Creative. Minimalist. Read English Lang/Lit at uni, became a sysadmin/coder. Periodically runs a business or two. Green tea. Black coffee. Runs on chocolate. Pretends to surf. Recovering Drum 'n' Bass addict.
The movement is towards a free web, unimpeded by the silos that threaten to own us, and liberated from social-networking norms that diminish our individuality.
And yet, there isn’t actually one movement; there’s two. In fact, there are many more than two, but I’ll focus on just these for now.
Friendica
Friendica is a social networking platform which is decentralised, distributed and fully privacy-respecting. It is, of course, open source too. Friendica’s purpose is to be an ‘alternative to those “creepy” social networks that don’t really care about your privacy’. It is primarily a web site with components that interact with other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) as well as other instances of Friendica.
Friendica requires self-hosting.
Indieweb
Conversely, the “Indieweb” is more of a concept than a specific implementation. Its guiding principle is that “When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation.” Although similar ideologically to Friendica, the implementation is less defined. Some people have implemented it via WordPress plugins, others through Jekyll and other static blogging systems.
Indieweb’s principles can even be implemented in “closed” systems, provided the data can always be accessed by its owner.
Free software such as Linux is great at many things, including keeping your data very safe. That is, if you are in relative control of it yourself.
Transferring sensitive files from one machine to another – offline, via USB stick.
Linux is also used by the likes of Google, Facebook, et al., not to mention most western governments. In fact, its flexibility, suitability and cost-effectiveness means it’s pretty much there, in most pieces of consumer electronic equipment, plus any networking kit employed in telephone exchanges and data centres, through to the end points – the receiving servers which constitute “the cloud”.
Its use and application is rich and strange: sometimes in your interests, and often, arguably, not so. But whether you’re a Linux/UNIX, Windows or Mac user, taking care of your own data is vital for a life of value!
Making your digital life private, again
Is it possible to retract data that you previously opted to store online, and be confident that cloud service providers no longer keep it stashed somewhere? There are two responses to this:
“yes”
“no”
Let’s assume for a moment that “yes” is, by far, the prevailing truth. “Yes”, data which I previously uploaded was properly deleted when I deleted it, and an online service provider no longer has any copy, nor any meta data about my data (ok, I’m laughing now).
“there are many ways in which you can protect your data, and protect your privacy”
Many of us have done it: uploaded photos to Google Photos, posted images or event information to Facebook, shared our location on Twitter, set up an account on … well, the list goes on. But forgetting the “privacy” policy of such entities, just for a second (well, ok then – it’s not that easy to put aside “We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others”, but even so!!), there are many ways in which you can protect your data, and protect your privacy. It starts with a little effort and time.
First things, first: get a backup routine!
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is your data security. For example, consider the following:
Is any of your personal data stored on company equipment?
Do you absolutely know, hand on heart, that your data is backed up?
Did you go ahead and do that yourself?
Did someone sign a certificate and say, in no uncertain terms, that they did that on your behalf?
When?
When did you last audit your data?
A friend of mine recently lost years of pristine digital photos due to a failure of company equipment (“the company laptop”) and because he hadn’t backed them up to a secondary device – even though he had one of sufficient capacity in his possession!
Don’t let this be you! Get a routine in place for backing up. Even if it’s only monthly, usually cameras and phones have enough capacity to store a month’s worth of shots.
Designate somewhere safe for your backup!
A safe location can be anywhere. You don’t have to get a fireproof safe – although I’m not saying don’t! But if you backup your personal data at home, try not to keep your backup at home. A USB drive costs so little these days, that it’s the perfect medium for backing up photos and then taking it to work and locking in your desk drawer.
Encrypting your data is always a good idea for a removable storage device, provided you can easily remember a strong password. Although the ease of managing encrypted removable storage varies between operating systems (note, it is very easy to encrypt data on GNU/Linux).
Test restoring from your backup and backup again!
A backup is no good if you can’t restore files from it. Luckily, with a simple backup process you can easily monitor and validate that your backups have occurred successfully. If you are confident that your system backups work ok, do another one. Then store. Wash, rinse, repeat.
How does this keep my data private?
By setting a rule for yourself to back-up your own data, you won’t become so dependent on cloud services for backing up your photos.
Common objections to keeping data off the cloud include the oft-argued (but ill-conceived) notion that it’s free of cost. Let’s just examine this for a brief moment:
Data centres cost hundreds of thousands, to millions of £/$/€ to build
Running costs are tens to hundreds of thousands of £/$/€ each month
They must be staffed, too – requiring monthly salaries
If everyone is uploading for free, how can it pay for itself?
There must be an end-purpose: the end does not justify the means!
The value of your “free” data storage is in the metadata that is stored with it. Tied to your user account (that same user account you might use to log in to other services, signifying your activity at other times even when not using the primary service…) is data – in the form of metadata – that describes it quite clearly.
What photo metadata tells my cloud provider about me
That photo which was kindly synced to your cloud provider’s account will contain data, like:
Where you were (where you live, work,visit, or where friends, family live, work, etc)
What local time it was (when you may not be working, placing you into a social demographic)
What equipment you were using (which brand you like to buy)
What network you were using (who you are a customer of)
What the weather was like at the time of the photo
Who you were with from the faces of people you were with & photographed … thus registering where they were at that time too (thanks to facial recognition technology and perhaps against their will)
Due to prominent colouring in the photo, whether you were inside or outside
… and much more.
When free is not free
If I am a massive indexing engine and I start aggregating and analysing these data, I will be able to determine some interesting trends:
How many people use my service in an area/region/country
How many people who use the service were in a particular area/region/country at a specific time
How many of those use Camera brand “B” or Phone brand “A”
How many faces I recognise (people who have opted in to facial recognition)
Who is in whose “networks” and extended networks (friends of friends)
How many faces I don’t recognise (potential targets for acquisition – new users)
How many people like being outdoors on a bright, dry day
And how many don’t
Whether you like being outdoors … or not
Who you like being with during those conditions
What you might be doing at that time, on that type of day, in those conditions, with those people, while using your “brand X” device.
we are now at a stage where it is easier to get a phone, and rely on Facebook for photo storage
Some people I know seem apathetic towards online security, and yet suspicious towards cloud service provider’s intentions too. Perhaps we are now at a stage where it is easier to get a phone, and rely on Facebook for photo storage, than to “bother” seeking alternatives. “The answer is not readily to hand, so let’s move on.”
Living a life less ordinary
The problem with systems is that they need parameters. Do a search on something, somewhere, and you’ll be sure to see ads and sponsored links of that thing, somewhere else. This is, and has been for a while, the new internet “norm”.
Breaking out of this “think, search (hunger); feed (consume with contextual data)” lifestyle has been described as the “search bubble”. A self-fulfilling data management and presentation matrix based on your lifestyle habits.
By adopting a simple routine such as taking care of your own data and not subscribing religiously to online services, it’s possible to find not only more sanctity in life’s unique moments, but also more richness from the due consideration of others. Where people know you a little less, and are curious to know you a little more.
Free software such as Linux is great at many things, including keeping your data very safe. That is, if you are in relative control of it yourself. Linux is also used by the likes of Google, Facebook, et al., not to mention most western governments. In…
What’s going on with Facebook’s suggested friends feature…?
I use my phone for personal and business reasons, so I have a number of contacts on my phone relating to work, most of whom I would never “friend request” on Facebook.
Also on my phone is my Google+ “following” list – i.e. people I follow. These people too I would never befriend on Facebook because, well, there’s no point!
Yet, recently, people have started appearing in my Facebook “suggested friends” list, the details of which can only have come from my phone’s Contacts. For instance, an old neighbour’s profile has appeared, whose only details I had were his mobile phone number – NO other social connection.
Then, people only in my G+ circles who I would have absolutely no connection with on Facebook, even in an extended network, started making an appearance. This seems to be people who are also quite prominent on G+; those who make a number of posts a week, or even per day.
Now, even a client’s profile has made a recent appearance. This is decidedly awkward, not to say infuriating.
I had never permitted the “Continuous Upload of Contacts” feature in Facebook, nor uploaded manually any contacts. I do acknowledge and accept that the app used the Contacts permission in order to access my addressbook, for writing to, but I am now wondering, was it uploading my addressbook without my knowledge or consent?
It seemed to get worse when I removed the Facebook app from my phone, but the problem was already present. How else could this be explained? Is Facebook scraping the web for my other social connections? How could it otherwise know about my client or my old neighbour?!
I posted these thoughts on Facebook and at least one friend on there has confirmed he has observed the same change in his “suggested friends” list.
Very interested to know if anyone else is seeing this…
Looking for a free software program to help me learn to touch-type, and shortly after my search started I found GNU Typist. And GNU Typist (gtypist) is a gem.
The instructions are simple and the purpose of the program is equally simple: to “condition” the user into adopting and maintaining good typing habits. After starting the basic lessons (“Quick QWERTY course”), it soon became clear that my touch-typing capability was far poorer than I had hoped and my typing speed these days is generally just luck-driven.
Thankfully, a considerate fellow called Simon Baldwin decided to write gtypist, and here we are. The online documentation is equally useful; not only do you get help regarding how to acquire, install and invoke gtypist on your machine, but also a list of alternative free software typing programs which are a good fit in various situations (general, education, games-playing, etc). Like most GNU software, a man page is also provided.
It is so easy to take this effort for granted, and yet how useful is this resource! Such is the way with free software: quite often, somebody already had that itch and had to scratch it.
Looking for a free software program to help me learn to touch-type, and shortly after my search started I found GNU Typist. And GNU Typist (gtypist) is a gem. The instructions are simple and the purpose of the program is equally simple: to “condition”…
Jetpack’s homepage is your standard, cloudy affair.
If you are a blogger, and you use WordPress, you will undoubtedly heard of Jetpack. Jetpack for WordPress provides a ton of enhancements to any WordPress install. Among the goodies is something for the socialite in all of us: the ability to automatically “broadcast” our blog posts to social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, via the Publicize feature.
All this free stuff of course comes with a “price” – having a user account on WordPress.com itself. But, if you are a blogger – or at the very least you read other people’s blogs and contribute comments – this is not exactly a hardship.
Set-up and Testing
Setting up Jetpack is as easy as installing a WordPress plug-in. If you are familiar with the process, you will probably have already seen Jetpack in the Add Plugin page.
The Publicize feature is equally easy to set up: you simply click on the button corresponding to the social network you wish to link with, a page/pop-up opens to allow you to authenticate with that social network, and then you return to the Publicize page with a “Connected as…” confirmatory message.
Jetpack confirming account connections.
The next step is to write a post and then publish it. Simple, huh? Well, not quite.
Content Formatting
Due to the different ways social networks publish posts, your “write once, publish many” WordPress post may need a little tweaking before it looks as good as possible.
Google+
Google+ rendered my blog post with lots of #whitespace ! 😐
Facebook
Facebook produced a worthwhile post, with backlink.
Finding the most effective way to post requires more testing. My main aim was to find a way in which one post can look great on the three main social platforms (Google+, Twitter and Facebook – not that I care too much about the latter).
[ This is a legacy-published post, originally written but unpublished on 13 August 2015. Some details may not longer apply to recent software releases. ]
Seems that my clever little spelling ideas have fallen foul of the English language yet again!
I believed that a double-S in a word (like “hiss“) always requires a soft “ssss“, whereas a single-S is harder – a bit like “szszsz“. But no. That would be too easy.
Take “issue” (I do, quite often – but anyway..). You could say “i-shu” or “iss-yu“. But what about “dissolve” (“dizz-olve“) – that conflicts with my rule, although “dissolution” (“diss-o-lu-shun“) doesn’t.
Disappear ? Soft “ssss” – again, a conflict. Occasion?
