, work or increasingly from everywhere. But it doesn’t mean that you really need a physical phone. I’ve written about this before, but feel it pertinent to expand on the advice. Any little bit of info that can help people get away from satanphones and building the new world slavery grid, right? I will remain vague in my recommendation of SIP hosts because I don’t believe there is a best one™, ...| Posts on Wrongthink
Civic infrastructure is rapidly coalescing around centralized disservices as towns, cities and states foolishly move away from in-person and pen & paper solutions. I have personally seen motor vehicle departments refuse the acceptance of cash or scheduling anywhere outside of their shitty web portals in the wake of the panic induced shutdowns. Grocers are now more comfortable than ever refusing cash at self checkouts (human checkouts to follow soon?). Several problems arise as the usual FAANG...| Posts on Wrongthink
When I was devising my DNS solution (DNS as a standard is still so broken for privacy as of 2022, shame on root name server operators for brushing away cryptography efforts!) and some other traffic concealment solutions, I found myself relying on the traffic capture tool tcpdump. Prior to cutting my teeth with tcpdump, I had only experience with Wireshark. And I don’t think I’ll be using Wireshark very much anymore. Here’s a decent cheat sheet. Since network interfaces will be different...| Posts on Wrongthink
mpv, ffmpeg and youtube-dl/yt-dlp. With this trifecta, almost any media can be accessible to view in any way you want. To download, manipulate and view anywhere, any time. It grants you complete control and totally outclasses the more widely known VLC. Some capabilities I have already covered in command line video/audio editing guides. * Note: I use yt-dl to refer to both youtube-dl and yt-dlp interchangeably, courtesy of the endless forking found in high profile projects. Some of the program...| Posts on Wrongthink
It is time for this site to practice what it preaches and claim a space on the web through more independent infrastructure. NeoCities is a good space for those just starting out but there are technical limitations (such as no media files) as well as the looming albatross of censorship. This NeoCities mirror will remain in place, but I will not be posting further updates here. If you subscribe via RSS or link to any of my works, please consider pointing it to the new address at https://wrongth...| Posts on Wrongthink
It is true that back in the day, I used to play all manner of video games, even including console games. They played a formative role in my musical tastes and still occupy a significant portion of my music library to this day. A page over at digdeeper inspired me to share some of what I consider to be the absolute favorites among the collection. If we can put aside for a moment the laughable fact that a self admitted free software extremist has a soft spot for game soundtracks of one’s yout...| Posts on Wrongthink
In addition to the fact that the [clown] world relies on certificate authorities remaining honest for HTTP Secure to do what it actually advertises, there is another standing issue that erodes my zeal to keep scrapping together workarounds. One might argue that having many sites hosted behind the same server and IP might paradoxically help to obfuscate the sites one visits from snooping ISPs, such as those which might reversely resolve domains associated to server IPs. Even the average Joe ca...| Posts on Wrongthink
Despite the terms ‘privacy’ and ‘anonymity’ being used interchangeably by many, and particularly by VPN marketing, I want to first highlight the key difference being that VPN connections are not anonymous but only private. Even if no payment transaction trail leads back to you. This is because the same entity connecting you to your destinations also knows your external IP. And both privacy layers (VPN) and anonymity layers (Tor, etc.) offer only end-to-middle encryption, except perhap...| Posts on Wrongthink
A while ago I tried out the Sway window manager. While it is very fast, very minimal and purist in it’s design, a few nails stood out which I couldn’t quite hammer down. A caveat to the following is that I grew up on graphical desktops with only a brief stint on DOS command line which I can barely recall from childhood memories. I may not be as hell bent on getting stacking windows out of the way as some WM diehards. The Sway experience was great overall except… Despite going out of the...| Posts on Wrongthink
Many credit the miscalculation of entry into Russia during the winter, along with the waging of war on two fronts, as the downfall of Nazi Germany’s efforts in the second world war. Although Adolf Hitler may have made another, less obvious fault. And that was to so intensely centralize his control over war operations. In The Mask Of Command, John Keegan touches on the histories, successes and failures of several of history’s prominent generals. A passing remark is left that those who seek...| Posts on Wrongthink
Your department store seeks to set a unique atmosphere while shoppers browse about. What do you play for them? Classical? Jazz? Maybe your establishment is themed. A bait & tackle shop might opt for some country. Perhaps some classic rock at the auto parts store. But reality is not so. Unfortunately, retailers now seem to take satisfaction in assailing their shoppers with Spotispy. The following must be their guidebook on playing background music for customers in $CURRENT_YEAR: The wall & cei...| Posts on Wrongthink
Amidst the waves of sweeping away voices critical of the 2020 health scare deception was Brian Rose, podcaster turned video interviewer. His April 6th interview with David Icke prompted Goolag to ban him from Youtube, shocking Rose into the realization that if you don’t host your own files, they’re not your files. So he set out to do the most reasonable thing any unpersoned individual should do: to establish his own platform. The “Freedom Platform”. But, like with many NeoBoomers, he ...| Posts on Wrongthink
You have just come into great wealth and find that you no longer need to work. You secure yourself with a ranch that runs on solar and wind power, raise and butcher your own meat, pull your own water from the ground and generally live with almost no dependence on others. I do not conjure this image to lambast some hypothetical prepper supreme, but to follow in question: Is this exceptionally independent person now truly free? The sad truth of the matter is that no, they are not. Your freedom,...| Posts on Wrongthink
I am relocating away from clown town USA to a more natural setting. It is off-grid except for the electrical, for the time being. I do not know what the connectivity is going to be like there, and I do not know when I will next be online with my full workstation. Expect a few weeks of inactivity on this site. My apologies to anyone who has been enjoying frequent writings. I’m just continuing to architect my life around autonomy, self-determination and to fulfill some design goals I’d been...| Posts on Wrongthink
Windows junkies often toss around the rhetoric that Window$ has support available, therefore it is more fitting for the individual user. Assuming that can be taken at face value, is it not indicitave that Window$ shortcomings demand a massive support network? But that may not be a fair assessment as any sufficiently complicated system can require such assistance. I think the real confusion arises from the failure to distinguish between different types of support presence. Proponents of this a...| Posts on Wrongthink
Joining SaaSS and GaaS, I propose CaaH. Content as a Hostage, also known as the exclusivity model. Present something that a user wants and make sure that the only place they can obtain it is through your own delivery platform. This has lead to the fracturing of streaming disservices into a million individual copycats who essentially host only their own internal works. CaaH was really perfected on gaming consoles which each held ransom some games to entice suckers into buying dedicated hardwar...| Posts on Wrongthink
Bitcoin is a tragedy. And I say this knowing full well that my donation section lists only a Bitcoin option. The cons outweigh the benefits and since I’m not paying for site hosting right now anyway, that section will be removed for the time being. Because I only like to run full nodes for any cryptocurrency and building from source + familiarizing myself with each one’s terminal commands all while taking precaution to do everything properly is mentally taxing. So I’d rather just use on...| Posts on Wrongthink
You might be a zombie if… You believe that the winners of all historic conflicts have always been the good guys. Most of your understanding of the world comes from legacy media. There is hardly any deviation between your views and those of the opinion molding class. There exist organizations who censor anything which runs contrary to your beliefs. You accept token rewards from authority for changing your own behavior. Your personal devices still run the stock big tech software which came pr...| Posts on Wrongthink
A recent fediverse discussion had me ruminating on how the face of the internet, and tech in general, has changed drastically as it gets molded by powerful interests. For any generation Z who might not have been around to experience the web as it was in the 90s or aughts, I wanted to share a few key changes I have witnessed not only as time flows on but also since I’ve remained well insulated from the larger shifts unlike so many others. The change just in the last few years has been atroci...| Posts on Wrongthink
Anyone reading this probably has measures in place to cleanse their web experience of invasive garbage. But maybe it’s been a while since those protections were lowered, and maybe you haven’t seen what the modern web really looks like today. What do normies see when they open a browser? Well, it isn’t good. And things have only decayed since the last time I ran a naked browser. I configured a stock Linux environment with a standard Firefox (non-ESR) without any addons and no blocking me...| Posts on Wrongthink
In the post about Visualizing Dependencies I shared a graphic relating some APIs. In the past, I would have painstakingly used something like GIMP or LibreOffice Draw to produce that. But recently I discovered graphviz, a brilliant command line tool to whip up complex relational graphs programatically. The more items you have to plot, the more sense it makes to use such a tool. Let’s say you want to graph out a small social network. Create a graphviz file (.gv) and populate it as: graph { A...| Posts on Wrongthink
A major catalyst which has propelled our society into the perpetually rising shepard tone cycle of new hysterias is undoubtedly the crowded mental state which most people operate in. The human mind has never had to process as much incoming information as is demanded of it today. In a way, it is hard to blame the masses for outsourcing their thinking to others in a desperate effort to free up some thinking capacity for the things immediately present in life. But this has come at a great cost. ...| Posts on Wrongthink