lynnesbian/bune.city
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Releases Wiki Activity

HUGE initial commit

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
Lynne Megido 2020-04-03 15:37:20 +10:00
commit 9bb8d70751
Signed by: lynnesbian
GPG key ID: F0A184B5213D9F90
27 changed files with 2530 additions and 0 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

3
.gitignore vendored Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
old/
_site/
.jekyll-cache/

661
LICENSE Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,661 @@
GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 19 November 2007
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <https://fsf.org/>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The GNU Affero General Public License is a free, copyleft license for
software and other kinds of works, specifically designed to ensure
cooperation with the community in the case of network server software.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed
to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast,
our General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to
share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free
software for all its users.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you
want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new
free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
Developers that use our General Public Licenses protect your rights
with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer
you this License which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute
and/or modify the software.
A secondary benefit of defending all users' freedom is that
improvements made in alternate versions of the program, if they
receive widespread use, become available for other developers to
incorporate. Many developers of free software are heartened and
encouraged by the resulting cooperation. However, in the case of
software used on network servers, this result may fail to come about.
The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and
letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its
source code to the public.
The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to
ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available
to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to
provide the source code of the modified version running there to the
users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on
a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source
code of the modified version.
An older license, called the Affero General Public License and
published by Affero, was designed to accomplish similar goals. This is
a different license, not a version of the Affero GPL, but Affero has
released a new version of the Affero GPL which permits relicensing under
this license.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
0. Definitions.
"This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License.
"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of
works, such as semiconductor masks.
"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this
License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". "Licensees" and
"recipients" may be individuals or organizations.
To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work
in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an
exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the
earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.
A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based
on the Program.
To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without
permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for
infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a
computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying,
distribution (with or without modification), making available to the
public, and in some countries other activities as well.
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other
parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through
a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
An interactive user interface displays "Appropriate Legal Notices"
to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible
feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2)
tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the
extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the
work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If
the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a
menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion.
1. Source Code.
The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work
for making modifications to it. "Object code" means any non-source
form of a work.
A "Standard Interface" means an interface that either is an official
standard defined by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of
interfaces specified for a particular programming language, one that
is widely used among developers working in that language.
The "System Libraries" of an executable work include anything, other
than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of
packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major
Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that
Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an
implementation is available to the public in source code form. A
"Major Component", in this context, means a major essential component
(kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system
(if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to
produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.
The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all
the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable
work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to
control those activities. However, it does not include the work's
System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free
programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but
which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source
includes interface definition files associated with source files for
the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically
linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require,
such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those
subprograms and other parts of the work.
The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users
can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding
Source.
The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that
same work.
2. Basic Permissions.
All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of
copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated
conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited
permission to run the unmodified Program. The output from running a
covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its
content, constitutes a covered work. This License acknowledges your
rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not
convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains
in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose
of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you
with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with
the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do
not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works
for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction
and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of
your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under
the conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10
makes it unnecessary.
3. Protecting Users' Legal Rights From Anti-Circumvention Law.
No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological
measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article
11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or
similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such
measures.
When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid
circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention
is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to
the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or
modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's
users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of
technological measures.
4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice;
keep intact all notices stating that this License and any
non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code;
keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all
recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey,
and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to
produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the
terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
it, and giving a relevant date.
b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is
released under this License and any conditions added under section
7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to
"keep intact all notices".
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this
License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This
License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7
additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts,
regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no
permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not
invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display
Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive
interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your
work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent
works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work,
and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
"aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not
used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users
beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work
in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other
parts of the aggregate.
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms
of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the
machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License,
in one of these ways:
a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
(including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the
Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium
customarily used for software interchange.
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
(including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a
written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as
long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product
model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a
copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the
product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical
medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no
more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this
conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the
Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
c) Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the
written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This
alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and
only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord
with subsection 6b.
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated
place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the
Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no
further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the
Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to
copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source
may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party)
that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain
clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the
Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the
Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is
available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
e) Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided
you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding
Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no
charge under subsection 6d.
A separable portion of the object code, whose source code is excluded
from the Corresponding Source as a System Library, need not be
included in conveying the object code work.
A "User Product" is either (1) a "consumer product", which means any
tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family,
or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation
into a dwelling. In determining whether a product is a consumer product,
doubtful cases shall be resolved in favor of coverage. For a particular
product received by a particular user, "normally used" refers to a
typical or common use of that class of product, regardless of the status
of the particular user or of the way in which the particular user
actually uses, or expects or is expected to use, the product. A product
is a consumer product regardless of whether the product has substantial
commercial, industrial or non-consumer uses, unless such uses represent
the only significant mode of use of the product.
"Installation Information" for a User Product means any methods,
procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install
and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from
a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must
suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object
code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because
modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or
specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as
part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the
User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a
fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the
Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied
by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply
if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install
modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has
been installed in ROM).
The requirement to provide Installation Information does not include a
requirement to continue to provide support service, warranty, or updates
for a work that has been modified or installed by the recipient, or for
the User Product in which it has been modified or installed. Access to a
network may be denied when the modification itself materially and
adversely affects the operation of the network or violates the rules and
protocols for communication across the network.
Corresponding Source conveyed, and Installation Information provided,
in accord with this section must be in a format that is publicly
documented (and with an implementation available to the public in
source code form), and must require no special password or key for
unpacking, reading or copying.
7. Additional Terms.
"Additional permissions" are terms that supplement the terms of this
License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions.
Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall
be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent
that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions
apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately
under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by
this License without regard to the additional permissions.
When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option
remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of
it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own
removal in certain cases when you modify the work.) You may place
additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work,
for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you
add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of
that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:
a) Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the
terms of sections 15 and 16 of this License; or
b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or
author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal
Notices displayed by works containing it; or
c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or
requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in
reasonable ways as different from the original version; or
d) Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or
authors of the material; or
e) Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some
trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or
f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that
material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of
it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for
any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on
those licensors and authors.
All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further
restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you
received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
governed by this License along with a term that is a further
restriction, you may remove that term. If a license document contains
a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this
License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms
of that license document, provided that the further restriction does
not survive such relicensing or conveying.
If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you
must place, in the relevant source files, a statement of the
additional terms that apply to those files, or a notice indicating
where to find the applicable terms.
Additional terms, permissive or non-permissive, may be stated in the
form of a separately written license, or stated as exceptions;
the above requirements apply either way.
8. Termination.
You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly
provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or
modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under
this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third
paragraph of section 11).
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your
license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a)
provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and
finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright
holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means
prior to 60 days after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is
reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the
violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have
received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after
your receipt of the notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the
licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under
this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently
reinstated, you do not qualify to receive new licenses for the same
material under section 10.
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or
run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work
occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission
to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However,
nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or
modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do
not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a
covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.
Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and
propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible
for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.
An "entity transaction" is a transaction transferring control of an
organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an
organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered
work results from an entity transaction, each party to that
transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever
licenses to the work the party's predecessor in interest had or could
give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the
Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if
the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may
not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of
rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation
(including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that
any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for
sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.
11. Patents.
A "contributor" is a copyright holder who authorizes use under this
License of the Program or a work on which the Program is based. The
work thus licensed is called the contributor's "contributor version".
A contributor's "essential patent claims" are all patent claims
owned or controlled by the contributor, whether already acquired or
hereafter acquired, that would be infringed by some manner, permitted
by this License, of making, using, or selling its contributor version,
but do not include claims that would be infringed only as a
consequence of further modification of the contributor version. For
purposes of this definition, "control" includes the right to grant
patent sublicenses in a manner consistent with the requirements of
this License.
Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free
patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to
make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and
propagate the contents of its contributor version.
In the following three paragraphs, a "patent license" is any express
agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent
(such as an express permission to practice a patent or covenant not to
sue for patent infringement). To "grant" such a patent license to a
party means to make such an agreement or commitment not to enforce a
patent against the party.
If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license,
and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone
to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a
publicly available network server or other readily accessible means,
then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so
available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the
patent license for this particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner
consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent
license to downstream recipients. "Knowingly relying" means you have
actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the
covered work in a country, or your recipient's use of the covered work
in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that
country that you have reason to believe are valid.
If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or
arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a
covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties
receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify
or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license
you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered
work and works based on it.
A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within
the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is
conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are
specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered
work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is
in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment
to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying
the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the
parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory
patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work
conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily
for and in connection with specific products or compilations that
contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement,
or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.
Nothing in this License shall be construed as excluding or limiting
any implied license or other defenses to infringement that may
otherwise be available to you under applicable patent law.
12. No Surrender of Others' Freedom.
If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot convey a
covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may
not convey it at all. For example, if you agree to terms that obligate you
to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey
the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this
License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the
Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users
interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version
supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding
Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source
from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary
means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source
shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3
of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the
following paragraph.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have
permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed
under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single
combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this
License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work,
but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version
3 of the GNU General Public License.
14. Revised Versions of this License.
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of
the GNU Affero General Public License from time to time. Such new versions
will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Program specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU Affero General
Public License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the
option of following the terms and conditions either of that numbered
version or of any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of the
GNU Affero General Public License, you may choose any version ever published
by the Free Software Foundation.
If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future
versions of the GNU Affero General Public License can be used, that proxy's
public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you
to choose that version for the Program.
Later license versions may give you additional or different
permissions. However, no additional obligations are imposed on any
author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a
later version.
15. Disclaimer of Warranty.
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY
APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY
OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM
IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF
ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
16. Limitation of Liability.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS
THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE
USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD
PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES.
17. Interpretation of Sections 15 and 16.
If the disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability provided
above cannot be given local legal effect according to their terms,
reviewing courts shall apply local law that most closely approximates
an absolute waiver of all civil liability in connection with the
Program, unless a warranty or assumption of liability accompanies a
copy of the Program in return for a fee.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If your software can interact with users remotely through a computer
network, you should also make sure that it provides a way for users to
get its source. For example, if your program is a web application, its
interface could display a "Source" link that leads users to an archive
of the code. There are many ways you could offer source, and different
solutions will be better for different programs; see section 13 for the
specific requirements.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school,
if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary.
For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the GNU AGPL, see
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

8
README.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
bune.city
===
This will eventually replace my existing WordPress blog at https://bune.city.
The website itself is licensed under the AGPLv3, but:
- All files in the `_posts` and `_drafts` folders are instead licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
- The "Material Icons" webfont file is licensed under the Apache 2 license.

11
_config.yml Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
url: "" # the base hostname & protocol for your site, e.g. http://example.com
baseurl: "" # the subpath of your site, e.g. /blog
title: "Bune City Blog" # the name of your site, e.g. ACME Corp.
exclude: [old/]
defaults:
- scope:
path: ""
type: "posts"
values:
layout: "post"
excerpt_separator: "<!--more-->"

6
_includes/header.html Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
<header>
<a href='/'>Home</a>
<a href='/'>Categories</a>
<a href='/'>Tags</a>
<a href='/'>lynnesbian.space</a>
</header>

18
_layouts/default.html Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-AU">
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>{{ page.title }} - {{ site.title }}</title>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Playfair+Display:wght@600&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ "/assets/style.css" | relative_url }}">
<link rel='stylesheet' href='/assets/material/style.css'>
<!-- <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet"> -->
</head>
<body>
{{ content }}
</body>
</html>

6
_layouts/post.html Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
---
layout: default
---
<h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
<div id='post-info'>By {{ page.author }}</div>
{{ content }}

79
_posts/2019-07-17-the-fediverse-tribune-issue-1.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
---
---
title: The Fediverse TriBune Issue 1
date: 2019-07-17 00:53
author: Lynne
categories: Fediverse TriBune, The Fediverse
cw: [misogyny, suicide]
cw_description: This issue contains a discussion about misogynist posts and a mention of suicide.
---
Hello and welcome to the first issue of The Fediverse TriBune. I'm aiming to create an interesting news-style post every now and then (perhaps weekly?) to update users of fedi and outsiders alike on the happenings of the Fediverse. If necessary, issues may begin with warnings about the nature of the content.
<!--more-->
knzk.me
-------
The most prominent event in recent memory is knzk.me's closure.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/07/369455ef26b48884ddbbc4ec485e8382/knzk-bg.png)
knzk was a popular instance with thousands of users. Its closure was announced on the first of June and it shut down on the first of next month. Many memories and (in)famous posts are now only kept stored in the caches of other instances, as well as the personal archives of those who chose to download them. For [reasons previously discussed](https://bune.city/2019/05/archive-team-and-the-fediverse/), knzk was not archived by any archival team (at least, none that I'm aware of). Users were given a month's warning, providing ample time to download personal archives and move to other instances.
![knzk.me's closure notice, posted by the admin.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/07/8b44d66fbe2bcb7421085c9d1ba96739/Screenshot_20190601-014259_Fedilab_1.png)
knzk.me was one of the most popular instances for users migrating from Twitter during the August 2018 influx. At its peak, it had over 3000 users.
![Many instances have the knzk logo as an emoji.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/07/c1f2ba111b8c1be425947d74af5bcfe0/image-768x382.png)
"Women are Stupid" Spammer
--------------------------
For months now, a spammer has been spreading a misogynist message on the Fediverse. He does this by manually (yes, manually) creating new accounts on as many instances as he can, and then copy and pasting a message as a reply to as many users as he can before he's banned.
![The spammer even replies to bot accounts.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/07/d2f692a2660eb6c4e52acfdd1bd073ed/Screenshot_20190721-103040_Fedilab-498x1024.png)
The spammer owns the domain "womenarestupid.site", and makes posts like the one above repeatedly. The current wave of posts are about this so-called "don't marry movement". To avoid seeing these posts, users need only filter out the phrase. While I don't know much about Pleroma, from what I understand, it is possible for admins to block all incoming posts that contain a phrase, which could be used to stop this spammer. Instance admins should consider either closing registrations or using Mastodon's new feature that allows you to ask new users to complete a form explaining why they would like to register.
Kiwi Farms Joins the Fediverse
------------------------------
Kiwi Farms is notorious for doxxing people and repeated targeted harassment, including driving people to suicide. They have recently joined the Fediverse at the domain `kiwifarms.cc`. Their main (non-Fediverse) site is `kiwifarms.net`, and they also have a backup site at `kiwifarms.is`.
If you're an admin, you'll want to block all three of these to keep your users safe from their harassment. Just blocking `kiwifarms.cc` will probably be enough, but preemptively blocking the others ensures that you'll be safe if they decide to open more servers. I've also been told that there's a Pleroma instance at `pleroma.kiwifarms.net`, but when I tried to access it, it failed to load.
Spotlight
---------
Every issue, I'll take some time to spotlight an interesting account, service, or instance on the Fediverse.
For this issue, let's talk about Koopa!
<p>
<center>
<iframe src="https://botsin.space/@Koopa/102455732978208333/embed" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" width="400" height="450">
</iframe>
</center>
</p>
[\@Koopa\@botsin.space](https://botsin.space/@Koopa) is an account that posts hourly photos of a small Hermann tortoise named Koopa between the hours of 10am and 10pm. The account has existed since April 2019.
<p>
<center>
<iframe src="https://botsin.space/@Koopa/102412086277661707/embed" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" width="400" height="450">
</iframe>
</center>
</p>
Thanks for reading!
*Noticed a mistake? Have something you'd like to add? Got an idea for a story? Shoot me an email at* [*lynne\@bune.city*](mailto:lynne@bune.city)*, or get in touch on the Fediverse. I'm* [*\@lynnesbian\@fedi.lynnesbian.space*](https://l.bune.city/me)*.
The Fediverse TriBune is written by Lynne in her spare time. If you'd like to donate, you can do so [here](https://bune.city/donate/).*

197
_posts/2019-08-14-the-fediverse-tribune-issue-2.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,197 @@
---
---
title: The Fediverse TriBune Issue 2
date: 2019-08-14 01:14
updated: 2020-04-02
author: Lynne
categories: [Fediverse TriBune]
cw: [shootings, pol, uspol, slurs]
cw_description: This issue contains discussions of mass shootings and US politics. It also deals with the presence of alt-right gathering spaces on the Fediverse. Finally, some screenshots in the Fedichive section contain various slurs. This issue is more opinionated than the previous.
---
Welcome to issue two of the Fediverse Tribune. This issue will discuss the decisions on Gab made by Fedilab and Tusky, and F-Droid's thoughts on those decisions. It will also discuss the rather short-lived "Fedichive" project.
<!--more-->
Fedilab, Tusky, and F-Droid
---------------------------
There has been some controversy over Tusky's decision to disallow its users to sign in with Gab instances, and conversely Fedilab's decision not to do so.
Gab is a social network focused on free speech above all else, and openly allows harassers and the alt-right, including admitted fascists, to use its service. They use a modified version of Mastodon called Gab Social, which is (by necessity of the AGPLv3 license) open source and available for anyone to use. This means that a few other Gab Social instances exist as well as the main one. Gab is a continued threat to minorities and other oppressed groups.
Tusky is an Android app for accessing Mastodon and compatible instances. On the 22nd of June, the official Tusky account announced that Gab would be blocked.
<p>
<center>
<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@Tusky/102310951337198004/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" width="400" height="550">
</iframe>
</center>
</p>
Fedilab originally implemented a block too, but the developer went back on it, instead deciding to add utilities within the app itself to allow users to block domains. It's worth noting that this accomplishes something different to Tusky's block: Tusky ensures that Gab users can't use the app, while Fedilab provides a mechanism to block people using Gab. Gab users can still use Fedilab.
<p>
<center>
<iframe src="https://framapiaf.org/@fedilab/102299963519678879/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" width="400" height="350">
</iframe>
</center>
</p>
This has lead many to criticise the developer of Fedilab, with one user opening [an issue report](https://framagit.org/tom79/fedilab/issues/208#note_435398) to state that adding and subsequently removing the block sends a bad message.
> Implementing a block and then removing it is telling those people "I made an error. Nazis are welcome to use my app." I'm sure this wasn't your intention, but that's how Nazis are receiving this message. And that is a big problem.
>
> <cite>Henry Nguyen</cite>
Kiwi farms, a site where users harass and dox vulnerable people, recently joined the Fediverse, as mentioned in [the last issue](https://bune.city/2019/07/the-fediverse-tribune-issue-1/). They recommend Fedilab as an Android app, almost certainly because of this issue. Again, it's worth noting that Fedilab is not the only Fediverse client not to block Gab, but it is the mostly publicly well known for doing so.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/07/8b3884b494969b54551e51c8a200960c/image-768x244.png)
### F-Droid's Response
F-Droid, an open alternative to Google Play which only allows [free software](https://bune.city/2019/05/lynne-teaches-tech-what-is-free-software/), recently published [an article](https://f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html) on this issue. They state that they agree with both Tusky and Fedilab's decisions, and that while they generally try to remain neutral, they are taking a political stance against the harassment of minorities.
Unfortunately, neutrality in such a situation is not possible, as the very act of not doing something is a statement. When I write the TriBune, I try to stay neutral as often as I can, but I'm fully aware that doing so sometimes means doing nothing to protect marginalised groups while being in an ideal position to do so. As such, I would like to offer my opinion on the idea of a stance of neutrality in any public online space, from forums to video sharing sites and even to app stores.
The [paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) means that tolerating all speech and presence is far from neutrality. The "neutral" approach of not moderating any incoming traffic - save for that which breaks the law - is the same neutrality that 4chan and 8chan maintain. If you allow for all speech including hate speech, you are expressly allowing harassment and bigotry. Allowing users to hurl slurs at the minorities in the group isn't neutrality. Similarly, giving fascists an equal platform with other people is not neutrality. It is often claimed to be neutrality, however.
Staying neutral isn't an option for everybody. A trans person can hardly stay neutral on the issue of whether or not they should be allowed to live. In situations such as these, neutrality is only an option to the privileged who do not face this discrimination. As a white person, I am privileged to be able to remain "neutral" (ignorant) on issues affecting people of colour. This is not something that I do, but due to my privilege, I am able to. As a woman, however, I cannot stay neutral on issues that affect women. There is no real difference between remaining neutral and allowing fascists to use your platform and explicitly allowing fascists to use your platform. The only difference is one of semantics.
> As a project, \[F-Droid\] tried to stay neutral all the time. But sometimes, staying neutral isn’t an option but instead will lead to the uprise of previously mentioned oppression and harassment against marginalized groups. We don’t want and won’t support that. F-Droid is taking a political stance here.
>
> <cite>F-Droid, "Public Statement on Neutrality of Free Software"</cite>
Later into the article, they give their reasoning for supporting both Tusky and Fedilab's decisions.
> We respect Tusky’s decision to block mentioned website; it’s their right to introduce restrictions like these into their software. We also respect Fedilab’s decision not to hardcode a login block; instead they are actively working on making it easier to block certain domains in the app itself and thus giving users more power to moderate which content they’ll see.
>
> <cite>F-Droid, "Public Statement on Neutrality of Free Software"</cite>
Others have expressed concern with Tusky's method of blocking Gab users at the sign up page, noting that it leads to difficult decisions down the line on whether or not particular instances should be blocked. However, this issue could possibly be prevented with a clear set of rules on whether or not to block a given instance at the app level, or with case by case decisions.
The developer of Fedilab does not take an explicitly pro-Gab stance, and instead believes that it's not his duty to block Gab users at the app level. Some have commented that not doing anything to stop Gab users gives implicit support. As I stated above, neutrality is not an option.
On the 29th of July, an app named "Free Tusky" was added to F-Droid. Free Tusky is a modified version of Tusky that is nearly identical to the original, save for one small change - the removal of the implemented blocklist.
![The description is copied from Tusky's description, save for the last two lines.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/3fd58d1ca8b82554d5aa9f6556f42301/freetusky.png)
Some people saw the existence of this app as contradicting with F-Droid's public statement, due to this line:
> Because of this, \[F-Droid\] won’t package nor distribute apps that promote \[discrimination\]. This includes that it won’t distribute an app that promotes the usage of \[Gab\], by either its branding, its pre-filled instance domain or any other direct promotion.
>
> <cite>F-Droid, "Public Statement on Neutrality of Free Software"</cite>
While it could be argued that this is not a "direct promotion" in that Free Tusky does not declare itself a Gab client, it does state that its only difference from Tusky is removing the hardcoded blocklist, which currently only includes Gab.
This can easily be defended with the "neutrality" defence: Instead of choosing to take a stand on which instances should be blocked, the app allows them all. However, the existence of this app is far from neutral. Its sole difference from Tusky is being able to access Gab. When framed in this way, it becomes clearly obvious that Free Tusky is not in any way neutral. Allowing Gab is not neutral, and making changes to allow Gab after it was blocked is *certainly* not neutral. There is no neutral position.
An [F-Droid issue](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/issues/1736) was opened on the eighth of August by Alicia Etler, recommending the removal of Free Tusky and Fedilab. There were several people in the thread recommending the removal of both apps, as well as many arguing against it. In the end, the issue was closed without any action being taken.
After noticing that Alicia seemed to be quite actively participating in the discussions around these apps' presence on F-Droid, I decided to reach out and contact her for an interview.
### Interview with Alicia
*The opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect my own.*
Lynne: What is your opinion on Fedilab?
Alicia: It seems more buggy than Tusky, as there seems to be at least one function that breaks in each new update. But I do enjoy the extra features it has such as the offline cache that lets you search out your old posts. That said, recent decisions by the developer have essentially forced me off the app in favor of Tusky.
Lynne: What is your opinion on Free Tusky?
Alicia: It's explicitly for Gab. It says as much in the app description, since Gab is the only one on Tusky's blocklist atm and FreeTusky's sole purpose for existing is to remove the blocklist. Anyone who uses it is clearly not one who should be welcomed in any tolerant society.
Lynne: Do you believe any either app is worse than the other?
Alicia: Well, I think Fedilab has potential to be redeemable, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part in the hopes of saving the extra features that I enjoyed so much. I might see if Tusky is willing to implement some of those things at some point.
Lynne: What do you believe should be done about these apps's presence on F-Droid?
Alicia: At a minimum, give full transparency in the app descriptions. Fedilab should have a notice pointing out how they might be hostile to marginalized groups due to the various activities that they've performed in order to enable Gab, as well as their other recent activity that according to the dev's own admission, is designed to evade instance blocks, violating the freedoms of instance admins to decide which apps are safe for their users. *(n.b. Alicia is referring to [an update to Fedilab](https://framagit.org/tom79/fedilab/commit/bcef7fa0450037d29d88b8e96edc062fcb502b6c#67ae7d910092124e1449d764ae9e42e6769e3f90_487_484) that changed the user agent string to ensure that Fedilab's internal browser is no longer uniquely identifiable. This means that instances wishing to block users of Fedilab's built in browser (but not the app itself) are now unable to.)* Meanwhile, FreeTusky should have an explicit notice that its sole purpose is to unblock Gab and is otherwise no different than Tusky. Obviously, I'd prefer much harsher measures such as complete removal, but informing their users is the very least F-Droid can do and they apparently can't be bothered to do that much.
This is especially true in the wake of 8chan.
Lynne: The F-Droid team has so far not acted to remove either of these apps, or the various apps they host that are used to access 4chan and 8chan. Do you feel that this is goes against their recent public statement?
Alicia: Of course. Their recent public statement is itself a contradiction. The last paragraph directly contradicts everything said in the first two. Active promotion doesn't necessarily mean "We support Gab" will be plastered somewhere. Coded promotion is still promotion. And it's arguably *more* dangerous because it can lure in innocent victims who don't know the full situation, growing the movement and increasing the number of people willing to resort to the violence expressed in places like 8chan and Gab. This is part of why I started my attempts by asking for a "promotes bigotry" antifeature on the F-Droid forums instead of going for a full-on removal. But as things heated up & F-Droid repeatedly refused to do anything, I moved to more extreme positions, demanding more in order to hopefully end at the informing of their users after negotiations were complete.
Lynne: Do you believe removing Fedilab and Free Tusky from F-Droid will help reduce white supremacist presence on the Fediverse?
Alicia: Most definitely. Outside of the Google Play Store, F-Droid is *the* largest platform for Android apps. And many of these white supremacist terrorists post manifestos just before walking into the place they're about to shoot up. That means they have to be on mobile to do it. Some have argued that they can always just access it from their browsers, but if you've ever tried that on mobile, you'll know how much of a pain that is. As a result, removing apps that enable bigots will help immensely, as they'd either be forced to manually sideload apps or use the clunky mobile browser interface in order to communicate with each other. Either way, it puts extra barriers in front of them and slows down their ability to organize, which gives us more time to enact more permanent solutions.
Considering that these terrorists use the "free speech" thing a lot in order to justify their invasion of marginalized groups' spaces, they're probably more likely to use F-Droid than Google anyway due to the "freedoms" it represents, so it's possible F-Droid would have a bigger effect on them than they would on other services, even if it's not as big an effect as if Google removed the apps.
Lynne: What app would you recommend using?
Alicia: Tusky, preferably via direct download on their GitHub page since both Google and F-Droid have made it clear that they're not working to protect marginalized people, but instead working to save face by removing all direct references to the terrorist networks in question. I also want to add that I can't recommend any app stores atm due to those reasons.
However, I will be looking into getting a small team together to start a basic fork of F-Droid with some interesting features such as separating the repos from the store itself in order to better avoid concentration of power. I have no programming skills in this department, so that's why I'm looking for a small team for it. If anyone's interested, they're welcome to message me on the Fediverse.
Lynne: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Alicia: If you're uneducated on the issue, get educated. This isn't just a problem on the Fediverse or even F-Droid/Google. The El Paso shooter from 8chan made that perfectly clear, as did the synagogue shooter from Gab last year. If you think you're educated, double check. There's a lot of misinformation being spewed by these white supremacists, as evidenced by the "invasion" term currently going through the news despite having provably less people coming to seek asylum under Trump than we did Obama. If you think this is only about criminals, think again. The Trump administration is targeting legal citizens too. But most importantly, start making your voice heard wherever you can. The only way to cast out hatred from a society is for that entire society to stand up together to oppose them. So the more voices we have out there, the better our chances. Talk to anyone willing to listen, and especially talk to those above you in the social hierarchy. Bosses, political representatives, etc. They're the ones that can do more to fix this mess, so it's important we encourage them to exercise their power to do so.
*Alicia can be contacted on the Fediverse* [*here*](https://octodon.social/@KitsuneAlicia)*.*
### Conclusion
The situation with F-Droid is messy and controversial. Neither F-Droid nor Fedilab and Free Tusky show any willingness to change.
Fedichive
---------
Fedichive was (briefly) an instance dedicated to archiving content on the Fediverse. I've already touched on why I believe this is immoral in a [previous article](https://bune.city/2019/05/archive-team-and-the-fediverse/) about Archive Team. In short, I believe that stating something publicly is not the same as consenting to having it stored forever. It can even put people in danger.
If you'd like to block Fedichive, here's what you'll need to do to ensure your posts aren't scraped:
*Note: This section was written before Fedichive shut down. While it's unlikely that it will return, you can still take these steps if you want to be safe.*
- Suspend the domain `fedichive.tk`.
- Blacklist the instance's IP in your system settings to ensure that their server is unable to talk to yours. On Linux, you can do this with the command `iptables -I INPUT -s 71.234.189.151 -j DROP`</code>, but this will not persist across reboots. You'll need to look up instructions to save this for your distribution.
- Tell your server (nginx, haproxy, apache...) to block any user agents containing `fedichive`. This will ensure that Fedichive remains blocked even if they change IPs, although the Fedichive admin can remove this user agent string if they are maliciously minded.
- Defederate from any relays that federate with Fedichive. Even if you've done all of the above, relays can still bring your data across to Fedichive. You can do this by checking your relays in the Mastodon preferences (I'm not sure how to do this on other instance types) and using ctrl-F to search for "fedichive", and then defederating the ones that show up for now. You can readd them if they block Fedichive at a later date.
So much needs to be done due to the way federation works - servers don't say who they are when fetching posts, so there's no way to tell certain servers not to.
It's worth noting that Eugen, the lead developer of Mastodon, has expressed his disdain for Fedichive.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/b936a1ab8f3232a4116b43c0485e3053/fedichive.png)
Much of the Fediverse had an averse reaction to Fedichive's presence, and this was apparently enough to drive the admin into a frenzy, posting a tirade of slurs and directed insults while stating that the users of the Fediverse as a whole are "bitchy babies". He repeatedly insulted one of my partners, Zoe, with misogynist slurs and degrading comments.
*Content warning: I'd like to restate that the following screenshots contain various slurs.*
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/1cfc4352d4f64e346920cdc5c3e72b9e/sshot_2019-08-17_at_14-57-24-1566017844.png)
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/2a13ee0b9db9cb24716b92dd1f65c2b3/sshot_2019-08-17_at_14-43-45-1566017025.png)
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/4bc848d7ab792a14c1e320ac9ad6bc71/sshot_2019-08-17_at_14-49-23-1566017363.png)
[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-prev .swiper-button-prev .swiper-button-white}[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-next .swiper-button-next .swiper-button-white}[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-pause}
The admin also admitted to being behind the weedislife and freefedifollowers instances, two instances known for follow spamming and scraping lists of accounts.
![The last post is particularly concerning.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/c502542f06bf3fc4e92b0934b7d852f1/sshot_2019-08-17_at_15-02-31-1566018151.png)
Finally, the admin decided to shut down the "project".
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/90f8b103b844698419f88a48ee775023/sshot_2019-08-17_at_15-26-30-1566019590.png)
The final post on the instance was the admin claiming that they were going to sell the "data" obtained to Facebook and Russia.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/d6c541ad4b4f8e34a9fba69172712b85/sshot_2019-08-17_at_15-29-30-1566019770.png)
Overall, this was a complete mess from start to finish, and rather entertaining to watch it unfold live.
Spotlight
---------
Every issue, I'll take some time to spotlight an interesting account, service, or instance on the Fediverse.
[Birdshite](https://birdsite.monster) is a tool that can be used to bridge Twitter and ActivityPub accounts, meaning that you can follow Twitter user from Mastodon, Pleroma, et al. **Note that as of 2020-04-02, Birdshite no longer functions.**
![You can now follow the official Twitter account from Mastodon, although I don't know why you'd want to :mlem:](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/49f973dd639d800401a8615231d32a0f/image.png)
Using birdshite is as simple as replacing `twitter.com` in a given Twitter URL with `birdsite.monster`. For example, if you want to access [this](https://twitter.com/MastodonProject/status/1079196084059205632) tweet from your Mastodon instance, you just need to replace `twitter.com` with `birdsite.monster`, and paste it into your instance's search bar.
![The same post displayed on Mastodon and Twitter.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/08/e065e47e5633dbc4e927953ffc79dc05/posts.png)
Birdshite allows you to follow Twitter users and interact with their posts, and integrates cleanly and simply with the Fediverse.

349
_posts/2020-01-03-xbox-one-woes.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,349 @@
---
title: Xbox One Woes
updated: 2020-01-04
author: Lynne
categories: [Reviews, Technology]
tags: [[Review, Technology, Xbox]]
---
*Xbox? XBox? XBOX? Whatever.*
So my wife and I recently made the decision to get an Xbox One, because there were a few games I wanted on it, mainly the Rare Replay Collection for its Xbox 360 titles. I could have got an Xbox 360 and a copy of the games instead, but hey, may as well buy a current gen console, especially since we managed to find a cheap second hand Xbox One on eBay. It came with the Kinect (joy of joys), a copy of Kinect Sports Rivals, Lego Dimensions and the requisite pieces and scanner (the eBay listing didn't mention it but sure), the Xbox itself, and a controller with headset. A headset that only works with the Xbox One controller. Neato.
<!--more-->
The first thing you notice when you see an original model Xbox One is that it's enormous. As big as a VCR.
![This is ridiculous.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/87d5da711b729344f9cc19b78a7b581f/IMG_20191205_092046-1024x768.jpg)
I can only assume they made it so big because of the [issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems#General_Hardware_Failure_errors) caused by making the Xbox 360 so small. The Xbox One S is 40% smaller than the original model, which is nice.
The second thing you'll notice is that you're required to sign in with a Microsoft account. If you don't want to, you can't use the Xbox. If you don't have one, you can create one from the Xbox itself (although I really don't recommend this, it's much slower and clunkier). Once that's done, you're ready to enter the world of Xbox.
The Rare Replay Collection
--------------------------
I already have a Microsoft account (a hotmail one at that!) that I used with my Xbox 360, so I signed in with that and everything worked okay from there. I signed up for the \$1 for 3 months Game Pass deal and started downloading the Rare Replay Collection. I had already ordered the disc so I can play it after I unsubscribe from Game Pass, but I may as well play it while waiting for the disc to arrive.
The Rare Replay collection consists of 30 games, 8 of which are Xbox 360 titles. The Xbox 360 titles run under the Xbox One's so-called Backwards Compatibility mode, and rather than being included within Rare Replay, they're separate programs. When you download Rare Replay, nine downloads begin - one for Rare Replay and eight for the included Xbox 360 games.
This was going to take a while with my internet, and the Xbox One only has 500GB of internal storage space, so I decided to cancel them all and individually install Trouble in Paradise once I realised that was possible. However, I then realised that I was installing the wrong Trouble in Paradise.
![There's two of them!!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/07120691d3969c54d14d8fe001c8bcd5/image.png)
See, I was installing **Viva Piñata: TIP** when I *should* have been installing **Viva Piñata: TIP**. Yes, those names are the same. The difference is that one of them has "RARE REPLAY" on the box art. They're both the same game, but Rare Replay won't recognise that you have the game installed if you install the non-Replay version. This doesn't really matter all that much, but I decided it was worth cancelling the download and starting the other one to have things integrate a little better.
This is true of every game in the Rare Replay collection, by the way - Game Pass will show you two versions of every Xbox 360 game in the collection, presumably identical apart from not integrating with Rare Replay. Eighteen of the 360 games in Game Pass are the same nine listed twice. At the time of writing (3rd of January 2020), there are 42 Xbox 360 games available with Game Pass, and 9 of them are Rare Replay duplicates, meaning that there are really only 33.
Because the 360 titles run completely independently of Rare Replay, the integration is sorely lacking. You can't return to the Rare Replay menu in game, you don't get overlays showing that you've earned new stamps, and choosing a 360 game in the menu causes Rare Replay to close, the 360 game to (slowly, if at all) start up, the 360 splash screen to display (which occasionally causes the Xbox One's fans to run at maximum speed for a few seconds, for whatever reason), the game logos to display, and *finally* you're in the game. It's nowhere near as neat as launching an N64 or ZX Spectrum game is. I understand that this is due to technical constraints, but jeez.
Speaking of 360 games...
Backwards Compatibility
-----------------------
Backwards Compatibility on the Xbox One is *not* an Xbox 360 emulator. Only some games work, and *none of them work from the original disc* - upon inserting an Xbox 360 game disc, the Xbox One will download a patched/modified/enchanted/whatever version of the game from its servers that has been specifically modified to work with the Xbox One.
### The Good
Xbox 360 games running on the Xbox One typically see pretty decent performance improvements, which I definitely noticed while playing Trouble in Paradise - the game would run at 30FPS with occasional drops to 15 on my family's Xbox 360, whereas the Xbox One never drops below 30 and even hits 60 in low intensity scenes like the romance dances and the "look inside" feature. The Xbox One also runs the games at a higher resolution (up to 4K if you have the Xbox One X), enables 16x anisotropic antialiasing, and adds a few more graphical enhancements. I'm really happy about this, actually - usually backwards compatibility just means running the games at the same resolution and upscaling it, with the only way to *actually* run old games in higher resolutions being emulation.
Because the Xbox One runs the games off of the hard drive (whether or not you have the disc version of the game - more on that later), loading times are vastly reduced compared to the 360. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (I know, I know) loads so quickly that the loading screen only has time to display one gameplay tip, compared to the three or four I'd see on the 360. If an Xbox 360 game is available on Xbox One, and the 360 version didn't use anything not supported by the Xbox One, I'd say it's definitely worth playing the Xbox One version instead.
### The Bad
#### Save management
Let's say you're playing Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (good taste, by the way), and you want to delete one of your gardens. The Xbox One menu offers you two options: Delete the "Reserved space", which contains nothing but will be recreated by the game when you next open it, and delete all save data.
![Sorry for the poor quality, but the Xbox One doesn't let you take screenshots of the home screen.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/e51a152d06158b245116e0c97d899cf6/IMG_20191212_143006_1-1024x599.jpg)
At first, I thought I was stuck with this, but after looking around online, I found out that there *is* actually a way to delete individual save files, but it's really counterintuitive:
- Launch any Xbox 360 game - it doesn't have to be the one you want to delete save data in.
- Press the menu and view (start and select) buttons at the same time to open the 360 guide.
- Open the storage manager. This will close the game and open a view that allows you to manage 360 save games.
- Delete the save game from there.
When launching an Xbox 360 game, you don't get a prompt telling you that you can open the guide by pressing menu and view, or that you can manage storage like this, or anything of the sort. The Xbox Assist app has a section that tells you how to open the 360 guide, but not how to delete save games. The weird thing is that you can't open the Xbox 360 storage manager from within the Xbox One's UI, you can only open it from within a 360 game, even though opening the save manager closes the game.
#### Supported Titles
Not all Xbox 360 titles are supported. This is an unfortunate and annoying reality for modern consoles - gone are the days where your PS2 could play every PS1 game in existence, or your Wii came with controller ports just so you could play Gamecube games. I can (begrudgingly) accept that. Technical differences and limitations between generations of consoles make this unfeasible. The original fat PS3 could only run PS2 games because it pretty much included the PS2's hardware inside it.
What I *can't* so readily accept is the paltry support for original Xbox titles. The Xbox 360 was backwards compatible with **461** original Xbox games, whereas the Xbox One is compatible with a mere **41**. One of the things I was looking forward to on the Xbox One was being able to play at least some of my old Xbox games on a modern console, but of the 41 supported titles, I own none. Midtown Madness 3, my favourite OG Xbox exclusive title, didn't work on the Xbox 360, and it doesn't work on the Xbox One. I'm not getting my hopes up for the Series X, either.
This isn't specific to the Xbox One in particular, as all three current gen consoles - the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One - suffer from terrible backwards compatibility. The Xbox One is actually the *best* of the three here, and it's the only console where you can pop in a disc from an older console and (after it downloads) play the game. The Switch can't play *any* Wii games, and likely never will. It's worth mentioning that the Wii U was fully compatible with all Wii games, but only because the Wii U's hardware was so similar to the Wii's. This makes the Wii U the best current gen console for backwards compatibility, but I hesitate to call the Wii U "current gen" as it didn't even make it halfway through the generation before the Switch was released.
I haven't played any original Xbox games on the Xbox One, but I hope that you can actually delete individual saves.
### The Nitpicks
Occasionally, when launching a 360 game, the Xbox One's fans will jump from silent to full throttle, which is *LOUD*, and remain that way until the Xbox 360 splash screen is finished. If this happened every time, it would at least be understandable (in the same way some PCs and laptops run the fans at full speed while POSTing), but it only happens *sometimes*, and only for some games. I'd say it happens about 70% of the time with Trouble in Paradise, whereas it never happens with Bejeweled 3, for example. The fans never get anywhere near that loud during actual gameplay, or at least, they don't with any of the games I own. You have to wonder what's going on behind the scenes there.
Side note: I have also had this happen to me twice with an Xbox One title (The Outer Worlds). However, every other time, it's happened when launching a 360 title. I'm beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the Xbox One kinda sucks.
Finally, the weirdest issue of all - sometimes games will fail to open. A message will appear with a generic "sorry, something went wrong" and an "okay" button. If you attempt to relaunch the game immediately afterwards, it will work fine. What "went wrong" is beyond me, and quite possibly beyond Microsoft too. It doesn't really impact gameplay, because you can just relaunch the game and it'll work fine, but it's an odd issue and feels unprofessional.
While writing this blog post, I even got a brand new Backwards Compatibility error that I'd never seen before!
![For some reason it has taken Microsoft too long to get their shit together.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/eedf15657fbe6fd48df69f5d5c8dfac2/IMG_20191212_163730_1c-1024x632.jpg)
For the most part, the games run fine, although the Klungo's Arcade minigame in Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts has some weird graphical glitches going on that weren't present on the Xbox 360.
![It even covers the amazing "cabinet" art on the sides of the screen...](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/ed1fd1436cfdaea4812e0294a1592836/cap_13-12-2019_2-49-37_AM-ek00ojvs_000001_01-1024x576.jpg)
I also experienced moments in Nuts & Bolts where sound effects would stop working occasionally. I don't remember if this occurred on the Xbox 360 version of the game, but I'm fairly certain it didn't, or at least not this badly.
<figure class="wp-block-video aligncenter">
<video controls preload="auto" src="https://lynnesbian.space/res/ceres/bk-sound.mp4" playsinline>
</video>
<figcaption>
The checkpoints are supposed to make a noise when you drive through them, and the egg gun should have a sound when firing.
</figcaption>
</figure>
Seeing these minor issues makes me think of the [Dolphin emulator](https://dolphin-emu.org), which has monthly blog posts detailing development progress and often going into a lot of detail on an issue that caused a minor graphical glitch in one game and how they fixed it.
I was somewhat disappointed to find that the Piñata Vision feature from Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise didn't work with the Xbox One. On the Xbox 360, it required the Xbox Live Vision camera, and didn't work with the Kinect's camera, meaning that I never got to use it when I originally played it years ago. I was hoping that the feature would have been updated to work with the Xbox One version of the game, but it sadly doesn't, which is to be expected. The Xbox 360 games on the Rare Replay collection aren't updated rereleases - they're just rereleases. Yes, they run better, but that's just because the Xbox One is more powerful - running a PC game on a high end PC instead of a laptop isn't an updated rerelease just because it runs better.
Xbox Store Issues
-----------------
For whatever reason, you need to enter your password to see the prices of 360 games in the store. Instead of the usual "\$xx.xx buy" button, there's a "See the price" button that prompts for your password because you're "accessing sensitive info".
<figure class="wp-block-video aligncenter">
<video controls muted preload="auto" src="https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/967c88345b751ed4199c7346fdaef2bd/secure_info.mp4" playsinline>
</video>
<figcaption>
Maybe it's because they don't want you to see how much they're charging for decade old games.
</figcaption>
</figure>
I can understand needing a password to buy games, but needing a password to see the price of games is just silly. I have no idea why this is needed, but it just makes the whole experience more clunky.
### Confusing Subscription Management
I don't really know if this counts as an Xbox store issue, but this is where it best fits in the post.
There are three main ways you can format a date. You can use day/month/year, like we do in Australia, and most countries around the world. You can do month/day/year, like they do in the USA and nowhere else. Or you can say year-month-day, which is used in a few countries like Japan. This latter option is an ISO standard (ISO 8601). The ISO standard approach is completely unambiguous. When you see 2020-1-3, you know it means the 3rd of January, 2020. But what about 3/4/2005? Is it the 3rd of April, or the 4th of March?
I bring this up because of the Xbox One's subscription management screen.
![Duck themed measuring spoons for scale.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2020/01/1532ba6849c5f384f5b3531fb81d532f/wp-1577943431917-1024x768.jpg)
It look like my EA access subscription will automatically renew on the 1st of the 7th, or July 1st. But that's not the case - it's *actually* renewing on the 7th of the 1st, which is four days from now.
Microsoft is a US company, sure, but my Xbox's locale is set to Australia, and the rest of the console has adjusted to that (for example, the UI says "colour", not "color"). My billing location is *also* Australia. Every single setting to do with locale, language, or location is set to Australia. So why would they use the US date format?
The system clock settings use an unambiguous format, using the word "January" instead of the number one. If Microsoft believed the month/day/year format to be unambiguous, why didn't they use it here?
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2020/01/d71e21d8e20e40b461a73fee20b3f8a6/wp-1577943431891-1024x768.jpg)
Even worse, the game recording filenames use day-month-year - the standard format for my locale. (they're using dashes instead of slashes because you can't use a forward slash in a filename - try it for yourself!)
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2020/01/7dfad4ae36c3ef34c1a0ab950a098180/image.png)
So if the Xbox uses day-month-year for game recordings because I'm in a non-US locale, then why does it use the US format for subscription expiry dates? Microsoft is aware that people in my locale put the day before the month (of course they are), and yet they don't do it for the subscription page, and *only* the subscription page. All they had to do was say "January 7th" or even just "7/1 (in 4 days)".
This is a minor issue, sure, but when automatic renewal of *paid* subscriptions are involved, ambiguity is very bad. Automatically renewing subscriptions are already confusing enough.
Storage Issues
--------------
### Mandatory Installation of Disc Based Games
Unlike every console before it, and like the PS4 (but unlike the Switch), disc games need to install before they can be played. When you insert an Xbox One game disc, you need to wait for the game to install from the disc before you can play it.
Also like the PS4, the *entire* game needs to be installed. On the Xbox 360, some disc games such as GTA V came with mandatory install requirements, where you install some of the content (disc 2) and the rest streams from disc 1. On the Xbox One however, you need to install the whole thing. This means that you don't have to wait for slow blu-ray load times, but it also means that you can't save space by buying disc versions, which I had previously assumed to be the case. If a game is 40GB, then all 40 of those gigabytes get installed to your hard drive. The disc simply acts as a license to ensure that you own the game. And despite the whole thing being on the hard drive, you need to insert the disc to play. I know that this is for DRM purposes, but couldn't they at least give you a 24 hour grace period where you can play without the disc before needing to insert it again?
Side note: When the Xbox One was announced, that was (sort of) the plan. You would be able to play without having the disc inserted as long as you put it in every now and then to re-verify your purchase. This is all well and good, but it came with a huge number of downsides - for one, this meant that each disc was now tied to a Microsoft account, and putting the disc in another console wouldn't work. This would effectively ruin the second hand game market. Microsoft didn't have to do it this way, but they wanted to because they're Microsoft, and after the tidal wave of backlash they reverted to doing things the same way as the PS4 - requiring the disc to play the game that's already installed on your hard drive.
### Halo 5 and Massive Install Sizes
The back of the Halo 5 box states that "up to 60GB" of storage is required to play the game.
![Cropped and edited from [here](https://imgur.com/a/CeNPs)
From this alone, I'm sure you can see the issue with giving the Xbox One a 500GB hard drive. This 60GB install requirement has since changed, though.
It's now 100GB.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/ac3b4d6592667504a5fa8579025e8964/IMG_20191212_151142_1-1024x596.jpg)
Halo 5 is "Xbox One X Enhanced", and it comes with higher quality textures on the Xbox One X. I don't have an Xbox One X, so I get the non-4K install size. The install size for Xbox One X consoles will be even higher than this.
This isn't the norm, thankfully. Gears 5 is 58GB, Just Cause 4 is 56GB, Wolfenstein II is 53GB. This is still huge, but at least it's not "one fifth of your hard drive" huge. Most AAA games are 40+GB, but the majority of games for the system aren't that big - Tomb Raider is 20GB, PUBG is 19GB, et cetera. I have 28 games installed, with the biggest being Monster Hunter World (48.8GB), although I do have a lot of small Xbox 360 titles and indie games installed. It's entirely possible to fill up the hard drive with half a dozen games or so if you specifically go looking for the biggest titles, and if you only play AAA titles you would probably start running into issues after installing around 15 games. You'll need to uninstall games to make room for others.
If your games are on disc, this isn't so bad, as you can uninstall the games from the hard drive and reinstall them from the disc at any time, which happens fairly quickly - in the space of a few minutes. Of course, you still have to download the updates after installing the game, but the majority of the content is on the disc. If you prefer digital purchases, however, uninstalling and redownloading massive games can take a while. Especially if that game is Halo 5, which from the looks of it, only includes around 60GB of content on the disc - if the game is now 100GB, you'll need to download the remaining 40GB.
Thankfully, you can buy external hard drives or SSDs for the Xbox One. And thankfully, unlike the Xbox 360, they don't have to be "Official Microsoft" hard drives - any external USB 3.0 drive should work. One of the major benefits of consoles is that you can play the latest games without having to upgrade your machine, and buying an external drive kind of goes against that, but still. I haven't personally done so yet, but I'm considering getting an external SSD for games like The Outer Worlds which load at a glacial pace.
It's also worth mentioning that the Xbox One S has 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions. At the time of launch, however, only the 500GB version was available.
### Load Times
Every Xbox One (apart from the Elite, which is a more expensive version of the original Xbox One and has nothing to do with the Xbox One X) has a 5400RPM 2.5" hard drive. There are two standard sizes for internal hard drives, 2.5" and 3.5", with 2.5" being preferred for laptops due to their smaller size and 3.5" being used in desktop machines. Why the Xbox One has a 2.5" drive even though it's the size of an early VCR is beyond me.
Hard drives are one of the few remaining mechanical parts of a computer, and their non-mechanical replacements (SSDs) have existed for a while. They're considerably more expensive, but offer much, MUCH better performance. It's hard to overstate the difference in speed between a hard drive and an SSD.
Using a hard drive instead of an SSD is understandable due to the lower price point, but 5400RPM is much less understandable. This refers to the speed that the drive spins at, and the higher the RPM, the faster the hard drive can read and write data. It's hard to find a drive slower than 5400RPM. To quote Wikipedia,
> As of 2016, the typical speed of a hard drive in an average desktop computer is 7200 RPM, whereas low-cost desktop computers may use 5900 RPM or 5400 RPM drives.
>
> <cite>"[Hard Disk Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Market_segments)" article on Wikipedia</cite>
Even the Xbox One X, the premium and much more expensive version of the Xbox One, comes with a 2.5" 5400RPM drive.
When playing an Xbox 360 game this isn't so bad, especially if you're used to waiting for horrendous DVD load times like I am, but when you play an Xbox One game, you really start to notice the budget laptop drive speeds. This is really bad in a game like The Evil Within where every death means a long loading screen, and much, much worse in a game like The Outer Worlds, where every death *and* every area transition means an even longer loading screen. This becomes nigh-unbearable when you're in an area that doesn't allow fast travel, so you need to exit the area, wait for the painfully slow load time, and then fast travel to your destination, which means waiting through *another* loading screen. You'll also want to make a manual save once you arrive, because if you die, and your last autosave was in the area that didn't allow fast travel, you'll need to load the save, load the outside area, and then load the fast travel target before you can get back to where you were.
Side note: This is just as bad on the PS4, by the way, but unlike the Xbox One, you can upgrade the PS4's internal drive to an SSD, a faster hard drive, or a similar drive with greater capacity. Doing so on the Xbox One immediately voids your warranty, and is not at all supported.
It's hard to state how horrendous the load times are on the Xbox One. I ran into a loading screen while I was running through the open world in The Outer Worlds - the part of the game where there aren't supposed to be load times. This only happens occasionally, if you run in a straight line for a while (15 seconds), which I was doing to get to a quest marker. Superman may be able to outrun a speeding bullet, but I can outrun the Xbox One's hard drive.
Here's a video of me recreating this. Even after the loading screen, characters still pop in right in front of you.
<figure class="wp-block-video aligncenter">
<video controls preload="auto" src="https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/the-slum-bucket/media_attachments/files/000/864/294/original/6d3e50975e72ab0f.mp4">
</video>
<figcaption>
It's kind of surreal. They don't just fade in or blit into the world, they sort of rise from the floor like a sci-fi holographic projector turning on.
</figcaption>
</figure>
Meanwhile, there are loading screens between areas, as there are in pretty much every open world game. I timed one of the loading screens I encountered on the Xbox One - *forty nine seconds*.
<figure class="wp-block-video aligncenter">
<video controls src="https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2020/01/8e44313a7abdb89471c937b40d8efc1d/ow-load.mp4">
</video>
<figcaption>
Here's a video so you can watch it in real time, if you really want to suffer through that. At least Fallout 4 gives you a model to spin around while you contemplate the nature of your own existence.
</figcaption>
</figure>
Like I mentioned before, The Evil Within also has long load times, but not as bad as this. The Evil Within was an early title and also came out on Xbox 360, so this has been an issue since day one.
I can't imagine waiting for this to happen on the Xbox One X, which has the same hard drive but needs to load higher quality textures.
I miss PlayStation 1 load times.
"Sponsored Content"
-------------------
This is the home screen of the Xbox One. It has four ads. You cannot turn them off or dismiss them.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/1171200932365a1449d2b50d46835052/sketch-1576130164202-1024x599.jpg)
Every time you go to choose a new game or exit the one you're playing you get this shoved in your face.
The bottom row shows an "all games" button, three thumbnails of your most recently played games, and then two ads. The ads are wider than the game thumbnails, so half of the actual space of that row is taken up by the ads. Again, you can't turn these off.
This is quite honestly unacceptable. Ads in the store make sense, but on the home screen? Really? This is a "feature" in Windows 10 too, with "suggested apps" and "sponsored content" being plastered all over the Start menu, so it's not like this is new for Microsoft, but it's taken to a new level here.
Not only are there ads on the home screen, but the tabs on the top can't be rearranged or removed. The third tab is "Mixer", a streaming service similar to Twitch, which I would also prefer to remove from the Xbox menu, but I can't. You also can't uninstall the Mixer app that comes with the machine.
Speaking of the tabs, the second tab is "Game Pass", which is one big ad for Game Pass. I already have Game Pass, but this is still there, ready to remind me of the great benefits of the service I'm already subscribed to whenever I accidentally tab over to it. "Home" is the only tab I ever use, because you can access your Game Pass games without ads through the "My games & apps" view anyway, but there's no way to remove or even rearrange the others.
There's also a small ad that appears at the bottom of the guide that pops up when you press the Xbox button on the controller, which means you're never more than one button press away from being advertised to.
![Ads being shoved in your face to an almost comical degree? It's like I'm still playing The Outer Worlds!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/ff714d71f87b62245df80cd00e0a3881/img_20191212_1610014367524193402917152-768x1024.jpg)
Side note: While browsing around the Xbox One, I realised that one of the two Minecraft ads on my homescreen (the one that said "Minecraft shared a link") was there because I was unknowingly following the Minecraft account. I unfollowed the account, which was the only account I was following, and rebooted the Xbox One to refresh the home screen. The Minecraft ad was then replaced with a recommendation to follow an account so I can have more ~~ads~~ enriching gamer content served to me.
Can Microsoft just not?
Microsoft Account Integration
-----------------------------
I mentioned this earlier, but I want to go into more detail on it. When you turn on the Xbox One and set it up for the first time, you're told that you *will* sign in with your Microsoft account.
![Sorry for the unbelievably shitty quality - this was before I realised that you need to turn the exposure way down to get decent TV screen photos.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/cf60c0edb07aaf24d5f7ee9b93e3b061/xonxk-1024x606.jpg)
There's no way to opt out of this. The options are "back" and "next". You can either sign in, create an account, or use your Xbox One as a giant paperweight.
This is bad enough on its own - If you only ever play single player disc based games, there's no real reason for you to need a Microsoft account. Apart from syncing your achievements, I guess.
But if you want to add another profile to the Xbox, *they need an account too.* You cannot create a profile without a Microsoft account. You can create guests, but their save data is wiped automatically. This means you can at least play something like Halo local multiplayer with just the one account, but if you want to have a separate profile for separate game saves, you need a Microsoft account.
My wife didn't (and never has, and never will) want a Microsoft account, but she was forced to create one to have separate game saves on the Xbox One. The Xbox 360 allowed you to create local profiles that functioned the same as online ones but without Xbox Live capabilities or achievement/save syncing, but it's not possible to do that on the Xbox One. Even Windows 10 lets you skip the Microsoft account requirement.
Side note: Microsoft recently made it more difficult to skip the sign-in requirement on Windows 10 Home. Windows 10 Pro is unaffected. You can still get around this by not setting up a network connection when the installer asks you to, which is not the case on the Xbox One.
Game DVR
--------
This has been one of the most annoying issues I regularly face with the Xbox One.
First, let's go over how this works on the Nintendo Switch, the other current gen console I own. If you want to record what just happened in a game, you hold the screenshot button down for a second, and a clip of the last 30 seconds is saved to either your internal memory or your microSD. You can then eject the microSD, plug it in to your computer, and copy the files across. Easy as pie. If you're playing with a single joy-con, you might not have the screenshot button, but this can easily be solved by playing with the left joy-con instead.
Now let's go over how this works on the Xbox One. You can specify how long you want the recordings to be (up to 5 minutes for 720p, or 2 minutes for 1080p). This is much less than the PS4's 15 minutes at 720p, but better than the (much weaker) Switch, which only gives you 30 seconds at 720p. I set mine to a minute of 1080p footage. To record that, you need to press the Xbox button, and then press X. There's no way to access this with a single button (unless you bought a controller with additional mappable buttons on it, of course), which is moderately annoying but ultimately liveable. At first, I thought this would make it impossible to take screenshots in The Outer Worlds, where opening the Xbox guide pauses the game (and the pause screen replaces what you wanted to screenshot), but the Xbox actually takes the screenshot when you press the Xbox button, and pressing Y saves it, despite the Xbox saying that you can press Y to *take* a screenshot. This means that pressing Y will take a screenshot of what was on the screen at the time you pressed the Xbox button. Confusing, but workable.
Now it's time to get the screenshot to your PC. I plugged a USB stick into the port on the side of the Xbox One (no idea why it's not on the front) and looked through the settings to find a "copy content" option or something. You can set the Xbox to record all future captures to the USB, but there was no option to transfer the past captures. I checked the file manager app, but none of my screenshots or recordings appeared there. I then opened the Game DVR view and looked through the options - nothing. As it turns out, you can't copy the screenshots to a USB. There are only two ways to get them onto your PC: Upload them to Xbox Live, or upload them to OneDrive.
Side note: While I could have used the "record to USB" option in future to avoid this, the Xbox refused to use the USB I provided it with because it wasn't fast enough. As I don't own any USB 3.0 compatible USB sticks, and my only USB 3.0 external hard drive is being used for something else, I can't use this feature unless I buy a new USB stick.
I live in Australia, which is rather well known for having abysmally slow internet. Until February 2020, I'm stuck with ADSL2+, with upload speeds of 150 kilobytes/second, and as soon as you start uploading something, the download speed plummets. I usually limit my laptop's Nextcloud upload speeds at 16KiB/s because anything above that makes the internet unuseably slow. You can't do this on the Xbox One, so I need to strategically upload the recordings when I don't plan to use the internet for the next while.
The size of the recordings vary, but they're typically around 50 to 70MB for 2 minutes of 1080p video. 70 megabytes is 71,680 kilobytes. With my upload speeds - assuming it remains at 150KB/s for the whole time, which it never does - that takes nearly eight minutes at best. I'm having to use napkin maths here because the Xbox One doesn't provide an ETA. In practice, I saw 14 recordings and 2 screenshots take *five hours* to upload. And 3 of them failed. The Xbox didn't tell me *which* 3 failed, mind you - I had to go through all the ones that made it to OneDrive and compare the first few seconds of each recording with the ones on the Xbox to see which ones made it and which didn't, because there's no way to view the filenames of the recordings on the Xbox.
It's not Microsoft's fault that I have horribly slow internet. It *is* Microsoft's fault that I'm forced to use it. I shouldn't need to wait for hours for recordings to upload to OneDrive just to download them to my laptop and delete them from OneDrive afterwards. I have multiple USBs (they don't meet recording requirements, but surely they're capable of copying?), a file server on my LAN that supports (among other things) Microsoft's SMB protocol, the Xbox app on my phone, Bluetooth, *so many other ways* that the Xbox can send things to and from my laptop or phone, but no, *this* is the only possible way to get my recordings onto my laptop. Even if you have fast internet, local network access is *always* faster than internet access. It's ridiculous that I have to send my files from my living room off to OneDrive and then back to my living room. The Switch doesn't make me do that. My family's PS4 doesn't make me do that. My 3DS and PS Vita don't make me do that. My phone doesn't make me do that. But my Xbox One does. And when Microsoft eventually discontinues online services for the Xbox One a decade or two from now, you won't be able to get the screenshots and recordings off the console at all.
<iframe src="https://fedi.lynnesbian.space/users/lynnesbian/statuses/103298419987348016/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="border: 0;" width="600" height="333"></iframe>
And it *has* to be OneDrive or Xbox Live, too. It can't be Google Drive or iCloud or whatever. I have my own Nextcloud server with plenty of free space, but I'm forced to use OneDrive and its tiny 5GB of free storage. I just delete the files after downloading them. It'd be nice to keep them there after waiting so long for them to upload, but whatever.
Once these videos make it to OneDrive, and you've reuploaded the ones that failed, you have to actually download them. My download speed is typically around 800KB/s to 1.5MB/s. But not with OneDrive.
![At least it's faster than the upload.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/27fdeedb3892c304e98c7a474ab9c64a/sshot_2019-12-13_at_13-57-14-1576209434.png)
I've never seen OneDrive get above 400KB/s from my house. Maybe Microsoft has crappy Australian servers, maybe my house was cursed by a Microsoft-hating warlock, who knows. Again, this isn't the Xbox One's fault, but the fact that I have to deal with this garbage is. If you're gonna force me to use your service, put effort into making that service usable.
And no, it's not just my internet being crappy. Here's a screenshot of Arch updating at about 1.3MB/s while the OneDrive download trickles through at 200KB/s.
![The pacman download speeds are the middle column.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/b0720d7b87a84b7421cb3cefd2344a2f/sshot_2019-12-13_at_14-38-13-1576211893.png)
You might have noticed that Firefox says "Unknown time left". You see, when you download a file, the server *typically* tells your browser how many bytes it should expect. For example, if you start a download, and the server says "this will be 5MB", then Firefox can give you an ETA because it knows how big the download should be, and if you're downloading at 1MB/s, then it'll take 5 seconds to download the 5MB file.
If the server doesn't say how big the file is going to be, then Firefox (or Chrome, or what have you) can't give you that estimate. It's like asking "A car is driving 40km/h. How long will it take to arrive at Sydney?" There's no way to know unless you know the distance.
OneDrive doesn't tell you how big the file will be if you batch download (although it does if you download the files one by one). So you have this terribly slow download happening with no progress bar and no indication of when it's going to be done. You can get an estimate if you open a calculator and add all the file sizes together manually, but *come on*.
That is, if OneDrive is even working at all.
![The cloud dropped its ice cream.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/f4d325f1577e5c34514640f5aae035a5/sshot_2019-12-12_at_13-19-18-1576120758.png)
Sure, OneDrive is slow and unreliable, but with the power of machine learning, it automatically tags my screenshots with what it "sees" in them. You can't do *that* with a USB stick.
![Thanks, Microsoft...](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/12/18788a8f6ba122a4857ca7938d684c4e/sshot_2019-12-13_at_14-17-00-1576210620.png)
At least you don't need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to do this. Maybe they're saving that for the Series X.
Conclusion
----------
I was considering installing Windows 10 on a partition on my Debian gaming PC, but if Microsoft is this incompetent at putting together a user experience, then I'll stick to using Proton to run games. The Xbox One is a great anti-advertisement for Microsoft in that it somehow managed to make me like them even less than I already did.
There are a few positives about the Xbox One, with the standout performer being the Game Pass, a subscription service that allows you to access hundreds (well, two hundred and something) full games. It's sort of like Netflix for video games. I really wish the Switch had something like this, but given that Nintendo is still selling launch titles like Breath of the Wild at full price, I sincerely doubt anything like that will ever happen. The downside to a service like Game Pass is that you don't own the games, and once they leave Game Pass (or the servers shut down) you can't play them anymore. You can buy Game Pass games with a 20% discount if you have an active subscription, which is nice, but you're buying the digital versions, which have the same issues. I like the Game Pass because I can play through the entirety of a game and decide to buy it afterwards if I like it enough to keep it, in a similar way to renting a movie (or watching it on Netflix) before buying it.
I'll also say that the controller is really nice. It's definitely the best Xbox controller, improving on the 360's controller (which was itself an improvement on the Xbox's controller) with a much better D-pad and in my opinion a nicer look. The bumpers are much stiffer though, which you may or may not prefer. I personally preferred the 360 controller's bumpers. Out of all the devices set up in my house (PS2, Switch, Xbox One), I prefer the Xbox One's controller. The Switch Pro controller comes in at a close second, but the lack of analogue triggers really sucks. The Xbox One's controller's analogue sticks also feel nicer. I don't like that the Xbox One controller doesn't have any indicator of which player's controller it is, though.
Unless you really, *really* want to play an Xbox One exclusive game, and you absolutely cannot wait for the Series X to come out at the end of 2020 (which I am tentatively assuming will be better than this), I'd advise getting a PS4 or (if you can afford it) a PC, or a Switch if you're okay with the performance.

428
_posts/LICENSE Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,428 @@
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
=======================================================================
Creative Commons Corporation ("Creative Commons") is not a law firm and
does not provide legal services or legal advice. Distribution of
Creative Commons public licenses does not create a lawyer-client or
other relationship. Creative Commons makes its licenses and related
information available on an "as-is" basis. Creative Commons gives no
warranties regarding its licenses, any material licensed under their
terms and conditions, or any related information. Creative Commons
disclaims all liability for damages resulting from their use to the
fullest extent possible.
Using Creative Commons Public Licenses
Creative Commons public licenses provide a standard set of terms and
conditions that creators and other rights holders may use to share
original works of authorship and other material subject to copyright
and certain other rights specified in the public license below. The
following considerations are for informational purposes only, are not
exhaustive, and do not form part of our licenses.
Considerations for licensors: Our public licenses are
intended for use by those authorized to give the public
permission to use material in ways otherwise restricted by
copyright and certain other rights. Our licenses are
irrevocable. Licensors should read and understand the terms
and conditions of the license they choose before applying it.
Licensors should also secure all rights necessary before
applying our licenses so that the public can reuse the
material as expected. Licensors should clearly mark any
material not subject to the license. This includes other CC-
licensed material, or material used under an exception or
limitation to copyright. More considerations for licensors:
wiki.creativecommons.org/Considerations_for_licensors
Considerations for the public: By using one of our public
licenses, a licensor grants the public permission to use the
licensed material under specified terms and conditions. If
the licensor's permission is not necessary for any reason--for
example, because of any applicable exception or limitation to
copyright--then that use is not regulated by the license. Our
licenses grant only permissions under copyright and certain
other rights that a licensor has authority to grant. Use of
the licensed material may still be restricted for other
reasons, including because others have copyright or other
rights in the material. A licensor may make special requests,
such as asking that all changes be marked or described.
Although not required by our licenses, you are encouraged to
respect those requests where reasonable. More considerations
for the public:
wiki.creativecommons.org/Considerations_for_licensees
=======================================================================
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public
License
By exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below), You accept and agree
to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License ("Public
License"). To the extent this Public License may be interpreted as a
contract, You are granted the Licensed Rights in consideration of Your
acceptance of these terms and conditions, and the Licensor grants You
such rights in consideration of benefits the Licensor receives from
making the Licensed Material available under these terms and
conditions.
Section 1 -- Definitions.
a. Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar
Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material
and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered,
arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring
permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the
Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed
Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording,
Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is
synched in timed relation with a moving image.
b. Adapter's License means the license You apply to Your Copyright
and Similar Rights in Your contributions to Adapted Material in
accordance with the terms and conditions of this Public License.
c. BY-SA Compatible License means a license listed at
creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses, approved by Creative
Commons as essentially the equivalent of this Public License.
d. Copyright and Similar Rights means copyright and/or similar rights
closely related to copyright including, without limitation,
performance, broadcast, sound recording, and Sui Generis Database
Rights, without regard to how the rights are labeled or
categorized. For purposes of this Public License, the rights
specified in Section 2(b)(1)-(2) are not Copyright and Similar
Rights.
e. Effective Technological Measures means those measures that, in the
absence of proper authority, may not be circumvented under laws
fulfilling obligations under Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright
Treaty adopted on December 20, 1996, and/or similar international
agreements.
f. Exceptions and Limitations means fair use, fair dealing, and/or
any other exception or limitation to Copyright and Similar Rights
that applies to Your use of the Licensed Material.
g. License Elements means the license attributes listed in the name
of a Creative Commons Public License. The License Elements of this
Public License are Attribution and ShareAlike.
h. Licensed Material means the artistic or literary work, database,
or other material to which the Licensor applied this Public
License.
i. Licensed Rights means the rights granted to You subject to the
terms and conditions of this Public License, which are limited to
all Copyright and Similar Rights that apply to Your use of the
Licensed Material and that the Licensor has authority to license.
j. Licensor means the individual(s) or entity(ies) granting rights
under this Public License.
k. Share means to provide material to the public by any means or
process that requires permission under the Licensed Rights, such
as reproduction, public display, public performance, distribution,
dissemination, communication, or importation, and to make material
available to the public including in ways that members of the
public may access the material from a place and at a time
individually chosen by them.
l. Sui Generis Database Rights means rights other than copyright
resulting from Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of
the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases,
as amended and/or succeeded, as well as other essentially
equivalent rights anywhere in the world.
m. You means the individual or entity exercising the Licensed Rights
under this Public License. Your has a corresponding meaning.
Section 2 -- Scope.
a. License grant.
1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License,
the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free,
non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to
exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to:
a. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or
in part; and
b. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material.
2. Exceptions and Limitations. For the avoidance of doubt, where
Exceptions and Limitations apply to Your use, this Public
License does not apply, and You do not need to comply with
its terms and conditions.
3. Term. The term of this Public License is specified in Section
6(a).
4. Media and formats; technical modifications allowed. The
Licensor authorizes You to exercise the Licensed Rights in
all media and formats whether now known or hereafter created,
and to make technical modifications necessary to do so. The
Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any right or
authority to forbid You from making technical modifications
necessary to exercise the Licensed Rights, including
technical modifications necessary to circumvent Effective
Technological Measures. For purposes of this Public License,
simply making modifications authorized by this Section 2(a)
(4) never produces Adapted Material.
5. Downstream recipients.
a. Offer from the Licensor -- Licensed Material. Every
recipient of the Licensed Material automatically
receives an offer from the Licensor to exercise the
Licensed Rights under the terms and conditions of this
Public License.
b. Additional offer from the Licensor -- Adapted Material.
Every recipient of Adapted Material from You
automatically receives an offer from the Licensor to
exercise the Licensed Rights in the Adapted Material
under the conditions of the Adapter's License You apply.
c. No downstream restrictions. You may not offer or impose
any additional or different terms or conditions on, or
apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the
Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the
Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed
Material.
6. No endorsement. Nothing in this Public License constitutes or
may be construed as permission to assert or imply that You
are, or that Your use of the Licensed Material is, connected
with, or sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by,
the Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as
provided in Section 3(a)(1)(A)(i).
b. Other rights.
1. Moral rights, such as the right of integrity, are not
licensed under this Public License, nor are publicity,
privacy, and/or other similar personality rights; however, to
the extent possible, the Licensor waives and/or agrees not to
assert any such rights held by the Licensor to the limited
extent necessary to allow You to exercise the Licensed
Rights, but not otherwise.
2. Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this
Public License.
3. To the extent possible, the Licensor waives any right to
collect royalties from You for the exercise of the Licensed
Rights, whether directly or through a collecting society
under any voluntary or waivable statutory or compulsory
licensing scheme. In all other cases the Licensor expressly
reserves any right to collect such royalties.
Section 3 -- License Conditions.
Your exercise of the Licensed Rights is expressly made subject to the
following conditions.
a. Attribution.
1. If You Share the Licensed Material (including in modified
form), You must:
a. retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor
with the Licensed Material:
i. identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed
Material and any others designated to receive
attribution, in any reasonable manner requested by
the Licensor (including by pseudonym if
designated);
ii. a copyright notice;
iii. a notice that refers to this Public License;
iv. a notice that refers to the disclaimer of
warranties;
v. a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material to the
extent reasonably practicable;
b. indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and
retain an indication of any previous modifications; and
c. indicate the Licensed Material is licensed under this
Public License, and include the text of, or the URI or
hyperlink to, this Public License.
2. You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any
reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in
which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be
reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or
hyperlink to a resource that includes the required
information.
3. If requested by the Licensor, You must remove any of the
information required by Section 3(a)(1)(A) to the extent
reasonably practicable.
b. ShareAlike.
In addition to the conditions in Section 3(a), if You Share
Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply.
1. The Adapter's License You apply must be a Creative Commons
license with the same License Elements, this version or
later, or a BY-SA Compatible License.
2. You must include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, the
Adapter's License You apply. You may satisfy this condition
in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and
context in which You Share Adapted Material.
3. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms
or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological
Measures to, Adapted Material that restrict exercise of the
rights granted under the Adapter's License You apply.
Section 4 -- Sui Generis Database Rights.
Where the Licensed Rights include Sui Generis Database Rights that
apply to Your use of the Licensed Material:
a. for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1) grants You the right
to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial
portion of the contents of the database;
b. if You include all or a substantial portion of the database
contents in a database in which You have Sui Generis Database
Rights, then the database in which You have Sui Generis Database
Rights (but not its individual contents) is Adapted Material,
including for purposes of Section 3(b); and
c. You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(a) if You Share
all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database.
For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 4 supplements and does not
replace Your obligations under this Public License where the Licensed
Rights include other Copyright and Similar Rights.
Section 5 -- Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.
a. UNLESS OTHERWISE SEPARATELY UNDERTAKEN BY THE LICENSOR, TO THE
EXTENT POSSIBLE, THE LICENSOR OFFERS THE LICENSED MATERIAL AS-IS
AND AS-AVAILABLE, AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF
ANY KIND CONCERNING THE LICENSED MATERIAL, WHETHER EXPRESS,
IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHER. THIS INCLUDES, WITHOUT LIMITATION,
WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS,
ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT
KNOWN OR DISCOVERABLE. WHERE DISCLAIMERS OF WARRANTIES ARE NOT
ALLOWED IN FULL OR IN PART, THIS DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
b. TO THE EXTENT POSSIBLE, IN NO EVENT WILL THE LICENSOR BE LIABLE
TO YOU ON ANY LEGAL THEORY (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION,
NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE FOR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY, OR OTHER LOSSES,
COSTS, EXPENSES, OR DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS PUBLIC LICENSE OR
USE OF THE LICENSED MATERIAL, EVEN IF THE LICENSOR HAS BEEN
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH LOSSES, COSTS, EXPENSES, OR
DAMAGES. WHERE A LIMITATION OF LIABILITY IS NOT ALLOWED IN FULL OR
IN PART, THIS LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
c. The disclaimer of warranties and limitation of liability provided
above shall be interpreted in a manner that, to the extent
possible, most closely approximates an absolute disclaimer and
waiver of all liability.
Section 6 -- Term and Termination.
a. This Public License applies for the term of the Copyright and
Similar Rights licensed here. However, if You fail to comply with
this Public License, then Your rights under this Public License
terminate automatically.
b. Where Your right to use the Licensed Material has terminated under
Section 6(a), it reinstates:
1. automatically as of the date the violation is cured, provided
it is cured within 30 days of Your discovery of the
violation; or
2. upon express reinstatement by the Licensor.
For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 6(b) does not affect any
right the Licensor may have to seek remedies for Your violations
of this Public License.
c. For the avoidance of doubt, the Licensor may also offer the
Licensed Material under separate terms or conditions or stop
distributing the Licensed Material at any time; however, doing so
will not terminate this Public License.
d. Sections 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 survive termination of this Public
License.
Section 7 -- Other Terms and Conditions.
a. The Licensor shall not be bound by any additional or different
terms or conditions communicated by You unless expressly agreed.
b. Any arrangements, understandings, or agreements regarding the
Licensed Material not stated herein are separate from and
independent of the terms and conditions of this Public License.
Section 8 -- Interpretation.
a. For the avoidance of doubt, this Public License does not, and
shall not be interpreted to, reduce, limit, restrict, or impose
conditions on any use of the Licensed Material that could lawfully
be made without permission under this Public License.
b. To the extent possible, if any provision of this Public License is
deemed unenforceable, it shall be automatically reformed to the
minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. If the provision
cannot be reformed, it shall be severed from this Public License
without affecting the enforceability of the remaining terms and
conditions.
c. No term or condition of this Public License will be waived and no
failure to comply consented to unless expressly agreed to by the
Licensor.
d. Nothing in this Public License constitutes or may be interpreted
as a limitation upon, or waiver of, any privileges and immunities
that apply to the Licensor or You, including from the legal
processes of any jurisdiction or authority.
=======================================================================
Creative Commons is not a party to its public
licenses. Notwithstanding, Creative Commons may elect to apply one of
its public licenses to material it publishes and in those instances
will be considered the “Licensor.” The text of the Creative Commons
public licenses is dedicated to the public domain under the CC0 Public
Domain Dedication. Except for the limited purpose of indicating that
material is shared under a Creative Commons public license or as
otherwise permitted by the Creative Commons policies published at
creativecommons.org/policies, Creative Commons does not authorize the
use of the trademark "Creative Commons" or any other trademark or logo
of Creative Commons without its prior written consent including,
without limitation, in connection with any unauthorized modifications
to any of its public licenses or any other arrangements,
understandings, or agreements concerning use of licensed material. For
the avoidance of doubt, this paragraph does not form part of the
public licenses.
Creative Commons may be contacted at creativecommons.org.

39
_posts/fixme/2019-05-05-depression-in-the-information-age-part-one.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
---
title: Depression in the Information Age - Part One
date: 2019-05-05 03:08
author: Lynne
categories: [Art]
tags: [Depression in the Information Age]
---
*Content warning: These images mention suicide and depression.*
About this project
------------------
I've been making some little "art" pieces about depression in the information age. The idea is that a lot of the systems we use feel overly friendly and cheerful as if they were conversing with us, such as Facebook greeting you with a "good morning", or how phone voice assistants respond with witty quips when asked questions like "do you like me" or "what's your favourite colour".
The images I'm making imagine a future where this trend gets out of control, and the cold, analytical nature of tech takes on a much more sinister and negative form. They deliberately evoke both modern design trends (material, fluent, flat) and potential future ones (brutalism).
<!--more-->
Images
------
![1. Method](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/1-methods-1.png)
![2. Mum](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/2-mum-1-949x1024.jpg)
![3. Personal](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/3-personal-1.png)
Reflection
----------
Methods imagines an app or website for finding effective suicide methods. Perhaps it's part of a larger website, or its own separate thing. It also provides a success rating based on its performance.
Mum is based on a real event - years ago, I saw a screenshot of someone's phone reminding them that they haven't texted someone in a year, and the user noted that the person had died about that long ago.
Personal shows a messaging app that allows you to block personal messages from someone. This idea is terrible enough in its own right, but it seems as though it will only allow you to talk about the other person.

33
_posts/fixme/2019-05-05-depression-in-the-information-age-part-two.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
---
title: Depression in the Information Age - Part Two
date: 2019-05-05 03:16
author: Lynne
categories: [Art]
tags: [Depression in the Information Age]
---
*Content warning: These images mention suicide and depression.*
<!--more-->
Images
------
![Redeem](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/4-redeem-2-1024x576.png)
![Gamified](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/5-gamified-1024x811.png)
![Empty](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/6-empty-1024x576.jpg)
Reflection
----------
The common theme to this set is the idea that companies and websites may have access to mental health information in the future.
Redeem is an automatically generated email offering someone who's feeling worthless and unwanted a 10% discount on selected games below \$30. An empty gesture to someone who needs genuine help.
Gamified imagines an app that provides you with a neat little "score" for your mental health, and allows you to compete with your friends to get the highest score.
Empty shows an online dating service that takes your mental health and other "personality info" into account when searching. It seems as though nobody within your area wants to date you.

40
_posts/fixme/2019-05-05-discord-and-spotify-for-linux-and-xdg-mime.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
---
title: Discord and Spotify for Linux and xdg-mime
date: 2019-05-05 04:26
author: Lynne
categories: [Scripts, Technology]
---
The bug
-------
I've noticed that Discord for Linux takes a very, very long time to start up - sometimes in the order of hours. During this time, my laptop gets very hot. I eventually decided to look into this and found that several instances of `xdg-mime` were taking up 100% CPU. Killing them caused Discord to open instantly.
Apparently this issue is present with Spotify too. This fix will work for both of them.
<!--more-->
You can fix this manually by killing the various `xdg-mime` processes every time you open Discord, but that's annoying. You can work around it permanently by creating a custom wrapper around `xdg-mime` and placing it somewhere in your `$PATH` with higher priority than `/usr/local/bin`, or wherever `xdg-mime` is on your system. In this guide, we'll use `/usr/local/bin`.
The fix
-------
Create a file called `xdg-mime` in `/usr/local/bin` by running `sudo nano /usr/local/bin/xdg-mime`. Paste this in the file:
``` {.wp-block-code}
#!/usr/bin/sh
if [[ "$@" == *"x-scheme-handler/discord"* ]] || [[ "$@" == *"x-scheme-handler/spotify"* ]]; then
/usr/bin/true
else
/usr/bin/xdg-mime $@
fi
```
If `xdg-mime` isn't in `/usr/bin` on your machine (you can check where it is by running `which xdg-mime`), you'll need to edit that script to match its location.
Save it with ctrl-o, then exit with ctrl-x. This should fix the problem.
The explanation
---------------
For whatever reason, Discord and Spotify have a lot of trouble registering themselves with `xdg-mime`. This causes them to hang for minutes or hours on startup. The workaround outlined above simply checks for what you're trying to do with xdg-mime, and if you're trying to modify the scheme handlers for Discord or Spotify - the process that causes these apps to hang - it carries on without doing anything. If you're doing anything else, it passes you through to the real `xdg-mime`.

96
_posts/fixme/2019-05-08-using-an-eeepc-in-2019.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
---
title: Using an EeePC in 2019
date: 2019-05-08 03:08
author: Lynne
categories: [Personal, Technology]
---
Introduction
------------
For the past two weeks, I've been using an [EeePC 1000H](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC#Eee_PC_1000_series), a [netbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook) with a 10" screen, an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and an 80GB internal hard drive. Released in 2008, it was designed with portability as its primary goal, with performance taking a back seat. this is especially true of the EeePC 701, a tiny netbook with a 7" scren and a rather restrictive 4GB internal SSD.
<!--more-->
While it hasn't replaced my regular laptop, I've enjoyed using it for lighter tasks, like making quick code edits, working on my server over SSH, and finding lightweight alternatives to the apps I use on a daily basis. Working with such an old and compact laptop is just *fun* to me!
Over a decade later, EeePCs are still sought out by some, especally the sub-10" models, as there are almost no other laptops available in such small sizes. However, performance is a major concern, as these laptops were low-powered even for 2008, let alone now - over a decade later.
![Neofetch output. The high memory usage is because I have Firefox open, writing this very post!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/neofetch.png)
Many of these tips apply to lightweight netbooks and and notebooks in general, of course, but they're written from the perspective and goal of EeePC usage.
Choosing an operating system
----------------------------
On release, most EeePC models were shipped with either Windows XP or a modified version of [Xandros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xandros#ASUS_Eee_PC), a discontinued Debian-based Linux distribution. Neither of these operating systems are really viable choices in the modern day and age, but there are still options available for the EeePC.
If your EeePC has less than 32GB of internal storage, you'll probably want to use an SD card for more space. You can use the SD card for `/home`, and the internal storage for the root partition, although you should be careful if your internal drive has a capacity in the single digits of gigabytes - you might want to move directories like `/usr` and `/etc` to the SD card too. Bear in mind that this will render your system unbootable without having the SD card inserted, but if you're already using it for `/home`, you almost certainly want to have it always inserted anyway. Also, make sure you mount the internal SSD (if you have one) and the SD card with the `noatime` flag to extend their life!
One major issue you'll quickly run into is that all EeePC models use 32-bit x86 CPUs. This means that many distros can't be installed on an EeePC, with major options such as Arch Linux being unavailable. There are sometimes community-maintained 32-bit ports of major distros available (such as [Arch Linux 32](https://archlinux32.org/)), but these will have reduced support, package count, etc.
Debian (and distros based on it, such as Ubuntu) is one of the few major Linux distros that still support 32-bit x86 CPUs. The Debian community once ran [a project](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC) with the goal of getting EeePC hardware natively supported by Debian without needing specific installers or packages, a goal that they have mostlly achieved. This means that you can install Debian (stable or otherwise) from debian.org without having to worry about missing firmware, broken installers, and so on. For these reasons and others, I decided to choose Debian as the operating system for my EeePC, and I highly recommend it. This isn't to say it's the only choice, but I found it to work very well, with only a few issues. Specifically, I couldn't get the function keys to work on my 1000H.
If you need Windows rather than a Linux distribution, I'd first advise you to make sure that you really *do* need Windows to run on this machine. Even if you use Windows everywhere else, this might be a good opportunity to try out Linux. If you really do need Windows, though, I would recommend Windows XP, as anything newer than that will almost certainly be too much for the EeePC to handle. The rest of this post will focus on Linux, although some of the information may apply to Windows too.
![An EeePC 1000H running Debian Buster.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/IMG_20190507_213008-1024x768.jpg)
Window manager
--------------
After installing your Linux distro of choice, the next step is to choose a window manager. If you only need to use the shell, then you won't need a window manager, but most people will need one, and even if you're only doing command line work, a lightweight manager like [i3-gaps](https://github.com/Airblader/i3/blob/gaps-next/README.md) or [awesome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome_(window_manager)) might still be worth looking into.
I used to use [LXDE](https://lxde.org/) on my EeePC 701, which struggled somewhat with it, but was mostly capable. After swapping my 701 for my wife's 1000H, I thought that I might be able to get away with running Cinnamon on the more powerful netbook. I was very wrong.
I decided to try going for a window manager I'd never used before. I wanted to find something new and lightweight, even lighter than LXDE. The EeePC 1000H is almost certainly capable of running LXDE, but I wanted to get the most performance I possiblly could out of my EeePC, so I decided to go with icewm. [This](https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/a-memory-comparison-of-light-linux-desktops/) wonderful blog post goes into detail about the idle memory footprint of various window managers, and ends with a graph comparing the results from around 30 WMs.
![Memory comparison of various window managers](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/cmp-all4.png)
While this graph only displays idle memory usage and doesn't take into account load times, CPU load, memory usage with more windows open, etc., it can be used as a rough estimate of how "heavy" a given window manager is. icewm idles at 4.5MB of RAM compared to LXDE's 36MB, while Cinnamon sits at 79MB. I'm happy with icewm's feature set and customisability, but it's not as user friendly as LXDE. LXDE, LXQt, and Mate are good choices for an easy to use and configurable desktop environment.
![icewm with the menu open, with Firefox in the background, writing this post.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/scrot_2019-05-07-22-01-29-1024x600.png)
Programs
--------
EeePCs are rather underpowered devices. You'll want to seek out lightweight alternatives to most of the apps you use. Electron apps like Discord and Visual Studio Code are just barely usable on the 1000H, but if you have a model with a slower CPU or less RAM, I'd say to avoid Electron where possible.
### Browser
I haven't really been able to find a lightweight that does what I want. Midori is lacking many simple features (like being able to add a new search engine) and has a GTK3 "header" bar, making it take up much more screen space than it needs to, QuteBrowser only works with vim-style keybinds, Falkon pulls in hundreds of megabytes of KDE dependencies... In the end, I decided to stick with Firefox, and try to keep as few tabs open as possible. This worked okay, but occasionally froze my entire computer. I fixed this by adding two gigabytes of swap space.
If you can deal with the limitations of browsers like Midori or QuteBrowser (if you're an avid vim user, QuteBrowser is an ideal choice), you should choose one of those instead. I find that I can't really make that sacrifice, so I stick with Firefox.
### Code editor
If you use vim or emacs, then you already know what to do here! :toot:
If you're like me, and you use something heavier like VSCode or Brackets, you'll want to have a look at some alternatives. I decided that Geany had the feature set I was looking for. I've got it set up to behaving similarly to how my VSCode environment works, with a file tree, git annotations, and a dark theme. Nobody's ported [Dracula](https://draculatheme.com/) to Geany yet, but I plan on doing so some time.
![Geany with a dark theme and a file tree browser.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/scrot_2019-05-08-02-33-05-1024x600.png)
To get Geany to look like this, I installed the Darcula theme from here, and enabled the Tree Browser and Git Change Bar addons from the `geany-plugins` package, which can be installed with apt. I also installed [this plugin](https://github.com/b4n/geany-plugin-dark-theme), which tells geany to request a dark GTK theme. I also set indentation to tabs with a width of 2 characters, but let's not get into that debate. :mlem:
Sublime Text would also work well, but I despise that donation nag and really can't afford the price of admission. Also, it's not open source!!
### Image viewer
This one was an easy choice for me, since the image viewer I use on a daily basis is already very lightweight. [Nomacs](https://nomacs.org/) is a simple image viewer that does everything I need it to and more.
### File manager
I use [PCManFM](https://wiki.lxde.org/en/PCManFM), the default image viewer for LXDE installations. It's relatively lightweight and provides everything I expect from a file manager, and also supports a "desktop" mode, allowing you to use it with a lightweight window manager like icewm, which doesn't provide a desktop. This allows you to put icons on your desktop if you're so inclined, and also to more easily set a wallpaper image.
The rest
--------
I use Syncthing and the Nextcloud Sync Client to keep my files synchonised to both my other laptop and my Nextcloud instance. I also use QOwnNotes to take notes that are automatically synced to Nextcloud, and therefore accessible from my phone. I find that QOwnNotes with Nextcloud makes for a great replacement for something like Google Keep, a webapp which would almost certainly bring any EeePC to its knees.
EeePCs aren't exactly great for multimedia, with their tiny screens and weak GPUs, but I found that [SMPlayer](https://www.smplayer.info/) ran about as well as you can really expect from such a machine. Just bear in mind that you should aim for sub-720p resolutions for optimal playback.
If you're using a Debian-based distro, you'll want to install and configure [localepurge](https://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/localepurge) to save a few hundred megabytes of space on your root partition. If you're running something else, see if there's an alternative available. The Debian wiki has [two](https://wiki.debian.org/FreeSpace) [pages](https://wiki.debian.org/ReduceDebian) on reducing your installation footprint.
Have fun with your EeePC, and keep its limitations in mind! :mlem:
![Thanks for reading!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/IMG_20190508_030629-1024x768.jpg)

20
_posts/fixme/2019-05-13-a-survey-of-the-fediverse.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
---
title: A Survey of the Fediverse
date: 2019-05-13 00:03
author: Lynne
categories: [Announcements, The Fediverse]
tags: [Fediverse Survey]
---
*Updated on 13/05/19 to reflect new closing date, and again to link to the results post.*
I decided to create a small survey to ask a few non-personal questions about Fediverse users, their opinions on its various platforms, and their thoughts on non-Fediverse networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
The survey is oriented at people who currently use the Fediverse, and does not provide any way of saying that you do not currently use it.
If you'd like to participate in the survey, you can do so [here](https://survey.bune.city/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=346863&lang=en). It opens at midnight on the 13th of May at midnight AEST (12th of May, 2pm UTC), and closes one month later on the 20th of May, one week later. I'll be posting some results every now and then until it closes.
Please answer honestly, and send it to your friends if you'd like them to participate too! :mlem:
Update: I've made a post about the responses received in the first 16 hours [here](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-1/).

173
_posts/fixme/2019-05-13-fediverse-survey-summary-1.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
---
title: Fediverse Survey Summary 1
date: 2019-05-13 17:19
author: Lynne
categories: [The Fediverse]
tags: [Fediverse Survey]
---
*Update 17/05/19: Changed the license to CC-BY-SA.*
*Update 20/05/19: The survey has ended.*
I decided to create [a small survey](https://l.bune.city/zQLb) to get some information about the Fediverse. It opened about 16 hours ago, and I've already received over five hundred responses!!
As promised, the response data is available under a free documentation license (specifically the [CC-BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)). You can download a CSV [here](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/dDaAWS6teoRn2Sn/download), and a xlsx [here](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/rTiAfoFsqJZ6Ax6). These links will always refer to the data as of this point, with later links being added for later revisions of the data. I've also provided a PDF "summary" [here](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/yxpko4NPzCCTJFe). The provided data doesn't include incomplete responses.
<!--more-->
With that out of the way, let's take a look at the data!
The Fediverse
-------------
### What type of instance(s) do you use?
This question was multiple choice, and aimed to gauge how many people were using different types of Fediverse servers.
![The first question is perhaps the most surprising - *over 90%* of respondents used Mastodon.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-2.png)
I am well aware that most of the Fediverse is based upon Mastodon and Pleroma, but I was surprised to find that such a large percentage of people actively used Mastodon. I expected Pleroma to be in second place, but I was expecting a much closer second, rather than the actual result of 18%. I was also surprised to find that only 8 respondents used Misskey -- lower than the number of diaspora\* users, which is *very* surprising, considering diaspora\* doesn't federate with Mastodon, which is where I posted a link to my survey!
It seems my little survey made it much, *much* farther than I was expecting it to. I assumed that it would only get 150 or so responses after a month, not 500 in less than 24 hours! I thought it would remain mostly within my circle of friends and mutual followers, but evidently I was wrong :mlem:
I was also surprised to find 9 users of Nextcloud Social, when I was expecting 1 at most. Finally, Osada is at 0 users, which I again did not expect. There's a lot of surprising results in this first question alone.
Taking a look at some of the "other" responses, we see a lot of people mentioning glitch-soc, a fork of Mastodon. I was originally considering including this as a separate option, but decided not to, as I thought it may split the Mastodon respondents.
Some people responded with answers like "Fedilab" and "Toot!", which are names of Mastodon applications for mobile devices. Another user responded "Uhh…i just use my browser". I believe this shows that the concept of the Fediverse is rather confusing, given that some people aren't even aware of what software their instance of choice is running.
I also got a few replies mentioning Plume, which I elected not to include due to its relatively tiny userbase. However, given that Osada had 0 users and Plume had 7, I can see that I made the wrong choice.
![The "other" responses.](https://lynnesbian.space/res/ceres/sshot_2019-05-13_at_16-23-22-1557728602.png)
### Which Fediverse software(s) have you heard of?
This was another multiple choice question.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-4-1024x618.png)
Unsurprisingly, almost everyone has heard of Mastodon (494 out of 501 respondents). Pleroma is close behind at 448 respondents. Peertube and Pixelfed are also in the 400s. It seems that while nobody who responded used Osada, 43 people had heard of it.
Under the "other" section, many people mentioned Plume again, as well as Funkwhale. Friendica also appeared a few times - I actually meant to add an option for Friendica but forgot to - and glitch-soc appeared again. As with the previous "other" option, xmpp was mentioned. I don't know whether I'd consider it part of the fed*iverse*, but it is fed*erated*.
### How long have you used the Fediverse?
Immediately upon looking at the results, it becomes obvious that I needed to add higher date ranges.
!["Other" is nearly double the second most reported answer.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-5-1024x561.png)
The "other" option accounts for the majority of responses, with many people saying they've been on the Fediverse for two or more years. I really should have designed the survey with more options for this question, but I was working under the assumption that the survey would stay mostly within my "inner circle". Most of my friends and acquaintances on the Fediverse joined around August 2018 like I did, in the "Twitter Exodus". I wasn't really planning on there being many responses in the "greater than one year" range. One respondent said they'd been on the Fediverse for 9+ years!
### Do you run a Fediverse instance?
I was expecting around 5% yes here, but got 23% instead!
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-6.png)
### Do you administrate/moderate/etc. someone else's Fediverse instance?
This is more along the lines of what I was expecting - 94% no, only 6% yes.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-7-1024x607.png)
### Why did you decide to join the Fediverse?
With questions like this, you can never account for everyone. Nevertheless, I provided four options which I felt would be the most prevalent, and sure enough, only 20% of respondents needed to select "other".
![A lot of people don't enjoy their data being mined, it seems.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-8-1024x542.png)
Many of the "other" responses directly mentioned Twitter's abysmal moderation.
> Twitter's moderation and blocking policies with regard to hate speech and harassment.
>
> <cite>Respondent 63</cite>
Many also mentioned Tumblr's recent nudity ban.
> tumblr banned titties and i joined as a meme but then it turned out to actually be way better than tumblr so i left
>
> <cite>Respondent 68</cite>
Finally, there were lots of responses that mentioned LGBT+ discrimination that occurs on other platforms, and how they joined the Fediverse to avoid it.
> As a trans girl, other social media experiences were becoming horrible for my mental health.
> Twitter's response to certain elements of its userbase were the final straw.
>
> <cite>Respondent 529</cite>
### How happy are you with your instance?
With a mean of 4.33, most people love their instance!
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-9-1024x597.png)
I honestly expected this, because there are so many instances to choose from that cater to so many different demographics and interests. If you don't like your instance, it's fairly easy to move to another one, and you'll still be able to talk to your friends. However, once you've built up thousands of posts or followers, it can become difficult to pull the plug and move somewhere else, as posts and followers don't automatically "make the jump" to your new account.
### How happy are you with the Fediverse as a whole?
A mean of 3.84 shows that most people are pretty happy with the Fediverse.
![Most people chose 4, with 3 in distant second place.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-10-1024x601.png)
Interestingly, 3 people reported being very unhappy with the Fediverse. I guess there's not really a better alternative, though, is there? :mlem:
I voted 4 here, as did most people. I'm pretty happy with things, but there are some flaws, like how difficult it is to find a post that hasn't federated yet using ActivityPub (although this is a development concern and not a usability one).
Centralised Networks
--------------------
The second part of the survey talked about centralised social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.
### Have you ever used a centralised (non-Fediverse) social network, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tellonym, or others?
Unsurprisingly, almost everyone said yes.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-11-1024x582.png)
96% of people said they had used a centralised network before. The 21 who haven't are very lucky people indeed!
### Which of the following non-Fediverse social networks have you used?
As with earlier, I left out a fairly major option here - tumblr. The majority of "other" responses mention tumblr.
![I mentioned LinkedIn in the previous question, but forgot to include it...](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-12-1024x590.png)
The most popular network here is Twitter, closely followed by Facebook. Everything falls off after reddit. Instagram has fewer users than I expected, as a lot of my friends still use Instagram even after leaving Facebook and Twitter (I know Instagram is owned by Facebook, but the two platforms are still separate things). Once again, the survey got a lot more respondents than I was expecting!
Some of the "other" responses mentioned YouTube and Discord, which I didn't consider social networks. I thought hard about including YouTube in particular, as it has posts, comments, likes, etc., but in light of their recent decision to remove the posts feature to focus more on video hosting, I decided not to. Messaging clients like Telegram and WhatsApp were also mentioned, and Google+ came up more than once. If I ever do a survey like this again, I'll make sure to include more options for both Fediverse and centralised networks.
### Do you still use a non-Fediverse social network?
About 75% of people do.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-13.png)
### Which non-Fediverse social networks are you still using, if any?
I don't know why I said "if any", because this question is only asked if you replied "yes" to the prior one.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-14-1024x595.png)
I removed Vine and Friendster from the options here, due to them being dead. I also remembered to add LinkedIn here, but not on the previous one. Oops!
The responses are pretty similar to the question that asked which centralised networks you had ever used, although Twitter and reddit are much more relatively common than in that one.
### Do you prefer federated social networks to non-federated ones?
The results on this one are pretty obviously biased, but I wanted to include it anyway.
![It looks like a few people responded "strongly prefer centralised networks", but this is just a rendering error.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-15-1024x587.png)
There's not really much to say here. The majority of people strongly prefer the network type they choose to use.
Summary
-------
While I didn't include a few options that I really should have, things seem to have gone pretty well.
I'll end this with one of the feedback responses I received:
> Use this to change the world pls
>
> <cite>Anonymous respondent</cite>

27
_posts/fixme/2019-05-17-fediverse-survey-summary-2.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
---
title: Fediverse Survey Summary 2
date: 2019-05-17 23:26
author: Lynne
categories: [The Fediverse]
tags: [Fediverse Survey]
---
*Update 20/05/19: The survey has ended.*
*This is the second summary of my Fediverse summary. The first is available [here](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-1/).*
The new data has been made available in [this Nextcloud folder](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/PJYXYn9C8MGnzDE). It is available under the [CC-BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) license.
Not much has changed since the original summary.
<!--more-->
Despite there being over 200 more respondents since last time, there are still zero Osada users.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-17.png)
Most people who responded to the "why did you join the Fediverse" question answered that they wanted to try out a new type of social network.
![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-18-1024x531.png)
Apart from that, there's not really anything to remark on.

118
_posts/fixme/2019-05-17-some-android-app-recommendations.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
---
title: Some Android App Recommendations
date: 2019-05-17 17:59
author: Lynne
categories: [Personal, Technology]
tags: [Android]
---
*Update 22/05: Fedilab is now paid on Google Play.*
These are some apps that I have personally found very useful. I'll be focusing on more obscure ones rather than apps that everyone's already heard of, but I will mention a few popular ones if I feel the need to do so.
<!--more-->
I'll be using "free" in the headings to refer to the price of the app, and open or closed source afterwards to clarify. For apps with more than one price point (for example, an app with free and pro versions), I'll list both. Prices are in Australian dollars.
Some of the apps listed below are free on F-droid, but cost money on Google Play. The F-droid versions are the exact same as the Google Play ones, so you won't be missing out on any features by installing them from F-droid.
F-droid (Free, Open Source)
---------------------------
![The "Latest" page on F-droid.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-155312_F-Droid-498x1024.png)
[F-droid](https://f-droid.org/) is an alternative to Google Play, with one major difference: All apps are required to be free. This not only means "free of charge", but also [philosophically free](https://bune.city/2019/05/lynne-teaches-tech-what-is-free-software/). All F-droid apps must be released under a free open source license.
While F-droid itself is rather plain looking, and lacks quite a lot of the polish that Google Play has, its best feature is its library of truly free software. Apps from F-droid will always plainly warn the user of any potentially negative aspects (referred to as "[AntiFeatures](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/AntiFeatures)"), such as advertisements, tracking, and non-free network dependencies. Most of these AntiFeatures are very uncommon in F-droid, with only 17 apps containing ads as of the time of writing. In total, [357 apps](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Category:Apps_with_antifeatures) have at least one AntiFeature.
The [F-droid Privileged Extension](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension/blob/master/README.md) allows F-droid to automatically install and update apps on rooted devices. With the privileged extension, F-droid behaves exactly like a regular app store on your device.
If you don't like the spartan design of F-droid, you might want to install [G-droid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gdroid.gdroid/), which provides a nicer UI with features such as recommended apps and star ratings.
![G-droid's homepage.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-161551_G-Droid-498x1024.png)
Fedilab (Free/\$3.89, Open Source)
----------------------------------
If you have an account on the [Fediverse](https://fediverse.party/), you'll probably want to install an app like [Fedilab](https://fedilab.app) (\$3.89 on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.fedilab.android), Free on [F-droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/fr.gouv.etalab.mastodon/)). Fedilab allows you to manage multiple accounts across multiple instances, with support for push notifications, lists, multiple timelines, and more.
![Fedilab viewing [my main account](https://l.bune.city/me)
I've used [Tusky](https://tusky.app/) before, but I prefer Fedilab for its feature set and design. I really appreciate that it makes use of Android Oreo's [notification categories](https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels), allowing the user to specify different urgency levels for different types of notifications.
Nextcloud Notes (Free/\$3.59, Open Source)
------------------------------------------
[Nextcloud Notes](https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-notes) (Free on [F-droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/it.niedermann.owncloud.notes/), \$3.59 on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.niedermann.owncloud.notes)) is an Android client for communicating with the [Notes](https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/notes) app for Nextcloud. It allows you to create, delete, favourite, and categorise notes on your Android device.
![Nextcloud Notes' main page.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-161811_Notes-498x1024.png)
It supports Markdown, has a dark theme, and also works with Owncloud. I use it very often to edit my shopping list, but I also have other notes that I edit from my phone, such as [this mstdn-ebooks guide](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/jozbRi69t4TpD95).
Simple Gallery (Free/\$1.09, Open Source)
-----------------------------------------
[Simple Gallery](https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Gallery/blob/master/README.md) (Free on [F-droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.gallery.pro/), \$1.09 on [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobiletools.gallery.pro)) is part of the [Simple Mobile Tools](https://www.simplemobiletools.com/) suite. As the name implies, it is a simple gallery app.
![Simple Gallery's homepage.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-165119_Gallery-498x1024.png)
Despite the name, Simple Gallery offers a few features that many photo gallery apps don't. It supports `.nomedia`, and even allows you to add `.nomedia` to other folders through the app. It also has an internal list for excluded folders, which allows you to hide a folder from Simple Gallery while allowing it to appear in other apps. I found this feature very useful for hiding my album art from Simple Gallery without adding a `.nomedia` file to my Music folder, which would prevent my music player from scanning the folder.
It also allows you to pin folders to the top of the list, which I use to keep my screenshots and camera folders at the top. It even has a simple image editor built in, which is perfect for quickly cropping images.
![You can even set custom colours for the app!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-170329_Gallery-498x1024.png)
LongShot (Free\*, Closed Source)
--------------------------------
\**This app contains ads and offers a \$2.99 in-app purchase to remove them.*
LongShot (Google Play) allows you to capture screenshots of long pages and automatically stitches them together. It also allows you to stitch existing images together, although the UI for doing this is rather clunky.
![Longshot's homepage.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-170810_LongShot-498x1024.png)
The "auto scroll" mode makes the app scroll down the page for you, automatically capturing images as it goes, and presenting you with a finished product at the end. I recommend this app if you often find yourself wanting to screenshot something that's too long to fit on one phone screen.
See here for an example screenshot captured with LongShot.
K-9 Mail (Free, Open Source)
----------------------------
[K-9 Mail](https://k9mail.github.io/) ([F-droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.fsck.k9/), [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9)) is an email client for Android. It offers support for multiple inboxes, push notifications (this is the reason I switched from Gmail - the Gmail app only supports push notifications from Gmail accounts, even if your other accounts support IMAP push), filters, PGP encryption, and more.
![K-9's accounts page.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/image-16-498x1024.png)
It also supports a "unified inbox" view, for viewing emails from all your inboxes at once. Different inboxes are given different colour strips, and these colours can be customised.
![The unified inbox view.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-172737_K-9_Mail-498x1024.png)
Its design feels rather archaic, and feels like a KitKat app. K-9's design is remarkably similar to Gmail's Holo theme from half a decade ago.
![Gmail's Holo theme.](https://cdn.appstorm.net/android.appstorm.net/files/2012/05/screen08.jpg)
While I miss some of Gmail's convenience features (mainly being able to swipe an email to mark it as unread), I prefer K-9 in almost every other way. Except the design, anyway.
Simon Tatham's Puzzles (Free, Open Source)
------------------------------------------
[Simon Tatham's Puzzles](https://chris.boyle.name/projects/android-puzzles) ([Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chris.sgtpuzzles), [GitHub](https://github.com/chrisboyle/sgtpuzzles)) is an Android port of the rather verbosely named [Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/).
![The game selection screen.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-173324_Puzzles-498x1024.png)
Puzzles is a collection of simple puzzles and games such as Sudoku and Minesweeper. It contains no ads, offers save and load capabilities with autosave on exit, allows for multiple difficulty settings, and is compatible with saves created by the PC version.
![Sudoku, known as "solo" in the app.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-174131_Puzzles-498x1024.png)
Puzzles should run on almost any Android device, with a minimum required version of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).
Automate (Free\*, Closed Source)
--------------------------------
*\*The free version is limited to 30 blocks per flow. I bought the full version for \$3.49, but the price may have changed since then.*
Automate (Google Play) allows you to automate tasks on your phone using an intuitive interface where action blocks are combined to create flows.
![Automate flow for mailing clipboard contents.](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/Screenshot_20190517-175403_Automate-498x1024.png)
You can access all sorts of things, from accelerometer readings to notifications to Google Drive files. Automate is frequently updated, both to maintain compatibility with newer Android versions, and to add new blocks. It also offers some blocks that work with rooted devices.

46
_posts/fixme/2019-05-19-a-simple-glitch-soc-tweak.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
---
title: A simple glitch-soc tweak
date: 2019-05-19 15:34
author: Lynne
categories: [Scripts, The Fediverse]
---
Mastodon recently added a cool feature that blurs images when they're marked as sensitive and while they're loading. I noticed that it automatically hides this blur when the image loads, but it's trivial to put it back. Combined with the glitch-soc setting to display full images rather than cropping them, we can use two little CSS rules to change those ugly letterboxes and pillarboxes to a nice-looking blurred background!
<!--more-->
*Update: Fixed a bug that caused the media gallery to stop working properly*
![The default behaviour](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/9d7264e7e4245c14c5569fb6d7dcc460/sshot_2019-05-19_at_14-57-40-1558241860.png)
![With my CSS tweak applied](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/1b90819a4327b18465545bede7481663/sshot_2019-05-19_at_14-58-13-1558241893.png)
The code
--------
If you'd like to run this on your own instance, here's the CSS:
``` {.wp-block-code}
.media-gallery__preview--hidden {
display: block;
}
.media-gallery__item-thumbnail .media-gallery__preview--hidden {
display: none;
}
```
To add it, go to your preferences page, click the Administration tab, choose "Site settings", scroll to the bottom, and paste the above CSS into the Custom CSS area. Save your changes with the button at the bottom, and reload your glitch-soc tab.
Some more examples
------------------
Some more examples of how things look with this small change, because I think it looks really nice.
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/d12970210c4933d4950c134c31b8a6a1/sshot_2019-05-19_at_15-29-33-1558243773.png)
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/2123e7c63b371fc455b9e5ba2ddf920c/sshot_2019-05-19_at_15-17-37-1558243057.png)
- ![](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/838e232660a060a4257af7c2530073fb/sshot_2019-05-19_at_15-20-01-1558243201.png)
[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-prev .swiper-button-prev .swiper-button-white}[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-next .swiper-button-next .swiper-button-white}[]{.wp-block-jetpack-slideshow_button-pause}

128
_posts/fixme/2019-05-20-fediverse-survey-summary-3.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
---
title: Fediverse Survey Summary 3
date: 2019-05-20 15:18
author: Lynne
categories: [The Fediverse]
---
*This post contains coarse language.*
Thank you all for participating in my little survey! It ended about 15 hours ago now, so it's time to look over the results one last time. This post will mostly be about the feedback I received, so If you want to do see a summary of the actual responses, you want to check [the first summary](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-1/).
<!--more-->
The data
--------
You can download the data from [this folder](https://cloud.lynnesbian.space/s/PJYXYn9C8MGnzDE). The files dated *2019-05-20* contain the latest data, but older sets are still available. They're all available under the [CC-BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) license.
Previous summaries
------------------
The first summary goes over many things in more detail than I will here, as I don't want to repeat myself. You can read it [here](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-1/).
The second summary is very brief and doesn't say much, but it's [here](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-2/) if you want it.
Survey meta
-----------
We received a total of 732 responses. Of those, 674 were complete, and 58 were partially incomplete. All 732 responses will be released, and reviewed for this post.
### How satisfied were you with the questions and options provided?
With a mean of 4.27, I'd say most people were pretty happy with the survey.
![Lots of 4s and 5s!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/c7d9c4bdc33bb964d9a107aad9275f14/sshot_2019-05-20_at_14-04-04-1558325044-1024x536.png)
There's still a lot of room for improvement. As I discussed in the first summary, the main issues were not enough social network types. In particular, I forgot to add tumblr as an option.
Some feedback responses
-----------------------
Let's take a look at some of the feedback I received!
#### "I hope the results will be made public 😉"
They are! The results are available in PDF, XLSX, and CSV format, under the [CC-BY-SA 4.0 license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
#### "I still use Twitter, but very little. Almost not at all."
It might have been a good idea to allow people to specify which social networks they spend the most time on, but at the same time, I don't want to give the respondents choice paralysis. I think this is something to consider for the next survey, if there is one.
#### "hi"
Hi!
#### "Pleroma is full of nazis and assholes, including the developers"
This seems to be a prevailing sentiment among many on the Fediverse. I frequently see posts like this on fedi, with people giving a variety of reasons. I don't think there's anything the Pleroma team can really do about the perception of their userbase, but if the developers themselves are being seen like this, then something probably needs to be done. I don't really think this is completely true myself, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
#### "I’m glad Eugen/Gargon started Mastodon but he needs to fucking let go"
This also seems to be a popular opinion. Many people are upset with Eugen's more controversial decisions, such as [his contributions to Smilodon](https://source.puri.sm/liberty/smilodon/commit/9cae431902a2c0ce6438c6722a3a901e279c78fc) and [refusal to add rich text support](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/10629#issuecomment-485927096). The Mastodon development team is bigger than just Eugen, but it's always Eugen specifically who gets mentioned.
#### "tumblr still exists sadly"
A lot of people mentioned social networks that I missed, both federated and otherwise, but by far the most frequently mentioned was tumblr.
#### "you forgot to add linkedin to the 'which ones do you use' even though it's on the 'ones you still use'"
I sure did!
#### "I'm on more than one instance and I know others who are as well. The question about being satisfied with your instance doesn't take this into account."
That's true, yes. I don't really know if there's a way around that, though, because asking "how satisfied are you with instance 1, 2, 3" would just split the data between multiple points without any distinguishing information between them. I could have specified "on average", but that muddies the data too. I probably should have asked for how people felt about their *main* instance.
#### "wonder what you'll do with these answers!"
It's not so much about what *I'll* do as it is what *you'll* do! The data is free and open for anyone to use in their projects. If you can think of a way to put this data to use, feel free to contact me! Go ahead and make something great!
#### "Need to ask about which applications are used, e.g. Tusky"
This is a really good point, and a glaring omission from the survey.
#### "it'd be interesting to ask people what was the "last straw" for them to join fediverse"
That would make a great optional question, although it's a little similar to the question asking why you joined. Perhaps they could be combined in some way?
#### "I only use Facebook for things related to school. If I had the option, I wouldn't use it."
The survey boils things down to a binary "do you use it/do you not", which isn't great. It makes it easier for people to respond, but it also means the data is less accurate. Perhaps a (hypothetical) next survey could provide options for yes, no, occasionally, for work...
#### "Maybe some questions about background of the surveyed person ?"
I think that would make for a great separate survey, but it would mean including personal information, which I wanted to avoid with this survey. You can't really answer personal questions without providing personal info...
#### "Thank you!"
You're welcome! :mlem:
The responses
-------------
The survey has come to an end, and still no Osada users. Honestly, I expected there to be at least one, and I certainly didn't expect Nextcloud Social to have more respondents!
![A lot of people use Mastodon!](https://wasabi.lynnesbian.space/bune-city/2019/05/ebf00d461930b6f4255f930d32e46f0c/image-1024x533.png)
### Reasons for joining the Fediverse
Let's look at some of the other reasons for joining the Fediverse that people gave. As mentioned in the first survey, many people mentioned Twitter and Tumblr's recent changes and behaviour as reasons for leaving.
I'll present some of the responses in list form, since I don't have anything to add.
- no ads!
- One specific friend was there
- Human moderators that actually take action
- I think Librem One is an important concept.
- Note: did not move from another platform, personal data/privacy is the reason I tried to avoid them.
- I was concerned about being biased by [bubbling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble) algorithms *(link added by me)*
- I was concerned about new Facebook polcies discriminating against queer and trans spaces
- not having everyone you know in one all-connected place is a healthy thing. it frees you up to say more things.
- I wanted a chronological timeline
- I realized how shitty reddit was for my mental health. Couldn't stand all of the "look how bigoted this bigoted thing said by this bigot is"
- It's a great non toxic place to find non binary people
There's really not much else to remark on that hasn't already been covered by [the first summary](https://bune.city/2019/05/fediverse-survey-summary-1/).
Thanks so much for reading and participating!

BIN
assets/material/MaterialIcons-Regular.woff2 Normal file
View file

Binary file not shown.

26
assets/material/style.css Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
@font-face {
font-family: 'Material Icons';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
src: local('Material Icons'),
local('MaterialIcons-Regular'),
url(/assets/material/MaterialIcons-Regular.woff2) format('woff2');
}
.material-icons {
font-family: 'Material Icons';
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
font-size: 24px; /* Preferred icon size */
display: inline-block;
line-height: 1;
text-transform: none;
letter-spacing: normal;
word-wrap: normal;
white-space: nowrap;
direction: ltr;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
/* Support for IE. */
font-feature-settings: 'liga';
}

3
assets/style.css Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
h1 {
font-family: "Playfair Display";
}

BIN
favicon.ico Normal file
View file

Binary file not shown.
Side by side

After

Width:  |  Height:  |  Size: 66 KiB

0
fixes.txt Normal file
View file

15
index.html Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
---
layout: default
title: "bune.city - Home"
---
{% include header.html %}
<h1>{{ site.title }}</h1>
<div id='posts'>
{% for post in site.posts %}
<div class='post'>
<h2><a href='{{ post.url }}'>{{ post.title }}</a></h2>
<i class='material-icons'>face</i>
<p>{{ post.excerpt }}</p>
</div>
{% endfor %}
</div>