We first need to obtain a blocklist of all possible Israeli ip addresses. This can be obtained from two sources.

1. https://www.ip2location.com/free/visitor-blocker
2. https://www.iblocklist.com/

Due to the nature of how IP addresses are distributed, these blocklists have to be updated, but that isn't a huge concern for us right now.

When you downloaded the file for Israel from either site, it should look something like this:

Israel:2.16.36.0-2.16.36.255
Israel:2.22.233.0-2.22.233.255
Israel:2.52.0.0-2.55.255.255
Israel:2.57.228.0-2.57.231.255
Israel:2.58.33.0-2.58.33.255
Israel:3.2.42.0-3.2.42.63
Israel:3.5.56.0-3.5.59.255
Israel:5.22.128.0-5.22.135.255
Israel:5.28.128.0-5.28.191.255
Israel:5.29.0.0-5.29.255.255
Israel:5.100.248.0-5.100.255.255

If you wish to add more nations to the list such as TERF island or the 4th Reich, then you can append the files on top of each other into one file.

Once you have the file, rename it with the .p2p extension so that qbittorrent will use it. Then, in your qbittorrent client, go to Preferences -> Connection. At the very bottom you should see a section labeled IP Filtering. In the Filter Path checkbox, select your .p2p file. You may also check the box to block trackers as well.

In other bittorrent software (hopefully you're using one that's libre) there should be a similar option for ip filtering.

There you go! You have effectively banned Israel from being your peer while you're doing p2p transfers. This won't stop Zionists from peering with you using a VPN or other undetected server, but this has done wonders for my mood.

Always remember to port forward and seed when torrenting (A non-Zionist VPN like AirVPN or ProtonVPN can allow you to do that). Only a Zionist does a download and run.

Resources

1. https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/discussions/17457

I was talking on my part, don't know about others. I'm a constant seeder (7+ years) and monitor peers from time to time or when downloading something. During these years I've never seen a single Israeli seed on a rare torrent, or high download traffic from them. I'm being completely honest, the only time I see them is when they are downloading something from me.

What's the point of this post?

We all love to dunk on M$ for repeatedly fucking up Windows, and we all love to recommend installing the superior OS, but there hasn’t been a guide on how to actually do so. My aim is to create a guide on how to actually install Linux so that every time M$ fucks up, people can link to this guide (or any other successive guide) on top of the usual dunking.

Note: This guide is tailored towards people who are using Windows devices.

Why Linux Mint?

• Linux Mint has a well-deserved reputation as the “newbie distro for people who came from Windows.”
• Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, and all three distros combined have a wealth of information online owning to their popularity, meaning that there’s less obstacles in troubleshooting.
• Linux Mint owning to its Debian heritage isn’t cutting edge or bleeding edge, meaning there’s a greater focus on using what currently works.

Which version of Linux Mint?

https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Linux Mint comes in three main editions:

• Cinnamon (←pick this one)
• MATE
• Xfce

Pick Cinnamon since this edition is more modern and closely imitates the Windows desktop environment (DE) the most. The other two use DEs that consume less resources, but don’t mimic the look of Windows as much.

How to create a USB boot drive?

There are various ways of creating a USB boot drive:

• Rufus (easy and fooproof): https://rufus.ie/en/
• Ventoy (takes more work but you can add multiple ISO images to the boot drive): https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Live session:

After creating your USB boot disk with Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition, you need to boot from your flash drive. The exact steps vary, but you essentially have to go to your BIOS and either change the boot order or specifically boot from your flash drive. Once there, you’ll come across a couple of screens before arriving at the Linux Mint desktop.

There’s a desktop icon that tells you to install Linux Mint, but you don’t have to do it yet. In fact, nothing’s stopping you from just running Linux Mint like this through the flash drive (there are entire Linux distro designed to be run from a flash drive like, but Linux Mint isn’t one of those). The live session is also good to catch any hardware issues like your wifi not working.

Actually installing Linux Mint:

It’s honestly pretty straightforward.

Pick the language you want, which will mostly likely be English.

Pick the keyboard, which will mostly be what you’re already using.

Connect online so Linux Mint will install the latest programs. You can skip connecting online, and Linux Mint will install the version of the programs that are in the iso image, but you’ll have to upgrade all those programs at once later.

Check Install multimedia codecs. The codecs allow you to watch videos.

Unless you have some weird logical partition set up for your drive, just choose Erase disk and install Linux Mint, and let Linux Mint handle the partitioning. If your PC has multiple drives, I would suggest physically disconnecting the drives that you don’t want the installation to touch as a precaution. Obviously, do this while the PC is off.

Pick the time zone you live in.

Set up your username, hostname, and password. It doesn’t have annoying password complexity restrictions on what password you want to use. Just pick any password.

This is a slideshow while installation is taking place.

Once installation is complete, Linux Mint will prompt you to reboot your PC. When you reboot your PC through that window, you will eventually get to a black screen with a prompt asking you to remove the USB boot drive and press Enter. Do so, and your PC will reboot to a fresh installation of Linux Mint.

I heard the last update for the 3DS fucked peoples homebrew consoles, so I haven't even connected to the internet since then.

But now I want to transfer a bunch of my old Pokemon to Pokemon Bank so I can get them onto Home and then my Switch, but Pokemon Bank needs an update...

Whats the safest way to do this? Can I just update it or will that fuck my homebrew?

For me, I've been looking into Lapce and lite-xl a lot recently. I really like the idea of extremely lightweight text editors that try to compete with Codium (libre binary of VScode).

What text/code editors do y'all use? I want to try them out.

I'd like to share a fun page from the GNU Project's essays on free software in other languages. It's always good to remember that the free software movement was and is always an international effort to defend our freedoms. Free software will always aid leftist organizations in breaking away from surveillance and creating our own technological independence.

You should always advocate for breaking away from proprietary software in your advocacy. For example, if you're in a leftist Discord chatroom, try building a bridge to Matrix or even moving to chatroom entirely to Matrix. If you talk to your friends using Messenger, Whatsapp or Zoom, try suggesting that y'all use something like Signal, GNU Jami, Jitsi Meet etc.

Free software is praxis! Never take your computing for granted!

day 6 of libreposting

TL;DR

RSS doesn't actually stand for "Really Simple Software", it stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and is an internet standard dating back to 1999. It allows websites to create RSS feeds that users can copy into their RSS Feed Reader to avoid connecting to the website over and over again just to see updates.

Why you should use RSS

RSS allows one to organize their internet activity into one cohesive, accessible program. Instead of leaving large digital footprints like subscribing to a newsletter via email or using a social media site, RSS allows one to safely preview web content right as it is updated. If you're creating a blog, making an RSS feed will greatly benefit your readers.

Using RSS is as simple as looking for the RSS Icon and copying the link into your feed reader, no extra steps required. Many feed readers also come with the ability to tag and organize your feeds into different sections for different topics. Invidious instances also come with RSS built in so you can replicate a YouTube subscriptions page without the stinging you'd usually get from Alphabet Inc for example.

In less eloquent terms: The modern web browser is bloat and you want to avoid using it as much as possible. RSS helps you do that.

Libre RSS Feed Readers

On Linux distributions with Flathub enabled, you have these options:

• GNOME: NewsFlash,
• KDE: Akgregator
• QT: RSS Guard
• Flutter: Fluent Reader
• GNU Emacs: Elfeed
• Terminal: Newsboat

Most web browsers either have extensions for RSS or have RSS built into them, I have only used one called Smart RSS. I don't recommend using web application RSS feed readers that require an account to use.

Examples

NewsFlash

Now I can enjoy all my JT content right as it's hot off the press (using invidious)

Lemmy

RSS Feeds are available at every comm. (little rightmost rss icon)

Day 5 of libreposting

i tried piped for a while, but many times i tried to watch videos and they didn't start loading until i reloaded it what felt like hundreds of times. any reccomendations?

edit: Dear comrades reading this, i am not sure if it will work the same for people outside of amerikkka, but puffyan.us worked really well for me. i decided not to go with yewtu.be, as i wanted to be able to find content using my subscriptions rather than searching for topics. if that doesn't bother you, go with yewtube but puffyan worked well for me. thank you for all of the advice!

A libre program is a program that fulfills these 4 basic freedoms.

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

• Bonus points if it is cross-platform (can run on Windows or MacOS) or replaces a proprietary program

Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is a free software program that allows users to create video calls with each other. Licensed under Apache 2.0, anyone is able to launch their own Jitsi Meet instance and be able to talk to their friends and family without having their freedoms revoked.

This application can be used to replace proprietary video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Meets which in addition to being nonfree, un-auditable programs have also shown time and time again to disrespect its users even further such as forcefully integrating AI anti features and forcing users to be trapped in their cultivated video conferencing garden of stings.

• Read more about the security of Jitsi if you're interested.

Jitsi Meet can be run on any operating system that has access to a web browser. There is also offline binaries for Linux distributions from Flathub. It's also available on mobile operating systems in both F-Droid and proprietary app stores.

How can I use it?

Jitsi Meet can be used gratis on the behalf of Jitsi here, however it requires the user to sign in with either Google, Facebook, or Github; all proprietary platforms.

Luckily, Framasoft still has a fully gratis Jitsi Meet service at Framatalk which does not require a third-party login.

Stop Zoomin' and use Jitsi Meet, self host one if you can to further ensure your freedom and your community.

Share your favorite Free software program here and help others!

Day 4 of libreposting :-)

Context

In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked highly classified information on global surveillance ring that the NSA had been building for more than a decade since the passing of the Patriot Act in 2001 as a reaction to 9/11.

The leaks demonstrate that the NSA and other federal agencies have been routinely violating the people's right to privacy via the cooperation of US telecommunications companies. They were able to wiretap people's calls, collect metadata on all sorts of things, and be able to fetch any companies' databases at will.

This is still true today. Anything you put on US servers can be pulled by 3 letter agencies in a variety of ways, none of them taking very long. The 4th amendment is Not For Sale bill demonstrates the fact that these agencies can literally just buy this data from data brokers without any judicial oversight.

And remember They kill even with just metadata

So why does what I mentioned above matter? Well it's because email by itself is a hilariously insecure messaging platform. This is because, by default, emails are sent without End-to-End Encryption (E2EE), meaning that they can be snooped on at will by your email domain provider (which in turn will mean the government). Email are also notorious for being the hotbed of fraud and scamming activity as by default, you can't actually verify the emails you receive (the "from:" section can be spoofed).

EDIT: This article from latacora is a good source on the flaws of email that you should know about. Email has its use case, but encrypting your emails isn't a fix all, having a PGP key is very useful though!

Email Encryption

I highly recommend reading the article linked with this post. It goes over step by step on how to obtain a personal key for your email and how to send encrypted messages to others. If you're looking to sign up for an email account from a company not in PRISM then I recommend this article which lists some email services that you can use. I personally use Runbox btw.

• Webmail systems

Other than encryption, your personal key can be used to digitally sign messages which shows that the email you sent belonged to you and your key. This is especially important when you want to verify the authenticity of something, it's also a great way to show others that you have a PGP key. I also recommend reading up more on GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) in general as it appears a lot especially when you're downloading software over the internet.

Helpful Vocabulary

• "Public Key" is the key you share with others so that they can contact you. Think of it as your phone number.
• "Private Key" is the one you want to keep to yourself at all times. If this key gets compromised or lost, then you have to get a new one and tell others that your old one can't be trusted.
• "Personal Key" is a synonym for private key. It also can reference the private key and your public key together.
• "IMAP" stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is how one chooses to receive messages from a remote email server.
• "POP3" stands for Post Office Protocol 3 which allows you store all your emails locally on a device.
• "SMTP" stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is how you send emails to others through your email server.
• "Keyserver" is a server whose duty is to host people's public keys. However, the best way to get someone's public key is to simply ask it from them as sometimes key servers can have spoofed public keys.
• "GPG" stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is a free software implementation of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). GPG is a must learn program as it is instrumental to any Linux operating system. Frontends to GPG do exist however.
• "Thunderbird" is an email client developed by Mozilla. It's has a lot of a features including a frontend to GPG (it will even let you generate a key for yourself). This is the email client to use on Linux.

Remember! GPG isn't just for emails, but for any file that you want to encrypt!

Day 3 of libreposting hehehe

Context

The JavaScript Trap is the idea that webpages have the ability to transmit programs to the user in the form of uncompressed or compressed JavaScript ("ECMAscript") code. Nearly all web browsers with the exception of GNU Icecat will silently evaluate all of this code by default. Not all JavaScript code is malicious or noteworthy to the user, but much of a JavaScript code run today on the client side is nonfree and therefore creates an uneven relationship between the user and the program. Even if the JS code is intended to be Free, only a proof of license and documentation can ensure it will be Free for its users.

LibreJS

Therefore, the LibreJS extension was created for Firefox derived browsers to be able to dynamically block nonfree JavaScript while also permitting free or otherwise trivial JavaScript to be run.

LibreJS can be obtained directly from the GNU Project here, it can also be installed automatically from the Mozilla Addons page here as well as several workaround scripts for some websites here

LibreJS should not be confused with extensions like NoScript which is used to block any and all JavaScript for security purposes (mostly used when browsing the Tor network). LibreJS is concerned with blocking JavaScript on the basis of software freedom, not security (though many security benefits can be achieved by blocking nonfree JS).

LibreJS should also not be confused with something like Greasemonkey which allows users to create and run their own JavaScript or modify existing ones. Greasemonkey is an example of how users can control their own computing in their web browsers by being able to create their own scripts. Websites that block Greasemonkey (websites which will also include proprietary JS) are therefore unjust.

Hexbear

Lemmy itself is released on the AGPLv3 license, therefore all the JavaScript code from the project is Free. However, that doesn't mean that the code sent by hexbear.net to its users is Free. In fact, this code is unique to hexbear.net specifically.

In fact, LibreJS blocks two scripts from Hexbear that gets run when users connect and render the site in their web browser.

• The hexbear.net script is uncompressed JavaScript code that sets meta tags, styles, themes, and a custom script to presumably do something important (I am not a web engineer evidently).

• When it's done, it defers to the client.js script. This script is compacted JavaScript code which is unreadable to humans. It starts with this however:

/*! For license information please see client.js.LICENSE.txt */

LibreJS does not recognize this as free JS code, therefore it is blocked as well. This renders the site unusable as users cannot login nor see posts. They can see the site tagline so at least that code is trivial/free. The only solution is to whitelist the site completely.

Request

I ask the web admins of hexbear.net to liberate their JavaScript code so that it passes the LibreJS check. The resources on how to do that can be found below. LibreJS compliance will demonstrate that hexbear.net stands with creating a freer and more inclusive web for all and with the goals of libre software.

• Setting Your JavaScript Free
• An example of the web label system being used to declare licenses
• GNU documentation of LibreJS

¡Viva software libre!

Errata

• the client.js code is autogenerated by lemmy and has a free license. It has to do more with Lemmy itself rather than being an instance issue. Perhaps a feature request is in order?
• you can view the client.js license through LibreJS as well, so there's no issue with whitelisting.

We should have a comm profile picture for c/libre. I'm thinking of several candidates for this role.

GNU - seems the most simple, the GNU Project was the start of the Free software movement and its sister movement, the Open Source Initiative. It helps distinguish us from being a "/Linux" tech support comm/news aggregator. The problem being is that we are not affiliated with the FSF nor the GNU Project so using this symbol might not be appropriate. (Also I don't want to discuss RMS in any shape or form anymore on the internet)

Tux - No question the most recognizable icon in the public mainstream regarding Free software. Chubby cute penguin that just wants to hack and share software fairly and joyfully. This will make the comm click quickly with users but also has the downside of just making this strongly resemble a "linux" comm rather than an all encompassing libre software comm.

Xenia - The trans foxgirl alternative mascot you never heard about. I personally want this one to be the mascot because it's the most "hexbeary" icon (looking at c/games) you could pick and the most unique. It would pique curiosity while also not bringing a whole set of expectations to the comm like GNU or Tux.

I want to breathe life back into this comm and I think a profile pic would be a cool way to do it . This is also my first post btw of many to come. Viva software libre!

Full release notes: https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_0.21

Lots of improvements covering a wide range of workbenches.

RIP from an Emacs head.

A representative of MinTsifry told RIA that if it decides that pirate sites can be removed from Russia’s blocking register, unblocking would only be available to sites that a) offer pirated content from Western countries and b) those who comply with additional restrictions laid down by the authorities.

“The Ministry of Digital Development, together with industry representatives, is working on proposals to abandon restrictions on access to sites that provide unlicensed video content of Western majors, on certain conditions,” the source said.

“Such video content should not be legally presented in Russian online services, should not be rented in cinemas, and should not contain extremist materials and LGBT propaganda,” the source said.

:fies

The Z-Library crackdown and related domain seizures haven't put an end to the site, but the knock-on effects are causing confusion among the public. The action has fueled the popularity of several copycat sites, some of which have millions of monthly visitors. According to the Z-Library team, these "fraudulent" sites are dangerous and should be avoided.

...

The wave of new AI chatbots is not stopping anytime soon; another contender has jumped into the ring with ChatGPT.

Released recently, it's called 'HuggingChat.' The main focus of this chatbot is to provide a more transparent, inclusive, and accountable alternative to ChatGPT.

Don't get me wrong, HuggingChat is not the first open-source alternative to ChatGPT. We have covered open-source projects challenging ChatGPT.

However, HugginChat seems to be the first one available to access as a platform that appears similar to ChatGPT.

...

https://huggingface.co/chat/

https://huggingface.co/spaces

Drew is part of the woke mob

Internet Archive (Archive.org) being sued by copyrightists.

Following arrest of some alleged operators and the transition to more censorship-resistant distribution methods. An eLibrary becoming a physical library.

Forcing an upgrade to paid plan or deleting files after 6mos.

Because copyright owners aren't making money off it.

OpenCycleMap (http://www.opencyclemap.org/) and CyclOSM (https://www.cyclosm.org). Both are free to use and useful regardless of the type of bike one is using.

Miramax and beIN, for example, stated in their submission that around 90% of the Iraqi population watches pirated live sports events and other media content. That’s a remarkable figure that we have never seen in any official reports, and it also triggered the USTR to ask “how these estimates are formulated.”

:gigachad: :gigachad-hd: :gigachad: :gigachad-hd: :gigachad: :gigachad-hd: :gigachad: :gigachad-hd: :gigachad: :gigachad-hd: