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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • Liking multiple people at once is super common. The love triangle is a trope for a reason.

    If you don’t like her then don’t worry about it (other than to maybe pay attention to how you’re acting around her and avoid flirting unintentionally) but if you’re interested in her, maybe try pursuing that? Flirt with her a bit and see if she reciprocates. If she likes you, there’s a good chance she’s been flirting with you and you’ve just been oblivious.

    If you’re too shy to intentionally flirt, you could ask her outright, but it’d probably be better to ask her something that hints at your interest, like “I like this girl but I can’t tell if she’s into me - what sorts of signs should I be looking for?” Should be pretty obvious what you’re both saying and asking.


  • Learn, understand, challenge, repeat.

    Learn as much as you can about all sorts of topics, even if you don’t have specific plans for those topics

    Learn enough that you don’t just know the facts, but that you actually understand why things are the way they are. You should be able to predict things you haven’t yet learned if you understand the concepts. If you don’t understand something yet, keep learning.

    Learn your fundamentals: language skills, math, logic, statistics, the science of research, history, politics, basic psychology, and the physics of whatever realm you’re operating in (meaning that in today’s day and age, you should learn about both real-world physics and about how information flows on the Internet).

    A lot of people don’t know how to teach themselves, so it’s probably important to point out that learning to do so effectively is a big part of thinking for yourself. Learning how information is presented, as well as what’s often left unsaid, is important. Learn how to read graphs and charts and statistics. Improve your information literacy: Learn how to find credible sources, how to judge the credibility of a source, and what “credible” actually means. It doesn’t mean infallible.

    As a general rule, don’t accept a fact until you have multiple credible confirmations of it. That might not be possible, but when information comes from untrustworthy sources, remember that. Learn the difference between something that you’ve learned and accepted and something that you’ve just heard on social media a few dozen times. This is easier when you have an understanding of what you’re learning. True things fit in better with other true things.

    Don’t assume things are false just because the source isn’t credible, either. Just do extra research to verify. Do your own experiments to confirm, if possible.

    Sometimes you’ll realize something you’ve accepted might be wrong, possibly because it conflicts with something else that you learned. When facts don’t add up, challenge them. You’re not infallible. Replacing a fact you accepted long ago isn’t a failure; it’s a victory. Many people are incapable of doing so.

    Learn to distinguish between facts, inferences, theories, and opinions. (Note that established, accepted scientific theories often fall into the “fact” category.) Facts are verifiable. Inferences are based on facts; they’re evidence-based conclusions that can help to build theories. Theories are explanations, and they can be disproven but haven’t been proven (else they would be facts). Information presented as facts can be false. Theories and inferences can be poorly formed, even if the facts are sound (and especially when they are not). “Opinion” is a word people use to defend flawed theories. If the opinion isn’t a preference, there’s a good chance it isn’t an opinion at all and is just intentional misinformation. “You can’t argue with my opinion” isn’t applicable when the “opinion” is provably false - then it’s just a failed fact, inference, or theory. And even when it is an opinion, it can still be criticized.

    Learn about logical fallacies. Even if you don’t call out the person using them, try to notice them in the wild, both by people you agree with and people you disagree with. But especially by people you agree with. Learn how to notice other ways people are misled.


  • Good catch, I didn’t realize that with AnyType. That makes my first recommendation to OP just SilverBullet, then. Source available is better than nothing, like with Obsidian, but OP specifically asked for FOSS repos. It looks like their peer to peer sync server is MIT licensed, but their client (and client library) code is licensed under the “Any Source Available License 1.0,” which restricts use other than for “personal, academic, scientific, or research and development use, or evaluating the Software, but does not include uses where the Software facilitates any transaction of economic value.”

    I ruled out Logseq’s sync service due to it being both paid ($60/year minimum) and not FOSS, both things OP asked for. For my purposes, since it’s not FOSS and not able to be self hosted, it’s not a good option. But it makes sense to use the same file syncing solution that’s already in use, whether that’s FolderSync (or some equivalent tool) set up to sync to my server, Syncthing (though I just realized its Android client is no longer being developed as of December 2024), or even Cryptomator + some cloud storage service.


  • Since you’re already using Standard Notes - have you checked out Awesome Standard Notes? You can use the community extensions - editors, themes, etc. - even with the free plan.

    It’s my main note-taking app, but I also got the 5 year paid plan for $150 (IIRC) a few years ago, and prices have increased substantially since then. If I weren’t locked into a lower rate, I’m not sure I’d subscribe at the current rates (though I would look into the self-hosted Pro discount before ruling it out). That said, if you don’t need note linking, queries, and those sorts of things, then I think the free plan of Standard Notes + community extensions is a great option. If I self-hosted the server, the main thing I’d be missing over the paid plan is nested tags.

    Logseq (repo) might meet your needs if you’re okay setting up a sync service like Syncthing on every client you use. Of course, you could use Dropbox, Google Drive, etc., but I recommend against it without a layer like Cryptomator in between, since your data is store in the clear. IMO it doesn’t really make sense to self-host Logseq - just use the native app that’s available on basically every platform. I find Logseq kinda confusing, honestly, but it has a lot of compelling features.

    SilverBullet may be what you’re looking for. It must be self-hosted and has a PWA instead of native apps, but the PWA on mobile at least is quite good. Since it uses Markdown files for its notes, you could use it with some other tool on the machine hosting those files, if you wanted. I have it self hosted myself and it’s the best alternative I’ve found to Notion and Obsidian when it comes to querying my own notes and so on.

    Someone else posted about Outline and I think it’s a fantastic, polished option. I know that you said this is for solo use, so you probably don’t care about its collaboration features, but you also mentioned managing personal projects, and its integrations (e.g., Airtable) could be useful for that. I have it self-hosted and it is a bit more complicated than other options, but I don’t think I ran into any particular issues. I’m using it with Authelia as an OIDC provider and can share my docker-compose file and other config if that would be helpful. They also have a paid, hosted option, which you can try out for 30 days if you want to see if it’s right for you before you put the time and effort into self-hosting it. One of my most-used editors in Standard Notes is the Rich Markdown Editor, which is based off the editor used in Outline. However, unlike SilverBullet and Standard Notes,

    Hedgedoc is another option that may be worth looking into. It’s my go-to collaborative editor / gist replacement. Personally, I prefer it over Outline. Its main shortcomings are that:

    • it must be self-hosted (though you could use HackMD aka CodiMD, which it was forked from, as that does have a hosted version)
    • it doesn’t have an app (on any platform - not even a PWA)
    • it doesn’t have any sort of querying capabilities, and
    • it doesn’t have any sort of Kanban-like tool.

    But it does have several built-in integrations, like Mermaid and multiple other diagramming tools, inline images (just drag and drop), syntax highlighting for code, Gist embeds, Youtube embeds, optional Vim/Emacs keybindings, a slide deck presentation mode, inline CSV tables, etc., and that’s all without needing to mess with plugins or switch between editors.

    I hadn’t used AnyType before today, but it’s been on my radar since late 2020, and it’s pretty powerful. It’s not perfect, but it seems to check off everything you’re looking for. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but it’s been easy to jump in and take notes.

    It’s hard to know which to recommend you try, though, because your list of criteria don’t all map neatly to features. For example, what do you want from planning vs managing personal projects? What do you mean by “journaling?” Is having a “journal” section where notes get dates sufficient? Do you like the way Standard Notes or Logseq handle journaling, or are you looking for features like what jtxBoard has?

    I’m assuming the following for my table below:

    • Quick Notes - easy to create a new note and just write some stuff. Needing to fill out any required fields (even “title”) make this a ❌
    • To-do lists - checkbox lists. You have to be able to add a new item by pressing enter and mark an item off just by checking the box.
    • Managing and planning projects:
      • Kanban / Trello style board - without needing to integrate with a non-FOSS third party service (this is why Outline gets a ❌)
      • Linking to another note in the body of a note (Standard Notes lets you create a link in the tag bar - this doesn’t count)
      • Embedded querying of your other notes, treating notes like objects - really the thing that makes Notion so powerful
      • Easy table editor
      • Diagrams - Mermaid, Excalidraw, or a similar plugin that works natively
    • Easy to use - auto-saving of notes, automatic synchronization that “just works,” rich text copy-paste, etc…
    • Offline mode - You didn’t mention this, but I’m calling it out since it’s otherwise easy to take for granted.
    • Publishing - you mentioned not caring about collaboration, but being able to publish a note is still useful in solo-only workflows, as it gives you a way to reference it directly from a bookmark, some other tool, etc., potentially from a device where you aren’t authenticated.
    Standard Notes 1 SilverBullet Outline LogSeq Hedgedoc AnyType
    FOSS
    Sync ❌ (Paid)
    Quick Notes
    To-Do Lists
    Kanban Board Sorta
    Links to Notes
    Queries
    Table Editor
    Diagrams
    Linux App ✅ (PWA) ✅ (PWA) ❌ (Web App)
    Android App ✅ (PWA) ✅ (PWA) ❌ (Web App)
    Easy to use
    Usable offline
    Free
    Easy inline images
    Publish

    [1]: For Standard Notes, I’m not assuming that you’re self-hosting the server, but I am assuming that you’re installing community extensions, particularly Rich Markdown Editor or something similar.
    [2]: For Silver Bullet, I’m assuming that you’re installing community plugins.

    I recommend you try AnyType and/or SilverBullet first, depending on which one looks more appealing to you.




  • Giphy has a documented API that you could use. There have been bulk downloaders, but I didn’t see any that had recent activity. However you still might be able to use one to model your own script after, like https://github.com/jcpsimmons/giphy-stacks

    There were downloaders for Gfycat - gallery-dl supported it at one point - but it’s down now. However you might be able to find collections that other people downloaded and are now hosting. You could also use the Internet Archive - they have tools and APIs documented

    There’s a Tenor mass downloader that uses the Tenor API and an API key that you provide.

    Imgur has GIFs is supported by gallery-dl, so that’s an option.

    Also, read over https://github.com/simon987/awesome-datahoarding - there may be something useful for you there.

    In terms of hosting, it would depend on my user base and if I want users to be able to upload GIFs, too. If it was just my close friends, then Immich would probably be fine, but if we had people I didn’t know directly using it, I’d want a more refined solution.

    There’s Gifable, which is pretty focused, but looks like it has a pretty small following. I haven’t used it myself to see how suitable it is. If you self-host it (or something else that uses S3), note that you can use MinIO or LocalStack for the S3 container rather than using AWS directly. I’m using MinIO as part of my stack now, though for a completely different app.

    MediaCMS is another option. Less focused on GIFs but more actively developed, and intended to be used for this sort of purpose.


  • Unless something has changed, it did. The page linked reads:

    And, obviously, this POC is open source, the code is publish here on our forge.

    The link takes you to their repos. The server repo has instructions on self-hosting directly on your server or with Docker. The app repo has code for both the iOS and Android apps. That’s good, because the iOS app at least doesn’t have a built-in way to select a different backend server.

    Whisper is by OpenAI and as far as I know they have not shared the training code, much less the data sets, so the best you can do is fine-tune the models they’ve provided.

    If use of Whisper is a problem, but the project is otherwise interesting to you, you could ask them to consider using a different STT solution (or allowing the user to choose between different options). I’m not aware of any fully open STT applications that are considered to be as capable as Whisper, but if you do, that would be great info to share with them.


  • Depends on your perspective. Would it be fine for Meta Threads to replace it? Threads supports ActivityPub, so in some ways it likely interacts better with the fediverse.

    If we agree that Threads isn’t a suitable replacement, then clearly there’s some criteria a replacement should meet. A lot of the things that make Threads unpalatable are also true of Bluesky, particularly if your concern relates to the platform being under the control of a corporation.

    On the other hand, from the perspective of “Twitter 2.0 is now a toxic, alt-right cesspool where productive conversations can’t be had,” then both Threads and Bluesky are huge improvements.


  • Eligible libraries, archives, and museums have a few exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clauses that aren’t available to ordinary citizens, but these aren’t unique to the Internet Archive. For example:

    Literary works, excluding computer programs and compilations that were compiled specifically for text and data mining purposes, distributed electronically where:

    (A) The circumvention is undertaken by a researcher affiliated with a nonprofit institution of higher education, or by a student or information technology staff member of the institution at the direction of such researcher, solely to deploy text and data mining techniques on a corpus of literary works for the purpose of scholarly research and teaching;

    (B) The copy of each literary work is lawfully acquired and owned by the institution, or licensed to the institution without a time limitation on access;

    © The person undertaking the circumvention views the contents of the literary works in the corpus solely for the purpose of verification of the research findings; and

    (D) The institution uses effective security measures to prevent further dissemination or downloading of literary works in the corpus, and to limit access to only the persons identified in paragraph (b)(5)(i)(A) of this section or to researchers or to researchers affiliated with other institutions of higher education solely for purposes of collaboration or replication of the research.

    This exemption doesn’t allow them to publish the content, though, nor would it provide them immunity to takedown requests, if it did.

    These exemptions change every three years and previously granted exemptions have to be renewed. The next cycle begins in October and they started accepting comments on renewals + proposals for expanded or new exemptions in April, so that’s why we’re hearing about companies lobbying against them now.


  • Dunno, I think regardless of the method used by the extension, I think any extension called “Bypass Paywalls” that does what it says on the tin can pretty unambiguously be said to be designed to circumvent “technological protection measures”.

    “Bypass” and “Circumvent” are nearly synonymous in some uses - they both mean “avoid” - but that’s not really the point.

    From a legal perspective, it’s pretty clear no circumvention of technological protection measures is taking place*. Yes, bypassing or circumventing a paywall to get to the content on the site itself would be illegal, were that content effectively protected by a technological measure. But they’re not doing that. Rather, a circumvention of the entire site is occurring, which is completely legal (an obvious exception would be if they were hosting infringing content themselves or something along those lines, but we’re talking about the Internet Archive here).

    * - to be clear, I’m referring to what was detailed in the request, not the part that was redacted. That part may qualify as a circumvention.

    In this case, it circumvents the need to login entirely and obviously it circumvents the paywall.

    Following the same logic, Steam could claim that a browser extension showing where you can get the same game for cheaper or free circumvents their technological protection measure. It doesn’t. It circumvents the entire storefront, which is not illegal.

    That’s the same thing that’s happening here - linking to the same work that’s legally hosted elsewhere.

    Though as you said, these guys should probably be sending DMCAs to the Internet Archive

    Yes - if they don’t want their content available, that’s what they should do. They might not want to do that, because they appreciate the Internet Archive’s mission (I wonder if it’s possible to ask that content be taken down until X date, or for content to be made inaccessible but for it to still be archived?) or they might be taking a multi pronged approach.

    Maybe archive.today is the problem? Maybe they don’t honor DMCA requests.

    Good point. If so, and if their site isn’t legally compliant in the same ways, then the extension becomes a lot less legally defensible if it’s linking there. That’s still not because it’s circumventing a technological protection, though - it’s because of precedent that “One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses,” (Source), where “device” includes software. Following that precedent, plaintiffs could claim that the extension promoted its use to infringe copyright based off the extension’s name and that it had knowledge of third-party action because it linked directly to sites known to infringe copyright.

    The Digital Media Law Project points out that there are two ways sharing links can violate the DMCA:

    • Trafficking in anti-circumvention tools - which is obviously not what’s going on here
    • Contributory copyright infringement - which is basically doing something described by the precedent I shared above.

    I’m not sure how the extension searches web archives. It if uses Google, for example, then it would make sense to serve Google ae DMCA takedown notice (“stop serving results to the known infringing archive.piracy domain”), but if the extension directly searches the infringing web archive, then the extension developers would need to know that the archive is infringing. Serving them a DMCA takedown (“stop searching the known infringing archive.piracy domain”) would give them notice, and if they ignored it, it would then be appropriate to send the takedown directly to their host (Github, the browser extension stores, etc) citing that they had been informed of the infringement of a site they linked to and were de facto committing contributory infringement themselves.

    Given that they didn’t do that, I can conclude one of the following:

    1. The lawyers are incompetent.
    2. The lawyers are competent and recognize that engaging in bad faith like this produces faster results; if this is contested they’ll follow up with something else, possibly even the very actions I described.
    3. The archives that are searched by the extension aren’t infringing and this was the best option the lawyers could come up with.

  • How is the accused project designed to circumvent your technological protection measures?

    The identified Bypass Paywalls technology circumvents NM/A’s members’ paywalls in one of two ways. [private]

    For hard paywalls, it is our understanding that the identified Bypass Paywalls technology automatically scans web archives for a crawled version of the protected content and displays that content.

    If the web archives have the content, then a user could just search them manually. The extension isn’t logging users in and bypassing your login process; it’s just running a web search for them.


  • I haven’t switched to Windows 11, but I also haven’t been using Windows 10, either. I’ve seen plenty of people say that Windows 11 is fine, but you should probably check with other students at your school who use the same software you do. Make sure your machine can be upgraded to 11, at least, since support for 10 is ending soon and that could result in software or services that you need being unavailable as well.



  • Each credit reporting agency offers this option, at no charge …

    It is highly recommended to lock your credit. Frankly, it should be locked by default. In September of 2017, Equifax announced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people.

    Note that, before this incident, it wasn’t consistently free. I remember it being free to lock, but costing $20 or so to unlock. A law passed in 2018 required credit bureaus to offer freezes and unfreezes (and to fulfill them within certain time frames) for free.

    Also note that you might need to look for a “freeze” instead of a lock. Experian charges $25/month for their “CreditLock” service, for example, but they offer a free security freeze.