xianc78 @xianc78@gameliberty.club

I will add one more thought on the government and internet more generally speakings move toward demanding ID and/or forcing users to login or otherwise jump through hoops to access web sites/content/services/etc. You can fuck off.

I don't care if your Linux Mint, Microsoft, New Egg, Walmart, Amazon, or similar. And yes- my company is a leading sponsor of Linux Mint project, and yes, Linux Mint uses a shitty firewall solution that basically blocks Tor users and possibly users of VPNs (and I believe the company is also a sponsor of the Linux Mint project which is why they won't stop using it sadly).

While I can't claim my company is perfect (it's far from perfect) I can tell you it's a thousand times better in every respect than the trash that amounts to what makes up the internet today.

We DO NOT demand people login to browse our catalog, we DO NOT firewall off every user we can't ID (ie looking at you Linux Mint, and I like Linux Mint for the most part, they otherwise have done a lot of good for desktop GNU/Linux even if I would change a few things), we DO accept Monero (even if it's a little bit more of a hassle, hopefully something we find time to improve upon at some point), we DO NOT demand ID to checkout.

I know this is probably like the first and only time I've posted a link to my companies website ... ever. Terrible at marketing... what can I say... but here it is:

https://www.ThinkPenguin.com/

Ohh and one more thing. The government can fuck off too. Particularly California, New York, and the other states that think they can bully us into implementing 'age verification' or similar tech into the embedded OS for routers that we're the primary sponsor of (and ship). Fuck off. We're not implementing it and I wrote to our NH reps opposing it.

I was trying to checkout with a merchant that uses coinpayments.net to accept crypto payments and was disappointed to see that Monero was not an option and I knew I had paid with it prior. Also knew coinpayments.net had supported Moerno. I created a ticket on the platform I was purchasing services from and then attempted to reach out to the payment platform coinpayments.net, but the contact form doesn't seem to work, or at least not without entering a telegram or linklinden contact info (yea, I know weird, right? telegram I half get maybe if they're geared toward a certain market/element). Long story short coinpayments legacy apparently supports Monero, but coinpayments.net v2 platform does not.

I told the merchant I intended to pay my bill, but if Monero was not supported next time around, next year when I go to pay I'd be looking at alternatives.

Very disappointed in both this merchant who I like and maybe even more so the payment platform. coinpayments.net has been one of the better crypto payment platforms over the decades. Unlike say bitpay.com which has only supported non-privacy oriented cryptocurrencies.

There are other options today for directly accepting cryptos like btcpayserver and btcpay-monero that are MUCH better in that your not dependent on a third party. This ensures you DO NOT force your customers to go through problematic KYC processes.

I attempted to pay with bitcoin at New Egg for example and was unable to do so despite them taking by cryptocurrency payments in the past. This was down to demands for ID. You can fuck off with the ID. I will NOT give you my ID to do business with you.

I also will NOT login to your site in order to find out what products if any you have that I may wish to purchase. Looking at you Walmart.

Petition to stop the lock-down of Android linked below. Google is going to require all app developers whether using the Play Store or not, including those publishing to F-droid, other app stores, and even side-loading to do KYC (know your customer) and ID and pay a $25 (to start) fee.

https://c.org/VcwgZGc2VW

I would also suggest looking at adopting alternatives like the original Pine Phone (particularly for those more adamant about supporting choice in the market place). It's definitely a beta quality not-fully developed solution, but it's massively better than "open source" independently designed and developed phones we've had in the past that have attempted to compete with Android and iOS.

https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-convergence-package/

Group A was conned by group B.
A subset of group A was helping con the rest on behalf of group B.

To the surprise of nobody, it's about datamining.

m*crosoft's involvement in the school system will only worsen this. School-provided laptops will likely be their only experience with something that's not a smartphone and they be presented to children as locked-down pieces of shit owned and operated by someone else. Even if they do take an interest in computers, any learning will be taking place in m*crosoft's walled garden.

It's no accident that gen alpha is less tech literate than the two generations that came before them. Big tech have a vested interest in keeping the public too fucking stupid to know why they should oppose them at every turn.

#Permacomputing is about the future. Old CPUs suck (but can be fun). Permacomputing has little to do with #retrocomputing, except insofar as we can examine our past solutions for synergies and such. And pre-enshittification versions of current software. The rest is nostalgia.

Used gear is the future too. There are so many "adequate" systems made in the last 10 years, alone, that meet most peoples needs.

The only non-enshittified OSes today are *nix OSes; freebsd, netbsd, derivatives, and the various linux.

I run Debian 13, as vanilla as I can get for the least effort involved. But linux/etc today are essentially server-class installs used on the desktop/laptop. OK lots of folk on the fedi lurv to wield complexity for it's own sake and that's fine. And eg. Debian is shockingly, wonderfully reliable and given the underlying complexity, surprisingly easy to install and maintain -- if you have the skills.

But I keep wondering about how much could a linux distro be pared back to cut size and complexity? A brutally stripped distro that runs Libreoffice and not much else; and a fancier one with networking (browser memory hogs).

Is there/are there super low end linux distributions I'm not aware of?

I'm not seeing a lot of traffic about permacomputing that aren't entangled with retrocomputing. I'm hoping that's just a feature of my feeds and follows!

@theorytoe better get one of those 3d printers that lets you flash the firmware/doesn't need internet and do not use any print&go bullshit
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/08/any-user-who-has-a-3d-printer-would-have-this-software-installed-printgos-plan-to-become-the-drm-of-3d-printing/

2 days ago Transport Tycoon Deluxe (the original) got added to the GOG store.

Using a very misleading move GOG has now updated their OpenTTD page to list the original game as a requirement for playing OpenTTD.

This is not true at all. OpenTTD is a standalone game and does not require any files from the original game to work, it even replaces the original graphics.

Do not buy Transport Tycoon Deluxe from GOG. They charge 10 euro for it and it is simply the original game wrapped inside of DOSBox without any changes. Not worth your money.

Instead you should just simply download OpenTTD from the official download on openttd.org and play that instead.

And instead of giving your money to Atari/GOG you can donate money to the OpenTTD project directly. https://www.openttd.org/donate

"He got distracted by Iran? Pass it"

the iran shit has been successful in making nerds forget about their own shit being locked down
they're locking down android, they're locking down 3d printers, they're wanting age verification everywhere, meanwhile nerds are borderline fedposting about shit they saw on the Daily Kos

You can avoid most LLM slop just by adjusting the dates on your search result. I made a HTML form that makes this easier:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/search-the-past/

Since switching from led to incandescent light bulbs, my power bill has actually gone down
bill.png

Was curious about the old Orkut that Google bought and killed. The domain is still registered and has an interesting message.

THE WORLD IS HEALING