Tuesday, 2022-05-31

Friday, 2022-05-27

19,000 dead in Sweden

DateDeaths DaysDeaths/day
2020-03-11 1 0 0,0
2020-04-09 1 000 29 34,4
2020-04-19 2 000 10 100,0
2020-05-02 3 000 13 76,9
2020-05-18 4 000 16 62,5
2020-06-11 5 000 24 41,7
2020-11-01 6 000 143 7,0
2020-11-27 7 000 26 38,5
2020-12-12 8 000 15 66,7
2020-12-23 9 000 11 90,9
2021-01-02 10 000 10 100,0
2021-01-14 11 000 12 83,3
2021-01-27 12 000 13 76,9
2021-03-01 13 000 33 30,3
2021-04-24 14 000 54 18,5
2021-10-27 15 000 186 5,4
2022-01-26 16 000 91 11,0
2022-02-15 17 000 20 50,0
2022-03-12 18 000 25 40,0
2022-05-27 19 000 76 13,2
Posted at 12:51, in the alt » corona2020 category.

Thursday, 2022-05-19

Libera.chat, one year later

One year ago, the failed businessman and accused felon Andrew Lee burned the Freenode network to the ground in a fit of childish pique. Luckily, responsible people were hip to his inept shenanigans and managed to launch a new network - Libera.chat - under his very nose.

In the intervening year, Freenode is a shadow of its former self. Even the alt-right lowlifes who gleefully became mods to settle old scores have slunk away to their slimy holes, and what’s left is an empty tomb, briefly visited by confused chatters who haven’t gotten the memo.

About 2 months after the events, I wrote the following little essay which never got polished enough for publication. I figured I could just dump it here now.

Slava Libera!

IRC culture wars (2020-07-20)

IRC as a mainstream cultural phenomenon peaked in 2002. At around that time, Freenode was started to address the issues with IRC as it was: spam, warez, channel and nick hijacking, and a general juvenile attitude.

Freenode saw a need for FOSS projects to have stability. To be able to claim and keep the channels they wanted, to be able to address spam and trolls, and to have a stable environment to point users to.

At the time, Freenode was the fussy nerd, not participating in the chaos the cool kids reveled in. But it filled the need for FOSS projects, and found its own niche within IRC.

As time passed, people left IRC, but many FOSS projects stayed on Freenode. This meant that as time passed, Freenode become more and more dominant within IRC. And the IRC culture that Freenode fostered became the norm, instead of the exception.

As IRC shrank, those that held the old IRC ideals dear were forced to use Freenode more and more. There they came into conflict with the Freenode norms. Conflicts about channel ownership and the wider issues of “free speech” erupted and were dealt with. Coupled with the entryism strategy of the alt-right and the general undercurrent of right-libertarianism of FOSS, this created a minority of dissidents on Freenode, at least as well versed in IRC warfare as the staff.

The takeover/coup of Freenode should be seen in this context. The dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS. And they would have gotten away with it too, had not the old staff adroitly moved to Libera.chat, and convinced almost every FOSS project to move too. Those that didn’t move were soon alienated by the new staff, who were more interested in settling old scores than the boring work of IRC stewardship.

Andrew Lee and his hardcore supporters are now betting that there’s still a market for old-style IRC, while at the same time loudly proclaiming their continued allegiance to FOSS. But their victory is hollow. They have won the battle but probably lost the war.

Posted at 05:27, in the comm category.

Tuesday, 2022-05-17

Winding down my Gemini engagement

[This piece was originally published on my gemlog but lost when I shut that down shortly after publishing this. Posted for visibility.]

Well it’s been a fun ride but I’m going to wind down my Gemini presence. I made it about 6 months.

I’ve been a vocal critic of parts of Gemini, but I wanted to make a good-faith effort to see what it was, not just snipe from outside. [1], [2].

While I have had a lot of fun on the technical side of things, and found a certain freedom in expression that was lacking from my old blog, the negatives outweigh the positives.

In the spirit of “2 pluses, 1 minus” or the “shit sandwich”, here’s a summary.

The good, part 1

Gemini has taken off! There’s a largish community and a bit of a “buzz”. This is frankly not very common and people should be proud.

The bad

First off, a lack of textual expression in gemtext. This is something I’ve butted heads with the community, and it’s not gonna change. Fine, but it turns out it’s a dealbreaker.

A lack of audience reach. This is not just vanity publishing for me. Despite the choice of really quite decent clients, I cannot simply share a Gemini link without having to preface it with “oh yes this is a new protocol please download this to read”.

I’m not really being that interested in discussing the things the community likes discussing - the evils of the Big Web, the tired rehashings of open source dogma I went through in the late 90s, and more. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m old.

Finally, I’m not on board with the virtue signalling of not using “normie” social media, and I still see Gemini as an attempt at a technical solution to a social problem.

The good, part 2

It’s been fun interacting with a small enthusiastic community. Members like Sandra (Idiomdrottning)[3] and Björn (ew0k)[4] have their hearts in the right place and are all-around menschs. The IRC channel on tilde.chat is welcoming too. And Lagrange[5] is an amazing client.

I’m taking from this a new focus on short-form blogging in the form of a new microblog.[6] It’s refreshing to have all the affordances of HTML to express myself, but at the same time I don’t have to be so damn formal about it.

I wish the Gemini community all the best!

Posted at 18:00, in the comm category.

Monday, 2022-05-16

PSA: unmaintained project channels on Freenode automatically redirect to #freenode

During the management changes at Freenode in Jul 2021, all access lists and channel ownerships were reset. Existing channels that were not reclaimed by projects now automatically redirect to the main channel, which is #freenode.

If you have a specific question about a project, please make sure you’re actually in a maintained channel, and not in the main channel.

If the channel is not maintained, try checking the project’s homepage for their IRC presence. It’s usually under the “Community” section.

Posted at 07:47, in the comm category.