rrobin

Depends a bit on what you mean by p2p.

If you mean it as anyone can run their own server - this is already possible. But since message inboxes are one way you can really only control how the server for the messages your are receiving. The messages you send go to wherever the destination says they should go.

If by P2P you mean fully decentralized with no distinction between clients and servers then the discussion is a bit longer, but right now no, and for practical reasons probably not. Let me elaborate a bit.

First the protocol assumes a client, that is your messaging app, delivers the message to a server which is identified by a hostname/ip (you ability to deliver depends on this server being up and working).

For practical reasons the server is a separate entity, just like in email delivery protocols, because

1. it needs a stable hostname or ip address
2. it needs to be reachable most of the time to maximize availability, otherwise messages are not delivered

Now, in practice nothing prevents your client and server from being the same machine, but if the previous two points are not true you will have a bad experience receiving your messages. Specially since most clients are on mobile phones, these two points will likely not be true.

Another thing we could do to get it to be fully distributed would be to run simplex on top of other p2p protocol - anything w/ a DHT that can expose ports to the Internet (Tor, GNUNet, etc). But this has one downside - the client app would need to recognize new types of inbox addresses and connect accordingly.

You could probably achieve this with Tor and some .onion host setup. But then anyone that wanted to deliver to you would need an equivalent setup.

Apologies, I tend to nerd on about distributed systems.

First of all, you can assume the server can infer this in a number of ways - there is actually no way to fully block it, but we can try.

The main issue for privacy is that it makes your browser behave in ways that are a bit too specific (i.e. less private by comparison with the rest of the browsers in the known universe).

As for techniques the site can use

• javascript can test the geometry of something that was rendered to draw conclusions - was this font actually used? test several options and check for variations
• measure font work between network events i.e. generate a site that makes the browser use unique links for 1) fetches a font 2) renders text and 3) only then another fetch - measure the time between 1) and 3) and draw conclusions. Repeat for test cases and draw conclusions - e.g. is the browser really fast using monospace vs custom huge font? not a great method, but not completely worthless
• some techniques can actually do some of this without Javascript, provided you can generate some weird CSS/HTML that conditionally triggers a fetch

By the away not downloading the fonts also makes you "less private". Some of this is a stretch but not impossible.

Now for a more practical problem. Lots of sites use custom fonts for icons. Which means some sites will be very hard to use, because they only display buttons with an icon (actually a letter with a custom font).

FWIW these two lines are in my Firefox profile to disable downloads and skip document provided fonts:

user_pref("gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.display.use_document_fonts", 0);

If someone has better/different settings please share.

Finally the Tor browser folks did good work on privacy protections over FF. Maybe their issue tracker is a good source of inspiration https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/18097

I don't quite agree with some of the rationale

1. I do think users have benefited from Open Source, but I also think that there has been an a decline in Open Source software in general
2. I don't think contracts are a good analogy here (in the sense that every corporate consumer of the software would have to sign one)

Having said this I do understand where he is coming from. And I agree that:

1. a lot of big companies consume this software and don't give back
2. corporate interests are well entrenched in some Open Source projects, and some bad decisions have been made
3. he does raise an interesting point about the commons clause (but them I'm no laywer)

I would like to remind everyone that the GPL pretty much exists because of (1.). If anything we should have more GPL code. In that regard I don't think it failed us. But we rarely see enforced (in court). Frankly most of our code is not that special so please GPL it.

Finally I think users do know about Open Source software indirectly. In the same way they find out their "public" infrastructure has been running without permit or inspection the day things start breaking and the original builder/supplier is long gone and left no trace of how it works.

Since these days everything is software (or black box hardware with firmware) this is increasingly important in public policy. And I do wish we would see public contracts asking for hardware/firmware what some already for software.

I wont get into the Redhat/IBM+CentOS/Fedora or AI points because there is a lot more going on there. Not that he is not right. But I'm kind of fed up with it :D

I've tried a few times in the past 2 weeks. Using a good email account and also with github, no luck though. Maybe its doing some "smart" heuristics to trigger it.

I just retried now, using that temp mail (but no vpn) and got the exact same phone verification. Maybe my IP address is evil :D

I'm a bit of terminal nerd, so probably not the best person to talk about desktop. I don't have many thoughts with regards to app development or layout for accessibility. What I really would like is for distros to be accessible from the ground up, even before the desktop is up.

The best example of accessibility from the ground up I saw for linux was talking arch, an Arch Linux spin with speech. Sadly the website is gone, but we can find it in the web archive

• https://web.archive.org/web/20210116060142/https://talkingarch.tk/download.php

in particular there was an audio tutorial to help you install the live cd (you can still ear it in the archive):

• https://web.archive.org/web/20201206010519/https://talkingarch.tk/tutorials.php

Here are a few resources, which are pretty dated but I wish they were the norm in any install:

• your system can boot up talking, using speakup http://www.linux-speakup.org/speakup.html
• even if the desktop is not fully accessible or breaks, your console or the terminal in your desktop can speak using yasr https://yasr.sourceforge.net/

Now going into your points:

How should a blind Desktop be structured?

To be honest I don't expect much here. As long as context/window switching signals you properly you are probably fine. I have not used gnome with orca in a long time, but this used to be ok. The problems begin with the apps, tabs and app internal structure.

Are there any big dealbreakers like Wayland, TTS engines, specific applications e.g.?

Lots.

Some times your screen reader breaks and its nice to have a magic key that restarts the screen reader, or the entire desktop. Or you just swap into a virtual console running speakup/yasr and do it yourself :D

TTS engines are probably ok. Some times people complain about the voices, but I think it is fine as long as it reliably works, does not hang, responds quickly.

Specific applications are tricky. The default settings on a lot of apps wont work well by default, but that is not surprising.

I do think that a lot of newer apps have two problems

1. they are not configurable or scriptable at all, there is only one way to do things and no way to customize it. Opening tickets to patch each and every feature is not feasible.
2. They frequently go through breaking release cycles that nuke old features, so you need to relearn all your tricks on the next major release and find new hacks

I can give you two good-ish examples, both Vim and Mutt can work very well with a terminal screen reader, but it is a lot of work to configure:

• with vim you need to disable all features that make the cursor jump around and draw stuff (like line numbers and the ruler)
• with mutt every single string in the screen can be customized, so you even insert SSML to control speech and read email

I think you can find similar examples in desktop apps too.

What do you think would be the best base Desktop to build such a setup on?

no idea to be honest. Gnome use to have support. I suppose other desktops that can be remote controlled could be changed to integrate speech (like i3 or sway).

Would you think an immutable, out of the box Distro like “Fedora Silversound”, with everything included, the best tools, presets, easy setup e.g. is a good idea?

I have never used Silversound. But the key thing for me is to be able to roll back forward to a working state.

How privacy-friendly can a usable blind Desktop be?

I think it should be fine. People with screens have things like those Laptop Screen Privacy Filter, people using audio have headphones. Depending on your machine you can setup the mixer so that audio never uses the external speaker.

I don't recall the details but you can also have some applications send audio to the external speaker while others use your headphones (provided they are a separate sound card, like usb/bluetooth headphones).

Also, how would you like to call it? “A Talking Desktop”?

Urgh, Shouting Linux.

This is a really nice summary of the practical issues surrounding this.

There is one more that I would like to call out: how does this client scanning code end up running in your phone? i.e. who pushes it there and keeps it up to date (and by consequence the database).

I can think of a few options:

1. The messaging app owner includes this as part of their code, and for every msg/image/etc checks before send (/receive?)
2. The phone OS vendor puts it there, bakes it as part of the image store/retrieval API - in a sense it works more on your gallery than your messaging app
3. The phone vendor puts it there, just like they already do for their branded apps.
4. Your mobile operator puts it there, just like they already do for their stuff

Each of these has its own problems/challenges. How to compel them to insert this (ahem "backdoor"), and the different risks with each of them.

Ok not much help there, for what is worth I tried building your recipe here. The full backtrace is not helpful - it just shows that the linker failed to run the binary:

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff7fe6c77 in dl_main () from /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
(ins)(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff7fe6c77 in dl_main () from /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
#1  0x00007ffff7fe3074 in _dl_sysdep_start () from /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
#2  0x00007ffff7fe4c91 in _dl_start () from /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
#3  0x00007ffff7fe3a98 in _start () from /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
#4  0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
#5  0x00007fffffffdf31 in ?? ()
#6  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()

Strangely my ldd shows nothing for the final minikube binary. file does show the guix interpreter though and it looks good:

$ file /gnu/store/xhyv7k87gy9k368yrv6faray37z615cr-minikube-1.31.2/bin/minikube 
/gnu/store/xhyv7k87gy9k368yrv6faray37z615cr-minikube-1.31.2/bin/minikube: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, Go BuildID=aBEWfkldQzf4mlUsITym/a6aHGcy9omlZPRTvR8ta/1-lUpI-DPce979zTpJQy/jMuF_0TfmkRW2e3NFst2, not stripped

readelf is a bit more helpful than ldd:

$ readelf -d /gnu/store/xhyv7k87gy9k368yrv6faray37z615cr-minikube-1.31.2/bin/minikube 

Dynamic section at offset 0x270 contains 21 entries:
  Tag        Type                         Name/Value
 0x000000000000001d (RUNPATH)            Library runpath: [/gnu/store/l684qgqlrqkbsh8jffp9d8ag6vrpcwgs-gcc-11.3.0-lib/lib:/gnu/store/fzsz6gk7g5spr7j5jx5zh6rysd5r0n64-gcc-toolchain-11.3.0/lib]
 0x0000000000000004 (HASH)               0x2dcbb20
 0x0000000000000006 (SYMTAB)             0x2dcc080
 0x000000000000000b (SYMENT)             24 (bytes)
 0x0000000000000005 (STRTAB)             0x4003c0
 0x000000000000000a (STRSZ)              795 (bytes)
 0x0000000000000007 (RELA)               0x2dcb668
 0x0000000000000008 (RELASZ)             24 (bytes)
 0x0000000000000009 (RELAENT)            24 (bytes)
 0x0000000000000003 (PLTGOT)             0x3e65300
 0x0000000000000015 (DEBUG)              0x0
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libc.so.6]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libpthread.so.0]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libresolv.so.2]
 0x000000006ffffffe (VERNEED)            0x2dcbaa0
 0x000000006fffffff (VERNEEDNUM)         3
 0x000000006ffffff0 (VERSYM)             0x2dcba40
 0x0000000000000014 (PLTREL)             RELA
 0x0000000000000002 (PLTRELSZ)           960 (bytes)
 0x0000000000000017 (JMPREL)             0x2dcb680
 0x0000000000000000 (NULL)               0x0

Another way to check rpath is to use patchelf

$ patchelf --print-rpath minikube 
/gnu/store/l684qgqlrqkbsh8jffp9d8ag6vrpcwgs-gcc-11.3.0-lib/lib:/gnu/store/fzsz6gk7g5spr7j5jx5zh6rysd5r0n64-gcc-toolchain-11.3.0/lib

The one thing that stands out to me there is that runpath lacks glibc. I also don't know why gcc is in there (but it was in the build recipe).

So I added the libc to the runpath (your paths will be different)

$ patchelf --set-rpath /gnu/store/l684qgqlrqkbsh8jffp9d8ag6vrpcwgs-gcc-11.3.0-lib/lib:/gnu/store/fzsz6gk7g5spr7j5jx5zh6rysd5r0n64-gcc-toolchain-11.3.0/lib:/gnu/store/gsjczqir1wbz8p770zndrpw4rnppmxi3-glibc-2.35/lib minikube

and voila

$ ./minikube 
minikube provisions and manages local Kubernetes clusters optimized for development workflows.

Basic Commands:
  start            Starts a local Kubernetes cluster
  status           Gets the status of a local Kubernetes cluster
  stop             Stops a running local Kubernetes cluster
(...)

I never used patchelf-plan, so I'm not sure what you should do there, but maybe find other recipes that use it? I see some in nonguix that add glibc there.

Looks like a segfault at the end there. Can you try and get a backtrace with gdb?

Also the SEGV_ACCERR seems to mean permission denied (no idea here, maybe related to the earlier mmap?)

True friendship is indeed to trade ssh keys.

What kind of hardware are we talking about here. Tiny boxes, big boxes? Disks, networking?

If the recipe change is small you can create your own file that imports the existing package and extends it to modify the version.

This is a minimal example that inherits from the existing one

(define-module (mystuffypackages)
	       #:use-module (guix packages)
	       #:use-module (guix download)
	       #:use-module (gnu packages)
	       #:use-module (gnu packages education)
	       )


(define-public my-anki 
  (package
    (inherit anki)
    (version "2.1.65")
    (source
         (origin
           (method url-fetch)
	   ;; Changed the url to github - could not download from site archive
           (uri (string-append "https://github.com/ankitects/anki/archive/refs/tags/"
                               version ".tar.gz"))
           (sha256
            (base32 "1s28kdaw864rj6x9zgq5wwwl0gi5cyn2kg91jkq05v1bwgl3f76a"))
           ;; FIXME 2.1.16 uses a patch - check education.scm - it is not
	   ;; applying
           ))
    ;; FIXME currently failing to build due to disable-update-check
    ))

my-anki

You can call guix build directly to build the package from this file. To be clear this is currently failing for me :D

Check this blog article for a pretty nice overview of how to create your own packages and channel https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/from-development-environments-to-continuous-integrationthe-ultimate-guide-to-software-development-with-guix/

Fair point (IP, email, browser session data). Those should not be exposed via the federation in any way. And the existence of the federated network means we could switch instances if we are concerned our instance is a bad actor about this.

I did not mean to suggest the ecosystem is not valuable for privacy. I just really don't want people to associate federation with privacy protections about data that is basically public (posts, profile data, etc). Wrong expectations about privacy are harmful.

To be fair I do not expect any privacy protections from lemmy/mastodon in general, or from blocking/defederation in particular.

Lemmy/Mastodon protocols are not really private, as soon you place your data in one instance your data is accessible by others in the same instance. If that instance is federated this extends to other instances too. In other words the system can be seen as mostly public data since most instances are public.

The purpose of blocking or defederation (which is blocking at instance level) is to fight spam content, not to provide privacy.