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Source: https://murtezayesil.me/feed.xml

1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2. <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
3.    <title>Murteza Yesil</title>
4.    <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/feed.xml" rel="self" />
5.    <link href="https://murtezayesil.me" />
6.    <updated>2023-06-06T23:00:44-06:00</updated>
7.    <author>
8.        <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
9.    </author>
10.    <id>https://murtezayesil.me</id>
11.  
12.    <entry>
13.        <title>AI and My Content</title>
14.        <author>
15.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
16.        </author>
17.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/ai-and-my-content/"/>
18.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/ai-and-my-content/</id>
19.            <category term="Web"/>
20.            <category term="Artificial Intelligence"/>
21.  
22.        <updated>2023-05-30T22:34:21-06:00</updated>
23.            <summary>
24.                <![CDATA[
25.                    Use of any content on this site is forbidden for artificial intelligence and machine learning training. It doesn’t matter whether whoever building the AI model is willing to attribute all data used in their dataset in a public forum and willing to share their resulting…
26.                ]]>
27.            </summary>
28.        <content type="html">
29.            <![CDATA[
30.                <p>Use of any content on this site is <strong>forbidden</strong> for artificial intelligence and machine learning training. It doesn’t matter whether whoever building the AI model is willing to attribute all data used in their dataset in a public forum and willing to share their resulting model in Creative Commons or similarly permissive licence with no commercial gain. I am <strong>not</strong> permitting anyone to use my content for the purpose is training AI and ML model.</p>
31. <p>No exceptions. Even my family is not allowed to create a pretend Murteza trained on any content on this site, regardless of in which stage of life I am in.</p>
32. <p>I like sharing, reading others’ opinions on topics and to talk about them. And I want to encourage it. The very purpose of this site is to encourage dialogue among people, not between humans and machines. There is enough social tension in this world and I see conversation as the only medicine. But preventing conversation by replacing a party with a machine undermines that purpose.</p>
33. <p>Second reason I am taking this stand is the bias problem in artificial intelligence models. We all have biases. We develop them throughout our lives. And everything we build will have our bias to some degree. I want to avoid keep adding into this fire.</p>
34. <p>Third concern is impersonation. If my content goes into a language model, it will be able to imitate my writing style to very convincing level. This can be used against me or other people in my life. Scam is the most common yet valid example for this use. Scammers upped their game by using large language models such as ChatGPT to produce convincing fake receipts to scam people into “paying a debt” they never had. I don’t want to contribute to this fire.</p>
35. <h2 id="this-is-hypocrisy-you-might-say">This is hypocrisy, you might say</h2>
36. <p>I don’t believe I am being hypocritical by not wanting my website to be used in AI training. My reasons for blocking AI is for humans to communicate more and this human interaction to be not replaced by robots. I actually do believe that I would be a hypocrite if I contribute to development of AI chatbots and whatnot.</p>
37. <hr>
38. <h1 id="telling-that-to-robots-in-robot-language">Telling that to robots in robot language</h1>
39. <p>Computer programs that go from website to website and extract data from each website they visit are called “web crawlers” or “spiders”. Those programs won’t understand that I don’t want them to collect data from my site for the purpose of AI training. Instead, they read some file in every website called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt" title="Read more about Robots Exclusion Protocol on Wikipedia"><code>robots.txt</code></a> file. That file defines which part of a website is disallowed for them to “crawl”. Even though you are a human, I assume, you can read this site’s <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/robots.txt">robots.txt here</a>.</p>
40. <p>Below you will find some code blocks you can add to your site’s <code>robots.txt</code> if you want to block web crawlers gathering data for AI projects. Because every webpage can have different file structure, I assumed your site is a static site like mine. If you have a dynamic site, such as those powered by WordPress, you should remember to add directories such as <code>/bin</code> and <code>/admin</code> to disallow to search engines as well. I strongly advise you to read your site’s <code>robots.txt</code> before overriding it.</p>
41. <p>If you are paying someone else to manage your site for you, you may need to contact them for <code>robots.txt</code> to be updated with these rules.</p>
42. <h2 id="method-1-not-recommended---disallow-all-but-search-engines">Method 1: NOT RECOMMENDED - Disallow all but search engines</h2>
43. <p>This is an easy, quick, but dirty method. I do <strong>not recommend</strong> this. It tells search engine bots to crawl entire website while telling all other bots to not crawl anything. This may only be desirable on static sites such as mine. This method will also block bots not related to AI, such as Internet Archive, which is why this method is not recommended.</p>
44. <pre><code class="language-robots.txt"># Be aware of bad bots. robots.txt is considered voluntary and
45. # there are crawler bots which may not obey disallow rules
46. # defined here. To block bad bots from overloading your website,
47. # you will need to use shell scripts and firewall rules.
48. #
49. # This setup will allow entire site to search engines which
50. # probably only is desirable on static sites. If your site is not
51. # a static site, add disallow rules fordirectories such as /bin
52. # and /admin.
53. #
54. # If there are more search engines you would like to allow, you
55. # will need to dig and find more about their crawler bots.
56. # Good place to start would be:
57. # https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
58. #
59. # Remember to add sitemap at the end if you have any.
60.  
61.  
62. ###   SPECIAL CRAWLERS - You may want to allow these   ###
63. ## Internet Archive
64. # Even though Internet Archive allows all archived webpages to
65. # be viewed by anyone, unlike Common Crawl, mass download of
66. # the archives is not allowed. Thus requiring site to be crawled
67. # again anyway.
68. # https://archive.org/details/webwidecrawl?tab=about
69. #
70. # To allow Internet Archive, remove "/" in Disallow line.
71. User-agent: ia-archiver
72. User-agent: ia-archiver-web.archive.org
73. User-agent: ia_archiver
74. User-agent: ia_archiver-web.archive.org
75. User-agent: archive.org_bot
76. Disallow: /
77.  
78.  
79. ###   ALLOWED   ###
80. ## Google
81. User-agent: googlebot
82. Disallow:
83. User-agent: googlebot-image
84. Disallow:
85. User-agent: googlebot-mobile
86. Disallow:
87. User-agent: googlebot-news
88. Disallow:
89.  
90. ## Microsoft Bing
91. User-agent: bingbot
92. Disallow:
93.  
94. ## Yahoo
95. User-agent: Slurp
96. Disallow:
97.  
98. ## Brave Search
99. # Brave hasn't disclosed much about their crawler yet, thus we
100. # don't know enough to allow Brave Search. Sad.
101. # User-agent:
102. # Disallow:
103.  
104. ## Yandex
105. # Comment out below 3 lines to disallow Yandex to crawl your site
106. User-agent: Yandex
107. User-agent: YandexBot
108. Disallow:
109.  
110.  
111. ###   DISALLOWED   ###
112. # Disallow entire website to every other bot
113. User-agent: *
114. Disallow: /
115.  
116.  
117. ####   SITEMAP   ###
118. # Remember to add your sitemap to inform allowed robots know
119. # where new and updated pages are and where they should focus.
120. # This is considered important for SEO.
121. Sitemap:
122. </code></pre>
123. <h2 id="method-2-add-individual-rules-for-each-ai-project">Method 2: Add individual rules for each AI project</h2>
124. <p>If you want to find each web crawler’s “User-agent” identifier, you may need to dig hard on the internet. Below are the AI crawler robots I could find. If you know other project and could find their identifiers, please inform me on Mastodon or via email. My contact information is in footer.</p>
125. <h3 id="common-crawl">Common Crawl</h3>
126. <p><a href="https://commoncrawl.org/big-picture/frequently-asked-questions/" title="Common Crawl FAQ">Common Crawl</a> is not specifically for AI. But, since Common Crawl makes data it collected from our sites available to everyone for free, it became an indispensable data bank for everybody with an AI project.</p>
127. <pre><code class="language-robots.txt">User-agent: CCBot
128. Disallow: /
129. </code></pre>
130. <h3 id="chatgpt-by-openai">ChatGPT by OpenAI</h3>
131. <p>According to <a href="https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/bot">OpenAI’s documentation</a>, ChatGPT does honour robots.txt disallow.</p>
132. <pre><code class="language-robots.txt">User-agent: ChatGPT-User
133. Disallow: /
134. </code></pre>
135. <h3 id="bard-by-google">Bard by Google</h3>
136. <p>There is no documentation about what the Bard’s crawler is/will be called on <a href="https://bard.google.com/">Bard’s official website</a>. Also, how they gathered the data for the experimental build of Bard is kept secret too.</p>
137. <h3 id="metafacebook-ai">Meta/Facebook AI</h3>
138. <p>Meta is keeping the name of their AI super secret AFAIK. If you know more about it, please share so that I can update this section.</p>
139. <h1 id="comments">Comments</h1>
140. <p>Reply either on Fediverse or via email. Only with your consent, I will publicly share your comment here.</p>
141.  
142.            ]]>
143.        </content>
144.    </entry>
145.    <entry>
146.        <title>We need more open ear headphones</title>
147.        <author>
148.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
149.        </author>
150.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/we-need-more-open-ear-headphones/"/>
151.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/we-need-more-open-ear-headphones/</id>
152.            <category term="Life"/>
153.            <category term="Headphones"/>
154.            <category term="Cycling"/>
155.  
156.        <updated>2023-05-29T22:18:14-06:00</updated>
157.            <summary>
158.                <![CDATA[
159.                    <p>I have been looking for headphones for cycling in traffic. Unfortunately, almost all earbuds feature “noise cancellation” which is exact opposite of what I need.</p>
160.  
161.                ]]>
162.            </summary>
163.        <content type="html">
164.            <![CDATA[
165.                <p>I have been looking for headphones for cycling in traffic. Unfortunately, almost all earbuds feature “noise cancellation” which is exact opposite of what I need.</p>
166.  
167.  
168. <p>Ever since weather became pleasant enough to ride a bike, biking became my primary form of commute for distances less than 7 km. It has many benefits over driving. Fortunately, the city I live in encourages biking a fair bit. There are bike racks in front of buses for example, So, public transport is an option even when I have my bike with me.</p>
169. <p>But in many other ways, biking is similar to driving. I have to go on bike lane where it is present and drive in car lane and become part of motor traffic where bike lane is missing. I also heavily rely on navigation apps to find my way around the city. This introduces a dangerous problem for bike commuters such as myself, needing to get our eyes off traffic to look at our phones for navigation. Especially in days when phone’s not so bright screen has to fight the sunny sky, reading screen requires too much attention. Spare attention is one thing I don’t have enough of in traffic. Only solution I see is using headphones, so that I can listen to navigation without dividing my attention.</p>
170. <h2 id="what-i-want">What I want</h2>
171. <ol>
172. <li>Hear navigation instructions from my phone to avoid keep looking at my phone while in traffic.</li>
173. <li>Be able to hear traffic even when I have headphones on. If I can’t hear traffic, I won’t realize when I need to ring my bell to inform others of my presence until it is too late.</li>
174. <li>Not to have a loose cable between me and the phone. I don’t want anything in the way of my hands as I require them to not tangle when I need to give signals.</li>
175. <li>Not to be tethered to my phone. My head should be able to turn freely to shoulder check incoming traffic.</li>
176. <li>Not to worry about dropping and losing headphones. Again, I have all my attention at something else.</li>
177. </ol>
178. <h2 id="what-i-need">What I need</h2>
179. <ol>
180. <li>Wireless (Bluetooth) headphones.</li>
181. <li>Not truly wireless headphones because I cannot afford to divide my attention to worry about losing them.</li>
182. <li>No noise isolating headphones. Something with always on “transparency mode” would do fine.</li>
183. <li>No headphone with a part that sticks out of my ear. Helmet’s strap could catch it and pull it out. But part extending to hang on ear is fine as it will be hidden behind my ear.</li>
184. <li>Something within my budget, 50 to 75 CAD.</li>
185. </ol>
186. <p>There are some earbuds that feature “transparency mode” which add back the noise from outside. So, rather than ruling out all earbuds since they cancel outside noise, I tried few which are owned by family members. Transparency is a common feature in earbuds nowadays, so if I can find a brand or tip I am happy with, rest should be easy. This story had to end here. I was supposed to find an earbud with effectively little to no noise isolation that I would be happy with using while biking in traffic. Unfortunately, I discovered a painful truth instead.</p>
187. <p>Earbuds are either pushed out by my ears within a minute, or cause my ears to ache if they manage to stay on. I am talking about an excruciating pain within 10 minutes. I tried different tips with different sizes, but all had one of either issues. Maybe the problem was me, maybe I was the one putting them in wrong. I asked the help of others to teach me how to put in-ear earbuds on, to no avail. My ears are shaped in such a way that the only tips that would stay on are custom-fit ear tips. Unfortunately, custom-fit ear tips cost more than earbuds themselves. Even if I used a cheap kit from Amazon, they would end up sealing my ear canals better than universal tips, thus making them more isolating. They are also bulkier, thus pushing earbuds out of my ears.</p>
188. <p>In a world where earbuds are racing to eliminate all outside noise, my quest to find headphones that I can wear with a helmet just got harder. There are some open-ear headphones which allow all outside noise to reach ear canals. But they are outside my budget. Best option I could find so far is <a href="https://shokz.com/products/openmove" title="80 USD before cargo and tax puts even this cheapest option out of my reach at the moment">Shokz’s OpenMove</a> headphones that tick most boxes, but cost 100 CAD on Best Buy. There are knock off bone conducting headphones in 50-75 CAD range, but reviews suggest discomfort due to hard plastic.</p>
189. <p>At this moment I started to think whether I could turn a wired earbud into a Bluetooth enabled headphone. Such solution would eliminate the dangling tether between the phone and me. Turns out there are <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Bluetooth-Receiver-Portable-Wireless-Headphones/dp/B09G97XMKR/" title="Amazon store link">Bluetooth receivers with audio jacks</a> to do exactly that. But I am not sold on them just yet, because all wired earbuds I could find are sealing my ears more than I would like. They are best suited for adding Bluetooth capability to older cars.</p>
190. <h2 id="side-note">Side note</h2>
191. <p>It turns out I am not the only one with incompatible ear shape for earbuds. Reviews for both Shockz’s items on Amazon and Bluetooth receivers with audio jacks are filled with people sharing how they are happy to find something that doesn’t go into their ear canals and hurt them. I seem to be more extremely affected than most because many people mention getting discomfort after half to one hour of use. I am one of those who get unbearable pain within 15 minutes at best.</p>
192. <h1 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h1>
193. <p>After further digging I was able to find Shockz OpenMove for 80 CAD. It is slightly pushing my budget, but I would rather buy quality than buy twice. Soon, I will find out whether those bone conducting headphones are as effective as they are advertised. But as far as initial research go, OpenMove seems to be the best option for me.</p>
194. <p>Do you have experience with Shockz’s products? <br>Do you have a better solution in ± 10 CAD range? <br>If so, please share your findings and opinions with me.</p>
195. <h1 id="comments">Comments</h1>
196. <p>Leave a comment or reply on Fediverse or <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/about/#contact">via email</a>. <br>With your consent, I may add them here later.</p>
197.  
198.            ]]>
199.        </content>
200.    </entry>
201.    <entry>
202.        <title>Buy Music to Support Musicians. BUT WHY?</title>
203.        <author>
204.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
205.        </author>
206.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/buy-music-to-support-musicians-but-why/"/>
207.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/buy-music-to-support-musicians-but-why/</id>
208.  
209.        <updated>2023-05-25T13:38:57-06:00</updated>
210.            <summary>
211.                <![CDATA[
212.                    I like DRM-free music. All the DRM-free music I purchased go on my Nextcloud server and become available on all my devices. It is a neat system, having streaming service of my own. I was not always into listening to music though. It is an…
213.                ]]>
214.            </summary>
215.        <content type="html">
216.            <![CDATA[
217.                <p>I like DRM-free music. All the DRM-free music I purchased go on my Nextcloud server and become available on all my devices. It is a neat system, having streaming service of my own. I was not always into listening to music though. It is an interest developed in last 3 to 4 years.</p>
218. <p>One streaming service was enough to access all the music I could listen to. Then I noticed that some tracks in my favourites were grayed out. They were no longer selectable. It turns out, some musicians weren’t happy with their contract with the streaming service, so they pulled the plug, thus those tracks became unavailable. That is when I fully recognised what subscription meant. I was only granted limited listening right as long as musician was happy with someone else’s rules. If I wanted uninterupted enjoymant from something, I had to purchase DRM-free copies.</p>
219. <p>I have been purchasing tracks ever since (for last 3 years or so). I am not a big spender and decided on a monthly budget. 10$ was my budget. Any money left after paying for a streaming service plan (roughly 5$) goes to purchasing tracks. Some months I decide to buy entire albums which wouldn’t fit into my budget, so I combine 2 months’ budgets and purchase that album. Result is a collection of just over 200 DRM-free tracks available to me at all times.</p>
220. <p>There often are 3 places I look to purchase a track or album:</p>
221. <ol>
222. <li>Band’s or composer’s official website and/or online store</li>
223. <li><a href="https://bandcamp.com">Bandcamp</a></li>
224. <li><a href="https://us.7digital.com">7Digital</a> (have different stores for each country. Go to [2letter country code].7digital.com for your country, examples: uk.7digital.com for UK and ca.7digital.com for Canada)</li>
225. </ol>
226. <p>Another thing I noticed is that very few people actually do have a digital collection of music they listen to. Almost everybody migrated to streaming only. Given that artists don’t encourage people to purchase their tracks, I started to wonder whether people like me purchasing their music was less profitable for them than streaming. I came up with below napkin math. I am not a musician and have no clue how much musiciand pay to what to be frank, but this is a napkin math, not a university thesis.</p>
227. <hr>
228. <p>I imagine musicians have to pay at least 2 things from their income: income tax to government and publishing fee to their publishers. I will assume that average income tax rate as 10% and publishing fee is another 10%. This means 20% of what I pay for doesn’t go to artists.</p>
229. <p>For sake of argument, I will assume everybody pays for Spotify’s 10$/month Premium Individual plan and that Spotify is keeping 30% of each payment just like every other tech company, leaving 7$ from 10$ for artists to share. This should paint the most optimistic picture for the artists.</p>
230. <p>Let’s say that average music listener listens to music for 1 hour everyday. Assuming each track is exactly 4 minutes long, you would listen to 20 tracks everyday. This makes 600 tracks monthly.</p>
231. <p>7$/600 tracks = 1.1667 cents per track</p>
232. <p>When we remove 20 percent fees and tax from that 1.1667 cents, we should be left with whatever much artist would get everytime some listens to one of artist’s track.</p>
233. <p>0.8 * 1.667 cents = 0.9334 cents (almost 1 cent)</p>
234. <p>Assuming that each track is 4 minutes long, everybody pays for the most expensive plan of Spotify and publishers are not sucking artists’ blood, artists should earn just shy of 1 cent each time you listen to one of their track once.</p>
235. <p>Now let’s assume that you purchased a track from band’s official website for 1$ each. Even if we assume that payment provider charges 10% per transaction, government ask for 10% income tax and publisher ask for another 10%. Artist would be paying 30% of this 1$ transaction and get to keep 70 cents from each purchase. This is an optimistic picture as well. But at least I won’t need to pay for the most expensive plan and listen to same track 70 times to get artist compansated the same amount.</p>
236. <p>Even if artists don’t have their own site or official online stores to sell from, selling DRM-free tracks on Bandcamp is the smarter choise than streaming. Even when we add 15% cut of Bandcamp in to the mix, artists would still get 55 cents per dollar spent on Bandcamp.</p>
237. <p>I wanted to see if my assumptions were close to real life and did some digging. I am not sure why, maybe it is in artists’ contract with their publishers, but it is almost impossible to see how much streaming services and DRM-free music stores pay to musicians per track played, minute listened or tracks sold.</p>
238. <p>Fortunately, independent musicians Che Chen shared details of her band’s earnings from streaming services and from Bandcamp with Pitchfork. According to Pitchfork’s article, an artist can expect to earn 20 cents for 500 listens. This means actually 40 listens on Spotify make 1 cents in royalties. My “1 cent royalty per listen” napkin math was way off, or generous.</p>
239. <blockquote>
240. <p>We might make $100 a year from streaming. On a recent statement of mine, the royalties for one track that had 580 plays on Spotify was zero dollars and 20 cents.</p>
241. <p>Che Chen said to Pitchfork</p>
242. </blockquote>
243. <p>Source: <a href="https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-much-more-money-artists-earn-from-bandcamp-compared-to-spotify-apple-music-youtube/">https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-much-more-money-artists-earn-from-bandcamp-compared-to-spotify-apple-music-youtube/</a></p>
244. <p>Now let’s assume that income tax is actually 20% and publishers charge 15% instead of 10%. Bandcamp also announced that they charge between 10-15% for their service, so let’s take 15%. I still believe 10% transaction fee is much larger than how much PayPal or Stripe would actually charge, so let’s keep it as it is. This means 60% cut rathar than 45% in my previous assumption. In other words, 40 cents from each dollar you spent actually reaching to artists. According to Chen’s interview with Pitchfork, you would need to listen to same track 1000 (this is a thousand, not a hundred) times to support an artist 40 cents for that track.</p>
245. <p>Even if we assume that an artist is charging 50 cents (thus earning 20 cents per track) rather than 1$ price tag per track, selling DRM-free album or individual tracks is much more sustainable for musicians rather than streaming income alone.</p>
246. <p>I must be doing the right thing by purchasing DRM-free track from the musician rather than End of napkin math.</p>
247. <hr>
248. <p>Dear musicians,</p>
249. <p>Please make DRM-free versions of your tracks available for purchase on your official sites. This is the best way I can think of to support you. I understand that you might be seeing DRM-free as that evil thing that allows people to pirate and share your work without any limitation. The fact is that, people who want to pirate find a way to do it. Do you really think it is impossible to pirate Ed Sheeran’s hits thanks to DRM. If not from sketchy sites, people can download them from YouTube and watch or listen over and over again without any advert, thus any income to musician. It is us, the people who respect and value your work who are left out.</p>
250. <p>I also don’t see Patreon as the most sustainable way to support artists for every artists. Some artists may see this as a way to motivate themselves, which is great. But some artists may find it causing stress, therefore affecting quality of their work. DRM-free track stores continue selling even when artists completely stop. Erutan has stopped singing due to <a href="https://www.erutanmusic.com/drinks" title="We pray for your health and well being.">health issues</a> but her album still sells on Bandcamp.</p>
251. <p>Here are some bands, singers and composers who have their tracks available for purchase DRM-free either on their official stores or on Bandcamp:</p>
252. <ul>
253. <li><a href="https://www.cogisdead.com/copy-of-shop/">Cog is Dead</a>: Steampunk themed rock</li>
254. <li><a href="https://luckychops.bandcamp.com/">Lucky Chops</a>: Instrumental “brassy funk”</li>
255. <li><a href="https://www.erutanmusic.com/">Erutan</a>: Folk music singer, unfortunately stopped due to health issues.</li>
256. <li><a href="https://joeypecoraro.bandcamp.com/">Joey Pecoraro</a>: Lo-Fi and background music composer</li>
257. <li><a href="https://peppsen.bandcamp.com/">Peppsen</a>: Video game soundtrack composer, famous for his work on RimWorld.</li>
258. <li><a href="https://thelongestjohns.bandcamp.com/">The Longest Johns</a>: Maritime themed stories</li>
259. <li><a href="https://www.brunomars.com">Bruno Mars</a>: Yes, same Bruno Mars who released “Just The Way You Are” and “When I Was Your Man” also sells DRM-free albums on his store page on Warner Music Group. Store is not on same domain as his site but it is ihis official store and sells DRM-free albums.</li>
260. </ul>
261. <hr>
262. <p>I encourage musicians who are suffering from such limiting binding agreements to talk to a news agency in exchange of your anonymity. I strongly believe that getting the word out there will either encourage other musicians to speak up as well, thus forcing streaming services to reslice their pie or make listeners purchase DRM-free versions of the music they like. Either way, it would be great for the musicians.</p>
263. <p>Comment by replying to <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/110300551390366982">this post</a> or via <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/about/#contact">email</a></p>
264.  
265.            ]]>
266.        </content>
267.    </entry>
268.    <entry>
269.        <title>Allah, Depremzedelerin Yardımcısı Olsun [TR]</title>
270.        <author>
271.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
272.        </author>
273.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/allah-depremzedelerin-yardimcisi-olsun-tr/"/>
274.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/allah-depremzedelerin-yardimcisi-olsun-tr/</id>
275.  
276.        <updated>2023-02-07T17:40:54-07:00</updated>
277.            <summary>
278.                <![CDATA[
279.                    <p>7.4 şiddetinde ki deprem güney Anadoluyu ve Suriyeyi neredeyse 1 dakika sarstı.
280.                ]]>
281.            </summary>
282.        <content type="html">
283.            <![CDATA[
284.                <p>7.4 şiddetinde ki deprem güney Anadoluyu ve Suriyeyi neredeyse 1 dakika sarstı.  40’tan fazla artçıl 6.7’ye varan şiddette vurmaya devam etti.</p>
285. <p>Türkiyenin üzerinde bulunduğu Anadolu tektonik plakası, Arap, Ege, Afrika ve Avrasya plakaları arasında bulunmakta. 6 Şubat 20223 sabahı gerçekleşen deprem Arap ile Anadolu plakalarının arasında ki stres birikmesinden kaynaklandı. Avrasya plakasına iktirilen Anadolu plakasının yaptığı sarsıntı Yunanistan ve Britanyada da hissedildi.</p>
286. <p>Ukrayna dahil birçok ülke yardım ellerini uzattılar. Maddi yardım etmek isterseniz, <a href="https://www.akut.org.tr/haberler/6665/akut-is-on-the-field-to-save-lives-kahramanmaras-2023" title="Araştırma ve Kurtarma Derneği">AKUT</a>‘a bağış yapabilirsiniz.</p>
287. <h2 id="kırık-binalar-güvenli-değil">Kırık binalar güvenli değil</h2>
288. <p>Ben üzen şeylerden birisi, halkın depremde çökmedi diye hasarlı binaları geri girmeleri. Gerçek şu ki depreme dayanmış binalar eğer yeterince hasar gördüyse, deprem ve artçıllar dindikten saatler sonra, dıştan bakıldığında hiçten sebebe, binalar çökebilir. Akrabalarımdan birisi Diyarbakırda otururken kiraladığı apartman depremden 3 saat sonra çökmüş.</p>
289. <p><strong>LÜTFEN KIRIKLARI BARİZ GÖZÜKEN BİNALARA GİRMEYİN</strong></p>
290. <p>Ülkenin diğer bucaklarında ki insanlar depremzedeleri ağırlamak için evlerinin bazı odalarını hazırlıyorlar. Türkiye büyük bir ülke ve bu karda kışta güvenli bir yer bulmak zor olucak, anlıyorum. Ama hasarlı binalara geri girerek hayatınızla kumar oynamayın.</p>
291. <h2 id="kaynaklar">Kaynaklar</h2>
292. <ul>
293. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-live-updates-rcna69266">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-live-updates-rcna69266</a></li>
294. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/02/06/1154761412/photos-a-devastating-earthquake-hits-turkey-and-syria">https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/02/06/1154761412/photos-a-devastating-earthquake-hits-turkey-and-syria</a></li>
295. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/powerful-78m-earthquake-hits-southern-turkey-dozens-dead/ar-AA178YQc">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/powerful-78m-earthquake-hits-southern-turkey-dozens-dead/ar-AA178YQc</a></li>
296. </ul>
297. <p><a href="https://murtezayesil.me/i-wish-condolences-and-godspeed-to-all-earthquake-victims/">İngilizce versiyonu</a></p>
298.  
299.            ]]>
300.        </content>
301.    </entry>
302.    <entry>
303.        <title>I wish Condolences and Godspeed to all earthquake victims [EN]</title>
304.        <author>
305.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
306.        </author>
307.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/i-wish-condolences-and-godspeed-to-all-earthquake-victims/"/>
308.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/i-wish-condolences-and-godspeed-to-all-earthquake-victims/</id>
309.  
310.        <updated>2023-02-07T17:57:26-07:00</updated>
311.            <summary>
312.                <![CDATA[
313.                    <p>Earthquake of 7.4 magnitude hit Turkey and Syria for nearly whole minute.
314.                ]]>
315.            </summary>
316.        <content type="html">
317.            <![CDATA[
318.                <p>Earthquake of 7.4 magnitude hit Turkey and Syria for nearly whole minute. With a strong earthquake comes many more aftershocks. Over 40 aftershocks continued hitting as hard as magnitude of 6.7.</p>
319. <p>Turkey is sitting on Anatolian tectonic plate which is located in between Arabic, Aegean, African and Euroasian plates. Earthquake on 6th February 2023 morning was due to stress between Arabic and Anatolian tectonic plates. Movement forced Anatolian plate into Euroasian plate which made earthquake be felt in Greece and UK too.</p>
320. <p>Everybody is trying to offer helping hand, Ukrain included. If you want to help fınancıally, you can donate to <a href="https://www.akut.org.tr/haberler/6665/akut-is-on-the-field-to-save-lives-kahramanmaras-2023" title="Research and Rescue Association">AKUT</a>.</p>
321. <h2 id="cracked-buildings-are-not-safe">Cracked buildings are not safe</h2>
322. <p>Sad thing is that people are entering back to their houses thinking that it can not collapse if it stood during the earthquake. But many of these building have cracks and damage caused by the earthquake which makes collapse, long after the aftershocks, very likely. One of my relatives said that the apartment they rented ehile they were living in Diyarbakır collapsed 3 hours after the earthquake.</p>
323. <p><strong>PLEASE, DON’T GO BACK TO BUILDINGS THAT HAVE VISIBLE CRACKS</strong></p>
324. <p>There are people in other parts of Turkey who are preparing rooms in their houses to welcome earthquake victims. Turkey is a large country and I understand that getting to safe shelter won’t be easy during winter. But entering back to damaged buildings is a gamble you definitely don’t want to take.</p>
325. <h2 id="sources">Sources</h2>
326. <ul>
327. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-live-updates-rcna69266">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-live-updates-rcna69266</a></li>
328. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/02/06/1154761412/photos-a-devastating-earthquake-hits-turkey-and-syria">https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/02/06/1154761412/photos-a-devastating-earthquake-hits-turkey-and-syria</a></li>
329. <li>[EN] <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/powerful-78m-earthquake-hits-southern-turkey-dozens-dead/ar-AA178YQc">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/powerful-78m-earthquake-hits-southern-turkey-dozens-dead/ar-AA178YQc</a></li>
330. </ul>
331. <p><a href="https://murtezayesil.me/allah-depremzedelerin-yardimcisi-olsun-tr/">Turkish version</a></p>
332.  
333.            ]]>
334.        </content>
335.    </entry>
336.    <entry>
337.        <title>Verifying your Mastodon Account </title>
338.        <author>
339.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
340.        </author>
341.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/verifying-your-mastodon-account/"/>
342.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/verifying-your-mastodon-account/</id>
343.  
344.        <updated>2023-02-01T16:05:55-07:00</updated>
345.            <summary>
346.                <![CDATA[
347.                    <p>Account verification is a very simple process that you can do yourself. Also it is a very important for proving that you own that Mastodon account. It baffles me that even tech literate people don’t do it.</p>
348.  
349.                ]]>
350.            </summary>
351.        <content type="html">
352.            <![CDATA[
353.                <p>Account verification is a very simple process that you can do yourself. Also it is a very important for proving that you own that Mastodon account. It baffles me that even tech literate people don’t do it.</p>
354.  
355.  
356. <h2 id="how-verification-works">How verification works?</h2>
357. <p><figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/resources/mastodon_account_verification-spiderman_meme.jpeg" alt="Spiderman pointing at spiderman meme. First spiderman is labelled &quot;your website&quot; and second spiderman is labelled &quot;your mastodon account&quot;"  data-is-external-image="true"></figure></p>
358. <p>If 2 things are claiming that they own each other and if their claims match, we understand that both of these are owned by the same person.</p>
359. <p><strong>Example</strong>: If car with plate number “ABC 123” has a sign reading “I also own a house (10 Downing Street, London)” behind its back windshield and if the house at 10 Downing Street, London has a sign reading “I also own a car (ABC 123)” behind the window next to door, you know that the person who has key for the car and the person who has key for the house is the same person.</p>
360. <p>Verification on Mastodon works the same way. Your Mastodon account should claim that you also own a website and your website should claim that you also own a Mastodon account. To make such claims in the internet, we add <code>rel=&quot;me&quot;</code> attribute to an HTML tag with <code>href=&quot;URL&quot;</code> attribute, turning that tag into a claim.</p>
361. <h2 id="2-ways-to-add-claim-to-your-website">2 ways to add claim to your website</h2>
362. <p><strong>Visible button</strong>: If you want claim to be a button that leads people to your Mastodon profile, use an “a” anchor inside <code>&lt;body&gt;</code> section</p>
363. <pre><code class="language-HTML">&lt;a rel=&quot;me&quot; href=&quot;https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil&quot;&gt;Mastodon&lt;/a&gt;
364. </code></pre>
365. <p><strong>Invisible claim</strong>: If you want to make the claim but don’t want to add a button, you can use link tag inside <code>&lt;head&gt;</code> section</p>
366. <pre><code class="language-HTML">&lt;link rel=&quot;me&quot; href=&quot;https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil&quot;&gt;
367. </code></pre>
368. <p>If you also added your website’s URL to your Mastodon account’s profile metadata, server will attempt to read your website HTML and check if the claim is true.
369. <figure class="post__image"><img src="https://murtezayesil.me/resources/mastodon-profile_metadata.png" alt="My Mastodon profile&#39;s metadata. Label is Website and Content is https://murtezayesil.me/"  data-is-external-image="true"></figure> <figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/resources/mastodon_verified_website.png" alt="My Mastodon profile has a green check mark next to my website because claim is verified"  data-is-external-image="true"></figure></p>
370. <p><strong>Note</strong>: If you are using a CMS such as WordPress or DEV.to, you may need to find a way to insert custom HTML to head or body of your profile page. It may even be impossible depending on your hosting platform. Static Site Generators such as Jekyll, Hugo, Pelican and Publii are easier to work with since they allow adding custom HTML and even altering the theme.</p>
371.  
372.            ]]>
373.        </content>
374.    </entry>
375.    <entry>
376.        <title>Contingency Plan</title>
377.        <author>
378.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
379.        </author>
380.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/contingency-plan/"/>
381.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/contingency-plan/</id>
382.            <category term="Technology"/>
383.            <category term="Life"/>
384.  
385.        <updated>2023-01-30T02:47:29-07:00</updated>
386.            <summary>
387.                <![CDATA[
388.                    <p>A plan to securely hand down our data for when we kick the bucket.<br>Reply to Kev Quirk’s blog titled “<a href="https://kevquirk.com/what-happens-when-were-gone/">What Happens When We’re Gone?</a>“</p>
389.  
390.                ]]>
391.            </summary>
392.        <content type="html">
393.            <![CDATA[
394.                <p>A plan to securely hand down our data for when we kick the bucket.<br>Reply to Kev Quirk’s blog titled “<a href="https://kevquirk.com/what-happens-when-were-gone/">What Happens When We’re Gone?</a>“</p>
395.  
396.  
397. <p>I don’t have the best answer but I have some idea, which is Bitwarden’s <a href="https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/">Emergency Access</a> but for files and stuff. For those of you don’t know what I am talking about, my idea is an encrypted storage in our Nextcloud servers that automatically gets shared with people we trust after we didn’t login to our server for set amount of time.</p>
398. <p>Unfortunately, there is no any app for Nextcloud I know of that can facilitate such feature. So, if there is any developer who is looking for an idea, this one is free.</p>
399. <h2 id="how-would-it-work">How would it work?</h2>
400. <ol>
401. <li>Add someone as a trusted person. This process downloads that person’s public key and stores their email.</li>
402. <li>Upload files for sharing with that person in case you don’t login for some time (such as 3 months).</li>
403. <li>Uploaded files get encrypted with trusted person’s public key.</li>
404. <li>After you don’t login for 3 months, trusted person should receive an email with a link from where they can download your data encrypted with their public key. Then they can decrypt the data with their private key.</li>
405. </ol>
406. <p>Problems with this system:</p>
407. <ol>
408. <li>Requires trusted people to know what private/public key pairs are and how to use them. Alternative is to use a long encryption key (like a passphrase) rather than keypair.</li>
409. <li>Server where the encrypted data load is hosted must remain online until 3 months period is over. This can especially be a problem if the person who passed away is the admin of the server. Reduce cooldown to 1 week or so rather than 3 months and pay a year or so in advance if shared hosting rather than on-premise self hosting.</li>
410. </ol>
411. <h2 id="what-to-hand-down-to-which-person">What to hand down to which person?</h2>
412. <p>This is up to you to answer. If you are wondering “Should I explain how to configure DNS records and docker containers to my significant other?”, the answer is <strong>YES</strong>. If your significant other is a smart person, they will either figure it out or hand down the task to someone they can trust.</p>
413. <h2 id="should-you-migrate-your-family-to-centrelized-alternatives">Should you migrate your family to centrelized alternatives?</h2>
414. <p>Moving your family to a iCloud or Gmail is, well, some plan, but not a sound plan. This plan lacks structure. When is best time to move them to such service? When you are 50! 60? 80? What if you die due to a car accident tomorrow?</p>
415. <p>What if the company goes out of business? We may think that Google and Apple are too big to fail. If I learned something about being too big, it is that being too big means not that you can’t fail, but when you eventually do, it is loud. Twitter was too big to fail, it partially collapsed and you know <a href="https://hub.fosstodon.org/fosstodon-vs-twitter-round-2/">the noise Twitter made coming down</a>.</p>
416. <hr>
417. <h2 id="the-google-method">The Google Method</h2>
418. <p>Google allows users to set trusted accounts which receive access to all your google data after you don’t login for 3 months. As you can imagine this method requires uploading encrypted data to Google Drive, then login to that account once a month. After you avoid signing in for a few months, your encrypted data will be shared with people you trusted. Not a great solution, but this is the only other alternative I can think of to Emergency Access by Bitwarden.</p>
419. <hr>
420. <h2 id="encrypted-partition-with-veracrypt-or-luks">Encrypted Partition (with Veracrypt or LUKS)</h2>
421. <p>This probably the most straight forward method of them all. Create an encrypted partition where both you and your significant other store your most important files. Both of you can have access to files at all times, regardless of someone is sick in bed or not.</p>
422. <hr>
423. <h2 id="conclusion-less">Conclusion-less</h2>
424. <p>Worrying what will happen to people we love after we die is a terrible thing to worry about. Building a fool proof system to securely send data to someone else is already difficult while alive, no doubt it will be even more difficult as dead. Only methods I can think of right now are Emergency Access by Bitwarden, The Google Method and the encrypted partition.</p>
425. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
426. <p class="msg msg--info">You can comment/reply via <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com?subject=Comment - Contingency Plan">email</a> or on <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/109777520579252330" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon</a></p>
427.            ]]>
428.        </content>
429.    </entry>
430.    <entry>
431.        <title>Predestination</title>
432.        <author>
433.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
434.        </author>
435.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/predestination/"/>
436.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/predestination/</id>
437.            <category term="Notes"/>
438.            <category term="Movies"/>
439.  
440.        <updated>2023-01-23T01:08:23-07:00</updated>
441.            <summary>
442.                <![CDATA[
443.                    <p>Thriller science fiction movie about time travel. This is a short blog to recommend it (or rather a note to remember its name in the future), spoilers here.</p>
444.  
445.                ]]>
446.            </summary>
447.        <content type="html">
448.            <![CDATA[
449.                <p>Thriller science fiction movie about time travel. This is a short blog to recommend it (or rather a note to remember its name in the future), spoilers here.</p>
450.  
451.  
452. <p>I recently watched Predestination. It isn’t the greatest movie ever made (because Matrix is already here) but Predestination got me interested with the thriller genre. If you liked Matrix, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series)" title="Read about it on Wikipedia">Dark</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5651844/">Travelers</a>, then I believe you will enjoy <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535/" title="More info on IMDB">Predestination</a>.</p>
453. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
454. <p class="msg msg--info">You can reply via <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com?subject=Comment - Predestination">email</a> or on <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/109737493761018172" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon</a></p>
455.            ]]>
456.        </content>
457.    </entry>
458.    <entry>
459.        <title>You have the Perfect Poker Face</title>
460.        <author>
461.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
462.        </author>
463.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/you-have-the-perfect-poker-face/"/>
464.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/you-have-the-perfect-poker-face/</id>
465.            <category term="Blogging"/>
466.  
467.        <updated>2023-01-08T18:38:18-07:00</updated>
468.            <summary>
469.                <![CDATA[
470.                    <p>I really like how unopinionated I am about you, the reader, when I am sharing my opinions in a blog post. Isn’t that interesting?</p>
471.  
472.                ]]>
473.            </summary>
474.        <content type="html">
475.            <![CDATA[
476.                <p>I really like how unopinionated I am about you, the reader, when I am sharing my opinions in a blog post. Isn’t that interesting?</p>
477.  
478.  
479. <p>If you and I were to sit around a table for me to tell you about my opinions about certain topics, like an interview, I would probably end up chosing different words depending on who I think you are. Ultimately, my opinion and bias about you would drive the talk rather than me.</p>
480. <p>I am not saying I wouldn’t be honest. Instead, I am saying that I would take a different route to come to same conclusion. That route would depend on whether I want to avoid certain things or I want to dive head on.</p>
481. <p>Thanks for keeping your poker face stranger, thus helping me speak freely.</p>
482. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
483. <p class="msg msg--info">You can comment via <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com?subject=Comment - You have the Perfect Poker Face">email</a> or <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/109656688256622464" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon thread</a></p>
484.  
485.            ]]>
486.        </content>
487.    </entry>
488.    <entry>
489.        <title>Write Freely on Yesil Club</title>
490.        <author>
491.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
492.        </author>
493.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/write-freely-on-yesil-club/"/>
494.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/write-freely-on-yesil-club/</id>
495.            <category term="Web"/>
496.            <category term="Server"/>
497.            <category term="Projects"/>
498.            <category term="Hosting"/>
499.            <category term="Blogging"/>
500.  
501.        <updated>2022-12-20T01:13:44-07:00</updated>
502.            <summary>
503.                <![CDATA[
504.                    <p>I like blogging and believe it should be more accessible. Thus I am hosting a blogging platform that is open to public registration. You can start a blog on <a href="https://blog.yesil.club">blog.yesil.club</a> if you don’t have one already.</p>
505.  
506.                ]]>
507.            </summary>
508.        <content type="html">
509.            <![CDATA[
510.                <p>I like blogging and believe it should be more accessible. Thus I am hosting a blogging platform that is open to public registration. You can start a blog on <a href="https://blog.yesil.club">blog.yesil.club</a> if you don’t have one already.</p>
511.  
512.  
513. <p>I see so many people writing blogs but not always using the best tool for the job. Some people are using micro-blogging platforms like Twitter to share their long form blogs. Some people are apparently okay with this. They will take their message and chop it, dice it, mince it and call it a thread🧵. A micro-blogging platform is called a micro-blogging platform because it is a <strong>micro</strong>-blogging platform, not a blogging platform.</p>
514. <p>Image you are trying to read a novel that is written on the back of a thousand gift cards. Would you find it comfortable? What would you think of the mental health of the author who thought that was okay? This is how I feel whenever I see a thread.</p>
515. <p>Best way to fight a bad habit is to offer a sensible alternative. Writefreely is a strictly blogging platform with a ActivityPub support. It still is in its infancy but it already works pretty well. Therefore, I decided to host a Writefreely server open to public registration. If you want to write blogs without worrying about character limits, you are welcome to create an account on <a href="https://blog.yesil.club/">blog.yesil.club</a>.</p>
516. <p>Writefreely offers 3 types of content presentation.
517. <strong>Blog</strong>: Dates are shown. Latest posts listed first.
518. <strong>Novel</strong>: No dates shown. Oldest posts first.
519. <strong>Notebook</strong>: No dates shown. Latest posts first.</p>
520. <p>Yesil Club lets all accounts to create up to 3 blogs, just in case you want to try all 3 types of content presentation by Writefreely or want to compartmentalize, like general musings, personal projects and notes.</p>
521. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
522. <p class="msg msg--info">You can comment via <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com?subject=Comment - Write Freely on Yesil Club">email</a> or <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/109544995893952751" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon thread</a></p>
523.            ]]>
524.        </content>
525.    </entry>
526.    <entry>
527.        <title>Mastodon will never be Twitter</title>
528.        <author>
529.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
530.        </author>
531.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/mastodon-will-never-be-twitter/"/>
532.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/mastodon-will-never-be-twitter/</id>
533.  
534.        <updated>2022-11-26T02:17:14-07:00</updated>
535.            <summary>
536.                <![CDATA[
537.                    <p>Now that Twitter is shaking and everybody is looking for an alternative, Mastodon has been getting some attention. Some people probably think that Twitter is big too fail and Mastodon is too small that "Mastodon will never be Twitter". This article is about how I couldn't agree more with the phrase "Mastodon will never be Twitter", but not with the argument.</p>
538.  
539.                ]]>
540.            </summary>
541.        <content type="html">
542.            <![CDATA[
543.                <p>Now that Twitter is shaking and everybody is looking for an alternative, Mastodon has been getting some attention. Some people probably think that Twitter is big too fail and Mastodon is too small that "Mastodon will never be Twitter". This article is about how I couldn't agree more with the phrase "Mastodon will never be Twitter", but not with the argument.</p>
544.  
545. <p class="msg msg--info"><strong>Terminology clarification: </strong>Mastodon is one of many different server softwares that power thousands of social media sites. Those separate social media sites communicate with each other to form a much larger social media platform called <strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse" title="read more about Fediverse on Wikipedia">Fediverse</a></strong>. In this post when I say "Mastodon", I am talking about Fediverse instances that use Mastodon software as their back-end, not the software. Expect word "Mastodon" to be used in place of Fediverse.</p>
546. <p>Works on Mastodon was started on 2008 by <a href="https://mastodon.social/@gargron" title="Eugen Rochko">someone</a> who was unsatisfied with Twitter. Mastodon is another micro-blogging platform with a different direction. From the beginning, it wasn't meant to replace Twitter but offer an alternative for those who felt the same dissatisfaction.</p>
547. <p>The direction Mastodon headed is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralization" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Decentralisation</a>. Thanks to decentralisation, Mastodon will not have a central authority, such as a corporation, government or foundation, on which the entire Mastodon depends. This is very unlike Twitter, which cannot exist without Twitter Inc.</p>
548. <p>We have many people who moved to Mastodon from Twitter. And very few actually listed 280 character limit as a reason. Most lists the toxicity as their reason for leaving Twitter. People were moving to Mastodon even before Elon Musk started joking about buying Twitter, but those people were very few. Things escalated fast once rumours became true.</p>
549. <p>If you are new to Mastodon, you will see that some "features" on Twitter are absent on Mastodon. Mastodon is a micro-blogging platform and it is feature complete in that regard. Don't expect Mastodon to have feature parity with Twitter since some limitations and missing features are deliberate decisions. I understand if you see Mastodon as not mature as Twitter at the beginning. But soon you will realise that those features aren't necessities and Mastodon is better off without them.</p>
550. <p>I also don't expect you to agree with every decision Eugen, founder and main developer of Mastodon, during the development of Mastodon. Some people thought Eugen was limiting too many things that they made their own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development)" title="A software fork is a clone of the original software that was later modified to meet different needs.">forks</a> of Mastodon. Sure I find 500 characters too few at times but it is not a big issue really. I believe Eugen is being mindful enough about whether a feature should be implemented and how it should be implemented.</p>
551. <p>Mastodon is a micro-blogging platform. It doesn't have Moments and QT from Twitter and I don't think I could care less. A micro-blogging software is for having conversations with "micro" messages where message are listed after one another in chronological order. When you focus on a message it should also also list parent and reply messages. Mastodon has everything to satisfy its purpose and many people like it as it is. It would really hurt us to see if it changed direction and started becoming something else.</p>
552. <p>Can you imagine Mastodon implementing features like quoting toots? Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have replies which aren't replies, but breaks the parent-child relation that is fundamental to micro-blogging.</p>
553. <h1>Open Message to Eugen</h1>
554. <p>I have been using Mastodon since 2019 and I felt much better using it than Twitter. At first, I thought Mastodon's differences like absence of certain features were due to one person not being able to keep up with a corporation the size of Twitter. But the more I use it I realised thanks to those differences Mastodon is the healthier option. Now I am grateful for not having things like "@person favourited X toots your were mentioned in" notifications and QT.</p>
555. <p>Thank you for those decisions. Keep being picky 😉</p>
556. <h1>Comments</h1>
557. <p class="msg msg--info">You can comment via <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com?subject=Comment - Mastodon will never be Twitter">email</a> or <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/109409346837111887" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mastodon thread</a></p>
558.            ]]>
559.        </content>
560.    </entry>
561.    <entry>
562.        <title>I wiped my SSD by accident</title>
563.        <author>
564.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
565.        </author>
566.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/i-wiped-my-ssd-by-accident/"/>
567.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/i-wiped-my-ssd-by-accident/</id>
568.  
569.        <updated>2022-10-27T15:06:39-06:00</updated>
570.            <summary>
571.                <![CDATA[
572.                    <p>I thought I would never need it. I thought it was unnecessary. I thought it would be a struggle to set it up and a burden to maintain. But, am I glad I setup some backup system anyway.</p>
573.  
574.                ]]>
575.            </summary>
576.        <content type="html">
577.            <![CDATA[
578.                <p>I thought I would never need it. I thought it was unnecessary. I thought it would be a struggle to set it up and a burden to maintain. But, am I glad I setup some backup system anyway.</p>
579.  
580.  
581. <p>I do believe we should use our electronic devices as long as possible. Repurpose them for other tasks when they no longer upto the task we bought them for. I even posted <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/lifespan-of-electronic-devices/">a blog post</a> advocating this. But I didn’t say much about data backups until now simply because I didn’t have a proper backup system for it. I thought it would be hypocritical of me to write about it when I am not practicing it. But I promised myself to do things more properly when I purchased my current laptop, Lemur Pro 2022 from System76. I setted up a data backup system. Then I wiped my SSD clean by accident on 2022-09-07. This blog post is about <a href="#the-accident">what happened</a>, <a href="#duplicati-with-b2">how my backup was set up</a> and <a href="#restoration">how I recovered my data</a>.</p>
582. <h2 id="the-accident">The accident</h2>
583. <p>I attemptet to install Pop!_OS on a 32GB flash drive to create a portable Pop!_OS system with secure boot support. I decided to boot into recovery partition of this laptop since it is there for installing Pop!_OS. In theory, it shouldn’t matter if I am installing the OS onto internal SSD or a USB device. But it turns out Pop!_OS installer didn’t find my 32GB USB sufficiently big. Then it targeted the internal SSD which had all my data.</p>
584. <p>At least I came to believe that was the issue after <a href="https://github.com/pop-os/installer/issues/277">contacting developers on GitHub</a>.</p>
585. <h2 id="duplicati-with-b2">Duplicati with B2</h2>
586. <p>I looked into few remote storage options and BackBlaze seemed like the most affordable option. So I followed <a href="https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404672215195-Quickstart-Guide-for-Duplicati-and-Backblaze-B2-Cloud-Storage">their guide</a> to set up Duplicati with B2 back-end. I guess it was working just fine, at least the bucket was getting larger with <code>.aes</code> files.</p>
587. <p>This small heart attack enducing mistake on my side was probably the worst “opportunity” for me to test my backup system. Only after reinstalling Duplicati I realized that Duplicati configuration was gone too. Why the heck didn’t I think about exporting it earlier🤦 <br> But again, I had all the stuff like access keys and encryption passphrase recorded in my password manager. Oh am I glad I made a habit of using a password manager. It truely can be a life saver.</p>
588. <p><figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24.png" alt="screenshot of a bitwarden entry holding my Duplicati secrets and passphrases. confidential data is replaced with big dots to hide them" width="418" height="544"  sizes="100vw" srcset="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-xs.png 300w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-sm.png 480w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-md.png 768w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-lg.png 1024w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-xl.png 1360w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-from-2022-09-07-19-02-24-2xl.png 1600w"></figure></p>
589. <h2 id="restoration">Restoration</h2>
590. <p>Recreating the configuration was as simple as following the guide again. All I had to do was clicking restore button on Duplicati config. It would connect and download my backups. But instead it hang midway while recreating the database. CPU was idle, fan wasn’t running, it was like the silence before the thunder all over again.</p>
591. <p>I decided to download the files first, then restore from a local source rather than loading work of downloading on Duplicati too. Now B2 wasn’t letting me create snapshot for some reason, because snapshots are the only way to download more than 5 files at a time. I guess I am downloading everything with using the command line now.</p>
592. <pre><code>$ b2 authorize-account
593. Backblaze application key ID: $B2_keyID
594. Backblaze application key: $B2_applicationKey
595. Using https://api.backblazeb2.com
596. $ mkdir ~/B2bucket
597. $ b2 sync --threads 10 b2://revenge-subarctic-canopy-glorifier ~/B2bucket
598. </code></pre>
599. <p>I cancelled the old job and started a new restoration job but using the ~/B2bucket folder as the backup source this time. Everything was a smooth sail from this point onward. I just had to not open or edit any files while it was restoring (I think).</p>
600. <h2 id="dont-let-backups-scare-you">Don’t let backups scare you</h2>
601. <p>I think I do know why I never used backups in the past. To me, backups always appeared as that complicated, expensive, burdensome thing that was so easy to postpone. But my overall experience was nothing but peace of mind. Sure I had few moments when I thought everything was lost and nothing would be back. It turns out, those were just a rookie’s growing pains.</p>
602. <p><figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati.png" alt="Duplicati&#39;s web based user interface showing the home page" width="948" height="347"  sizes="100vw" srcset="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-xs.png 300w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-sm.png 480w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-md.png 768w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-lg.png 1024w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-xl.png 1360w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/24/responsive/Screenshot-2022-09-09-at-12-35-18-niagara-Duplicati-2xl.png 1600w"></figure></p>
603. <p>So please, if you haven’t already, give yourself the gift of peace of mind. It really is <strong>NOT</strong> a struggle to set up or burden to maintain. Set up backups using Duplicati with any of the storage options. You don’t have to use B2 like I did, you can even use Amazon’s S3 for all I care. Backup will be encrypted before upload anyway (hopefully you used a passphrase with 4 or 5 random words). Or, maybe repurpose an old HDD for this if you have to. But let there be encrypted backups.</p>
604. <p>Also, I owe a massive <strong>THANK YOU</strong> to past Murteza. He saved the day.</p>
605. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
606. <p>Comment on Fediverse or <a href="mailto:fb029ea2-fd90-4976-b223-ecb9bfb71edb@simplelogin.com">via email</a></p>
607. <h2 id="edits">EDITs</h2>
608. <h3 id="on-2022-10-27">on 2022-10-27</h3>
609. <ul>
610. <li>Language is simplified to avoid confusion.</li>
611. <li>Many misspelling mistakes are fixed.</li>
612. <li>Became ever so slightly better at English langauge ☺️</li>
613. </ul>
614.  
615.            ]]>
616.        </content>
617.    </entry>
618.    <entry>
619.        <title>Blogs go on and under</title>
620.        <author>
621.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
622.        </author>
623.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/blogs-go-on-and-under/"/>
624.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/blogs-go-on-and-under/</id>
625.            <category term="Web"/>
626.            <category term="Blogging"/>
627.  
628.        <updated>2022-08-19T18:36:02-06:00</updated>
629.            <summary>
630.                <![CDATA[
631.                    <p>Wayback Machine comes to rescue when a website is no longer accesible.</p>
632.  
633.                ]]>
634.            </summary>
635.        <content type="html">
636.            <![CDATA[
637.                <p>Wayback Machine comes to rescue when a website is no longer accesible.</p>
638.  
639.  
640. <p>I had many teachers in life. Aside from my parents, friends, lecturers and experiences, I also had strangers to teach me. Even though I never met most of those strangers face to face, I read their stories, experiences and accessed their knowledge via their personal blogs.</p>
641. <p>All the learning resources generated by strangers, lecturers, aquaintances and parents are too valuable to let to vanish. Similar to how we have private archives of our personal files, we should have public archives of our learning resources. Don’t worry about the archive hosting because it is generously provided by the <a href="https://archive.org/">Internet Archive</a>.</p>
642. <h2 id="wayback-machine-for-time-travel">Wayback Machine for time travel</h2>
643. <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/">Wayback Machine</a> is the website archive search engine by the Internet Archive. It allows browsing <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201101010524/https://murtezayesil.me/">older</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220720160718/https://murtezayesil.me/">newer</a> versions of crawled websites as well as creating. </p>
644. <p>I felt the need for writing this posts when I noticed that 2 blogs I used to read are no longer around. But thanks to Internet Archive, neither are lost forever. If you too have a website, please search it in Wayback Machine. You either will be amazed, or notice that it isn’t saved and facing danger of total disappearence.</p>
645. <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
646. <p>Wayback Machine is so useful that you may find yourself using it almost as much as Wikipedia. I say so because I do.</p>
647. <hr>
648. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
649. <p>Comment on <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil">Mastodon</a> or [via email](mailto:<a href="mailto:&#x63;&#x6f;&#109;&#109;&#101;&#x6e;&#116;&#64;&#x6d;&#x75;&#114;&#116;&#x65;&#x7a;&#97;&#121;&#101;&#115;&#x69;&#108;&#x2e;&#109;&#101;">&#x63;&#x6f;&#109;&#109;&#101;&#x6e;&#116;&#64;&#x6d;&#x75;&#114;&#116;&#x65;&#x7a;&#97;&#121;&#101;&#115;&#x69;&#108;&#x2e;&#109;&#101;</a>?subject=Blogs go on and under)</p>
650.  
651.            ]]>
652.        </content>
653.    </entry>
654.    <entry>
655.        <title>Too Many Online Accounts</title>
656.        <author>
657.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
658.        </author>
659.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/too-many-online-accounts/"/>
660.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/too-many-online-accounts/</id>
661.            <category term="Web"/>
662.            <category term="Security"/>
663.            <category term="Online"/>
664.  
665.        <updated>2023-06-06T23:00:44-06:00</updated>
666.            <summary>
667.                <![CDATA[
668.                    <p>Dashlane projected that people in 2020 would have <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150919202348/http://blog.dashlane.com/infographic-online-overload-its-worse-than-you-thought/">207 online accounts in average</a>. I have over 300.</p>
669.  
670.                ]]>
671.            </summary>
672.        <content type="html">
673.            <![CDATA[
674.                <p>Dashlane projected that people in 2020 would have <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150919202348/http://blog.dashlane.com/infographic-online-overload-its-worse-than-you-thought/">207 online accounts in average</a>. I have over 300.</p>
675.  
676.  
677. <p>I hardly believe I am using half of those 300 accounts in my daily life. In fact, I don’t think I have accessed to 50 of them in last 6 months. They must be waiting for either me to login or to be exposed in next data breach.</p>
678. <p>Take Uber for example. Turns out I ended up with 2 accounts on Uber. Last time I rode Uber was months ago, and my mom was the one who called it. There is no reason for me to have any Uber account.</p>
679. <p>I decided to do some deep cleaning, checking every single account in my Bitwarden account, and only moving the credentials for accounts I decided to keep around to a new Bitwarden account. Yeah, yeah. Creating another account to get rid of accounts, I get the irony. My priority is to find all the dangling accounts with easy to guess passwords, and unimportant accounts I created using my primary email address rather than unique alias addresses.</p>
680. <h2 id="what-now">What now?</h2>
681. <p>This is a call for you to do the same. You probably have a dozen of forgotten accounts which are nothing but security risks now.</p>
682. <p>Even if you are someone who doesn’t care much about online privacy or security, please at least check your primary and work emails for involvement on data breaches on <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">haveibeenpwned.com</a>.</p>
683. <h2 id="source">Source</h2>
684. <p>Infographic by Dashlane: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150919202348/http://blog.dashlane.com/infographic-online-overload-its-worse-than-you-thought/">https://web.archive.org/web/20150919202348/http://blog.dashlane.com/infographic-online-overload-its-worse-than-you-thought/</a></p>
685. <hr>
686. <h2 id="edits">Edits</h2>
687. <p>2023-06-06: Retouch to make article more readable, fix grammar mistakes and clean left over from draft I accidentlally forgot</p>
688. <hr>
689. <h2 id="comments">Comments</h2>
690. <p>Comment on <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/108791178955818321">Mastodon</a> or reply <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/how-do-i-commentreply-to-your-posts/">via email</a>.</p>
691. <p><strong>Jessica Mesber</strong>: <br>I tried to do some extra research about data breaches, and I came across another one in the media industry, that I think was interesting too: <a href="https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/foxnews-leak-report/">https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/foxnews-leak-report/</a></p>
692. <p>These things happen quite often (too often IMHO) and they are a very delicate situation, sometimes we underestimate the amount of information that some companies handle about their employees or users, and these are showing us the scary sides of data privacy. The lack of awareness of cyber security is dangerous to us, consumers, and this article actually explains it in a nice way.</p>
693.  
694.            ]]>
695.        </content>
696.    </entry>
697.    <entry>
698.        <title>Android Privacy Report</title>
699.        <author>
700.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
701.        </author>
702.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/android-privacy-report/"/>
703.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/android-privacy-report/</id>
704.            <category term="Papers"/>
705.  
706.        <updated>2022-08-03T01:23:50-06:00</updated>
707.            <summary>
708.                <![CDATA[
709.                    
710.  <p>
711.    This paper by Prof Doug Leith shows how great and terrible Android can be for the privacy of its users.
712.  </p>
713.  
714.                ]]>
715.            </summary>
716.        <content type="html">
717.            <![CDATA[
718.                
719.  <p>
720.    This paper by Prof Doug Leith shows how great and terrible Android can be for the privacy of its users.
721.  </p>
722.  
723.  
724.  <p>
725.    paper:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/Android_privacy_report.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/Android_privacy_report.pdf</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220416182518/https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/Android_privacy_report.pdf" target="_blank">[archive]</a>
726.  </p>
727.  
728.    <figure class="blockquote">
729.      <blockquote>We find that, with the notable exception of e/OS, even when minimally configured and the handset is idle these vendor-customized Android variants transmit substantial amounts of information to the OS developer and also to third-parties (Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook etc) that have pre-installed system apps.</blockquote>
730.      <figcaption>Prof Doug Leith. Doug Leith. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2022, from https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/</figcaption>
731.    </figure>
732.  
733.  <p>
734.    It should be noted that, GApps were installed along with Lineage OS for this research. Lineage OS does NOT include Google services by default.
735.  </p>
736. <hr class="separator separator--long-line" />
737.  
738.    <h2 id="notes">
739.      Notes
740.    </h2>
741.  
742.  <p>
743.    I used and recommend both Lineage OS and eOS. I continue to use eOS on my personal phone, OnePlus 6. Unlike in the paper, I used Lineage OS without GApps in the past, therefore without Google background services.
744.  </p>
745.  
746.  <p>
747.    I am new at citing research papers. It is possible that I have made a mistake while for the citation in above quotation. If you find a mistake, please correct me, send a comment email maybe.
748.  </p>
749. <hr class="separator separator--long-line" />
750.  
751.    <h2 id="comments">
752.      Comments
753.    </h2>
754.  
755.  <p class="msg msg--info">
756.    Comment via <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/108757737078806891" target="_blank">Mastodon</a> or <a href="mailto:comment@murtezayesil.me?subject=Android Privacy Report">email</a>
757.  </p>
758.  
759.  <p>
760.    
761.  </p>
762.            ]]>
763.        </content>
764.    </entry>
765.    <entry>
766.        <title>Lifespan of electronic devices</title>
767.        <author>
768.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
769.        </author>
770.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/lifespan-of-electronic-devices/"/>
771.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/lifespan-of-electronic-devices/</id>
772.            <category term="Review"/>
773.            <category term="Rant"/>
774.            <category term="Hardware"/>
775.  
776.        <updated>2022-08-18T00:20:10-06:00</updated>
777.            <summary>
778.                <![CDATA[
779.                    
780.  <p>
781.    Almost everybody wants the latest gadget. Everybody also wants their devices to last as long as possible, or at least sell for a good price on 2nd hand. I too have opinions on how long something is useful, also a 4 years old phone.
782.  </p>
783.  
784.                ]]>
785.            </summary>
786.        <content type="html">
787.            <![CDATA[
788.                
789.  <p>
790.    Almost everybody wants the latest gadget. Everybody also wants their devices to last as long as possible, or at least sell for a good price on 2nd hand. I too have opinions on how long something is useful, also a 4 years old phone.
791.  </p>
792.  
793.  
794.  <p>
795.    In my opinion, an electronic device should last 1 year for every 100$ spent on it. In other words, a 300$ phone should function 3 years or more and 1,000$ laptop should be useful for 10 years. Some of you think that, that is a ridiculous thing to expect, but many devices in our house beg to differ.
796.  </p>
797.  
798.    <h2 id="our-devices-as-examples">
799.      Our devices as examples
800.    </h2>
801.  
802.    <h3 id="my-fathers-laptop-from-2011">
803.      my father's laptop from 2011
804.    </h3>
805.  
806.  <p>
807.    My father's laptop, Toshiba Tecra R850 is from 2011. You would expect it to run excruciatingly slow but that is not the case. My father is someone who can (almost) never remember to close browser tabs or restart the computer, yet it runs surprisingly smoothly. I should also mention that only SSD storage and battery were upgraded over the years.
808.  </p>
809.  
810.  <div  class="gallery-wrapper">
811.    <div class="gallery" data-columns="2">
812.      <figure class="gallery__item">
813.      <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/gallery/Screenshot-from-2022-07-17-05-30-46.png" data-size="651x691">
814.        <img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/gallery/Screenshot-from-2022-07-17-05-30-46-thumbnail.png" height="691" width="651" alt="About page in Control Centre showing info about the device. device name: mintygreen, hardware model: Toshiba Tecra R850, Memory 7.7 gigibyte, processor: Intel i7-2620m, 4 cores, graphics: AMD Caicos, disk capacity: 240GB, budgie version: 10.6.1, operating system name: Solus 4.3 Fortitude,  operating system type: 64-bit, windowing system: X11" >
815.      </a>
816.      <figcaption>Solus Control Centre - About page</figcaption>
817.    </figure><figure class="gallery__item">
818.      <a href="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/gallery/Screenshot-from-2022-07-19-06-01-19.png" data-size="483x182">
819.        <img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/gallery/Screenshot-from-2022-07-19-06-01-19-thumbnail.png" height="182" width="483" alt="Linux terminal showing how long has this computer been running: 4 weeks, 22 hours and 27 minutes" >
820.      </a>
821.      <figcaption>This laptop has been running for almost 29  days</figcaption>
822.    </figure>
823.    </div>
824.  </div>
825.  
826.  <p>
827.    By the way, this laptop was unusable with Windows 10. Any attempts to use ended with tears and rage. You would expect Windows to make good use of 8GB memory, yet even opening start menu was slow all the way from boot to running for days. I would like to believe that <strong>days</strong> was enough time to cache start menu.
828.  </p>
829.  
830.  <p>
831.    I installed Solus on an SSD and booted it over <strong>USB</strong>. It was faster than Windows on HDD (connected to internal SATA). My father started using Solus and later asked me to put it in the computer rather than having it dangling on the side.
832.  </p>
833.  
834.  <p>
835.    I don't know how much it was when brand new.
836.  </p>
837.  
838.    <h3 id="media-hub-from-2014">
839.      media hub from 2014
840.    </h3>
841.  
842.  <p>
843.    My brother's old Lenovo G50-70 is now our media hub. It runs Linux Mint and is used for watching streaming services on the TV. Our TV is pretty old too (LG 55LE5500 manufactured in 2010). All in all, I am happy that this $400 laptop still has a purpose and staying out of landfill.
844.  </p>
845.  
846.    <h3 id="my-phone-from-2018">
847.      my phone from 2018
848.    </h3>
849.  
850.  <p>
851.    I am sometimes told that I should replace my current phone. My current phone is a OnePlus 6 and I am pretty happy with it. I bought it second hand in 2020 for $250. Its stock operating system Oxygen OS was okay, except that I was having problems with receiving notifications on time. When I forced important apps to run in the background (mainly WhatsApp and Signal), it started draining the battery fast.
852.  </p>
853.  
854.  <p>
855.    I installed Lineage OS shortly after purchasing it. Battery life was manageable and important notifications were coming in a timely manner. Given that this phone had very small battery (3300mAh) for its high end processor (Snapdragon 845), I was surprised it was still holding on. Well, that was back in 2020. Like any other Li-ion cell, phone's battery naturally degraded further. My energy demands increased as well. I am using many more apps which need to run in the background.
856.  </p>
857.  
858.    <figure class="post__image post__image--center">
859.      <img loading="lazy" src="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/battery_health-2.png" height="727" width="1080" alt="Battery Health: 65%, estimated capacity 2137 mAh, design capacity 3300 mAh, calculation based on last 4 sessions with 362% charged or 7735 mAh added"  sizes="100vw" srcset="https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-xs.png 300w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-sm.png 480w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-md.png 768w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-lg.png 1024w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-xl.png 1360w ,https://murtezayesil.me/media/posts/12/responsive/battery_health-2-2xl.png 1600w">
860.      <figcaption>Battery health estimate by Battery Guru app</figcaption>
861.    </figure>
862.  
863.  <p>
864.    For the curious ones, here is some info about my phone:
865.  </p>
866. <div><p>Release date: May 2018<br>Price at release: 530$<br>Last OxygenOS update: September 2021<br>CPU: Snapdragon 845<br>RAM: 6GB<br>Storage: 64Gb<br>Battery: 3300 mA</p></div>
867.  
868.  <p>
869.    I also heard that I should switch to newer phone because of my phone's small storage. We computer enthusiasts would like to talk about 321 backup system. To be frank, my system isn't complete yet. I mostly have 1 copy of important stuff on local storage, 1 copy everything on Nextcloud server and on remote backup. I don't need everything to be available locally. When you have a proper backup and sync server set up, you will find that 64GB storage can be plenty. You will be able to use your phone's tiny storage for the things you might need the most, such as the map of the city you live in.
870.  </p>
871.  
872.    <h2 id="conclusion">
873.      Conclusion
874.    </h2>
875.  
876.  <p>
877.    There are few more devices in our house which are considered "old and crappy" by many, yet functioning perfectly. I advocate for using the things we own in the best way we can, for as long as we can. Of course you should replace something if it is too old to let you work efficiently. But rather than tossing the old device into landfill, find a way  re-purpose it rather than tossing it to landfill.
878.  </p>
879.  
880.  <p>
881.    Sorry if you found this post a bit pushy about continuing to use old devices. I don't mean to blame you if you have the latest gadget. I guess what I wanted to say was that "buy the best device you can afford and use it until it is no longer useful to you, not until new one comes out".
882.  </p>
883.  
884.  <p>
885.    All mentioned prices are in USD.
886.  </p>
887. <div id="edit"><h2>EDIT</h2> on 2022-07-23</div>
888.  
889.  <p>
890.    It was brought to my attention that peripheral devices such as earbuds, mice, keyboard etc. can be purchased for less than $100. I forgot to mention that I was only talking about phones and laptops, not peripheral devices. I don't know how long such a device can be useful for if was not abused. After all, I use cable earphones that came with my father's Sony XA1. I would suggest a year/$15 as target for peripheral devices. Bonus points if you can get a year/$10. It is best to use them as long as possible for their primary purpose since it isn't easy to re-purpose them.
891.  </p>
892.  
893.  <p>
894.    I should also mention that, I was talking about useful lifespan of stuff, not total lifespan. <a href="#media-hub-from-2014">My brother's laptop</a> reached its useful lifespan back in 2018 and no longer good enough as a daily driver laptop. But it still is working fine and could be utilized in other ways, such as an old TV smartifier. If I was talking about total lifespan, I would expect that laptop to be broken back in 2018.
895.  </p>
896.  
897.  <p>
898.    There is also the problem of diminishing returns. You can buy a laptop for $1500, $2000 and even $3000 today. But that doesn't mean that $3000 laptop will still be suitable as a daily driver 29 years from now. I believe $1200 is the sweet spot. 
899.  </p>
900.  
901.    <h2 id="comments">
902.      Comments
903.    </h2>
904.  
905.  <p class="msg msg--info">
906.    Comment via <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/108674505585512170" target="_blank">Mastodon</a> or <a href="mailto:comment@murtezayesil.me?subject=Reply to Lifespan of electronic devices" class="" data-link-popup-id="1658241398810">email</a>
907.  </p>
908.            ]]>
909.        </content>
910.    </entry>
911.    <entry>
912.        <title>MSI GF65 Thin with Pop_OS! Review</title>
913.        <author>
914.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
915.        </author>
916.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/msi-gf65-thin-with-pop_os-review/"/>
917.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/msi-gf65-thin-with-pop_os-review/</id>
918.            <category term="Review"/>
919.  
920.        <updated>2022-07-19T12:58:45-06:00</updated>
921.            <summary>
922.                <![CDATA[
923.                    
924.  <p>
925.    Lenovo Ideapad 110 I had been using for 4 years was fried when the charger broke down. I started using my brother's MSI GF65 laptop with Pop_OS! And I got to say, I didn't expect it to work as well as it did, especially given that MSI builds computer optimized for and preinstalled with Windows.
926.  </p>
927.  
928.                ]]>
929.            </summary>
930.        <content type="html">
931.            <![CDATA[
932.                
933.  <p>
934.    Lenovo Ideapad 110 I had been using for 4 years was fried when the charger broke down. I started using my brother's MSI GF65 laptop with Pop_OS! And I got to say, I didn't expect it to work as well as it did, especially given that MSI builds computer optimized for and preinstalled with Windows.
935.  </p>
936.  
937.  
938.  <p>
939.    This review of MSI GF65 Thin will highlight what worked out-of-the-box, what didn't and what required some tinkering to get it working. I have been using this laptop for about 3 months as of writing this review.
940.  </p>
941.  
942.    <h2 id="the-good">
943.      The Good
944.    </h2>
945.  
946.    <h3 id="nvidia-3060-mobile-gpu">
947.      Nvidia 3060 Mobile GPU
948.    </h3>
949.  
950.  <p>
951.    This powerful GPU is able to run AAA games in High presets without lagging a bit (while using external laptop fans), even on Linux. I played many demanding games such as Detroit Become Human, Satisfactory, Minecraft with realistic shaders and Frostpunk. Visuals were both incredible and smooth (again, with external fans).
952.  </p>
953.  
954.    <h3 id="hybrid-graphics">
955.      Hybrid Graphics
956.    </h3>
957.  
958.  <p>
959.    I run this laptop in hybrid graphics mode to avoid killing its battery fast. After all, a powerful GPU is a power hungry GPU. Dedicated GPU only kicks in while playing a game, Blender rendering or video recording. Integrated GPU is used all the time. I am writing this review while unplugged. Battery lasts about 2.5 hours in hybrid graphics mode if not actively using the dedicated GPU.
960.  </p>
961.  
962.    <h3 id="performance">
963.      Performance
964.    </h3>
965.  
966.  <p>
967.    Boot time of Windows and Pop_OS! are nearly the same even though Pop_OS! is encrypted. Performance during operation is same too. I am very happy with performance of this computer even though MSI builds Windows exclusive devices.
968.  </p>
969.  
970.    <h3 id="fan-activity-and-battery-charge-limit">
971.      Fan activity and battery charge limit
972.    </h3>
973.  
974.  <p>
975.    This laptop has very quiet fans and battery that shouldn't wear out as fast as other laptops thanks to charge level limiting. Unfortunately, only way to configure fan speed and adjusting battery charge limit is to use Dragon Centre software on Windows. MSI doesn't provide Linux build of their software. Yet, after configuring fan speed and battery limit on Windows, they work on Linux as well. I am happy to see that I am not losing these features because I switched to Linux.
976.  </p>
977.  
978.    <h2 id="the-bad">
979.      The Bad
980.    </h2>
981.  
982.    <h3 id="battery-capacity">
983.      Battery capacity
984.    </h3>
985.  
986.  <p>
987.    51 Whr battery is small for a laptop with this processor and GPU. I can get 2 hours with screen at medium brightness, WiFi on and while running Amberol music player, Publii, Steam, Element, Thunderbird, Nextcloud client and Firefox with 12 tabs. Battery life is barely 30 minutes while playing a AAA game.
988.  </p>
989.  
990.  <p>
991.    Battery life is not any different on Windows according to online reviews. I didn't test this laptop's battery on Windows to come to a conclusion of my own.
992.  </p>
993.  
994.    <h3 id="cooling">
995.      Cooling
996.    </h3>
997.  
998.  <p>
999.    Fans will get loud when I play a game. Unless I am using the external laptop cooler, game will start lagging after 10 minutes or so. I have to switch to medium graphics on Detroit Become Human for frame rate to be playable. It is not that fans are useless. They push a good deal of hot air. Even though it has many heat pipes, this cooling system is not good enough for this GPU at times.
1000.  </p>
1001.  
1002.    <h2 id="the-ugly">
1003.      The Ugly
1004.    </h2>
1005.  
1006.  <p>
1007.    Another reason I use hybrid graphics rather than Nvidia Graphics only mode is the visual glitches appearing on GNOME desktop after a suspend. GPU will forget a random selection of glyphs after every suspend. Imagine "Applications" button on the top left corner becoming "A   l cat ons".
1008.  </p>
1009.  
1010.  <p>
1011.    Also some games won't open at all and throw unsupported GPU error even though Nvidia GPU is still running and that game uses Nvidia GPU even when in Hybrid graphics mode. It should be noted that I saw this problem with Windows games running via Valve Proton.<i></i>
1012.  </p>
1013.  
1014.    <h2 id="conclusion">
1015.      Conclusion
1016.    </h2>
1017.  
1018.  <p>
1019.    I recommend this laptop only as a desktop replacement that won't move around too much. Pop_OS! is a very good choice as long as you configured fan speed and battery limit to your liking on Windows. Pop_OS! is miles ahead of Windows 11 in privacy. In terms of performance, Pop_OS! is match with Windows for daily tasks. Depending on process, sometimes Pop_OS! and sometimes Windows is slightly ahead.
1020.  </p>
1021. <hr class="separator separator--dots" />
1022.  
1023.    <h2 id="comments">
1024.      Comments
1025.    </h2>
1026.  
1027.  <p>
1028.    To comment, you can either reply to <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/108610073937261714" target="_blank">this thread</a> on Mastodon or <a href="mailto:comment@murtezayesil.me">send an email</a>.
1029.  </p>
1030.            ]]>
1031.        </content>
1032.    </entry>
1033.    <entry>
1034.        <title>My workflow for publishing on this site</title>
1035.        <author>
1036.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
1037.        </author>
1038.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/my-workflow-for-publishing-on-this-site/"/>
1039.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/my-workflow-for-publishing-on-this-site/</id>
1040.            <category term="Web"/>
1041.            <category term="Blogging"/>
1042.  
1043.        <updated>2022-07-19T13:06:09-06:00</updated>
1044.            <summary>
1045.                <![CDATA[
1046.                    
1047.  <p>
1048.    I wanted a blog and I wanted it to be fast, without unnecessary stuff like trackers and cookies and with as little moving pieces as possible. Introducing the website you are reading right now, static pages written in and generated by Publii SSG, hosted by NeoCities and updated via webdav connection.
1049.  </p>
1050.  
1051.                ]]>
1052.            </summary>
1053.        <content type="html">
1054.            <![CDATA[
1055.                
1056.  <p>
1057.    I wanted a blog and I wanted it to be fast, without unnecessary stuff like trackers and cookies and with as little moving pieces as possible. Introducing the website you are reading right now, static pages written in and generated by Publii SSG, hosted by NeoCities and updated via webdav connection.
1058.  </p>
1059.  
1060.  
1061.    <h2 id="piece-1--publii-ssg">
1062.      Piece #1 - Publii SSG
1063.    </h2>
1064.  
1065.  <p>
1066.    Publii is an SSG (Static Site Generator) with an easy to use graphical interface. After the initial setup, all you have to do is to click the "Add new post" button and start typing. It offers 3 different editors:
1067.  </p>
1068.  
1069.  <ol>
1070.    <li>Markdown editor : for people who just want to type without needing to move their hands to mouse. There is a little learning curve if you never wrote in markdown before.</li><li>Block editor : offers everything in Markdown editor but requires clicking on options with mouse. It is my recommendation for people who are not comfortable with the Markdown's syntax yet.</li><li>WYSIWYG editor : What You See Is What You Get editor is a rich text editor very similar to word processors. It is the easiest to get started with. But I wouldn't recommend it to people who care about HTML semantics.</li>
1071.  </ol>
1072.  
1073.  <p>
1074.    It also has support for enabling and disabling cookies, GDPR warning, built-in search etc, but as long as you don't enable a fancy feature, Publii is cookie free. I like being able to have a pretty site without ugly banners and pop-ups. 
1075.  </p>
1076.  
1077.    <h2 id="piece-2--noecities-for-hosting">
1078.      Piece #2 - Noecities for hosting
1079.    </h2>
1080.  
1081.  <p>
1082.    I wanted a simple hosting provider which supports custom domains, auto renews HTTPS certificates and offers and easy way to upload static site files. I didn't really worry about the storage size or the bandwidth given that this is a static site. Neocities got me by surprise when I found out that they offer what I wanted and 50GB storage and 3TB bandwidth for $5/month. Guess who is paying neocities and very happy about it.
1083.  </p>
1084.  
1085.    <h2 id="piece-3--not-auto-uploading-via-webdav">
1086.      Piece #3 - NOT auto uploading via WebDAV
1087.    </h2>
1088.  
1089.  <p>
1090.    I initially accepted manually uploading the files using the web UI. But when I saw the&nbsp;<a href="https://neocities.org/site_files/mount_info" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" class="">Mount your site as a drive on your computer</a>&nbsp;link in the dashboard page, I knew I at the very least had to try it. After installing <code>davfs2</code> package on Pop_OS! and following a guide on <a href="https://sleeplessbeastie.eu/2017/09/04/how-to-mount-webdav-share/" target="_blank">How to mount a WebDAV Share</a>, I wish I could say Publii can auto upload newly generated pages to Neocities via WebDAV, but that is not the case.
1091.  </p>
1092.  
1093.  <p>
1094.    In fact, Publii emptied the WebDAV directory first and then failed to upload anything. This seems to be a common behaviour among SSGs. They will replace everything in their target directory before generating the pages.
1095.  </p>
1096.  
1097.  <p>
1098.    Well, I won't need to open a browser tab every time I need to make changes. Manual copy-paste from Publii's export directory to WebDAV directory works for now. I believe I would have better luck if Neocities supported SFTP, but that might be asking for too much. Don't get me wrong, I am not unhappy. It is not the end of the world if I have to hand crank that 1 gear.
1099.  </p>
1100. <hr class="separator separator--dots" />
1101.  
1102.    <h2 id="comments">
1103.      Comments
1104.    </h2>
1105.  
1106.  <p>
1107.    To comment, you can either reply to <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@murtezayesil/108609598044837310" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" class="">this thread</a> on Mastodon or <a href="mailto:comment@murtezayesil.me">send an email</a>.
1108.  </p>
1109.            ]]>
1110.        </content>
1111.    </entry>
1112.    <entry>
1113.        <title>Getting Started with Rust development on Solus</title>
1114.        <author>
1115.            <name>Murteza Yesil</name>
1116.        </author>
1117.        <link href="https://murtezayesil.me/getting-started-with-rust-development-on-solus/"/>
1118.        <id>https://murtezayesil.me/getting-started-with-rust-development-on-solus/</id>
1119.            <category term="Notes"/>
1120.  
1121.        <updated>2022-07-16T09:25:06-06:00</updated>
1122.            <summary>
1123.                <![CDATA[
1124.                    
1125.  <p>
1126.    We need to install "system.devel" bundle for things like cc linker to work.
1127.  </p>
1128.  
1129.                ]]>
1130.            </summary>
1131.        <content type="html">
1132.            <![CDATA[
1133.                
1134.  <p>
1135.    We need to install "system.devel" bundle for things like cc linker to work.
1136.  </p>
1137.  
1138.  
1139.  <p>
1140.    My Rust learning journey on Solus was abrubtly stopped when I found out that Solus doesn't ship with all the necessary packages for development in C, C++ and Rust languages. We need to install the system.devel bundle for cc linker to work.
1141.  </p>
1142. <pre class="line-numbers  language-html"><code>sudo eopkg it -c system.devel</code></pre>
1143.  
1144.  <p>
1145.    Source:&nbsp;<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37519076/how-to-solve-repo-item-build-essential-not-found-in-solus" target="_blank" class="" rel="nofollow noopener">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37519076/how-to-solve-repo-item-build-essential-not-found-in-solus</a>
1146.  </p>
1147.  
1148.  <p>
1149.    Archived Source: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220706043334/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37519076/how-to-solve-repo-item-build-essential-not-found-in-solus" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" class="" data-link-popup-id="1657082138070">https://web.archive.org/web/20220706043334/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37519076/how-to-solve-repo-item-build-essential-not-found-in-solus</a>
1150.  </p>
1151.  
1152.  <p>
1153.    
1154.  </p>
1155.            ]]>
1156.        </content>
1157.    </entry>
1158. </feed>
1159.  

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