/reader

London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

1984 has been on my "to read" list for years, but I've never actually taken the time to read it, until now.

Overall it was pretty good. I didn't think it read like a book that's 75 years old, which is a credit to how forward thinking Orwell was. I would have given it more stars, but I felt the story focussed on Winston and Julia's love affair too much.

I get it, that's what the book was about - how they were "sticking it to the man" by having the relationship, but I personally would have preferred the story to focus more on the strict dystopian society that they found themselves in, and more of the nuance it contained.

Either way, a good read and I'm glad I finally read it.

Reply to this post by email

Alllllll the way back in February 2021, I shared my thoughts on Micro.blog, and in that post I said...

The only real value I would get from MB, would be the cross-posting service, which I don't think is worth $5/month.

That still holds true today. The best part of Micro.blog, in my opinion, is the cross-posting feature. Socially I only really use Mastodon, but still, cross-posting links to every post I write is a pain in the arse. So a way to automate that would be cool, but not cool enough to warrant $5/month.

Then, around 6 months ago I discovered Robb's Echo tool (now called Echo Classic). I set this up (albeit with a little help from Robb) on my Synology and hey presto! Posts were automagically cross-posted to Mastodon.

Enter EchoFeed

But Robb recently started working on EchoFeed, a managed version of his Echo tool.

Robb asked me if I would beta test it; and I happily obliged! So I jumped in, set it up and forgot about it. Because that's how good this tool is. You plug it in, let it do its thing, and forget about it.

I have a custom RSS feed that only contains a link to the post and the post's description, so EchoFeed just chugs away in the background, doing it's thing, posting my links with a little summary.

Supported services

EchoFeed doesn't just support Mastodon, either. You can set it up to work with the following services:

• Mastodon
• Micro.blog
• Bluesky
• GitHub
• Discord
• Webmentions
• Webhooks

It takes literally 2 minutes to configure a cross-posting feed, and you're done.

Amplify

Once of the little extra tidbits that Robb has baked into EchoFeed, is the Amplify option.

If you switch the option on, anything posted to Mastodon using Echo will be re-posted by the EchoFeed Amplify account, which is a cool way of giving people more visibility.

Pricing

Micro.blog's $5/month was too much for me as I'd only use their cross-posting service. EchoFeed on the other hand is free for a single echo, or $25/year if you need more.

Better yet, if you have an omg.lol account, Robb offers a $5/year discount. I do have an omg.lol account, so EchoFeed only cost me the equivalent of $1.60/month.

Pretty bloody good.

I only need a single Echo setup, for Mastodon, so I could have gone for a free account, but I prefer to support indie developers where I can, so I had to sign up. And since I had the ability to add more echos, I decided to set one up for my Bluesky account too (which I never use, but whatever).

Anyway, if you're looking for a no hassle cross-posting service that's cheap, but works extremely well, check out EchoFeed.

Reply to this post by email

The Great Extermination has begun.

In the Capitol, Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan hatches a plot to kill every member of the untouchable caste in all of Lok, down to the last man, woman, and child. As a member of the Order of Inquisition, Vokkan has no official say in the creation of Law, but he has powerful allies willing to do his bidding. Through them, he has convinced the Judges that the genocide will be swift, complete, and without complication. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Lord Protector Devedas has sworn to uphold the Law. Once, he and the traitor Ashok Vadal had been like brothers. Now, he hunts Vadal and the Sons of the Black Sword, heretics and rebels who seek to live outside the rule of the Law. All Devedas must do is find and kill his best friend and order will be restored to Lok.

The rebels seek the secret kingdom spoken of by the Prophet Thera, a paradise where water is pure and food plentiful, where there are no castes, where the people rule themselves, and are not slaves to the Capitol. Ashok Vadal is not sure he believes in such a Paradise, but he—along with his allies—does seek refuge in the rebellion’s hideout in Akershan. But Vadal, a former High Protector who has turned his back on the corrupt Law, will not merely wait meekly, hoping that fleeing to Akershan will spare the rebellion from the clutches of the Great Extermination. No, if it’s a war the Capitol wants, Vadal, who has faced down gods and demons, will be all too willing to give it to them.

I don't really know what to say after reading this book, except for the fact that this series just continues to get better and better.

In this 3rd book, we get to know Ashok on a personal level a but more, and it's really interesting how his character develops throughout this book.

Aside from the Ashok side of things, this book seems to have everything - love, epic battles, monsters, the lot.

Can't wait for book four...

Reply to this post by email

I personally think this is a fair post, and right on the money. I really wouldn't have expected Ruben to receive any flack for something so...benign?

So I perused the replies, thinking to myself "can they really be as bad a Ruben is making out here?"

They were.

I decided while perusing the replies, I'd take some screenshots of them, so I can quote some of them within this posts. Very quickly I had like 20 screenshots saved to my phone. Then I came across this reply from @pamela, one of the admins on Ruben's instance:

Local Admin Note: We've removed a lot of toxic replies here, and have blocked and silenced a surprising number of accounts. Frankly, this has been an embarrassing response to a post encouraging empathy. Use your judgement before adding additional replies to it.

So the ones I saw weren't even the worst. Pamela & co. had already removed what appeared to be far worse replies than what I was seeing.

The fallout

Ruben wrote a blog post about this whole experience that contained some responses to the dross that he received in the Mastodon replies.

For posterity, here's some of the more "interesting" replies I read:

there is no sound reason for anyone to give up their freedom and support the prolonging of the moral disgrace that is proprietary software. And it's #GNU/Linux people.

Of course you're allowed to complain. But part of putting your opinion out into the word, is that other people might also have opinions, and they may tell you them. Oh no!

Imagine making a post "Boy, I sure do hate umbrellas", and then a reply mentions a really nice coat and you get totally butt hurt.

you mean Windows people like those who browse the www full of linux
servers?

We can complain anything we want when 'your' corporation takes over the space of fair companies, just for the sake of dollahs.

And that's what a VM is for!

Nope, they are by no means allowed to complain about the sh!t they threw themselves into.
As I am not allowed to complain about all the sh!t my NixOS setup with pure Wayland w/o Xwayland runs me into.

Ask for solutions to the problems and issues, sure. But Do Not Complain!

It's gnu-linux.

I think no, if you're running Windows you aren't allowed to complain.

It's either your choice to run spyware serving you ads, or it's your choice to use it for work.

If you have a job that forces you to install it on your personal device, then I feel sorry for you. Capitalism literally chained people to their working tools and worked them to death while letting them shit themselves. So no, I don't think Windows is there on the list of items that's OK to complain about.

wrong

you regret posting this? Good.

1. Look what's the name of your Mastodon server

2. I understand that some people are still living in serfdom, but I cannot stop repeating that it is much better to be free. (And whenever I am fixing my mum's Windows, she is 86, I just cannot believe what some people pay their money for)

I never do. I just say "it's your right to eat shit" instead. I'm forced to eat it sometimes too by the way (at work), not a big deal. The only thing I can't understand here is why are you so pissed off?

Sigh

For me, it's very sad to see the open source community be such dicks about this whole thing. Ruben simply posted an opinion. One that was actually, in my opinion, very level-headed. It's pathetic.

I've written about this kind of elitism before, and I've witnessed it in various communities more times than I care to remember.

I'm actually glad I no longer consider myself to be part of this insidious community. The sad thing is, the vast majority of people in it are really cool. It's a small number of wankers that give the entire community a bad name (isn't that always the case).

Personally, I don't think I'll be returning to Linux on the desktop any time soon. Not wholly because of the bad apples in the community of course (that would be ridiculous), but because I find Linux a waste of time to use.

To Ruben; don't worry mate. These things tend to blow over quickly. I've been on the receiving end of this kind of thing myself and it's utterly shit, so I know how you feel. Take a break and come back stronger for it.

Reply to this post by email