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A tall glass containing a light pink/brownish liquid.
FreedomBox 25.13 has been released! Here are the highlights:
- backups: Fix robust handling of known errors
- debian: Stop privileged service during upgrade or removal
- miniflux: Fix DB connection issues during install/uninstall
See the full changelog here:
https://discuss.freedombox.org/t/freedombox-25-13-released/3935
#FreedomBox #FreedomBoxRelease #BorgBackup #Debian #Miniflux
I think this article makes some good points. And makes it clear why physics is not a good substitute for philosophy.
Throw-away fruity laptop - Forking Mad:
https://forkingmad.blog/throw-away-apple-laptop/
New-ish blog post: Adventures of a YAML engineer
https://blog.legoktm.com/2025/08/28/adventures-of-a-yaml-engineer.html
(I actually wrote this back in May and never published it...)
I mostly wanted to brag about a bit of YAML code I wrote back in March for #SecureDrop's completed migration to Ubuntu Noble that I neglected to mention in the blog post explaining the technical details. Yes, #YAML, is a programming language.
I didn't expect Google to wage war against general-purpose computing itself.
We have custom ROMs, but how long before Google decides that the AOSP doesn't have to be open source anymore?
It's already quite a struggle to run the essentials like banking and cash transfer apps without Google Play Services. A new update might drop at anytime and your app stops working. Some apps won't let you use the old working version for security reasons.
Repeated warnings of AI-driven layoffs is fueling anxiety among workers, who report feeling pressured to accept pay cuts or worse conditions to keep their jobs (Anne Lutz Fernandez/Nobody Wants This)
https://nobody-wants-this.ghost.io/ai-is-already-disempowering-workers-through-hype/
http://www.techmeme.com/250729/p47#a250729p47
Today, I met a FreedomBox for Villages volunteer, Satya at a local conference. It was pleasant surprise to know that they have recently deployed a community Wi-Fi network in a remote island village in the Narmada river that barely has cellular phone signals. The village only has an elementary school (until class 4), so the main thing they needed to provide was Moodle with some K-12 educational content.
Another non-profit might set up satellite Internet in the near future.
Gleam is an interesting new functional programming language. It is an ML-family language with syntax very similar to Rust, but it's not a replacement.
If you like Rust and don't like Go (or Elixir's Ruby syntax), Gleam might be worth considering for I/O bound applications needing high concurrency.
Gleam can also replace Elm on the browser. Code written in Gleam is apparently 30% faster than hand-written JavaScript.
I bought an Android TV 4 years ago. Only today I had a working idea to get rid of ads on it.
Google's launcher is set as the default. It shows ads at the top which considerably affects the TV's performance. It also deceptively keeps showing titles from the Play Store as if they are available from one of your installed apps.
So, just get another launcher. You can install one from the Play Store and set it as default.
No Google Launcher, no ads. 
https://git.sr.ht/~jvalleroy/lister
It's a TUI and CLI program to manage a list of items in a text file.
Redis, the popular in-memory data store, returns its main system to open source license AGPL, after facing criticism in 2024 for moving to a dual-license model (Lindsay Clark/The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/redis_returns_to_open_source/
http://www.techmeme.com/250501/p40#a250501p40
After switching to Neovim (no AI plugins this time), I feel like the joy of programming is slowly returning.
LLMs are like energy vampires. They suck the joy out of everything.
I started using GitHub Copilot for work to generate both test and production code in January.
Since the refactoring work it was generating for me was too much, I stopped using it for production code a month ago.
It keeps creating test files in the wrong directories and breaks half the scripts in the repository (not consistently though 🤦♂️). Yesterday, this got pushed to the main branch and broke scripts for everybody.
The day has finally arrived! I've completely given up on AI-generated code.
Make sure you’re inviting the right person to your Signal group!
To help confirm someone’s identity and keep track of your contacts, @signalapp offers nicknames and information about the groups you share in common with your contacts.
Learn about Signal’s identifiers:
From the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker:
Update: The Associated Press sued White House officials today over ban on its access to White House events, Oval Office and Air Force One because wire service continues referring to “Gulf of Mexico.”
It asked court for emergency order rescinding ban:
I have one prediction for 2025 that I am most confident about.
2025 will be the hottest year on record (since 1850), just like the two years before it.
Of everything they could've questioned Tulsi Gabbard about, Dems chose to grill her for past support of whistleblowers and the Fourth Amendment.
Because now's a great time to signal hostility to people who may leak evidence of government criminality.
https://freedom.press/issues/trump-attacks-oversight-dems-attack-whistleblowers/
New blog post: Three years of #SecureDrop
https://blog.legoktm.com/2025/01/31/three-years-of-securedrop.html
This is the longest I've ever held the same position at a job, so a few notes on what I've been up to over the past year and what I enjoy.
Congratulations to the ACLU, EFF and everyone else involved in this significant win for the Fourth Amendment.
MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners: Resources, links, projects, and ideas for gardeners tending their digital notes on the public interwebs
Using Python uv tool as a replacement for Poetry for a small Python utility I'm writing. It feels a lot like Rust's Cargo.
All that I can say for now is that it is certainly a better experience than setting up a virtualenv manually.
I am writing this proprietary tool for a team of JavaScript developers. I think they will feel that it is just as easy to use as npm/yarn or whatever is the new hotness this week.
Yes, I keep coming back to the thought which is expressed here...
Before You Can Have Smalltalk, You Must First Defeat Capitalism. - Matthew Gaudet:
https://www.mgaudet.ca/blog/2024/10/28/before-you-can-have-smalltalk-you-must-first-defeat-capitalism
"If you want to build a future that involves beautiful systems like Smalltalk, you must first rebuild the economic environment wherein it could be built. Wherein it could succeed!"
A look at Uber Shuttle, the shared bus service that has rolled out in over 20 cities and completed ~30M trips globally, as Uber awaits approval in Bengaluru (Anisha Sircar/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2024/uber-shuttle-india-shared-bus/
http://www.techmeme.com/241207/p8#a241207p8
Food, meat [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
I made a "savory pumpkin pie" for Thanksgiving dinner. It contained bacon, onion, rosemary, cheese, and a bit of black pepper and cayenne. I think it turned out pretty well!
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Pie in pan on oven. The pie is covered with cheese.
Problems with Free and Open Source Software
https://njoseph.me/blog/posts/foss-problems/
My last blog post for September. After not writing any blog posts for 4 years, I wrote 4 in one month!
New blog post!
Using small AI tools on Debian GNU/Linux
https://njoseph.me/blog/posts/small-ai-tools-debian/
I am using the word #AI as it is meant to be used, as click-bait. 😉
I have started quoting liberally in my linkblog (subscribe via RSS).
Earlier, I was only writing my own summary or opinion of the subject, but quoting adds more context. This is inspired by the writing style of Pixel Envy blog. https://pxlnv.com
New Debian Developers and Maintainers (May and June 2024) https://bits.debian.org/2024/07/new-developers-2024-06.html
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The true, tactical significance of Project 2025; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/
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An X-ray of a broken femur. On either side of the fracture is a elephant (cropped from a medieval illumination) facing one another, in the livery of the GOP logo.
FreedomBox 24.14 has been released! This one adds a new "Automatic repair" option to the Diagnostics page. When enabled, it will attempt to fix some issues that cause diagnostics to fail.
https://discuss.freedombox.org/t/freedombox-24-14-released/3143
FreedomBox 24.6 released to Debian (unstable) with several fixes related to the setup, uninstall, and backup/restore for Wordpress and Zoph apps.
https://discuss.freedombox.org/t/freedombox-24-6-released/2982