Shdwdrgn

And yet with closed-source software you have no choice but to trust it blindly. At least open source software has people looking at the code.

I'm curious what you've heard, this is the first recommendation I've seen against filezilla? You certainly have to get the server side set up right for it to work, and plain FTP is a security risk, but otherwise am I missing something?

If you can work from the command line (and assuming you have a linux server) then SSH is simple -- really all it does is give you a secure connection to the command line. You should get familiar with it because if something goes wrong with your server that may be the only way you can connect to it.

Next you need tools to transfer files to the server. While wget is useful for grabbing stuff from other web servers, while something like scp can get you to any host that also accepts ssh. I use this all the time to transfer files between home and work. Or you might set up an sFTP service to accept a GUI connection from a client like FileZilla.

As for what you can put on your web server... Well if you install php then you can run any php code. If you write javascript code then the web browser interprets that, so nothing to add to your server, but NodeJS code would require some installation. You also want to take some time to learn about security practices. For example if you have pages that use a database, an attacker can write a URL to gain access to your server if the code simply accepts any random input. There's not really any limit to what can be run, but some things (like the php example) require you to install more components on your server.

Alternatively, there are also functional services you can run that have nothing to do with web pages. For example, a caldav service would allow you to host your own calendar that can be shared between multiple people or locations. Or maybe you want to start up a chat server like IRC or Matrix? Maybe you want to start a Mosquitto server for your personal IoT content? Think of it this way -- literally anything and everything that makes the internet run is something you can host yourself.

Appreciate the link! Glad to see that both my mastodon and lemmy instances have already blocked their content.

Thanks! Guess I should look through the available filters list more often.

I've been running uBlock Origin forever, didn't even know reddit had ads until people started complaining, but it's never done anything for these stupid cookie warnings.

Ever since sites started doing this, StackExchange has been the one constant thorn in my side. "We'll only ask you once" and yet that popup has appeared every single time I have visited the site, and I'm there quite frequently for programming questions. Other sites like StackOverflow were able to store a cookie containing my selected preferences, but SE seems to ignore my selection and I finally gave up even trying to click on the banner years ago.

Funny thing is, I checked them again after reading this article, and suddenly there is no cookie banner on the page. Hopefully they finally got it fixed and this isn't just some temporary fluke.

as long as someone else has an even more horrible life

My parents always knew I would be a disappointment, they just didn't count on that being a positive thing! ;-)

Where I work at they decided the "office" people need to keep a presence just in case some random person walks in off the street and wants to ask questions. I'm the IT guy, I have no intention of talking to anyone I don't support, I have no knowledge to answer any questions about our business that I could offer, and my office isn't even near the front desk where I could hear anyone come in anyway ... but yeah it totally makes sense that I should have to drive in a couple days a week to a place where they make me pay for parking, just to sit at my desk all day and answer emails.

Of course there's two reasons why I haven't made a stink about their idiocy. First is that in doing my job, it really is helpful to others if they know they can meet me in person at certain times to fix issues that can't easily be solved over email. The second is that I can see my retirement on the horizon (about ten years away), and in the last ten years the place I work has made a huge contribution to my 401A, so much that it has already passed everything I've put away from previous jobs. If I can hunker down for another decade, I won't even need social security to retire comfortably, and that's a really good thing since Trump and other Republicans have already stated they are trying to eliminate it so they can justify collecting fewer taxes from the rich. I may be one of the last generations that can afford to retire and I'm not taking that lightly.

It's funny that most people forget OTA TV still exists and that you don't need to pay to see a lot of shows. For the cost of one month's service fees you can get a decent amplified antenna, but if you're near any large cities that broadcast you can get a cheap cardboard-sandwiched antenna for less than $10 and requires no installation. It's cool to see some people are taking advantage of the open spectrum and newer technologies.

FYI this same article was already posted in this group yesterday and there's been quite a bit of discussion on the subject.

The terms of linux don't come into play unless I try to re-use some other licensed code to make a profit, and that would still fall under copyright law rather than any kind of terms&services clause. Installing a piece of software doesn't constitute an agreement unless there are clear terms given at the beginning of the installation (and even then it has been pretty questionable in court cases). There was nothing presented to me to agree to during the installation and I've never once been asked to agree to anything during the installation of any software on my computer. There's no need for something like this in most linux software other than the standard disclaimer that it comes with no warranty. Still not anything I had to click to agree to, it just happens to be on the websites for the distributions.

Even if you want to try and pretend that I somehow agreed so some nonsense conditions by installing linux, it still doesn't meet your conditions of putting myself at a disadvantage to the manufacturer. Surely you're not trying to suggest that my "disadvantage" is that I can't take a group to court for my own failure to use software which was freely given and distributed, and of which very little was even written by the distribution maintainers? That would be as absurd as claiming that I had to agree to an EULA before installing my operating system. Hell I don't even agree to collecting data about package management on my system.