sam
@sam@cablespaghetti.dev
786 following, 698 followers
https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-fediverse-instance-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html
@sam this was fun!
I spotted a typo: `apk install acme.sh`
Should be `apk add…`.
I also wonder if the periodic script actually runs with the .sh suffix? If my memory serves me correctly you may need to drop the .sh suffix or it will now run.
@sam MUST - RESIST - URGE - TO - BOOST. 😁
Also, very inspired domain name for a Homelab. 😂
Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band
A supposed band called The Velvet Sundown has released two albums of AI slop this month.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/half-a-million-spotify-users-are-unknowingly-grooving-to-an-ai-generated-band/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
@arstechnica What a profound, fundamental insult to everything that makes us human. Disgusting people.
@hedders @arstechnica you will see horrors beyond human comprehension but the worst part will be the things you won't even notice.
Project Hail Mary trailer.
If you’ve read the book, watch the trailer because it looks good!
If you’ve haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor and skip the trailer because it spoils a key element of the story. I can’t believe they put that in the trailer.
The book is fantastic and well worth a read. The movie looks good from the trailer.
I've had admin powers at 5+ companies' Google Workspace/G Suite over the past decade or so. Every single one had groups which were misconfigured, often so anyone in the whole company could join without approval or see the message history at https://groups.google.com without being a member at all.
This is because for any sensible configuration of Google Groups when using it for email groups you have to use the "Custom" permissions mode. The default Public mode doesn't allow external people to email the group, but does allow the whole company to see all the messages. The default Team mode, has the same problem of everyone being able to see all the messages.
Also let's not forget that dangerous little "Anyone in the organisation can join" toggle at the bottom which is on by default. So any random new starter can join your confidential company directors group and get all the emails sent to it.
Giving Google the benefit of the doubt here, I think the reasoning might be that Google Groups is intended as a kind of company forum, not for private email groups. However that isn't how anyone uses it in my experience...
@sam agree this is absolutely crazy, it's been like it forever, i wrote about it a couple of years ago as part of a guide on securing Google Workspace:
@sam it's simply because they sometimes neglect to annihilate the technology they merge with to give them an advantage. Google acquired Usenet archives in 2001, merged them with Groups, made Groups a "Usenet client" then pushed for Usenet obsolescence by having the new posts not use Usenet but using the same UI. Usenet was meant to be public, Groups was not. But you can't claim that if you use privacy by default.
Ok, EVERYONE so far has been all in on Mona. I used Mona up until Ivory was available. So I'm curious what people find most compelling about Mona vs other clients?
@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle I was an Ivory user, then started splitting time between Ivory and Mona, then eventually went all in on Mona. One of the things I really love about it is how customizable the UI look is. I know, silly little thing, but there are a number of custom built templates available to us and they’re amazing.
It’s also fast, stable, and works the way I like.
@ttscoff @drdrang @rho @fahrni @sashk @benfsmith @jimmylittle
@MonaApp works a lot better with VoiceOver.
@ttscoff Crazy amounts of customisation; no missing posts if you’re running more than 400 behind current.
@ttscoff been using Mona before ivory showed up. Dislike somewhat Mona’s UI: confusing settings, same with the way it shows quoted posts. So since ivory been out been using it primarily. Checking Mona occasionally.
This is going to be an experience!
@sam ..."vertically challenged"... like this way to phrase it 😄
Must be huge to hear Linkin Park live!
I tried tuning various parameters but after some reading came to the conclusion that lots of small files with very little RAM is about the worst case scenario for XFS.
This week, while I was in The Netherlands, we had an air source heat pump installed by Octopus Energy.
They seem to have done an *excellent* job, and we no longer have a gas boiler or even a gas meter!
So now, of course, I'm trying to work out if we can get solar and a couple of home batteries to increase our resilience - and eventually have close to zero bills... ⚡
On the resilience from home batteries and solar though, watch out. Most systems will turn off in the event of a power cut. It’s something about avoiding back-feeding to the grid. If you want this you need to specifically get a system with an “emergency mode” or something like that.
@dajb @sam @slothrop Would love to have a heat pump but our property couldn’t accomodate one. And there are plenty of good alternatives to Tesla, in fact Octopus has their own preferred one. But yes the real rub for us is retrofiting the off-grid capability. My recent calculations had us breaking even at year 10-12, the natural lifecycle of the battery.
Congratulations on the new heat pump! A colleague of mine had #Octopus install one for her earlier this year, and she's delighted with it. We went with #GoodEnergy because Octopus wasn't able to help us, but I'm convinced Octopus would've been better value if our house had been suitable.
We're not yet ready to buy a battery — I want to go through a winter with the new heat pumps so that I know how much capacity to buy — but I've heard good things about #Victron. You might give them a look. They seem to be a bit more expensive than canned systems like #Powerwall, but a lot more flexible.
@CppGuy @dajb @fedops @sam @slothrop
my relatives have a Victron system feeding a battery bank (Pylontech, not sure if those are still made).
A couple of weeks ago they lost grid power for around 1,5 hours. The Victron automatically isolated the solar/batteries from the DNO service cable to avoid backfeeding but kept the house on supply. It was daytime so most of the power demand was handled by solar, the battery reserve was barely touched. (there is a quite a high power demand in that house even during summer and yet it was possible to behave as normal for the entire duration of the power cut without even implementing load reduction measures).
@sam it's specifically the synchronization on the grid frequency. Your system needs to support "island mode". There are many that do.
On the autonomy aspect - do the math first. In our latitudes producing enough energy November - February means having a LOT of panel area. Especially if you plan to heat electrically.
@dajb @slothrop
@dajb we had one fitted two years ago, also by Octopus. The standard of work was superb.
As expected, by itself it doesn't save us much financially compared to gas heating but it's using one third of the energy, which is pleasing.
Good news, I fixed the radio in the retired police cruiser.
Bad news, the speakers appear to be disconnected.
Hopefully they just disconnected them, and didn't divert power to somewhere else.
It's a good thing I know a teensy bit about electronicals, this car is going to be an adventure.
@sam I should also probably try to figure out how to disable the child safety locks on the back doors. It no longer has the convict cage, but the doors don't open from the inside no matter their locked state.
We love stories like this 💜 www.reddit.com/r/linux_gami...
New Backyard Ultra world record by Phil Gore (AUS). 119 yards or 797.3km in 119 hours or 4days 23 hours. 😳🙌
https://runnerstribe.com/latest-news/phil-gore-breaks-backyard-ultra-world-record-with-119-loops/
@sam Maybe set less and/or smaller log buffers? See "logbuf" and/or "logbsize" mount options in the xfs man page. The default logbuf value might be too much for a memory-constrained system.
She's trying to install KeeWeb now, a tool she's used to. It's another deb, and once installed it just doesn't work. 😆
The Year of the Linux Desktop my arse.
I love Linux and open source in general. It just depresses we have zero chance of making a desktop that's non-nerd friendly. Your interface to the rest of the world has to be 100% usable and friendly, otherwise people bail immediately.
This should be a solved problem. But we can never agree on anything and make a "standard" interface that everyone can use. It's scratch-your-own itch and make yet another desktop/window manager/compositor/whatever.
ANYWAY.
Anyway I point new users at Linux Mint rather than Ubuntu now, but obviously everyone has their different opinions which is probably part of the problem. 🤷
@awfulwoman Agree. In addition to "own itch" also: assuming that "more choice" is always great and that if you provide several half-baked solutions, someone(tm) will improve them.
@simulo @awfulwoman I’m one of the nerds and I still prefer to use Apple stuff just because they give me a consistent UX. I don’t even bother to customise much, I’ll use it in the way they prescribe because then I don’t have to worry about it and can concentrate on the actual things I need to use a computer to do
@awfulwoman I used to love this aspect of Linux when I was a student and had time to mess around with stuff (like compiling Fluxbox from source because I didn't like the default window manager on the uni machines). Now I'm a grumpy old man and want things to Just Work.
@awfulwoman this makes me flash back to when OS X first appeared and all the BSD folks were going "oh, it's just built on FreeBSD". YEAH BUT IT ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKED IN A SENSIBLE WAY
@awfulwoman The Year of the Linux Desktop is every single year from about 1997 to present, right?
Not sure about your arse.
@awfulwoman which version of Ubuntu is this? On my 24.04 desktop a .deb package is associated with the Software Install application and seems to just work as expected.
@_steve This is a 1 hour old 24.04 install.
@awfulwoman I just downloaded the same Dropbox package you are trying and it works correctly for me. I don't recall doing anything to my Ubuntu installation to make .deb association with the installer app. This install is only 10 days old or so.
@_steve So what's your expert opionin, Steve?
@awfulwoman Right click a .deb package and choose Open With... then make whatever app your default choice.
You are right that in this day and age it should just work. Could just be a fluke that it didn't on your install.
@awfulwoman Yeah trying to install a lone .deb package is always a pain.
If you're looking for a solution, there is a Dropbox flatpak from flathub. Which isn't enabled by default on Ubuntu, but once set up once, should be good to go. Definitely annoying, but then basically all software should be available from sort of repo.
I basically refuse to install a .deb file manually. I wish websites would stop advertising them...
Just saw this scrolling through Facebook. I don't know anything about the matter, but my point remains valid: using other people's platforms does not and never will guarantee the safety of your data.
@_elena 's video is extremely relevant: https://tube.bsd.cafe/w/64VuNCccZNrP4u9MfgbhkN
Somewhere in-between genuine compassion and schadenfreude, there's "brah, you shoulda known."
It's tiring to see people legitimise such terrible platforms by continuing to use them.
Well, there was a time that facebook was a fun place to be. And lots of FOSS friends are still on their because of inertia.
I don't know if anyone remembers this, but circa 2008-2010, we used to call "facebook" "crackbook," because it was so addictive and enjoyable to use.
That was such a different era.
@stefano Meta did it well. If you are really a Linux user you cannot have a group in that shit called Facebook. They should have been thinking about it! Now they know. 😐
@stefano a group with 350 thousand members seems unfathomable. 😳
I've heard about multiple such group deletions. Honestly these groups are the only thing I miss. They remain the only game in town after FB killed all mailing lists and web forums. It's odd now seeing them going against their own prey^Husers.
@stefano Didn't Meta fairly recently (within the last year or so) classify Linux as some sort of contraband? I don't remember if they had it down as spam, malware or something else, but it was definitely one major online platform classifying discussions about Linux as something like that, and I'm quite sure it was one of Meta's.
Yes. It's your own data. Own your data. Data you own.
@foolishowl @mkj @stefano @_elena Meta runs on Linux pretty much entirely, so yeah.. whoever doesn't know that needs to know that.
@stefano @_elena I was just remembering how I trusted nyc.indymedia.org - I had some nice posts, and obits that got search listing matching NYT. Yes, and Nobel Prize winners. The took us down like bowling pins.
I am glad to hear what you are saying, because I've been eager to build it from scratch.
I wasted time asking people who were supposedly doing this, they were probably FBI and it has been years.
I am going to rebuild the IndyMedia network.
I want you to at least be a user.
@stefano I can only feel sad for people that set their own standing above highly toxic behavior of their platforms. They simply don't care and make business as usual, ignoring all facts and news. They could've stand up, used their voice to rebel or search for another place, coordinated and calmly. Instead they said "I don't care, I'm not affected", until they are - then they scream for help and how cruel the world is to them.
Sorry, but I don't get the point.
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe A bunch of trans groups, including transgender shitposting and several of its moderators, all got nuked too. They say it was a mistake but have gotten zero word on anything being restored.
@stefano @_elena They were warned. It happened in January 2025, something about Malicious Software. If it happened once it could happen again. https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-accidentally-blocks-users-from-posting-about-linux
How does an org own their own data today? Not only do all Social Media Apps feel free to separate users from their data with no repercussions, so too can and do all Cloud hosting companies, whether free or paid.
The only way for an org to truly own their own data is build out a server farm in someone’s garage!
Welcome back to 1980!
@crashdive @_elena Not exactly. We can still buy/rent servers in datacenters and manage them. It's not hard, it's not dangerous. They've fundamentally convinced us that we're obligated to pay for "cloud services" to access essential functionalities, touting SaaS as a beneficial model, and so forth. However, from my perspective, any solution that locks us into a particular offering or vendor will inevitably, at some point, become our confinement.
@stefano @_elena A really decent, performant #OpenSource forum software such as #Flarum, #PhpBB, or #Discourse, is right there. Do any of your 350k subscribers have a #RaspberryPi 5 lying around (wth an NVME drive), and have expertise? Flarum or PhpBB would run performantly on it for a huge number of concurrent users. Where is your #OpenSource spirit, to take things into your own hands?
@readbeanicecream @stefano @_elena I don't get it either - folk who are smart enough to install Linux (which whilst easier than before still isn't a trivial amount of effort) are usually smart enough to use forums. Also sorting out the inevitable problems that can occur with Linux (or any other OS TBH) often require detailed discussion that Facebook is pretty useless for..
@readbeanicecream @stefano @_elena I'm on a few car-related FB groups and they are no good either for sharing detailed info, only links to stuff you can buy or sell (which is exactly how Meta wants it, but not as much good for Linux)
@stefano Reminds me of my big long rant in 2022 entitled "Never Build Your House On Someone Else's Land"
You never know how a provider builds its psych profile on you, and what it chooses to read into an activity or a membership. Linux users, for example, might be considered too fact-based or independent to be allowed to participate on Meta's platform. It's about controlling the megaphone.
This is why I left facebook
I was writing there for 10 years
My thoughts about communism, climate threat windfarms, veganism, miracle meat, mass immigration, taxation and healthcare
I never made threats. I used a politically correct language. I wrote up to 10 posts a day. I was very active. I set the posts so only a select tiny group of 800 people could see them.
My content was sometimes copied, and ended up in print.
Then one day 97% of my content got censored.
So I left
@stefano @_elena Why would tech savvy people be running a group on farcebook when they could just buy some cheap web hosting and set up their own forum. It takes 5 minutes and you have 100% control, and hosting is cheap. Even better, forum systems have actual usable search functions, not the shitty FB system which is as much use as tits on a bull...
How many groups does this have to happen to before people start to get the message?
Also, what is the point of having a 350,000 member group?
Back when I did use that cesspool, many groups were obsessed with size, in and of itself. Like twitter follower counts, there's an interest there in something other than social communication.
The whole setup is fucked.
The last group I was in there had just crossed 1000. The group owner was overjoyed, but at even 100 the quality was garbage, mostly noncontributors, ... then all the scammers.
At this point, I'm glad I went to through all that; now I know how it works. Truly fucked up shit.
I don't know how many web sites out there implement Webmention (I guess very few), but given that it has been very simple to implement, here it is.
Long live the non-big-tech Internet.
I quickly restarted the service from the platform but then it got killed again and I didn’t notice until this evening. I have now rebooted the server, maybe that will help until I get home from my camping trip with my kids.
For those who don’t care about my latest ADHD obsession, don’t worry I’m sure I’ll move on to a different one soon, and here’s a steam train…
#Meshtastic users on the UK South Coast - seek and destr...er, educate.
They're still sending this evening - less frequently, but still.
https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-fediverse-instance-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html
@sam this was fun!
I spotted a typo: `apk install acme.sh`
Should be `apk add…`.
I also wonder if the periodic script actually runs with the .sh suffix? If my memory serves me correctly you may need to drop the .sh suffix or it will now run.
> So consistent with the theme of this series, I found the oldest and slowest 2.5" hard disk (an IDE 40GB Fujitsu from 2004), random USB adapter and a powered USB 2.0 hub to connect up to my terrible server.
https://cablespaghetti.dev/fedi/sam/p/1750370660.367621
I like this idea of hosting web stuff at home with the most basic stuff you have lying around (see also http://home.wezm.net/~wmoore/cgi-bin/about.cgi). We need a name for such things. Someone needs to come up with something better than #DustyDrawerComputing or #TerribleServer @sam
'Meredith,' some guys ask, 'why won't you shove AI into Signal?'
Because we love privacy, and we love you, and this shit is predictable and unacceptable. Use Signal ❤️
@Mer__edith
Personally I like Signal, and for me it works well, but when I have tried to get friends to use it, several have reported that they never get notifications of new messages. They are generally using older phones. Those friends all switched back to WhatsApp.
This happened to two friends of mine too.
At least for IOS (and they have a fairly new device) there seems to be an extra stage required to reliably get new message notifications (possibly due to IOS's own privacy settings).
How to fix this is shown on the Signal site somewhere, but it doesn't always seem to work "out of the box".
Both my friends are quite tech aware and one of them runs his own IT company but even he struggled with it a few years ago (he subsequently upgraded his device and it started working).
@vfrmedia
Its always iOS users, there was an article on Mastodon recently saying its due to iOS throttling battery usage of infrequently used apps, so much that the app never gets a time slice to check for messages, there was a claim that European consumer laws were going to be used to require apple to fix this. Long story short, it isn't something signal controls. Apple does.
@bytebro @Mer__edith
@Mer__edith Why would anyone want LLMs in an app as simple as Signal.
KISS!🙈
It can sent and receive messages - job done. Please do not cave in, like ever!😍
@Mer__edith
Not AI, PI. Pseudo Intelligence. Not that I want either but actual AI is not a thing. It'll turn up at some point though, so we need to build the distinction now.
@Mer__edith Thank you so much Meredith.
Each time I hear you taking a stand for privacy and against surveillance and AI gimmicks I am increasingly happier with my monthly donation to Signal
@Mer__edith misleadimg article.
It should say "chatbot did not know, so it just made up a number which just happens to be a working one"
@Mer__edith I would love to know who is asking for this, and why they're doing that.
I especially want to know if any of these people are actually users, rather than grifters.
I don't think I've ever spoken to a human who said "oh, I wish there was more llm in the application I use to chat with people".
@Mer__edith I suspect it didn't share a user's number, it hallucinated a set of 11 digits that looked like a phone number and it happened to be valid. But that's not as good a headline.
@Mer__edith
Not a mistake. A mistake requires intent (to do something else), and intent requires knowing wtf you are doing, not stringing together words with a sufficient probability of looking like a sentence.
@Mer__edith This is what we get when the CEO and the company care more about their users than their shareholders and profit. And, for that, thank you!
@Mer__edith I know this is only semi-related to your post but can we pause and appreciate the moment where that guy on Bluesky tried to explain to the PRESIDENT OF THE SIGNAL FOUNDATION what Signal’s future plans and business strategy are? Because it was such a chef’s kiss moment for me that I want to tape the screenshot to my wall.
@Mer__edith
Dear tech companies,
Please stop putting AI in everything, unless you replace your CEO with AI.
Imagine all the money you could save if you replaced the CEO with AI! It's not as if the AI would make worse decisions than your current CEO.
@Mer__edith The last two years of Gen AI reminds me of a debate I had with developers about bug severity. Dev Mgr would only rank level 0 if the app broke and wouldn't run. I found a calculation that provided erroneous results in the final report of our business analytics app. Dev Mgr would not call people in on the weekend.
"But our customer is going to make bad decisions based on false data we made and go out of business! That's worse than no answer"
@Mer__edith As now a quite long time Signal user - I have never used AI and either disabled it or left places using it or ignoring stuff it provides - who thinks it a good idea bar those wanting to spy on us and steal data by connecting dots that otherwise they'd miss
@Mer__edith but i saw some rando confidently mansplain that it was definitely happening
(not sure anything funnier has happened since)
"In March, a Norwegian man filed a complaint after he asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT for information about himself and was confidently told that he was in jail for murdering two of his children, which was false."
That sounds like an opening for a #BlackMirror episode.
#OpenAI, #ChatGPT. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number
@sam that's a really icky feature.
@sam I know there's fedi instances that have bots that post whenever anyone from an external instance blocks someone.
E.g.
Block Report Bot:
@PersonMindingThierOwnBiz@mastadooon.social has just blocked KingOfTheNazis@FreezePeach.Hate
@sam What was this in response to? The thread isn't working.
This happens so infrequently I'd like to print out the original and get it framed.
Points will be given for amusing my 6 and 7 year old children and immense gratitude will be given if it stops them waking me up at 5am when it’s light early in the summer.
"Butter me an otter, I'll be back for breakfast" is a thing I just said to Mrs Wife. #NoContext
@hedders
Did the otter eat the kippers?
@HighlandLawyer It smoked the kippers.
https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-static-site-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html
@sam I think there might be something wrong with it?
@sam No, it still looks the same for me:
@sam Yeah, see my other answer (possibly not fetched by our poor Pi yet? 😉 ), I only have the issue on Firefox, Chrome displays it just fine.
@sam Okay, just tried it in Google Chrome (previous screenshots were Firefox), and there it's looking fine.
There are some HTML validity issues I’m seeing if I put it through validator.w3.org that I will endevour to fix. Maybe it’ll help. 🤷
@sam Okay, in that case it really looks like the issue is on my end, when you're seeing it properly in Firefox.
At no point did I say this was an optimal configuration for a website and social media account!
@sam looking all good now. 👍 Definitely on my to-do list moving my blog over and running on a static site.
I like the look of https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog i saw @cartron mention.
@sam Nice article! I love how you managed squeeze out more by compressing the pages
A few tips and tricks:
- you dont need to type the ssh key from the installer. at the "enter ssh key" question you can write "al <user>", "gl <user>" or "gh <user>", which will download your gitlab.alpinelinux.org, gitlab.com or GitHub.com <user>s ssh keys. or you should enter an https URL to your keys.
- `echo rc_after=ntpd >> /etc/conf.d/lighttpd` to make it start after ntpd.
@sam you can set up a headless machine by adding a USB stick (or any partition) with vfat label "cidata". on this you add a file meta-data with:
local-hostname: myhostname
and a file named user-data with:
#alpine-config
ssh_authorized_keys:
- ssh-ed25519 ...
packages:
- lighttpd
- tmux
A subset of cloud-init's config is supported.
With this you don't even need a screen or keyboard.
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