day2 You're back? No, I'm glad. Just surprised. prophet of the book of links Let's start this one slow. It has been written in the holy book of the links2 cult, that anyone, who wishes to brave the sickly sands of the plain-web desert unprepared, must brace themselves for the horrors of digital diseases. And truly, the prophets of old (browsers) were right. Trackers, auto-playing media, ads that watch one urinate... The prophet rose to his feet without saying a word and walked some distance away from the firepit, around which the apostles sat. They observed him patiently, silently reaching into their pockets for chewed quills and almost emptied ink jars. They knew the prophet would speak. Some minutes passed. All that one could hear were buzzing sounds of prehistoric insects around the flame and the ocasional crack and sift of the damp branches in the pit. The horned redskinned apostle could not bear the prophet's silence any longer: "What of the fediverse, the mastodons?! Thou sayeth the decentralized way shines a bright light on the peoples. Our friends fled the walled gardens of the Metacities, and yet we cannot engage with them. Thou shuns all that is javascriptae. But what good is our way, if we disregard even the good kinds?! Even those we consider our allies laugh at our ways!" The other apostles whispered in surprise. Afraid how the prophet would react to the devil's blasphemous outcry. "Thou have missed the lesson, child. We have not chosen this path for easy comforts. We chose it, for we believe there are right ways and there are poor ways. It is true that our world is changing to some benefit of our brethren in the cyber war, but the machine has clouded the judgement of most. Their abodes stand on a foundation of exploits. They no longer can see the right way." The prophet paused for a moment and looked up at the moon, clouded by the branches of the forest. Then continued: "Has not the creator removed javascript from links2 themself? It was once part of our life, but not anymore, for it was not the right one. Were we to disregard their holy intentions, perhaps we too would now be bleeding on the front lines, struggling for breathing space. We gave up the tools that can be abused, so that we could find the good ways and teach the people." The horned apostle hung his head in shame, asking for the prophet's forgiveness. But the prophet reassured him: "It is not blasphemous to question our ways. Now listen, for I will tell you how to find your friends." brutaldon How to reach the fediverse with links2 Way of trust If there is someone you trust and they offer you to use their brutaldon instance, your battle is already won. You just direct links2 to the url. Here we are using a publicly reachable instance hosted by praetor, a good friend of the Lispy Gopher Show and a father of many machines. * $ links2 brutaldon.praetor.tel Way of purity You may want to run a brutaldon server locally, just for yourself and connect to it through a socket. This way the only person you need to trust is yourself. * install python3 and pip, ie: # pkg_add python3 python3-pip * install pipenv through pip: $ pip install pipenv * $ git clone https://gitlab.com/brutaldon/brutaldon * $ cd brutaldon * $ pipenv install * $ pipenv run python ./manage.py migrate * $ pipenv run python ./manage.py runserver At this point your local brutaldon server is running. Point links2 to 127.0.0.1:8000 * $ links2 127.0.0.1:8000 Now listen very closely People get this wrong and blame the holy browser for faults that are in fact its features. Whether you took the way of trust or purity, the following applies to both. * Click on Log in * Go to the bottom and select old login form * Enter your credentials and log in * You will be brought back to the main page, seemingly not logged in. * Click on Log in again * Hard-refresh the page with Ctrl+r * Mastodon menu pops up at the top, choose whichever Why the extra step??? links2 by design caches all pages you visit during the session. This is a feature so you don't go around wasting bandwidth. Similarly, while using brutaldon, you will want to remember the refresh shortcut for every time you want to update the feeds or notifications. This applies to any online services that let you log in without javascript. Invidious instances, forums, etc. And of course, the preceeding steps apply to any browser. You already know I use mothra with brutaldon this way. The way of the rabbit I had the brutaldon guide on hand for quite some time and now it felt like the right time to put it out there, since it's been reported in the irc channel that links2 fails to log in to brutaldon. Now I can scratch that one off the list. Remember what I said about productivity on day0? It's looking good so far. In other news, I've been following the 7 day beginner tutorial to uxn by compudanzas. While looking for solutions to the exercises, I found out it exists as an e-book, so I bought it. I had to cheat by doing it with my phone. Then I emailed the .epub to my OpenBSD server and ssh'd it over to the 9front machine. Initially I was worried I'd have to go out and bother the bunny hackers with inquieries about ebook readers, but guess what.. page(1) does it all! More on my bothering later. However, it's only day2 and it's safe to say, I'm much less afraid of them now. Been using irssi through vt(1). I feel only a little guilty. -------------------------------------------------------------- resources * https://gitlab.com/brutaldon/brutaldon - brutaldon * https://mastodon.sdf.org/@screwtape/110693831341656541 Lispy Gopher Show on mastodon * https://compudanzas.itch.io/introduction-to-uxn-programming introduction to uxn programming by compudanzas