Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz)

Interesting to see this: https://talkpython.fm/blog/posts/we-have-moved-to-hetzner/ Like us, others are finding that Hetzner.com offers the best commodity cloud services value. We cut our cloud hosting costs by ~95% by dropping AWS & MS Azure and switching to Hetzner. If you think: "but we depend on specific services we can't get on Hetzner!" offered AWS or MS Azure, then you, my friend, are fully locked in. I'd be questioning the governance of your organisation.

@ben just curious what services do you include in the set of the 'open social web'? I assume the Fediverse is included. But is Bluesky? Threads?

I find myself having zero interest in BlueSky. It's distributed (theoretically?) but it's still owned by profit motivated people, and it can be sold. It will be. After people are 'bought in'. Time and again, people fall for the shiny, thinking this time's different. But it won't be. It'll be a train wreck with much collateral damage. Same old big-tech Silicon Valley story. No thanks. I'm banking on the Fediverse because it really is fundamentally different. No need for the same same also-rans.

It completely staggers me that *anyone* could vote for a GOP candidate or align themselves with the party. I can't really come up with a sufficiently comprehensive word to characterise my despair & disbelief that they appear on track to control all 3 arms of gov't (exec, court, and congress). The US is a total unmitigated disaster. It is pathetic and heartbreaking to see it.

Has anyone ever run or participated in a conference facilitated by Indico? https://getindico.io/ (source code: https://github.com/indico/indico ) It's #libre, and looks interesting to me. I'd love to hear about people's experiences if they have any! #LibreConferenceSoftware

This is superb and I commend its message to you all: https://elenarossini.com/2024/11/the-rebellion-will-be-federated/ Pass it on!

Whelp, the switch to Quic was pretty painless. It 'just worked'...

Could this election be a blessing in disguise? Perhaps a Harris victory would've removed the urgency for the dramatic fundamental reset the broken US system desperately needs. Maybe the extreme cognitive dissonance of the situation in which we find ourselves will provide the necessary provocation for the small number of dedicated, motivated, wise (and, I hope, lucky) individuals (who're always the agents of real changes in the world) to step up where they might otherwise not have. Here's hoping.

Seems to me that the US is experiencing the equivalent of an auto-immune disorder like multiple sclerosis* on a national level. It's been destroyed from within.

Here in Aotearoa, we need to disconnect ourselves from the US now. We need to back out of military alliances, especially #5Eyes, and trade agreements, especially the #CPTPPA Any idea that the US is a honourable (or even rational) actor need to be entirely revised.

* I've got it

Personal fireworks are a lot like Jetskis. Yeah, they're moderately fun for those using them - with fun seeming to be inversely proportional to intellect... but annoying to pretty much everyone else and without any practical utility. They're just a pointless and fairly dangerous (for the user and innocent bystanders as well) waste of our precious remaining carbon budget.

There. I've said it.

@rimu yes, the 2Gbit symmetrical connection is pretty affordable, really...

Right - moving to Quic (local fibre provider) on Friday morning. Need to finish setting up my Gl.inet Flint 2 before then! 😅

Paid the one-off fee for a static IPv4 address (a block of IPv6 comes with the connection, I believe).

If anybody else wants to move over that way, I can provide a sign-up code 😀 actually, it's right here: https://account.quic.nz/refer/666738 which gives me a $50 credit with Quic (which would, for example, cover the static IP one-off price!)...

@Suiseiseki I'm pretty sure MongoDB is gone from the 3.x code base now (see 'removal of Meteor and MongoDB' here https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/3.0/new-features/), and it should be easy enough to install Valkey instead of Redis, no?

Reminder: no employer that forces you to compromise your ethics and aesthetics by requiring you to run MS Windows is worthy of your talents.

If you need that job, then stick with it, but know that you have every right to feel aggrieved and unvalued (and to question both the competence and motives of those making decisions in the business), and that you should feel justified in jumping ship for a better opportunity that respects your intelligence & agency at the first opportunity.

For the record, just painlessly upgraded my beta3 release of BigBlueButton 3.x to beta4. No biggie. Well done BBB dev community!

@Suiseiseki @Adam mine'll be running OpenWRT, which, so far as I know, is #libre (although not sure about the bootloader).

Hmm - just ordered an OpenWRT-compatible home wifi/router - via Aliexpress... it's a GL-iNet Flint2 (GL-MT6000). https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt6000/ And shame on me, turns out I could've got it for less from the manufacturer's site (~NZ$265 with free shipping to NZ vs. ~NZ$320 with a little shipping + tax)... Live and learn!

If anyone else in NZ is looking at moving to Quic for broadband (where you need to provide your own router), that router is my choice (replacing my own painfully old router).

@Adam given that it runs OpenWRT out of the box (you might need to install your own to modify it, not sure yet), you might be able to install it... (this looks promising: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/pihole-directly-on-routers-tomato-merlinwrt-dd-wrt-openwrt/1314 ) but haven't fully read or tried it myself (yet).

Ok, I've got a hunch... the fact that EVs are stolen far less often than ICEs (even relative to their proportion of the US fleet) in the US has the same underlying reason that Linux computers are less targeted by malware ne'erdowells, And it's not (just) about marketshare. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/26/electric-vehicles-evs-theft-gas-cars

@Suiseiseki "negligence that doesn't fly any more"... Really?