Why to be a fedi instance admin?

My instance gentoo.live was small compared to others very well-known. It was running on Gentoo Linux for 3 years. Probably it had 5 active users average at week. Currently gentoo.live had a reboot, it's running Debian or a Debian derivative, and all previous users are not available anymore. I'm referring me in the article on my experience as the admin of the old gentoo.live instance.

Why would someone would like to be a fediverse admin?

There are many possible motivations for becoming a fediverse instance admin. Some of them are:

To create a space for a specific topic, interest, or community that is not well-represented or welcome on other instances.

To have more control and customization over the look, feel, and functionality of the instance.

To enjoy the technical challenge and learning opportunity of setting up and maintaining a server.

To contribute to the growth and diversity of the fediverse as a whole.

To express one's values and beliefs through the choice of federation policies and moderation practices.

Of course, these are not the only reasons, and different admins may have different goals and preferences. Being a fediverse instance admin can be rewarding, but also demanding and stressful. It requires time, money, skills, and responsibility. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but rather with careful consideration and planning.

In my case I was pretty interested in learning and it's an experience you only live when you only do yourself. And I was pretty interested in the technical challenge it would be to run it on Gentoo as well I was interested in seeing more servers running Gentoo.

I'm not using Gentoo.

But things have changed since then, currently I own 4 VPS, 3 Raspberry pis, 2 Desktop computers and a Netbook.

That are 10 machines! And most of them are using different hardware.

So I mostly use Debian, Ubuntu and RHEL. Mostly I use Debian, RHEL seldom. My netbook still uses Slackware. What about Gentoo?

The issue is that my main desktop computer is the Raspberry Pi, I tried booting Gentoo from a binary image from Sasaki but it had an error at boot. I think that if I perform a manual installation, report the error and do some research there is a high chance to get it working.

But I feel pretty comfortable right now with the Raspberry Pi OS, even if the Raspberry Pi runs on ARM and there are a lot of missing apps for ARM there are many amd64 apps that runs nicely on the Raspberry Pi thanks to Pi Apps.

My issue is that I haven't be able to be quiet and static to install Gentoo calmly and it's not very likely to make a new installations when I have systems that are working just fine.

The instance was not about Gentoo.

Probably the philosophy of the instance was Install Gentoo in your instance. it was a very general instance.

What have I learned?

Paying attention to resources, even if I'm in Mexico I found a great hosting support in Ionos allowing me to pay in my local currency, because my payments depended a lot of the variations of currency, I learned this pretty bad at COVID time since MXN was so inflated compared with Dollar and Euro.

Also I learned that I love hardware so much, I'm going to continue researching the possibility of only using dedicated hardware in a future! It's interesting running Gentoo on VPS as I did but I believe it is a waste of time if Gentoo is not running on dedicated Hardware. A VPS performance is not the best compared to dedicated Hardware.

And to tell you the truth, I used an expensive VPS for running Gentoo with peace of mind, which is not a very resource savvy election.

Even if my Gentoo installation was simple, it was extremely hard to update it without breaking Gentoo since I forgot to update Gentoo for so long time. Ofc I followed a guide for updating Gentoo but this was a hard task.

Instance rules

I haven't thought about this, I think i just stick with rules most of the instances I interact the most uses. But that rules represent my values? I just created an instance of only one user the past week. And I feel free, I don't have to follow rules, if you are behaving nice you don't need rules. So posting rules to me would be just posting some common sense rules with respect of the universal human rights. And I believe some rules like the copyright are bad done, needs reinterpretation, reformation or simply they are questionable as some rights about the individual freedom can be in contradiction with some other rights.

But I guess I have to attach with these rules I don't completely agree since I don't want my instance down

I really feel bad for those people which may be excluded with our terms and conditions if there is any. Even criminals or simply people who breaks society rules deserves love and find happiness. It's not a justification and sadly we are not psychologist for helping those who want to change or be a better person.

In my instance I'd like to protect individual human rights the most, for instance, even if I agree with Gnu software ideals and I plan on licensing on it my software if you uses Windows and you feel good with it, perfect. The GNU ideals are pretty good as a whole, a society, but probably individually you are just working fine with Windows. Or the case of the abort, probably we have a soul or we don't understand what is the value or the life itself, but, as individual, the abort is what can increase your life quality.

My perspective as accountant and as my experience working with pensions

Since the pandemic started, I have matured a lot, and I have worked with lot's of confidential information of individuals and being an agent in many economic transactions. And I feel proud of it, it's a trust I had acquired thanks to hard working and being consistent.

I also made a lot of mistakes at work, plenty of them, I still have some regrets since this is my first formal job.

Accountancy science has gave me a lot of perspectives to understand society in an economical way, and to understand better an organization and the money.

As an accountant I have an code of ethics, a compromise of integrity and a lot of responsibility as my resolutions and interpretations has legal value and meaning important to society as well as clients.

When I see what a do for a living and my major in this perspective, then I realize that has a lot of meaning and importance what I'm doing for society.

One of my motivations is knowing I'm doing something important, but probably you may say that Princess.wedding is something pretty fancy

But now this is more important than ever, we saw the creation of threads, the transformation of Twitter to X, Youtube is too aggressive with adds. It can be a great change to create AI chat bots with free software to survive in this new order world

Very simple link shortener in PHP

I just simple had this idea, I'm not a programmer, so this is probably not the best solution, before proceeding think of it as something I did because I was bored

I had this idea, saving all the links in a text file each one per line, then converting the number line to another numeric system similar to HEX which also uses letters, the alphanumeric filesystem that is indeed the numeric system with base 36.

I like using both Apache and Nginx, in this case I will show you the Apache directive you will need, AI helped me a lot for writing the code, most of the code was written by AI, by instance part of the code was written using this input:

write php code that takes the URL, which will be provided in alphanumeric format, for example .com/A, where A is the alphanumeric number, which in the decimal system is 10. Once the portion of the URL in alphanumeric format is extracted, it must be transformed into decimal format. with this variable the line number in the links.txt file will be queried, which contains a URL per line. once the line number is queried, it will redirect to the URL found in this line number.

Originally I didn't pretended to create a user form to submit the url via the web but only modifying the file with SSH and the command line, which you can still do so only using the part of the code in the else statement. However you would need a bash script or something for editing the file in the console. Or probably, just using decimal numeration and an editor with number line activated. I was thinking in a VIM plugin that uses the alphanumeric numeric system for number line.

Add the following directive in your Apache configuration, replace the PATH with the yours:


<Directory "/var/www/7d.gg"\>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php [L]
</Directory>

Now create index.php with the following content:


<?php
$url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
if ($url == '/') {
        include 'main.php';
} else {
// Getting alphanumeric string /
$alfanumerico = substr($url, strrpos($url, '/') + 1);
// Convert alphanumeric string to decimal
$decimal = base_convert($alfanumerico, 36, 10);
// Open the links.txt file
$archivo = fopen("links.txt", "r");
// Counting lines until getting the one
$linea = 1;
while (!feof($archivo) && $linea < $decimal) {
  fgets($archivo);
  $linea++;
}
// Getting number line
$url_destino = fgets($archivo);
// Closing file
fclose($archivo);
// Redirecting 
header("Location: $url_destino");
}
>?

It's a good idea to change permissions of links.txt to 750. I believe this code is not very efficient with a large database.

With this html code you may create a simple form in main.php:


<form action="" method="post">
  <label for="texto">Escribe el texto que quieres añadir al final de links.txt:</label>
<input type="text" id="texto" name="texto" required>
<button type="submit">Enviar</button>
</form>

And this would be the php code:


<?php
// Verificar si se recibió el texto del usuario
if (isset($_POST['texto'])) {
  // Obtener el texto del usuario
  $texto = $_POST['texto'];
  // Abrir el archivo links.txt en modo append
  $archivo = fopen("links.txt", "a");
  // Escribir el texto del usuario en el archivo, con un salto de línea al final
  fwrite($archivo, $texto . "\n");
  // Mostrar un mensaje de confirmación
  fclose($archivo);
  
  // Abrir el archivo links.txt en modo lectura
$archivo = fopen("links.txt", "r");
// Inicializar el contador de líneas
$contador = 0;
// Recorrer el archivo línea por línea
while (!feof($archivo)) {
  // Leer una línea del archivo
  fgets($archivo);
  $contador++;
}
  $contador--;

// Cerrar el archivo
fclose($archivo);

// Convertir el contador a la base 36
$alfanumerico = base_convert($contador, 10, 36);
// Mostrar el resultado
echo "Your link has been added, your link is 7d.gg/" . $alfanumerico;

}
?>

Two letters domains

I got this domain: 7d.gg, the renovation price is 60USD each year, which makes me to reconsider keeping it or not. But to tell you the truth, it's pretty useful, I have some private sites as subdomains there.

In my case, one of the main reasons to keep a domain it's its monetary value, everything you own should be able to be sold, the only way to own things it's realizing that is yours only when you are able to let it go. But if you let it go and you don't get money or something in return your ability to acquire something you may need will be reduced.

And the other one reason to keep a domain it's because I like to collect domains, unique domains, like this iogirl.com, it's very unique, short; and dot com, which makes this domain hard to get. If I dropped this domain it's very likely someone would take it.

The dot com still has an incredible power in our conscious mind, it's like the ending of a very well known spell. I got this domain: princess.wedding and of course it's a very unique domain, great for business, if you ask me, princess.wedding domain is probably one of the best domains for a dot wedding TDL, and probably the best. My presentation site was available there instead of iogirl.com, what I wanted is the English equivalent to chicamagica.com (magical girl). It needed to be a dot com.

How to get a two letters domains?

Two letters domains dot com are in four zeros figures. And when it comes to domains as io, ai, the price is also thousands. The most popular a TLD, the most the mean cost of the domains.

This page helps you to know how many domains are registered for an specific TLD, which helps greatly to know how popular a domain is.

https://research.domaintools.com/statistics/tld-counts/

If you ask where to find a two letter domain you probably will be told to to look at sedo.com, afternic and dan.com for buying it from a reseller. Since its very likely that all two letters domains are already registred, since there are few of them, exactly 650, which is calculated by a permutation formula: 26!/(26-2)!

Notice that there is a very good change of getting a decent two letters domain with no number in an auction at hundreds (dollars)

But, what about numbers and letters?

This is the case of a letter that is combined with a number like 7d.gg. You got 520 extra possible combinations. And you will discover that you can had registry many of them! I made this research by myself, using whoisxmlapi.com/ and a bash script.

The more popular a domain it is, it's very likely that the registrar will consider it a premium domain.

The easy way to get a two character domain (letter plus number), is visiting micro.domains and filtering to 4 characters. However, this site is missing a lot of domains:

.is domains

In a sample from 499 from a total of 520,at least, 138 domains are free from registration at this current moment, which represent 30% of available domains.
They are very affordable price, approximately 40USD for registration and renovation. As you can expect, this is one of the least popular TDL from my research. Here you have the available list.

.gg domains

In the complete universe of 520, only 60 are available, which represent exactly 11.56% of domains available. This is the second least popular domain from my research, however, it's increasing greatly in popularity the .gg TLD.

In 2016, it was the number 260 in terms of popularity, in 2020, 254, but in the past 3 years this domains has increased a lot its registrations, now its the number 173. This is important since the other ccTLD are only decreasing their popularity.

This domain is becoming popular in the gaming community, you see, for instance, discord is using discord.gg.

I believe that is why people are betting on it, people are speculating so high on this domains, and we have to say speculating instead of investing because it's a high risk inversion, but inversion is not the correct word, it's more likely to going to a casino. The average price in the market is 200USD and people are asking so much for them, 3 figures. Lots of these domains are being list for sale. (in these article I refer to the two characters domains consisting of one letter with one number)

I believe this is a pretty bad investment at the current moment. People could get 4 to 6 dot com domains which is a far better investment than these.

Here you have the list of available domains:

.ws domains

From a sample of 411, they are 398 available domains, approximately 95%. This is due to high registration price. ($1005). Some domains registred: 1t.ws, 5g.ws, 6g.ws, 7g.ws, 8g.ws, 0c.ws, 3m.ws, 3d.ws

.fm domains

This is the most unpopular TDL from this article, due to its high registration price has lots of available domains, from a 100 sample, 81 are available for registration.

So, will I keep 7d.gg?

Well, I just noticed that of the Active domains, these were registered these years:
2023: 155 (29.8%)
2022: 119 (23%)
2021: 35 (6.7%)
2020: 40 (7.6%)
2019: 29 (5.5%)
2018: 18 (3.4%)
2017: 6 (1.15%)

Probably .gg will continue becoming more and more popular, and the domains will became scarce and maybe the registry will became premium too as ws domains did in 2016, for the moment I think is a good idea to keep it and use for any idea that comes up, and probably for community projects. Maybe a Link shortener, a pastebin, a note taking app, and task manager and a blog at same time, I dunno.

Here is the script I used:


#! /bin/bash
extension=gg
api=############
 for p in {0..9}{a..z}; do 
if	 ( curl https://www.whoisxmlapi.com/whoisserver/WhoisService\?apiKey=$api\&domainName=$p.$extension | tee -a /tmp/$extension | grep dataError ) ; then
		
		echo DOMAIN $p.$extension >> /tmp/$extension
	 a=$(expr $a + 1)
	 echo ======================================
	 echo $a Available for registration $p.$extension
	 echo ======================================
	 echo "*******************************************"
	 echo "*******************************************"
	 echo $p >> /tmp/available$extension
 else
		echo DOMAIN $p.$extension >> /tmp/$extension
	 echo NOT AVAILABLE $p.$extension
	 fi
	 b=$(expr $b + 1 )
	 echo try number $b
	  done
	  
 for p in {a..z}{0..9}; do 
	if  ( curl https://www.whoisxmlapi.com/whoisserver/WhoisService\?apiKey=$api\&domainName=$p.$extension | tee -a /tmp/$extension | grep dataError ) ; then
		echo DOMAIN $p.$extension >> /tmp/$extension
	 a=$(expr $a + 1)
	 echo ======================================
	 echo $a Available for registration $p.$extension
	 echo ======================================
	 echo "*******************************************"
	 echo "*******************************************"
	 echo $p >> /tmp/available$extension
 else
	 echo DOMAIN $p.$extension >> /tmp/$extension
	 echo NOT AVAILABLE $p.$extension
	fi
	 b=$(expr $b + 1 )
	 echo try number $b
	  done

Installing Lurch, the OMEMO plugin in Alma, RockyLinux and RHEL 9.3

Well, this blog is now in https://tech.iogirl.com, I adquired iogirl.com since i found the domain more relevant than girl.place. This blog was in linux.girl.place, and before that it was cat.princesa.company, and it even was zsh.li at 2019.

In my seek of the right domain I had moved the site many times, because first my philosophy was keep it simple, so I used the zsh.li domain, then I wanted to transmit more than just technical stuff, but something cute, feminine, so linux.girl.place, right now I wanted a dot com domain, these domains are very scarce and you will find very long domains nowadays.

I believe this is because I'm very influenced by my current major, accountancy, trying to valuate everything in economical aspects, Iogirl.com is a strong brand since is a short domain and transmits my relationship with technology too.

Also because I'm pretty interested in investment right now, another reason it's that I want to write about magical girl, I will do so in the domain girl.place

It had been a while since last time I wrote about technology. But this year I have been pretty active in technology. So here we go:

I just installed RHEL 9.3 as my main Desktop system, I got a developer individual subscription. Currently at moment of writing this text despite you are reading this thanks to Ubuntu and Debian, some months ago this site was still running on Centos, and back in 2016 this site was in a shared hosting that used Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Currently I just try to disconnect from the OS a bit, and use anything that has proven to be useful, currently I was having lots of issues with Debian and right now I'm working pretty nice in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know that Red Hat is having issues with the community, and derivated distros are stopped to be binary compatible and they are more focusing in API compatible and I'm not sure about the future of these distros, so I think the most conservative and stable option is to use RHEL itself. If CentOS continued to be a RHEL binary clon as in the old days, I'd be using CentOS instead.

RHEL screenshot

I believe this deserves a briew review, this is something unusual, at least to me, to see someone using CentOS, Rocky, Alma or Red Hat Enterprise as the main OS.

My decision is based only in practical reasons, I can install it in many devices and not worrying to much for version upgrades (RHEL supports last for 10 years). But also because Debian wasn't working to me as I was expecting it. I know that the issue might not be Debian but hey, Red Hat released this OS with this selected applications and it just works, and works well to me.

The experience is pretty similar to Fedora, I haven't used Fedora in years by the way, but you need complementary repos, RPMFusion, and Epel repos for extra packages and so you complete the installation. And now this distro is better than before thanks to snap and flatpack.

It reminded me when I used to download Fedora with Gnome 3, I knew a lot of things thanks to Fedora, how to use LVM, systemd, Gnome 3.

I mostly use the web browser, and a terminal.

It has been a while since the last time I used the pidgin Lurch plugin, the last time it was in Slackware.

1. Install dependencies

sudo dnf install git cmake libpurple-devel mxml-devel libxml2-devel libsqlite3x-devel libgcrypt-devel

2. Make the installation:

git clone https://github.com/gkdr/lurch/
cd lurch
git submodule update --init --recursive
make install-home

3. Now you can open pidgin and enable the plugin

The best, now you can also use it in finch, you have to reenable lurch there.

In both Pidgin and finch, you need to enable it in each conversation with the command /lurch enable, for more information type /lurch help in any conversation

how fedi amin reads you

Today you will learn how your admin (@admin@gentoo.live), reads you, notifications on account are shown in my terminal using shell scripts, the only requirement is to install this python app (toot) toot

This works for me because I always have several terminals opened, each time I have a new prompt (i.e, after running a command) my admin notifications are displayed if there are new.

1. First I run this script with cron each 15 minutes (*/15 * * * * *):

#! /bin/bash
if ping -c 1 -q duckduckgo.com >&/dev/null ; then
toot notifications | head -20 > /tmp/admin
fi

2. I created the following script:

#! /bin/sh
cd /tmp
if  ! sha256sum -c admin.sum >/dev/null; then
cat /tmp/admin
sha256sum admin > admin.sum
fi

3. Add the following environment variable to .bashrc to run the second script:

PROMPT_COMMAND="sh script.sh"

If you are using zsh in .zshrc add this code besides the environment variable:

precmd() { eval "$PROMPT_COMMAND" }

That's all!