According people who understand these matters better than me, VPNs are becoming almost a necessary feature for privacy on today's web.

I have been experimenting with some of them lately. I started with Njalla. It worked well with MXLinux, I activated through a script in the terminal. The cost was, if I remember rightly €6 per month for one device, and it was not possible for me to choose a local server.

ProtonVPN has both a free and a premium plan. The premium version costs about the same as Njalla, but is for 8 devices. There are servers all around the world, so I was able to find a local one. Linux support is through a dedicated gui app. However I found the app to be buggy under MX Linux / KDE. After I got rid of it, I had a hard time getting back into the Internet. The app works fine in my aging Samsung phone however - it's still working there, till I cancel the subscription.

Now I'm trying Mullvad VPN - I came upon it by chance since I have started to use Mullvad browser. This also has a Linux GUI app for Linux, which works well for me, so far (2 days). It costs about the same as the others, and is good for 5 devices, which would be enough for all our computers and phones. Like ProtonVPN, there are servers around the world, including local servers that we can use. The speed seems fine.

Mullvad browser is a new browser produced by Mullvad VPN company in cooperation with the organization behind Tor browser. After reading a review on it in The Verge, I am giving it a try. So far it seems quite usable; like a slightly downgraded version of Firefox. One noticeable "feature" is that the actual size of the browser window is smaller (evidently they are trying by this means to standardize the canvas size, which is one of the things that trackers use in order to establish a unique browser fingerprint). There are also no sync options, and the addition of addons is discouraged. I will probably use it in conjunction with my other browsers.

I haven't been listening too much to the depressing news. My assumption is that it is in the interest of our wise leaders to create a fracas or maybe start a little war in order to distract people from the other harmful stuff they have been up to. Nothing unites the (normally divisive and polarized) Israelis better than a healthy reminder that it is surrounded by enemies. Starting a minor war offers a win-win situation. You can easily start one by sending border police into the Al-Aqsa mosque to beat everybody up, raiding Syria night after night and then bombing Gaza again. Everyone will feel sorry for the Jews cowering in their shelters over the holiday. The people will unite against external threats that are, with a stretch of the imagination, just real enough to be believable. After weeks of warnings about the dangers of Ramadan, it seems that the holy month got off to too quiet a start.

Facebook’s Monopoly Is Imploding Before Our Eyes

How to leave dying social media platforms

Interoperable Facebook (video)

Instagram sucks now, sorry

Après WhatsApp, Instagram victime d'un gros bug

Elon Musk dissolves Twitter’s board and makes himself ‘sole director’ | The Independent

What apps to use if you leave Twitter - The Washington Post

Those are a few recent articles. In short, both Twitter and Facebook, and Meta's other services like WhatsApp and Instagram are in serious trouble right now. People are seeking alternatives such as Mastodon, which some of the mainstream press, like the Washington Post (see above), struggle to understand.

We love to hate these big tech corporations here on the Fediverse. I would describe myself as an avid despiser of Zuckerberg and Musk. On the other hand, if I look back a few years ago, I remember my awe when MySpace, Facebook and Twitter were finally turning people on to the web, in a big way. At the time when those services were beginning, the internet was still a place that many less technical users visited only reluctantly. They certainly didn't participate or publish anything there themselves. Yet suddenly, when the early social networks gained prominence, people finally "got" it. They began to share personal stories and family pictures in earnest, and even discover old friends. When Facebook came along, it suddenly became possible to find former classmates, reconnect with distant family members and recover old relationships. Its contribution to the social fabric of society was huge. Twitter, at the same time, became a place that you could find journalists and writers, engage with them personally, and get the back story behind the news. Emotions that journalists would carefully hide behind a screen of objectivity in their polished stories, you could learn about from their tweets. And, of course, Twitter was the first place to visit on any developing news story.

These examples are just a fraction of the contribution made by the big social media companies. The amazing thing is that, all the while, their true agenda was figuring out how to make money from their services. In a way, we should be thankful that they did.

And yet, as we know, their solutions were inimical and destructive, first to the web, and then to people and societies. We are now at a place where we are beginning to ask how we could arrange things differently, reap the benefits while minimizing the drawbacks.

Everyone on the Fediverse thinks they have the obvious answer to that; though, if you look more closely, there are problems there too, of how and how much to engage in moderation, on whether to block networks like Gab, about how to relate to new laws and increasing governmental snooping and interference.

Regarding the biggies like Facebook and Twitter, the EFF and Cory Doctorow have the core answer: there needs to be interoperability. Those big tech companies don't deserve to be abolished, but their monopolies need to be trimmed down through legislation and regulation. They can live on, for those who want them, as honorable but interoperable platforms. If they are creative and clever, with an amazing interface that people appreciate, they will always be popular enough to make money. But they should not be permitted to stifle competition. Ergo interoperability. No more walled gardens: if the user wants to friend people on other networks, or wants people from other networks to be able to friend him, that should be made possible. May the best platforms win, but it should not be a zero-sum winner-take-all situation. Those who prefer to live on a maybe less slick, less plush, but ad-free, non-algorythmic networks should not be penalized for their choice.

And I still look forward to seeing an offline client, like Thunderbird is for email, that can bring together all of our social media posts, from around the Fediverse, from Diaspora, from Twitter and Facebook, and everywhere else.

It's the pleasure of finding articles like this that makes the web worthwhile. The non-commercial web. The writer describes the qualities of the oil found in poison ivy, which causes so much grief to Americans, but which is prized in Japan for its use in traditional lacquer-making. He also points out, or claims, that Japanese and native Americans are less susceptible to injury by the oil or the plants that contain it. The plants are related to the cashew and the mango that hail from South Asia, which also cause nasty allergic reactions in those who need to deal with the trees or harvesting their fruit. Only humans, it seems, suffer from the bad effects of urushiol.

Y found music by an interesting artist couple - he sent the link to Spotify but I also found them on SoundCloud: Santi & Tuğçe - I am listening on headphones to their stuff just now, and it is nicely blocking out the lousy music from a hinna party taking place next door, as well as the sounds from the TV. There is so much good and interesting music that is being produced. I don't know how the artists are making their money, when we can listen to it for free, but the variety is so varied that something must be happening right.

It seems that I made yet another mistake with my server while trying to get Friendica working the other day - the support person claimed that I'd deleted the ETC directory. All I know is that I had attempted to get Filezilla working better, and was trying different configurations - then suddenly nothing worked. I deleted the server, and then created another to try again with Epicyon - this time with nginx. Meanwhile, I've put the blog and the photos back on Fastmail.

I so love thorns.