A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. I also like to write and to sketch.

  • 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 4th, 2025

help-circle
  • i believe that “far-right” sentiments are a natural defense mechanism against a perceived threat.

    if your tribe is in danger, you start kicking the foreigners out, you start going back culturally to what you perceive as “safe”,

    Correct. In a less obvious way we can even see it at play here, in this (interesting) discussion.

    So far, in the comments trying to design a culprit, I have yet to read one that doesn’t blame some ‘other’ group, be it the far-tight, the rich, the boomers, the US, Russia, and so on. Forget the names and the personal preference: each one is that ‘foreigner’, someone that is not us on which we put teh blame. The issue is among us, with all our differences and contradictions (even sometimes our hatred of one another). It’s not ‘them’ causing the issue ‘we’ are the victims of.

    As long as we keep looking for someone else than us to blame, well I don’t see things getting much better anytime soon. Which is sad because if they don’t start getting better soon they will get real worse, real a fast.

    Posting that from France, a country that once valued freedom so much as to make it one of its three core principle. But that was back then.


  • 100%.

    They don’t give a crap that only large corps can ‘absorb the cost’ of checking age and/or ID, they just want to control/limit what we say and to whom, and what we can do online. And if that requires to kill small non-corporate-owned web (and make everything subscription-based, in the process), so be it.

    When they’re not being dishonest, they’re incompetent and proud of it. The few that are not incompetent (and that are honest) they are not numerous enough to make a difference, which is sad. And not just in the UK. I mean, here in France it’s quite interesting too, we’re following steps to the UK, btw, and, what not a surprise, VPN usage has skyrocketed the second they introduced their own version of that stupid age-verification.

    Next step seems obvious: make VPN use illegal for the average user (I mean people like us not, say, journalists, NGOs, lawyers and, obviously, politicians—and their families).







  • Thx a lot for sharing.

    I’m a 50+ non-geek Linux user myself, and selfhosting is the one computer ‘thing’ I would love to be able to setup one day but I’m too afraid to seriously start doing as I’m way too afraid of being that ‘low hanging fruit’ you mentioned in your post.

    I said I was not a geek in the sense that, after almost 40 years using only Apple computers, I’ve switched to Linux to use it like I used… my Mac. Sure, I’ve learned to understand a little bit of Linux workings and I would not want to go back to the Mac, no way, I can also write simple bash scripts (with a lot of trials and errors) but that’s about the full extent of my computer ‘expertise’.

    So, even though your post is well written and informative, it was still way beyond my limited skills, I’m afraid. I’m not saying that as downer, it was a really interesting read and very informative with all those useful links, but hopefully as away to let you know there are… extremely… odd users like myself that are very much interested in the idea but also are as clueless as an oyster comes the time to buy a pair of sneakers :)

    In regards to self-hosting, my conclusion so far is that it’s a much safer choice for someone like me to not do it. The risk is too real to get into some serious issues. And that I’m better off using the few paid services I rely (all in the EU, many of them small companies I can have have direct/human discussion with) as I know by experience I can trust their expertise a lot more than I woudl ever trust my desire to ever become not completely in competent in those fields ;)