On Sunday 05 May 2024 21:55:36 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

On Sunday 05 May 2024 20:21:23 Slávek Banko via tde-users wrote:

...

Hi all,

after R14.1.2 was released, the window for the development of R14.1.3 has already been opened. The first pull-requests have already been merged, new translations are merged, the first builds of the packages was launched.

If you used the Preliminary Stable Builds repository only temporarily, and you prefer to stick on the official final release, it is now the best time to switch to the official repository. The packages in both repositories are identical for some time, so it is smooth to change the apt source if you want. Otherwise, we will be happy if you help us in testing the upcoming release. Publishing the first R14.1.3 preliminary packages I suppose on 8 May.

You can stay up to date on TDE news and development by following our Mastodon channel https://floss.social/@tde

If you can, please help supporting the project with a donation. https://www.trinitydesktop.org/donate.php

Thank you for your support!

Cheers Slávek

Well, this is fun. I remember vaguely that Mastodon would be an option for communication about TDE, and it appears that I had set up an account on floss.social; but then I forgot about it. Now when I try to log in I am informed that my account has been suspended (no reason given), and there seems to be no Help or Contact facility to figure out what's going on, though it does say "...we will retain some basic data to prevent you from evading the suspension" which implies that somehow I have done something wrong. Maybe inactivity is a banning offense?

Leslie

It sounds more like your account got hijacked while you weren't actively using it. But this would probably mean that "somebody" out there who has the tools or resources was scanning for unused accounts to take over.

Bill

From the main page on floss.social (given, they say to report breaches of CoC):

"Sending email to admin@floss.social"

Hope it helps. Cheers Michele

On 2024/05/06 02:34 PM, J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

On Monday 06 May 2024 00:07:57 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

It sounds more like your account got hijacked while you weren't actively using it. But this would probably mean that "somebody" out there who has the tools or resources was scanning for unused accounts to take over.

Bill

Perhaps; but there's no way to tell. My attempts to find some sort of support contact at floss.social are all reflected back to my account's suspension notice, so I can't find out what's going on. :-(

Leslie

Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0 ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@trinitydesktop.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@trinitydesktop.org Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@trinitydeskto...

On Monday 06 May 2024 17:15:57 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

Okay. I can't see that page anymore because it gets redirected to my "suspension notice" page. I'll try explaining why the account was inactive and hope that they'll recind the suspension.

Leslie

I don't actually use Mastodon, just like I never used Twitter before it, don't use X, etc. However, do they require real names, full names, etc.?

Is it possible just to go to a different place and create a new account with a new identity?

If not, then I will probably never use any disservice like them.

Bill

On Monday 06 May 2024 17:56:47 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

Like Facebook, once one has been suspended, there is no way to find support/contact information.

Leslie

Like other disservices of this kind, it seems only to put the bad guys in charge of everybody else. It just provides an opportunity to ban people for no reason (or because somebody else has hijacked their account); or to ban somebody merely because one doesn't like something they said, or because of opinions that they have expressed elsewhere, or to ban them based on nothing more than gossip and slander.

I have the deb packages for a couple different Mastodon clients, but until now I haven't felt that I am missing anything important.

Bill

On Monday 06 May 2024 18:23:15 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

I have to agree with you, but in this case the problem seems to be with just one Mastodon server, floss.social. I found this while looking for ways to contact their admin:

https://discuss.kde.org/t/parts-of-community-cut-off-from-floss-social/9548

Now if this is an issue peculiar to floss.social and not Mastodon itself, that's not a good reason for abandoning Mastodon, but it would be a very good reason to migrate @tde.floss.social to some other Mastodon server.

Leslie

A little research has discovered that it is run somewhat like jabber/xmpp, and no doubt was based on that general idea.

In any case, the servers are run by individual admins, so maybe it's possible to access the TDE feed from another server. Otherwise, I have to agree, it doesn't sound like that server, @tde.floss.social, is really serving us.

Bill

On 2024-05-06 20:37:20 Felix Miata via tde-users wrote:

Private, due to image attachment that doesn't need to be archived.

J Leslie Turriff composed on 2024-05-06 19:56 (UTC-0500):

...

After creating the Mastodon account I looked at tde@floss.social for a few

days but there wasn't any activity to speak of, and then I pretty much forgot about it until recently when some posts on the list made it apparent that a lot of stuff that I would have expected to appear in the Announcements list were happening on Mastodon, and I was missing a lot of traffic.

Are you familiar with IRC? It's been around for decades. ircs://libera.chat/trinity-desktop I avoid all the new-fangled stuff. Email lists, IRC, and forums that work with the web browser of MY choice are enough.

I have used it in the past, and could again, if the information I want/need appears there. The original post by Slávek implies that the stuff that I would expect to appear in the Announcement list now appears in Mastodon. There are now so many channels being posted to, it is extremely difficult to understand where to get information: mailing lists? There are at least three; irc? Mastodon? TDE wiki? Bugzilla? Gitea? –aaaagh!

Leslie

On 2024-05-07 06:57:36 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 19:56:47 -0500

J Leslie Turriff via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:

...

Like Facebook, once one has been suspended, there is no way to find support/contact information.

I know you've resolved your issue, but just in case this helps someone else: it's 90% likely that if you had wiped your browser cookies, the site would have treated you like a new visitor and stopped shoving that page at you.

E. Liddell

You're probably right; but at one time a browser I was using (might have been Firefox, long ago) had no way to clear cookies selectively, and now I always forget that option exists.

Leslie -- Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 04:52:29 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 17:33:00 -0700

William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:

...

I don't actually use Mastodon, just like I never used Twitter before it, don't use X, etc. However, do they require real names, full names, etc.?

Is it possible just to go to a different place and create a new account with a new identity?

The exact requirements for signing up with a Fediverse server are set by the local server admin. Most require only an email. Some don't even require that. There is no attempt made to track you from server to server, and it's not uncommon to have multiple accounts in different places.

E. Liddell

So then that's pretty much how jabber/xmpp servers are also run. Some require all kinds of personal information, yet there are others (or at least one that I know) that requires nothing to create an account, not even email or other contact information. But then, of course, if you lose your password or have other problems with the account, it is lost for ever. But then you can just create a new account.

I didn't imagine there was much tracking, either, otherwise Mastodon could not compete successfully as the anti-X-Twitter. But when I went to their home page, I found that I cannot do that over a proxy, that they want javascript and cookies enabled, etc. So for me, that's still tracking, whether they actually do so themselves or not.

But I read what Slavek wrote in a separate email, that you can see what's being posted without actually logging in. I think that's probably more my style. I like to know if anything important is happening; I don't necessarily want to join the party.

Bill

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 13:00:54 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:

On Tue, 7 May 2024 09:59:03 -0700

The default Mastodon Web interface does require Javascript to display properly, yes, although I don't think there's technically anything that would make it impossible to write a pure server-side site interface. It's just that no one has, yet. You don't need cookies if you're just visiting and have no account, and a couple of random instances I just prodded seemed to have no issue with my accessing their sign-up pages through TOR, so that restriction on proxies may be specific to floss.social again.

In the extreme case, you can always set up your *own* Mastodon instance, which guarantees you're not going to be tracked by anyone but, well, you.

That's not myself! I don't track anybody. That's my evil twin. He never comes when summoned, but is always showing up uninvited, where he's not wanted, and at the worst possible, most embarrasing moments.

If you aren't interested in replying to Mastodon posts, though, you're probably better off with the RSS feed Slávek suggested.

Yes, I think for me, for now, I am satisfied just to be an occasional observer. I'll save my rants for the mailing list.

:-]

It seems that I ought to learn how to do that rss thing. There are a couple of podcasts (for old-timey music) that I know ask for rss subscription, but I just sidestep that part and download the mp3 of the show to my machine. That is not what they intend, of course, but it works for me.

However, I probably ought to learn how to do this rss for real. It might come in handy.

Bill

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 13:57:09 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

On 2024-05-07 11:59:03 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

But I read what Slavek wrote in a separate email, that you can see what's being posted without actually logging in. I think that's probably more my style. I like to know if anything important is happening; I don't necessarily want to join the party.

Bill

Really, if you connect to a server's webpages, tracking will happen. Depending on your browser settings, you can mitigate it fairly well, but can't eliminate it completely; 'tis the nature of today's web. Would that we could go back to the days before JavaScript and plain-text email...

Leslie

Well, actually ... I am pretty good at evading most tracking. For one thing, I use dedicated browsers for various activities, each with specialized settings. I would recommend Icecat, by the way, over Firefox, for your ultra-secure anonymous browser; indeed, even over the Tor browser, which often reverts to default settings (in my experience), and leaks data.

It's true, if I am doing something that requires me to use a direct connection and have javascript and cookies enabled, then I do so, very briefly, take care of my business; then I clear all that data, and close the browser. Otherwise, I never use javascript, never, and I always send plain text emails, and refuse to open html email, except sometimes when I have gone offline -- and even that can be risky.

For most of my online activies, though, it would be hard to identify me, my machine or location. I don't claim to be bulletproof, as nobody can escape notice entirely, and probably they ought not even attempt it, as that might only attract even more intense surveillance. I have only a reasonable expectation of privacy.

And that is possible, to control what information and data one gives out.

It takes some work, true, but I find that I gradually need less and less, that I can still live without constantly checking something online. I use the internet when it is useful to me, not when I am useful to the corporations who control it.

I read somewhere awhile back that we are all celebrities now: that this is how celebrities live, always aware that they are being watched. But since they know that they are being watched, they choose instead to guard their private lives, and to satisfy the curiosity of outsiders by thowing them little scraps of information (which may be accurate or not), allowing them brief glimpses into their lives.

You are a star now. Start acting like one. ;-)

Bill

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 15:43:22 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

On 2024-05-07 16:17:54 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

You are a star now. Start acting like one. ;-)

Bill

A brown dwarf, I am. :-)

Leslie

That's a hard life.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-finds-that-aging-brown...

Bill

On 2024-05-06 08:53:58 Michele Calgaro via tde-users wrote:

From the main page on floss.social (given, they say to report breaches of CoC):

"Sending email to admin@floss.social"

Hope it helps. Cheers Michele

On 2024/05/06 02:34 PM, J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

...

On Monday 06 May 2024 00:07:57 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

It sounds more like your account got hijacked while you weren't actively using it. But this would probably mean that "somebody" out there who has the tools or resources was scanning for unused accounts to take over.

Bill

Perhaps; but there's no way to tell. My attempts to find some sort of support contact at floss.social are all reflected back to my account's suspension notice, so I can't find out what's going on. :-(

Leslie

I received a response from admin@floss.social quite quickly:

We have received and reviewed your request to prevent suspension of your account due to inactivity. Your request has been granted and your account has been restored. Please be sure to log in and use your account regularly. You may wish to review the Inactive Account Policy at https://floss.social/terms for further information.

so apparently it was due to inactivity. (Why couldn't the page say so, and provide the email address?)

And now I can see @tde.floss.social, so all is well.

Leslie -- Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 05.20:58 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

Well, I believe now that I will probably never use Mastodon or anything like it, if I must log in regularly and use my account regularly.

I don't go anywhere that attendance is required.

I had set up a Mastodon account too at the time it was mentionned on the tde list - I'll have to look, I guess I have been suspended too, as I hardly ever looked there since.

I never use a phone to get messages, I stop all "notifications" either on my computers or my phones and just like you I can't stand attendance or update requirements. I go llok for information when and where I need.

Looking at the world around me, I sometimes wonder if I might be an alien...

On Monday 06 May 2024 22:01:53 Thierry de Coulon via tde-users wrote:

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 05.20:58 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

Well, I believe now that I will probably never use Mastodon or anything like it, if I must log in regularly and use my account regularly.

I don't go anywhere that attendance is required.

I had set up a Mastodon account too at the time it was mentionned on the tde list - I'll have to look, I guess I have been suspended too, as I hardly ever looked there since.

I never use a phone to get messages, I stop all "notifications" either on my computers or my phones and just like you I can't stand attendance or update requirements. I go llok for information when and where I need.

Looking at the world around me, I sometimes wonder if I might be an alien...

If we refuse to be sheep, to be conforming compliant consumers of whatever is put before us, then we must be aliens. If one is old enough to remember what was before the home computer and internet, then indeed it does feel like I have been transported into some alien place, where everything looks pretty much the same as I remember, but beneath the surface everything has changed.

But I don't think that the people who envision and start these tech companies regard themselves like that. I know that many of them lived on ramen noodles and slept on the floor in tiny apartments, or that they lived all together with their developers, until they found investors or ... what's the term? ... venture capital.

The problem is, with success, one must keep growing, bigger and bigger; otherwise, people are going to be out of work. But with that growth comes the problems of organizations that grow beyond what is useful and necessary to their community of users, and they who control these corporations feel less inclination to respond to actual people.

What does Cory Doctorow call it? the enshittification of the internet, or of tech?

Bill

Dne út 7. května 2024 E. Liddell via tde-users napsal(a):

On Tue, 7 May 2024 07:01:53 +0200

Thierry de Coulon via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:

...

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 05.20:58 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

Well, I believe now that I will probably never use Mastodon or anything like it, if I must log in regularly and use my account regularly.

I don't go anywhere that attendance is required.

I had set up a Mastodon account too at the time it was mentionned on the tde list - I'll have to look, I guess I have been suspended too, as I hardly ever looked there since.

If it was also on floss.social, your account may indeed have been suspended, but the suspension policy is another one of those things that's up to the local server admin. floss.social has a specific inactive account policy at the bottom of its About page that other servers (fosstodon.org, for example) don't have.

In general, if you just want to view what's being posted from a Mastodon account (and not get notifications, reply, etc.), you don't need to log in to Mastodon. Visiting https://floss.social/@tde will work fine.

E. Liddell

In addition, it is also easy to follow posts as RSS channel, also without the need to create an account:

https://floss.social/@tde.rss

Cheers Slávek --

On Sun May 5 2024 21:55:36 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

Well, this is fun. I remember vaguely that Mastodon would be an option for communication about TDE, and it appears that I had set up an account on floss.social; but then I forgot about it. Now when I try to log in I am informed that my account has been suspended (no reason given), and there seems to be no Help or Contact facility to figure out what's going on, though it does say "...we will retain some basic data to prevent you from evading the suspension" which implies that somehow I have done something wrong. Maybe inactivity is a banning offense?

FWIW:

It's 15 months since I last logged into Mastodon. It took me a moment to figure out which of the Mastodon domains to use (mastodon.social). But I could log in ok and then it spent about a minute "preparing my home feed" and then everything seems to be working.

I switched to BSky because I needed an algorithm to filter posts rather than drowning in a deluge of conversations. And I'm still on Xitter.

--Mike

On 2024-05-07 19:18:41 Dan Youngquist via tde-users wrote:

On 5/5/24 9:55 PM, J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

...

Well, this is fun. I remember vaguely that Mastodon would be an option for communication about TDE, and it appears that I had set up an account on floss.social; but then I forgot about it. Now when I try to log in I am informed that my account has been suspended (no reason given), and there seems to be no Help or Contact facility to figure out what's going on, though it does say "...we will retain some basic data to prevent you from evading the suspension" which implies that somehow I have done something wrong. Maybe inactivity is a banning offense?

At least you were able to open an account. I've tried several times. All I get is a message saying I'll get an email when my account is approved, then never hear another word.

It seems floss.social may have been a poor choice for social media. It's hard to be "social" when they won't even let you sign up.

Yes, I think that the bigger an individual server gets the more problematic its "user-friendliness" becomes, perhaps because of the effort of riding herd on the large number of accounts on it. I suspect it's another instance of the idea that throwing more people at a problem doesn't necessarily help fix it. On the other hand, trying to pick out a small Mastodon server to host one's account is rather trying; there is always the chance that it will suddenly disappear, leaving one suspended in mid-air like Wiley Coyote.

Leslie -- Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 18:17:41 J Leslie Turriff via tde-users wrote:

...

It seems floss.social may have been a poor choice for social media. It's hard to be "social" when they won't even let you sign up.

Yes, I think that the bigger an individual server gets the more problematic its "user-friendliness" becomes, perhaps because of the effort of riding herd on the large number of accounts on it. I suspect it's another instance of the idea that throwing more people at a problem doesn't necessarily help fix it. On the other hand, trying to pick out a small Mastodon server to host one's account is rather trying; there is always the chance that it will suddenly disappear, leaving one suspended in mid-air like Wiley Coyote.

Leslie

Somebody else here (E.Liddell, I believe) said that the requirements for signing up vary greatly among the servers available, which, as I said, sounds a lot like jabber/xmpp in that regard. Thus I suppose that maybe some server admins are more responsive to their users, and maybe it isn't a direct ratio between size and user-unfriendliness.

In other words, you may need to go fishing until you find the server you like. As for jabber/xmpp, I always use the server at hot.chilli.net (and they have others under the same umbrella). They allow registrations without requiring any personal information, and they have been rock-solid in terms of stability. I cannot remember having any problems with them, no server down time in my experience, etc. (I wonder, idly, whether they host for Mastodon?)

Of course, I am just drawing a comparison here. Maybe the Fediverse servers are like that, and you may find others that work for you. If I understand what others have said, you can sign up with any server, and still use that account to interact, post, upload and follow accounts on other servers (again, like jabber/xmpp).

If anybody should come up with such a Fediverse server, by the way, it seems that such information would be of interest to many people on the TDE mailing list, so please share.

I am still considering whether to take the trouble to sign up, but I want to avoid those bad experiences.

Out of all the Mastodon clients available for Devuan or Linux in general, I have so far settled on toot, as it is command-line only, operates inside a terminal. I hope that means that I can use it over the Tor network, but we'll see. Otherwise, I think I'll just find a way to rss or somehow get to read what gets posted there.

Bill

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 19:08:39 William Morder wrote:

On Tuesday 07 May 2024 18:58:27 William Morder wrote:

...

I wonder, idly, whether they host for Mastodon?)

Dig it:

https://mastodon.social/@HotChilliIM

Well, it appears that I spoke too soon. That is just their own Mastodon feed.

I did try to subscribe to TDE's rss feed using akregator-trinity (and I even tried to run it over Tor). Everything worked fine, except for when I tried to read the actual feed https://floss.social/@tde.rss, and again I get the message that I cannot read it without enabling javascript and (if I recall) cookies.

Now, if I enable javascript, that negates any benefit that I get by using a proxy; javascript reveals pretty much all details about one's machine. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself: https://ipleak.net/

It is odd that people have some idea that Mastodon is more private, but if all your information is out there where everybody can see it, then it's not really private, and somebody out there will be tracking it. The same with E.Liddell's suggestion about setting up one's own instance. It doesn't help, unless we can be truly anonymous.

So again, I am glad it's there for others, but it's not for me. And so far, I don't feel that I am missing much; not enough to make me want to use Mastodon, anyway.

When I was searching for Mastodon applications, I found several IRC and Jabber clients, and I hear that Pidgin has plugins for Mastodon, but the only connection I have seen with Jabber is that people on Mastodon like to use Jabber to send direct messages.

There are still a few options for getting the rss feed, but I doubt that my results will be different.

Bill

On Wednesday 08 May 2024 13:21:15 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2024 10:28:13 -0700

William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:

...

https://ipleak.net/

Amusingly, that page fails to determine much of anything if I visit with the browser profile I have piped through TOR. It's convinced I'm in Europe somewhere, although it can't quite make up its mind whether "somewhere" is Germany, Romania, or Switzerland.

This may be partly due to the fact that I'm using a browser with no WebRTC support, so the site can't attack that backdoor. And apparently TOR+Privoxy doesn't leak DNS requests.

(The site does pick up my browser's unusual User Agent, but I've made no effort to obfuscate that in that profile. If I used an extension to mask it, the only thing they would know about me is my screen size.)

E. Liddell

I think I remember that screen, as I have tried to run other browsers over Tor, and have tried various configurations just for testing; such as having javascript enabled. You get several different possible locations, it seems, because your browser is making many different connections, or maybe making those connections over different ports; but in any case, you will appear to be in several different places.

With javascript disabled, I get only one location, which is not my actual location. It is good that you have WebRTC disabled (something one can do in Icecat), and Tor+Privoxy does not leak DNS requests if it is properly configured. In Icecat, and I believe in Firefox and other Mozilla browsers, under Network Settings > Connection Settings, there is a place to click boxes for "Proxy DNS when using Socks5" and "Enable DNS over HTTPS"; all of which combined ought to stop most data leaks.

As I said before, though, nobody is bulletproof, and it's nowadays a sign of psychological health to be justifiably paranoid. Staying anonymous will help to keep that paranoia down to a very low simmer rather than boiling over.

In Icecat, the only identifiable information is my accept language, en-US, which could be changed now and then, if I wanted to be too clever, to say, en-UK, en-IE, en-CA, en-NZ, en-AU or whatever. It would be nice if it could just be set for en, and not worry about those differences, which is how my Devuan system is set up.

Also, by way, Icecat has some settings to evade browser fingerprinting. Maybe that feature also exists in Firefox or other browsers; I haven't compared for a while.

Bill

On 2024-05-08 12:28:13 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

It is odd that people have some idea that Mastodon is more private, but if all your information is out there where everybody can see it, then it's not really private, and somebody out there will be tracking it. The same with E.Liddell's suggestion about setting up one's own instance. It doesn't help, unless we can be truly anonymous.

But privacy is not the problem that Mastodon and other Federation software intend to solve; they are trying to provide "social" internet services that do not lock the user to a particular platform.

Leslie -- Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0

On 2024-05-07 20:58:27 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

I am still considering whether to take the trouble to sign up, but I want to avoid those bad experiences.

In fairness, I suppose that I did it to myself by abandoning the account for a year; but it would have been nice if the email address for contacting the admin was on the page that I became locked into.

Leslie -- Platform: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.5 - x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.1.2 tde-config: 1.0