The Mad Filkentist (original) (raw)
March 5th, 2022
| **04:56 pm - To the Russian people**This is my "crash and burn" post. I expect my account to be terminated shortly after I post this, but perhaps someone in Russia, if only a LiveJournal employee, will read it. If it's auto-blocked the moment I post it, that will be interesting information. My apologies for not being able to write in Russian. To whom it may concern: Putin is a monster engaging in an unprovoked assault on the people of Ukraine. His forces have attacked civilians and have recklessly attacked a nuclear power plant. His security apparatus is feeding you lies. The rest of the world sympathizes with the people of both Russia and Ukraine. You are victims of a latter-day Hitler. You defeated the Communists thirty years ago by simply refusing to obey. You can do it again. If you're working for LiveJournal and are told to report and censor "criminal" speech (such as this post), do it as slowly and poorly as possible. Find ways to slow down and frustrate Putin's apparatus. Give them useless answers to their questions. Find any little way you can sabotage their operations. Sometimes the most effective form of resistance is simply to do nothing. Walk away. Know that in America we regard you, the Russian people, as friends, and only Putin and his gang as enemies. We wish you the best and hope that very soon Europe will be at peace again. |
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March 16th, 2017
| 08:41 am - The Internet of Things and LawToday's Techno-Liberty post is a little late, because it's long and took some extra effort (and also because of a very nice concert last night). I discuss whether a regulatory or tort-based approach is the better way to deal with "Internet of Things" products that are so poorly designed that criminals and hacktivists can turn them into tools for DDoS attacks. |
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March 14th, 2017
| **07:04 am - This week in Techno-Liberty**Today's Techno-Liberty is a digest of recent events.Are you crazy enough to cross the border? The CBP is getting more Gestapo-like, but at least EFF has a new guide. I seriously recommend not taking your phone with you when you're traveling internationally.Confide had some serious problems. They've supposedly been fixed now, but what were they thinking, sending unencrypted messages without notification?The SEC decided not to approve a Bitcoin ETF. It doesn't like unregulated markets. |
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February 26th, 2017
| **06:55 am - LJ reported to block Dreamwidth crossposts**According to a recent update by the Dreamwidth staff, LiveJournal has been blocking access from Dreamwidth servers, preventing crossposting. This may be a technical glitch, but the possibility that it's retaliation against the exodus of users to Dreamwidth is hard to dismiss.Some commenters report that they're still able to crosspost or recently were. |
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February 21st, 2017
January 26th, 2017
January 17th, 2017
| **05:51 am - LiveJournal's move, explained!**There was a very good reason (from SUP's viewpoint of self-preservation) for LiveJournal's moving its servers to Russia. It's the same reason Russia has permanently blocked LinkedIn: A law requiring data on Russians to be in Russia, on servers with back doors for the government.I've put the full account on Techno-Liberty. As far as I can tell, no one else had previously put these pieces together in one article. |
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January 11th, 2017
| **06:32 pm - The LiveJournal move, explained!**While researching Internet blocking for Techno-Liberty, I came upon a Telegraph article that sheds a lot of light on the LiveJournal move: Russia has ordered internet providers in the country to block access to LinkedIn after the professional social network was found to violate data laws.Technology companies operating in Russia are forced to store data about Russian citizens on servers in the country, and a court ruled last week that LinkedIn's failure to do this should lead to it being banned.As far as I can tell, LinkedIn is still blocked. LiveJournal, owned by a Russian company, is in a much weaker position to fight back than LinkedIn. This makes the move even more disturbing, since the Russian government presumably wants the servers on its territory so it can snoop them more easily. |
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January 7th, 2017
| **05:14 pm - Exporting from LiveJournal**A simple way to export your posts is with the export page. Exporting as XML would work better in the long run than CSV. You have to export each month separately, though. It should be scriptable with the right tools. |
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January 2nd, 2017
**07:24 am - The Aleksei Kungurov case**Human Rights Watch has an account of the Russian government's treatment of Aleksei Kungurov ( kungurov), a blogger on LiveJournal. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for criticizing the Russian airstrikes in Syria. The article says that his account was also "hacked."Strangely, the article that supposedly got him jailed is still up. Running it through Google Translate shows content that matches HRW's description of what he said, but it seems odd that the government would jail him for what he said and not order his post removed. It starts with "Myth No. 7," though, which sounds like a continuation. I can't find anything that looks like the predecessor to that post, so perhaps the earlier post was deleted and this one overlooked.Even more confusing, there are recent posts to his journal. According to PEN, his wife is writing them. It looks like political criticism, though Google's translation is often bizarre: "All together we are neighing"? Researching this is hard, since I don't read Russian and a lot of the information is in secondary sites whose reliability I don't know anything about.Look for my normal chatting on Dreamwidth. I'm basically done with this account, aside from posts directly related to SUP and LJ. Some people are completely deleting their accounts in protest, but I don't see any point in censoring myself before they can censor me. |
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December 30th, 2016
| **05:09 am - End of the road for LiveJournal**I've got some very bad news about LiveJournal. Please feel free to link to this post or otherwise spread the information, but I'd appreciate it if you don't mention my real name.There have been rumors about LiveJournal servers moving to Russia. Most of the solid information seems to be on Russian-language sites, which I can't read. However, we have geolocation as a tool to confirm or dispel rumors. IPLocation.net lets you enter a domain or IP address and get information from several sources about its likely geographic location. This information isn't precise; sometimes it's actually the location of the upstream server, and it isn't too hard to falsify. My own geolocation jumps over several states, even though I'm sitting at home. In general, it's a pretty reliable tool for big websites. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any obvious way to make a site part of the URL, so you have to go to the site and enter a domain yourself.A couple of days ago, I checked www.livejournal.com and felt reassured when the result said it was in San Francisco. This morning, though, I checked madfilkentist.livejournal.com. All sources say "Moscow."My own LJ is now hosted in Moscow. **( So now what?Collapse )**See you on Dreamwidth!Current Music: Anatevka |
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December 28th, 2016
| 02:39 pm - Comrade! LiveJournal has moved its servers to Russia. Or at least so I've read; I'm still looking for reliable confirmation. I'm seriously thinking it's time to bail out and move entirely over to Dreamwidth. If the servers are in Russia, we have no privacy from Putin's goons. If you're in Russia, those goons can put you in jail for posting.As Brooke said, I'd like to be told when the parent company's parent company's ...Update: A geolocation check on www.livejournal.com (208.93.0.150) indicates it's still in California. It could be working with back-end servers anywhere, of course. |
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December 24th, 2016
| **05:36 am - A sad trend on Facebook**Recent years have seen a huge move away from openness and willingness to face ideas that are different. It's not just the left; the election of Trump wasn't a defeat for political correctness, but an affirmation of the Republican brand of intolerance.Now I'm seeing something I didn't think I'd ever see: Filkers on Facebook calling for a "safe space." Another term for is "echo chamber," but "safe space" is revealing; it says that people feel endangered when they can't control what they hear.Facebook is constantly building this kind of "safety" into people's feeds, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it's happening there. But a lot of filkers are on Facebook, and what happens there is bound to have an effect on filksings and conventions.If filk had been a "safe space" from the beginning, Leslie Fish would have been kicked out of the first filksing she stuck her face into. I might have lasted till the second. Is filk going to turn its back on what it's been all these years? I hope not. |
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December 19th, 2016
| **04:28 pm - Breitscheidplatz**My sympathies to all affected by the Breitscheidplatz deaths in Berlin, whether it was a deliberate attack or a horrible accident. |
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| **07:57 am - The dark time**The daytime keeps getting shorter, the weather has gotten cold (though with New England caprices like 50° F between two freezing days), and we all have our ways of dealing with it. Winter observations turn into a time to put up lights and express a hope for warmer days to come. This has nothing to do with any particular religion, though religions may translate it into their own terms: the birth of a savior, a light that outlasts its fuel, rebirth of the sun god, etc. It's the idea that no matter how bad things get, there's some kind of hope.In the spirit of that hope, I offer you my song "Beacons in the Darkness," sung by Heather Dale. |
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December 12th, 2016
**07:43 am - Techno-liberty**I need to start a new Project. Mad File Format Science is still going, but it's getting stale since I've been away from active software development. I'm putting together a new idea and could use some feedback.The idea is in a name: "techno-liberty." That is, the use of technology to maintain liberty. It wouldn't be about politics as such, but about the tools that are let people find paths to freedom, such as Tor Browser, Signal, GPG, Bitcoin, etc. I'd talk about not only their uses, but their weaknesses and abuses. In addition to blogging, I'd provide the best resource lists I could. During the Trump years, free speech will need any edge it can get.I already have a blog called "Techno-Liberty" within the Liberty.me website. I stopped posting when I found that liberty.me wasn't especially useful, and the site gives me even less control over the blog's appearance than wordpress.com does, so I won't continue it there, but the three articles give an idea of how I'd focus a new blog. In spite of its obscurity, that blog is the first hit when I search on "techno-liberty," so I don't have much competition in using the phrase.Sites such as the EFF do a good job on many issues, but I'd try to be more out on the leading edge, looking at new technologies and ways of using them.The site could later be the base for "extras" to go with it, guides and in-depth pieces that would be available for sale or to premium subscribers. I don't know yet what the best sales model is.Is this something you'd like to see me do? If so, please let me know.Current Mood:  quixotic |
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December 2nd, 2016
| **05:35 pm - Cause for concern**It looks as if the person who broke into the UK Filk Archive and posted a false notice of my death is getting more deranged. Based on an email I got, he's now trying to intimidate the hosts of a West Coast filksing. He has software to put together fragments of people's voices, and has used it in the past to threaten people and make it appear that I was calling.If you get an uncharacteristic phone call that seems to be from me, consider the possibility that it isn't. This person is a coward and has never tried to physically approach me in the twenty years he's been obsessed with me, so I wouldn't take any threats from him seriously. |
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| **08:48 am - Dispelling a rumor**It just occurred to me that I ought to mention this in a public post. The person who broke into the UK filk archive claimed to have taken control over my email account. To the best of my knowledge, my own email hasn't been compromised. |
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November 11th, 2016
| **05:57 pm - Please do not "Like" my posts**Argh. LJ, convinced that the best way to keep the people who prefer it to Facebook is to make it like Facebook, has added a "like" button. I just got an email saying someone has "like"d one of my posts. I don't know who. It doesn't even show up on the post. I don't see any setting in the notifications to turn that email off. The FAQ gives the helpful advice that I can turn off "like" by turning off comments.Please. Do not click "Like." Functionally, it's just a "spam me" button. |
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| **06:59 am - New userpic**Here's my newest userpic. Feel free to use or adapt it.For those with visual issues, it's a picture of Donald Trump's face with the word "THUG" superimposed.I'm intentionally making this post public. LJ is known to invent reasons for terminating accounts, so I know there's some risk, but speaking out is more important right now. |
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