HREE years ago we kickbanned a number of connected individuals from Techrights IRC because illegal things had been done. 2 years later a judge at the UK High Court acknowledged that bad things had been done; the issue was, there was a burden of proof put on us to show evidence of attribution and Tor was used by the perpetrators (several of them in the mix).

Just because you do not have a Code of Conduct (CoC) does not mean you must tolerate every online vandal in your network.

Freedom of speech does not imply a freedom to vandalise without consequences.

T was almost 14 years ago that I created this gallery (using Gallery, the software) for us to upload our photos after the main page mostly contained this dreary long list of photos to be shared. Sharing lots of photos by E-mail is just poor netiquette, E-mail is not a file-sharing protocol.

One point to make was, we “don’t need no stinkin’ Facebook” (or similar). It’ll soon clock over 8 million views.

Yes, on average it’s less than a million a year, but we don’t update that gallery much anymore (got better things to do).

O almost 3 years ago Google hijacked the term “Gemini” (in relation to Web/Net stuff), which makes it hard to find information online about Gemini Protocol, pretending Google’s slop brand by 4 years!

Despite the attack on the “brand”, i.e. on Gemini Protocol, Geminispace continued to grow.

What next can GAFAM do to derail alternatives?

became aware that this domain was no longer accessible over Tor.

I do not use Tor myself, but this site targets technical people, some of whom are Tor users.

I did my best to first affirm that there was a block on Tor; there was then a discussion on feasibility of undoing this.

Tor in schestowitz.com and www.schestowitz.com remains blocked not because of my personal choice; it’s a decision further up the chain.

Sorry.

This may impact some whistleblowers who wish to speak to me about corruption and report misconduct.

EXT week it is Rianne’s birthday and we plan to celebrate somewhere nearby. Technically we’re still on holiday for 15 days to come and we’re enjoying every moment of it. We spend more time offline and go to the park to feed many birds amid a worrying drought.

We predict that later this week some thugs in London will try to bully us again; it would be a giant own goal if they attempted to do so.

Yesterday I discussed with a friend how Web search is getting worse over time, maybe by intention (intent would be difficult to prove though).

Is there any in “Tech” that is actually still improving?

They basically reposted what ABC had published hours prior:

have now been informed by three Tor users (that’s 3 out of 3) that this domain cannot be accessed by Tor users, with failure occurring at DNS level (cannot even reach the server). The webhost claims Tor is not blocked, so there seems to be no room for resolution or compromise here.

Are we mis-communicating the issue?

While disappointing, and I fail to think of a workaround, I’ll probably have to just leave it at that.