Author Archives: Alireza Hayati

About Alireza Hayati

Hacker, cypherpunk, and user freedom activist.

Hello again, Pixelfed

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I created, changed, moved, and deleted a lot of accounts on fediverse, I’m not going to lie. Some of them were Pixelfed accounts. Since 2018, Pixelfed is bringing photo sharing to people without violating their rights. Pixelfed is free software and has much better privacy settings than Instagram.

I’ve had quite few Pixelfed accounts before but photo sharing was not my thing but since I’m trying to be more socialized and connected to people, I try to keep this account. I’ve explained about fediverse before, here’s a small note about Pixelfed.

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I’m switching from Fedora to Ubuntu

Aside

Update: You may also want to read this too regarding my problem with Fedora.

I’ve been a user of Fedora for a long time but I recently noticed a statement on Fedora download page:

By downloading Fedora software, you acknowledge that you understand all of the following: Fedora software and technical information may be subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (the “EAR”) and other U.S. and foreign laws and may not be exported, re-exported or transferred (a) to any country listed in Country Group E:1 in Supplement No. 1 to part 740 of the EAR (currently, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan & Syria); (b) to any prohibited destination or to any end user who has been prohibited from participating in U.S. export transactions by any federal agency of the U.S. government; or (c) for use in connection with the design, development or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or rocket systems, space launch vehicles, or sounding rockets, or unmanned air vehicle systems. You may not download Fedora software or technical information if you are located in one of these countries or otherwise subject to these restrictions. You may not provide Fedora software or technical information to individuals or entities located in one of these countries or otherwise subject to these restrictions. You are also responsible for compliance with foreign law requirements applicable to the import, export and use of Fedora software and technical information.

I believe this statement is an obvious violation of freedom of software. They didn’t talk about Fedora trademarks, they have only said that some people who are determined by U.S. government won’t have the right to use Fedora “software”.

This is the end for me and Fedora. I do encourage you to move away from Fedora (if you’re using it) and install another free (libre) distro. There’s a good list of free (libre) distors on gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html.

I’m very disappointed. Fedora was one of my favorites. I should mention that I continue to use QubesOS.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) and privacy (part 3)

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I’ve been informed that there’s many apps in various app stores to track people during coronavirus pandemic. Right now (May 24), there’s more than 5.3 million cases of coronavirus and near 350 thousand people are dead.

I believe many of them were also tracked, not only by these apps, but by Google and Apple too. Apple and Google are helping governments to track people‘s location status. This tracking technology release is an obvious violation of privacy.

People are convinced that these technologies and tracking is helping them but disadvantages of it is far more than its benefits. While people can be informed of the dangers in various ways that are not violation of privacy, these corporations are collecting personal information, obviously not to help people but for their own benefits.

People should be able to be safe without their basic rights being violated. Privacy is one these basic rights. Nobody should be forced to destroy its privacy. No matter what are the reasons.

Stop filtering domain names for email messages

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One of my problems with services that require invitation or entering your email address in any way is that some of these services filter acceptable domain names. Some of them only accept emails from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo (plus AOL) and that’s a problem for people like me who don’t use these email services for privacy reasons.

I opened an email account on ProtonMail but some of those services didn’t even accept ProtonMail, one of the most famous secure email services. Service providers should stop filtering domain names and email providers.

Make free software special again

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“Necessity is the mother of invention” is probably the best way to start a business. If your product is new to people, you need to make a sense of need for it. I believe in that sentence, however, I believe when we say need, we shouldn’t only think about the need for product.

People have different needs. For example, many people like to be famous, many people like to be rich, many people want political power, etc.

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Myths about VPNs

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A lot of VPN services advertise their service talking about things that are not true. Or, at least, has been given more importance than it should be. For a lot of people, VPN is useless and they only buy it because they have been targeted with false advertisement.

Here’s why you shouldn’t, or probably should, buy a VPN.

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Please provide RSS feeds

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I, personally, don’t read blogs that don’t provide RSS feeds. I think RSS is not still out of date and well, it’s still the best standard for subscribing to blogs.

RSS feeds make following a blog much easier. You just subscribe to a feed and it’s done. You open your favorite RSS reader and read your favorite blogs.

Please add a RSS feed to your blog. One of the reasons that social networks are popular now is that they provide a way of subscribing to people or topics. You can make your blog popular by providing such ability and that ability is for sure RSS.

I personally use Nextcloud News as my RSS reader but there’s a lot of popular and great tools. Mozilla Thunderbird, for example, is one of the bests I think.

Omar Khayyam’s commemoration day

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In Iranian Jalali calendar, today, Ordibehesht 28, is Omar Khayyam’s commemoration day. Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet.

Khayyam was born in Nishabur, in northeastern Iran in May 18, 1048. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle.

Khayyam is one of the best known Persian poets in world where a lot of English readers are also attracted to his poems. His poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald, which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle.

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again –
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden – and for one in vain!

Omar Khayyam