Permacomputing

ProtonVPN did an API bump in this version: Version 2.7.56.1 (2021-06-18) which left everyone with an Android version older than AOS 6 in the dust. So I went to the archives and grabbed the version just before that one. Ran it for the first time, configuration wizard had no issues but as soon as I tried to reach out to the server it refused to stand up a tunnel saying my version was too old. Not only did they leave permacomputing folks behind for sustaining their still-quite-functional devices, but they proactively sabotaged us from the server side.

AFAIK they made no excuses for the API bump. The usual excuse is “for security reasons”... yeah.. bullshit. Anyway, here’s the workaround:

The absolute latest openvpn app still supports AOS 5 (somewhat suggesting there is no compelling security reason to force AOS 5 users to throw away their devices). Or if you have AOS 4 you can take the openvpn version from 2 years ago. ProtonVPN distributes openvpn config profiles and the openVPN app can simply import those.

Also worth noting that F-Droid warns of anti-features on the ProtonVPN app but OpenVPN is free of anti-features. That said, I got an authentication error, but I doubt that’s related to this procedure.

update --- ProtonVPN is possibly breaking EU law. If someone subscribed to service less than two years before the forced obsolescence, ProtonVPN is obligated to continue service as long as necessary to serve the consumer for 2 years.

I can hardly believe I’m not joking. And there’s chatter that “we are addicted to sand” (like the oil mantra).

Permacomputing people can rejoice.. our community will grow because of this.

The enshitified web throws at us websites with autoplay videos that waste copious bandwidth. The waste is not just annoying and eco-hostile, but it sucks dry the credit of people on limited internet connections and grinds CPUs of #permacomputing folks to a crawl.

The best fix in principle would be a browser that disables animations. But it does not exist (reference). It’s an extremely complex problem because there are so many different ways video can forced on people with JavaScript. The developer of Ungoogled Chromium gave up on the effort and even Google have failed in their attempt as well (yes, I shit you not, the big brains at Google could only figure out how to mute the audio).

So the next best option is to identify websites that autoplay video and cancel them. The #uBlacklist plugin is available on Chrome and Firefox. When you get burnt by a shitty autoplay website, you can blacklist so it doesn’t happen again. There is also a mechanism to subscribe to crowd-sourced lists.

Caveat: I’ve not used it myself as the plugin is incompatible with my browser version. It appears it supports certain search engines which I do not use myself, so I’m not sure if it’s useful apart from search results on particular search services.

⚠ The link to jwz.org might have autoplay content, ironically enough. Sorry if that triggers on anyone! Tor Browser is exceptionally able to block the autoplay on that site, so I suggest using TB. I do not like the idea of publicizing MS Github but this link is an alternate which is linked by jwz.org anyway.

Yeah, I have a PPC laptop that this happened to a few years back, which felt way too soon. It's in perfect working condition except for the battery.

@activistPnk @permacomputing

The article title is “Debian Likely Moving Away From i386 In The Near Future” but according to the article Debian will drop i386 support because it will be dropped from the kernel. Seems like bad news for permacomputing folks.

(EDIT) modified the title since it seems more accurate to say that 32-bit support is being dropped. (reference)

Are there any Debian apps that will track bandwidth consumption on a per-app basis, and ideally website-specific when a browser with sandboxing has multiple tabs?

These tools are vaguely described as being able to monitor network traffic:

iftop, nload, nethogs, vnstat, bmon, iperf, netperf, iptraf, cbm, zabbix, nagios, cacti, darkstat, sarg, monitorx, etherape

I’ve tried iftop, nload, vnstat, & bmon. Some of those are just showing realtime stats (bytes per second) and some are per net interface, not per app. I need to know the total bandwidth used on a per-process basis so if a website is streaming or buffering something heavy like video I can react. Since browsers tend to have sandboxing, i think there is a separate process per website. So if a website is a pig I need stats on it.

Ultimately I’m on a limited connection and it’s a mystery what is hogging my bandwidth allowance. I prefer light non-graphical apps but I guess I can’t be too fussy at this point.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/4071219

> These two groups exist: > > * !permacomputing@lemmy.sdf.org > * !permacomputing@slrpnk.net > > Both are small but it looks like slrpnk.net has more traction. IMO both might want to consider mentioning the other in the side-bar so folks know to cross-post.

This article sets out a vision for KDE (the free software desktop environment) written by Clinton Ignatov. It doesn't draw on permacomputing explicitly but it is nonetheless full of real-world examples of permacomputing principles, particularly less reliance on omnipresent networking. If you were on the techie end of the spectrum and looking for inspiration to put concepts into practice, IMO this is a great starting point.

From the Ninth Workshop on Computing within Limits (LIMITS '23)