Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> writes:
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D <nospam@example.net> writes:
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On Wed, 20 Feb 2025, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
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Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

In comp.misc, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

Indeed, so long as you block all FB's scripts and images on
otherwise unrelated websites. Although I don't tend to make close
friends so I don't need to worry about controlling their FB usage.

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Doesn't stop people from posting about you on FB. (Or worse, posting
photos of you on there.)

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What I don't tell, they can't post, and the same with what they
don't photograph. Although I guess that does leave a bit of an
information vacuum there which some nutcase could exploit to make
up missing personal info/photos on me if they so desired.
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Quite mysteriously, all sorts of otherwise respectable open-source
software developers are happy to use GitHub even though it's owned
by M$. So even having ditched their software long ago, M$ are now
very hard to avoid online if, ironically, you want to use, and
especially work on, open-source software. I find that truely
unfathomable, but others barely seem to see my problem with it.

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Many, I suspect, started using Github before Microsoft bought them in
2018.

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For software projects I use, many more seem to have moved to there
since 2018 than before. You'd think they like the M$ acquisition.
Occasionally I object and am ignored.

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You have been heard! I will not be hosting my stuff on github. On the
other hand, I have nothing interesting to host, so perhaps a moot
point. ;) My home made scripts and little utilities live on my laptop
and sometimes on my server, and are shared upon request.

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I think most little scripts should be documented (with a manual) and put
online.  It will make it easier for others to use and it will certainly
encourage others to improve it and share the improvement.  So you could
see your little script turn into a nice polished program simply because
someone saw the idea and knew what to do to make it a lot better.  Could
be a good source of joy.
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One time I wrote a function---just a function---and added to some
archive online.  This was a pretty niche programming language.  Years
later, I looked it up---I was still called the author of the function,
but the code was completely rewritten, with much more expertise
knowledge.  I thought it was ironic that my name was still there.  We
value the pioneer perhaps too much.
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Lately I've been seeing people advocating for a switch to
Codeberg.

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I don't know about Codeberg, but there have been lots of
alternatives all along. Tons of projects switched from SourceForge
to GitHub. Many projects have their own websites too, so why not
self-host? GitHub do offer a lot of extra features for free, but
that's dealing with the devil IMHO. Especially as the more tied in
to GitHub-specific systems a project gets, the less practical it is
to move away if M$ get more greedy later on.

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I have heard about gitea. It seems as if it allows you to setup
graphical git hosting yourself. I personally use a fossil repository
accessible only over ssh. I don't use any of the wiki/ticket/chat
functionality included in it.

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There's Forgejo, too.  It looks very good.  Like in Github, you can
disable all such modules---wiki, ticket system et cetera.

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Sorry---you'd have to switch to git.  I don't think Gitea or Forgejo
work with fossil.  But fossil has its own web server, so you'd be fine
with it, too.
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This is the truth. I'm a contrarian kind of guy, so when the world goes git, I go fossil. ;) Jokes aside, I like the concept of one binary and how it works for my own personal use case.