I got a link to download the new Arc web browser from The Browser Company and the first thing it does is ask me for account details.
So the messaging out of the box is that everything I do online can potentially be tied to an account with an email address.
It really doesn’t matter if they say they don’t collect data. Collecting name and email without even showing me the product is a special kind of inability to read the room.
I really, really don’t want to have to create an account to use a web browser.
So thanks, but no thanks.
Per Axbom
I'm a white dude who was born in Liberia. Almost 50 years ago. Though I have no national attachment to this West African country, my emotional attachment is significant.
I haven't been back since 1979, but I follow news. And I was weirdly proud when President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, Liberia had a female president. The first elected female head of state in Africa.
And in 2018 Liberia had its first ever peaceful democratic transition of government from President Johnson Sirleaf to president George Weah.
Yes, that’s also the football player who was the first and only player to win FIFA World Player of the Year AND the Ballon d’Or awards while representing an African country internationally. And the father of Tim Weah who plays for the United States.
What I’ve been following more recently though is the (un)affordability of Internet access.
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With a fiber optics cable active since 2013, the potential for low-cost Internet in Liberia is already apparent. Under president Weah, the cost of internet access has unfortunately increased.
The government has increasingly seen levies on mobile phone usage as an attractive source for tax collection. This was to address the huge shortfalls Liberia was experiencing because of the withdrawal of the huge United Nations Missions from the country.
Ironically the country now does not meet the UN Broadband Commission’s affordability threshold.
It costs the lowest 20% of earners in Liberia almost 50% of their monthly income to pay for 1GB of data. That is 5 hours of Internet browsing, or 30 minutes of HD video streaming. Per month, for half your income. Total internet penetration in Liberia is around 20%.
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We call the Internet ubiquitous and global. Access is so often assumed. The internet as a democratising force is obvious, but everything that can be a force for positive change can also exclude. As always, those without a voice are not heard.
As I’m reflecting on my work within the digital space, and the impact I hope to have, I’m realising more and more I would love to make connections in Liberia and help out in some way with any digital struggles.
That’s as far as I’ve come in these thoughts. Hopefully to be continued.
If you live in Liberia or have connections to the country I would love to connect. I’ve also lived in Tanzania and I am truly interested in the whole continent. Give me a shout.
I regularly read The Continent and highly recommend it for an African perspective and outlook. You can subscribe to it using Signal.
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@m Haha, I feel this so much. But I've managed to blog more in the past two years...
@clacke This is super interesting. I had no idea. Still so much to learn here! Love it.
Nice! This would have saved me a lot of time 😅
This is all such fantastic info. Thank you.
Looking forward to writing a tutorial on setting up an Akkoma instance for dummies.
This was the first server I ever set up from scratch in my life. And about time too.
@aminco If you want to grab the code from the page your are welcome to it. :)
I can send you the php file if you want (I only use php to repeat the form fields).
It's all just one file. And it still has some limitations. URLs and usernames should be set to a fixed number of characters. So requires a bit of work ;)
Thanks! Yes, it's small but that is also what intrigued me when people were saying it was possible to run on a small one.
I'll likely at least double the specs before I move the big account there. 😅
My Mastodon instance is indeed on an 8GB 4-core server, but that is also shared with a lot of other stuff that I don't want to be affected by Mastodon :)
This is the first month since I started my company in 2010 that I'm not really booked at all. Just a few loose ends to tie up with clients.
This should be scary. But I think it's why I'm in a good mood... there is an opportunity here to reinvent what I'm doing, not just keep doing the same.
I feel like something is going to reveal itself and I'm going to love it. Like anticipating a gift nobody has promised. If that makes sense. 😁
As my support corner on this I have to ask you all, is the server supposed to be running at close to 100% RAM usage?
I've made all the optimization settings to the database and thought it would actually be requiring less RAM.
It's a 1 core, 1GB RAM machine and all I'm running is Akkoma.
Maybe it's just using all that is available, because that makes the most sense?
I'm in a weirdly good mood today. Haven't slept near long enough but find myself smiling and feeling what we in Sweden call "busig".
I mean, that word can not be translated even though 'mischievous' comes close.
@ashur Very nice! Will definitely include this in the piece I'm writing about RSS.
Thanks everyone for all your help. We'll see how this goes. Haven't decided on a move yet, but really enjoying the better thread/reply management of Akkoma.
@MisterArix Were you able to bring over followers, not just follows? Not seeing this in Akkoma...
@troed Memory usage is constantly above 1GB. Sometimes up to 2GB. I believe the issue is that Mastodon doesn't scale well for one person with many followers.
@mookie Ah, thanks. Now I see what you mean. I'll have a browse through the settings to see if that can be addressed.
@mookie Oh, interesting. I'll have to look out for that one.
#AkkomaHashTags
@joeldebruijn I'm more of a novice too. This is the first year ever I'm setting up servers on my own 😅
I haven't gotten around to a mail server yet. It works without it. But if I want to set up system messages I will need to do that as well.
@mookie Haha, nice. Just as I was going through some server config issues as well. I was down for five minutes...
@joeldebruijn Yes, from scratch. I tried making a Cloudron docker image first but failed spectacularly.
With the fresh install I ran into some troubles but understand enough that I could find forum entries to help me out.
Specifically the certbot (Let's Encrypt) and Nginx (server) I made some mistakes with.
I used the OTP variant of installing which is reasonably straightforward but it took me about 3 hours to get it all running on an Ubuntu server.
https://docs.akkoma.dev/stable/installation/otp_en/