Many years ago, when we still had control over the web and giant corporation hadn’t still send it to hell, and there were no giant search engines for people to use, we had blogrolls. Blogrolls were sidebar links on our blogs with links to other blogs, usually our friends, which w … | Continue reading
Giving context to a blogroll Comment on this. | Continue reading
Things in the afterlife don’t happen while things are happening here because while time on Earth moves in a straight line, one thing happens and the next and the next, time in afterlife moves in a “Jeremy Bearimy.” In the afterlife time doubles back and loops around and ends up l … | Continue reading
It was when I quit social networks that I knew how they’re truly addicting. I felt something was missing from my life. I missed communicating with friends I made, I missed writing about whatever came to my mind, and I was opening the web sites randomly out of habit only to realiz … | Continue reading
In December 2004, 19-year-old Gary Brolsma uploaded a webcam video titled “Numa Numa,” featuring himself lip-syncing to the Romanian song “Dragostea Din Tei” by O-Zone. Hosted initially on Newgrounds.com, Brolsma created the video after watching a cartoon about Japanese cats. Eve … | Continue reading
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! | Continue reading
I think it was first on Joe Rogan’s podcast that I heard someone saying “I don’t believe in ghosts but I would never spend a night in a haunted house” and that made a lot of sense! Me too, actually. I don’t believe in ghosts either but I’m still sometimes scared of ghosts or evil … | Continue reading
I’ve been too annoyed with clickbait titles recently that I have stopped visiting certain web sites. Particularly, my favorite sports news web site is now blocked on my computers since they started using clickbait titles. Titles that are designer or written to force you to click … | Continue reading
A not-so-new trend in building web sites is to use JavaScript and force users to launch applications in their browsers in order to be able to access a page. A benefit of that would be that a user who wants to surf different pages on a web site would spend less resources doing so … | Continue reading
While the war between Israel and Palestine is intensifying, I must say that the recent war will only result in more anti-Arab and anti-Semite racism around the world. It had not even been two days since the start of the war that a Egyptian cop shot and killed two Israeli tourists … | Continue reading
I used to be very relaxed. I still don’t get angry easily or soon. However, lately, I realized that I’m getting worried about little things pretty easy and too much. Contrary to how I was before, I’m now stressed all the time about little unimportant details or situations I got m … | Continue reading
As I’m surrounded by my like-minded people, who care about software freedom and privacy, I’m usually questioned about why I’m not on social networks and sometimes get suggestions about what social network may suit me. I have to explain to them that my problem is not with a certai … | Continue reading
This is just a notice that I changed the blog’s name to “Braindumps” and it’s no longer simply my name, Ali Reza Hayati. I also changed the blog’s tagline to include my name and it’s now “Ali Reza Hayati’s thoughts and comments” so the blog will have my name on it, in addition to … | Continue reading
A while ago I asked a question from some people about where they stand on torture. I asked whether torture can be ethical in any situation but then it wasn’t about whether it can be justified, rather I asked about an specific situation. At first people told me that it depends on … | Continue reading
Today’s invite to use Firefox and Firefox-based browsers is not about the browser war the Internet and Web community is typically involved in, but a war for open and free (as in freedom) Web. Since Google is trying to take away our freedom in Web browsing, it is now our duty to f … | Continue reading
I’m super tired right now. Since I started my experiment, I’ve been trying very hard to keep up with it and it’s been 15 days since I started not sleeping well intentionally. 15 very hard days indeed. At first I thought it becomes easy when I go with the experiment a few days. i … | Continue reading
I was going to put an exclamation mark after the title but I realized there’s no need as I don’t get surprised by hearing Google is doing something bad to the web. As Google does, they’re launching another attack on free Internet, this time by “Web Environment Integrity”. Put in … | Continue reading
Google vs. the Open Web Connect to me about this. | Continue reading
It’s been days since I had a good sleep. I’m going to bed late and wake up early these days. I get no more than 5 hours of sleep a day and it made me exhausted, until it didn’t! Since three days ago, it’s been hard for me to wake up because I feel very […] Connect to me about thi … | Continue reading
I’m doing backups right now. I take a backup of everything I know I’ll need of my computers get lost or stolen or wiped and I encrypt them and store them on storage I have on different locations. I store copies on different storage to be able to recover my stuff if one of the […] … | Continue reading
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) | Continue reading
Meta (formerly Facebook) has recently published a social networking app to compete with Twitter. It’s named Threads. Threads allows users to create text-based posts with up to 500 characters, share photos, and upload videos up to five minutes long. It looks similar to Twitter, wi … | Continue reading
I’ve been training myself to not care about being called names. I don’t care if people try to hurt or insult me with words. I don’t care about their insults, they can’t upset me, and won’t be able to affect me in any way. I simply don’t care about what they say to me and […] | Continue reading
I’ve been watching the American crime drama TV series “The Rookie” lately and it’s very enjoyable. Apart from the action and partial comedy you see in it, it’s kind of more realistic than other police dramas I’ve seen. I’ve seen “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” for example and that was kind … | Continue reading
If you still haven’t heard about it, Reddit community and moderators are protesting because of the social network’s new policy and price change that threatens third-party and individual developers. Reddit’s my favorite social network. Well it’s flawed and I don’t use it for many … | Continue reading
I have always said that one of the benefits of having an open mind is that one’s thoughts and opinions will eventually change. There is no shame at all in changing personal views and beliefs over newly presented evidence. This means that one who grows up and is willing to learn a … | Continue reading
I believe in conspiracy theories. I do. I have my own conspiracy theories such as all things happening to Trump right now are planned by DeSantis to sabotage orange man’s candidacy or every government official around the world is a clown in disguise of a normal human being. Not j … | Continue reading
It’s been a while since Google introduced its passkey login system which users won’t need to set and remember passwords in order to log in to their accounts. Now, Google is giving its users option to switch to passkey-only login for their accounts. It simply works like this on yo … | Continue reading
I’ve recently deleted my Mastodon account. Mastodon was my only social network and I was using it since 2016 since it was first started. Mastodon, being a decentralized social network, was not my first presence on social networks. I remember when I was on MySpace, FriendFeed, Vin … | Continue reading
It’s been hard times for Internet and my people. Internet situation is getting worse every day and people are facing more shutdowns and censorship. These shutdowns are not even reported because the regime is switching its form of censorship from a blacklist type to a whitelist ty … | Continue reading
Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream li … | Continue reading
I’ve been watching West Wing for past weeks and it I just ended. It was amazing. It’s one of those shows for me that I feel I’m actually living with the characters. One of those shows that if I see the character on the streets, I won’t remember them by their real name but by […] | Continue reading
I was reading Zen Habits and it made me thinking about changing my blog’s license to public domain and I was going to do it. But I thought about it and I thought about it hard and I realized then I might change the license of any code or program I wrote to public domain […] | Continue reading
About a year ago when we talked about artificial intelligence and machine learning, what we meant was a machine getting used to some routines or somehow understanding an algorithm and order of matters happening so it can respond in a certain way. That may sound complicated but in … | Continue reading
While people are still publishing their end-of-the-year lists and new year resolutions, and while people are still debating about whether social networks should provide a safe space or a complete free speech environment, many people around the world are struggling to connect to i … | Continue reading
Sometimes I just want to punch people in the face when they ask me to think positive. Stay positive they say. What a brilliant idea. I’m not angry though. I just chose to use those words to express how stupid it is to tell people stay positive and how frustrated I get when I hear … | Continue reading
Watching Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, I know all those saviors needed one thing to become a hero and that was being worthy of helping people and selflessness. What made those people recognized as heroes is that they put aside their differences and accepted their weaknesses y … | Continue reading
As Elon Musk took over Twitter, people are migrating to alternative social networks. One of them being Mastodon, it is a decentralized social network based on a protocol named ActivityPub. This protocol is what Fediverse is built upon. But we don’t want to talk about the technica … | Continue reading
You would have to agree with me that all people should obey just laws but I would also say that unjust law is no law at all. And when we find an unjust law, I think we have a moral obligation to take a stand against it. I do feel there are two types of […] | Continue reading
While the Iranian people are fighting for regime change, Iran regime lobby in United States, NIAC, is busy trying to reclaim the narrative and making it one of reform, and not regime change. But the Iranian people aren’t calling for reform, they’re calling for regime change. NIAC … | Continue reading
It’s been a month since nationwide protests in Iran started and it seems people are not willing to stop shouting their pains. People are hopeful that this time they can change something, even if not big enough. People are hopeful, and this is dangerous. Hope is the general source … | Continue reading
It’s been a while since I have started thinking, or worrying, about my email security. And since few days ago my PGP key was compromised, I’ve been changing my passwords and emails on sites I’ve been on and I’ve been wondering if my email is secure and stable enough. The thing ab … | Continue reading
Everybody is a genius in their own way but it’s the injustices imposed on people that make it look different. Let’s create an imaginary jungle. We have a lot of different animals in the jungle. We have monkeys, we have tigers, elephants, lions, fishes, penguins, etc. All those an … | Continue reading
Every freedom we surrender is a freedom our children will never know existed. History shows humans are willing to die to gain freedom. For thousands of years, as much as we know about myths and legends of wars, people were willing to fight to death to gain freedom and liberty. Ei … | Continue reading
It has been more than ten days since my people in Iran have started protesting against injustices they are suffering from, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young girl reportedly killed by morality police. The government has shut down the internet again and killed almost a … | Continue reading
Debates are often viewed as two opposing sides finding some common ground in the middle. However, this framework presumes that both viewpoints are valid and equal when in reality not all viewpoints are, or should be, considered as such. And sometimes when you concede ground to me … | Continue reading
In Persian, sometimes curse words are different than other languages. For example, people sometimes refer to another person as an animal. In English you may insult someone by calling them a pig or a donkey, in Persian you can insult people calling them a calf or cow, in addition … | Continue reading
A common argument conservatives often throw is that the Founding Fathers would approve of a behavior or political/societal practice. For example, they say the Founding Fathers would not approve of separation of religion and state, which I previously wrote about on a different pos … | Continue reading