_ Balsa _ is available in Debian-based distros. It is super lightweight. It sports a slightly retro aesthetic.

https://pawsa.fedorapeople.org/balsa/

Then there is Claws-Mail, which is under heavy active development with a community of users, patchers and bug reporters staying on top of it like white on rice. It is also very light-weight compared to Thunderbird.

I like the Thunderbird interface. I hate the Thunderbird configuration and storage backends. Claws uses good old MH and so does Balsa.

If you choose Claws it also has NNTP reading built in. Balsa has no NNTP functionality.

I use snac2 with tut command-line client and my web browser. SNAC is currently my only gateway into the Fediverse. It seems to work very well.

I'm currently reading and interacting with a total over 1300 followers and followees, using tag filtering in tut, without any problems. This is a efficient power-user way to rip through posts and filter out what I'm not interested in, so I can find useful and relevant information from thousands of posts per day really quickly.

When I want to see an image in context I'll open the link in the web browser. I like it this way since I can limit my exposure to images, which sometimes turn out to be unsavory. Surprise, right?

I recommend you give it a spin. The backend proxy setup is about the same as if you were going to install Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, etc., so if you don't like it you can just put one of those other bloated beasts on the proxy port and call it a day.

#snac #Fediverse #hosting #selfhosting

I have been building scripts to automate some tasks including managing my interface with this ActivityPub server. I want to push a single button or enter one command to publish notes and files via several protocols and have each reference link to all. The protocols include:

1. ActivityPub (Mastodon, this server)
2. Preprints / TechRXIV / Zenodo / Figshare, etc.
3. NNTP / Usenet
4. Static Web Site
5. Blog
6. BlueSky
7. Archive.org
8. PHP Blog / Wordpress / Blogger
9. P2P network(s)
10 ... ??? Still working out the elsewhere(s) and how and whyfor.

The Internet is so full of disparate platforms and protocols that I am almost tempted to just manage a static website like in the good old days of web 1.0 or even web 1/2 and forget about everything else except that and the Internet Archive and Usenet.

I miss the old days where one could put up a static site and push a link and description into a chat room or forum and watch the site get hammered for fifteen minutes. Twenty years ago I ran a rant site that got hundreds of visits per day and I was quite happy with that.

Nowadays there is so much going on that even 1000 real human page views in a month is sometimes too much to expect. Why would anyone want to look at my silly essays or PDF files when every day is Caturday or Saturdog with infinite memes and endless rage outlets? Why read about my strange musings and puzzles when there are endless memes about the empire and the endless bogeymen out to eat us all?

Yet I cast my runes out upon the rivers of ether anyway; just in case someone seeks to get high on a supply of digits.

#Automation #Publishing #Scripting #Notes #Musing #Microblog #OCTADE

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Just like shell ... worth a try.

@[email protected]

I recall that friendica has the option disable_federation in the config settings.

I realized that with snac, I can run a script daemon:

1. Use inotifywatch to check incoming objects;
2. Dump the new object JSON to detect requests from foreign domains;
3. run the 'snack block' command on the found domain;
4. Delete the incoming object;
5. Sanitize any generated notifications.

This should all happen so quickly that local users should never notice it.

So any attempt to communicate in either direction can be automatically detected on first blush, then the remote domain blocked.

It's a hack, but it should work.

Another question: what about a wildcard character in the 'snac block' command?

I'm not going to try it on this public instance because I'm afraid of some kind of expansion wrecking things. Does anyone know if that would do anything weird?

I think there may be some XMPP front ends that do what I'm thinking here. I'll need to check that out too.

I don't want a forum. I want it to 'feel' like a social media interface and work with the available activitypub (or maybe XMPP) clients.

@[email protected]

It is a convenient way to have a local portal that runs like a social media platform.

@[email protected]

Why not?

A local portal would be useful for lots of uses.

Yes, that is correct. I suppose 'isolated instance' is the term I am reaching for.

If I configure my web server proxy to block snac2 from sending and receiving connections from other instances would this break snac or cause some kind of dump or race condition? I suppose I could just try it and see.

@[email protected]

Is there any internal method for preventing a snac2 server from federating? I don't mean blocking. I mean prohibiting all federation and contact with other activitypub instances. The goal is the local users don't see anything from the fediverse and the fediverse won't see anything from the local server.

I realize there are brute ways to hack nginx and IPtables to block ports and things like that. I'm just wondering if there is an internal method that is more sensible, or if perhaps some blocks of code could be removed before compilation.

#snac2 #fediverse #servers #activitypub

It has been happening for at least the past 5 years. I have talked to several people whose retirements were looted.

It is called, 'exhausting administrative remedies' and it is designed to exhaust you.

Maybe they have an employee with a plushy collection who was shopping for more.

@[email protected]

Ich folge ein paar fur deise; dann lese ich fur lehrnen.

Gestern gelernt ich das wort, "Hilfeleistungsloschgruppenfahrzeug.". Dieses Wort ist urkomisch. Die sundet ausgeseichnett aber zum sprechen ist fast unmoglich.

@[email protected]

I couldn't say. I don't have time to examine the project or test it. I think the combined endpoint routing is a strong idea the way their documentation explains it. Allowing users to choose longer circuits is also very good, and we used to have that in Tor a long time ago. Veilid can probably can be made quite a bit safer than Tor if an app network includes a good number of nodes.

The keyed network option is a great idea. I can't overstate how important it is to be able to have private mixnets or mixnets run in cooperation by consortia yet segregated from public access. From the documentation it looks as if the users can slice and dice for their own recipes.

One thing I think could be added is swarm routing for larger networks. Instead of sending data through a route or circuit, the data is chunked into equal-sized payloads and shuffled through a swarm of randomly-chosen routes in longer routes. This would be a nightmare for eavesdroppers, requiring much more in the way of compute power and honeypot peers for statistically correlating endpoint IP addresses.

Another problem exists with mixnets and I don't see anyone discussing this problem. In a peer-to-peer mixnet anonymity is supposed to be achieved by tunneling through multiple peers. The theory is that each peer in a circuit can only know the adjacent peers, and thus not be able to correlate endpoint IP pairs. However a determined adversary with large resources can spin up and run dozens or hundreds or even thousands of peers on a public network. Thus any route formed through a series of these hostile peers would not achieve anonymity for either endpoint. Since the adversary owns all the peers in the route, the adversary can use the timestamps and payload hashes to correlate the route and identify both endpoint IP addresses. Yet ameliorating this attack on a public network requires a certain number of tamper-proof peers for which all users can verify those peers have not been tampered with. The private key network option of Veilid amerliorates this attack. If the hostile peers can't join your network then they can't employ this kind of surveillance.

This opinion is just from a cursory glance. I can't vouch for anything without looking under the hood.

#Veilid #Mixnets #P2P #Networking #Privacy #Encryption #Cryptography

Gagh ... gach ... gach ... yich ... I give up.

An army of quantum evangelists is crusading in a stock market near you.

@[email protected]

Public school is open to the public; it must allow your child to attend.

Private school can reject entry applications or charge tuition or both.

A mushrooming mansion full of munch-able mention machines for the moshing and marching moonshiner munchkins.

I am glad I was not sipping when I read this.

@[email protected]

Welcome to the new normal.