In a fast-paced world like what we have today, recording events is often forgotten. This is especially true in the digital era, wherein we assume that every piece of information will remain available indefinitely, and archived somewhere. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. Sites, portals, databases, even software repositories, all come and go. If no one kept a copy, the information is gone forever.
It proved this when I started this project. There were countless information which are now gone forever, and in an age where words of individuals no longer hold any weight—unless they are a personality—a source is often expected, if not demanded.
My desire to change that resulted in the creation of The Federated SNS Timeline
. A list of the Federated Social Network history, gathered on this page, with links to sources scattered everywhere.
The Federated SNS (social network service/system) timeline is a simple list of its history. To put it another way, it is a record of how the Fediverse came to be. This is only one part of the larger Federated Social Web. For this list, we defined SNS as services meant for posting updates (microblogging, macro-blogging, blogging), uploading images, leaving comments, re-sharing, and liking; or simply, the Fediverse.
Protocols and services like XMPP and Matrix are part of the Federated Chat grouping. While there is an overlap with the XMPP protocol when it comes to SNS, these platforms/software were not (yet) included (e.g. Juick, Movim, Buddycloud, Jappix, and OneSocialWeb).
The focus of this list is on information with sources. If the original sources are no longer available, there should be an archive via archive.org or archive.ph.
For example. There is some information I remember about the Federated Social Web. However, since this information is no longer available (sites went offline and there are no archives elsewhere), I did not include these in the timeline.
There are also no personal opinions on this list, and no endorsements. This list is a plain record of dates with a link to sources.
Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 4.0 International License
As long as the conditions of CC-BY-SA 4.0 International License are met.
Repository is now available.
Without further ado, here is the timeline for the Federated SNS. Enjoy!
2008-05-18
2008-07-02
2008 sometime
Instance: The TWiT Army Canteen
Software: OpenMicroBlogger was released 8
Instance: OpenMicroBlogger.com
2010-02-22
2010-03-04
2010-03-09
2010-03-14
2010-07-02
2010-08-17
2010-09-09
2010-10-13
2010-11-03
2010-11-23
Protocol: Diaspora Federation
Software: diaspora* was released by Dan Grippi, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Raphael Sofaer, and Maxwell Salzberg 24
Instance: joindiaspora.com
2011-03-19
2011-05-01
2011-11-12
2012-05-25
2012-07
2012-08-27
2012-10-04
2013-01-24
2013-06-08
2013-07-12
2013-11-20
2016-03-16
2016-08-16
2016-10-26
2017-07-18
2017-07-27
2017-09-03
2018-01-23
2018-03-20
2018-04-19
2018-08-17
2018-08-23
2018-11-03
2018-11-10
2018-11-18
2019-02-20
2019-05-06
2019-08-20
2019-09-22
2019-09-22
2019-10-04
2019-10-06
2020-03-08
2020-12-31
2021-05-11
2021-07-18
2021-11-07
2022-01-29
2022-07-19
2022-08-05
2022-10-30
2022-11-13
2022-11-21
2022-11-24
2022-12-03
This is a living project. I will update it depending on the new information and my available time. If you have information available, kindly provide the relevant links for verification. If I can verify (rel=me; keyoxide; GPG; and other ways to verify your identity) that you are the developer of a protocol, standard, platform/software, a link is no longer needed (though still preferable).
Corrections would have to be clarified. Like, how is the correction more accurate than the currently sourced information? Or, how can we reconcile the correction with the currently sourced information? Of course, if you are the developer, and I can verify your identity, your information holds more weight (e.g. you prefer your software’s release date to be later than the current information).
Submit your information in the issues section.
Laconica: Evan Prodromou, “This is my first post.” (published: 2008-05-18) (archived: 1) ↩︎
Pump.io: Even Prodromou, “This is my first post.” (published: 2008-05-18) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Wikipedia: OpenMicroBlogging ↩︎
Disintermedia: A Brief History of the GNU Social Fediverse and ‘The Federation’ (published: 2017-04-01) (archived: 1 2 3) ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: Identi.ca Launches, an Open Source Twitter (published: 2008-07-02) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
louisgray.com: Identi.ca and the Power of Microbranded Communities (published: 2008-08-12) (archived: 1 2 3) ↩︎ ↩︎
W3C: OpenMicroBlogging (published: 2008-09; 2008-11-20) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
status.net: Laconica is now StatusNet (published: 2009-08-28) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
ostatus.org: It’s started! (published: 2010-03-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
status.net: Understanding OStatus (published: 2010-03-07) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
status.net: StatusNet 0.9.0 Released (published: 2010-03-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Black Web: StatusNet Cloud Service Opens To The Public (published: 2010-03-09) (archived: 1) ↩︎
Luke Slater: Time for bed. Goodnight Identiverse. Thank you for existing! (published: 2010-03-14) (archived: 1) ↩︎
talkplus: The history of Hubzilla (published: 2016-10) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Mistpark: Initial checkin (published: 2010-07-02) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
Mistpark: prepare for federation (published: 2010-08-17) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mistpark: mistpark 2.0 infrastructure lands (published: 2010-09-09) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mistpark: Provide the ability to subscribe to our user from other federated sites (published: 2010-10-13) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Sean Tilley: A quick guide to The Free Network (published: 2017-09-24) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Mistpark: project rename (published: 2010-11-03) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Diaspora*: Private Alpha Invites Going Out Today (published: 2010-11-23) (archived: 1) ↩︎
Friendika: stuff to make connecting to diaspora profiles easier (published: 2011-03-19) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Friendika: pull in new ‘writable’ dfrn flag (published: 2011-04-11) (archived: 1) ↩︎
Friendica: rename (published: 2011-11-12) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mark Eckenwiler: Fully accessible from my part of the fediverse (published: 2012-05-25) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Twitter search: (fediverse) until:2013-01-31 since:2006-01-01 (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
Diaspora developer: Fla (published: 2022-12-13) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
pump.io repo: v0.1.0 (published: 2012-10-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
pump.io site: Version 0.1.0 (published: 2012-10-04) (archived: 1) ↩︎
Marjolein Katsma: good morning / #tzag #identiverse / fediverse :) (published: 2013-01-24) (archived: 1) ↩︎
W3C: First draft (published: 2014-09-06) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mastodon repo: v0.1.0 (published: 2016-03-16) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Diaspora Federation protocol: Ruby library (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Pleroma repo: pleroma_fe (published: 2016-10-26) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Pleroma: Pleroma’s First Release! 0.9.9 (published: 2019-02-22) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Hubzilla repo: provide content-type matching ability for activitypub (published: 2017-07-18) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Hacker News: zotlabs (published: 2018-03-28) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
socialhome repo: 0.1.0 (published: 2017-07-27) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mastodon repo: v1.6.0rc1 (published: 2017-03-09) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
W3C: ActivityPub (published: 2018-01-23) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
PeerTube: v1.0.0-beta.1 (published: 2018-03-20) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Misskey repo: 0.0.5018 (published: 2018-04-19) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Zap repo: 57e75d9332 (published: 2018-08-17) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
Zap repo: 57e75d9332: boot.php (published: 2018-08-17) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎ ↩︎
Osada repo: 9ce94bd414 (published: 2018-08-23) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Osada repo: 9ce94bd414: boot.php (published: 2018-08-23) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Pixelfed repo: v0.1.9 (published: 2018-11-03) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
WriteFreely repo: v0.1 (published: 2018-11-10) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Friendica: ActivityPub support in Friendica (published: 2018-11-18) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Hubzilla: Hubzilla 4.0 (published: 2019-02-20) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Lemmy v0.0.5 (published: 2019-05-06) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Hometown repo: Hometown v1.0.0 (Mastodon 2.9.3) (published: 2019-08-20) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Zotlabs.org: Osada has been discontinued (published: 2019-09-22) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Zotlabs.org: Supports Zap and ActivityPub (published: 2019-09-22) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mastodon repo: v3.0.0 (published: 2019-10-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
socialhome repo: 0.10.0 (published: 2019-10-06) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Pleroma: Releasing Pleroma 2.0.0 (published: 2020-03-08) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Rebased repo: soapbox-v1.0.0: Merge branch ‘release-1.0’ into ‘develop’ (published: 2021-05-11) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
GNU Social repo: v2.0.0beta (published: 2021-07-18) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Guppe Groups repo: First Major Release (published: 2021-11-07) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Akkoma repo: akkoma as it was before rebasing onto the fork (published: 2022-01-29) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Firefish repo: Firefish release! (published: 2022-07-19) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Foundkey repo: 13.0.0-preview1 (published: 2022-08-05) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
First instance: karab.in (published: 2022-10-30) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
First instance: karab.in (published: 2022-10-30) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
AP Groups (first mention): developer update (published: 2022-11-21) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Takahē repo: 0.3.0 (published: 2022-11-24) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mike Macgirvin: Streams (published: 2022-12-03) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
Mozilla: @mozilla@mozilla.social (published: 2023-05-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
dist://ed: The internet deserves a better answer to social (published: 2023-05-04) (archived: 1 2) ↩︎
No better way to find out other than by making a poll and asking the fediverse community!
]]>I mostly use Markdown, but I have also been considering learning Org-mode. Other than Markdown, Org-mode, and good old plaintext—which is not a markup language per se—there are also AsciiDoc and LaTeX, to mention two. I was curious if it is worth learning a new markup language, and what other people use. Was it easy for them to learn a new markup language? Are they using it for writing research papers, blogging, emails, and taking down notes?
No better way to find out other than by making a poll and asking the fediverse community!
For Fell’s thesis, LaTeX is the markup language of choice, but in all other cases, good old plaintext is more than enough because it is compatible with everything.
I agree. Plaintext is plaintext. It is the easiest and fastest way to take down notes. You do not have to worry about converting a particular file from one markup language to another.
However, for Nick Anderson, Org-mode is life. Nick uses Org-mode for everything: knowledge management, writing email, blogging, presentations, tracking time, Jira ticketing, and more. Nick’s entire workflow and daily routine, you can guarantee Org-mode is there.
I checked the articles Nick shared, and after going through Nick’s experience and process, I can imagine how it made Nick’s daily workflow faster and easier. This is a good thing, as I have mentioned I have been considering learning Org-mode and integrating it into my daily routine.
For Evan Keeton, the answers are LaTeX and Markdown markup languages. Evan shared that for anything mathematics related, LaTeX is the one to use. This is true, LaTeX is the choice in publishing scientific documents 2. If you plan to publish a research paper, it is a good idea to master LaTeX.
However, for things like note-taking, Evan said that Markdown fits perfectly. For Evan, Markdown is easy to read even without a proper renderer. I can attest to that. As a long-time Markdown user, my mind processes a Markdown document as if my brain is a Markdown renderer. It flows naturally, I do not have to consciously think about the markups in the document.
Potung Thul shares the same view as Fell, plaintext is the most compatible format of all the choices in the poll. Vim is also Potung’s go to cross-platform software for editing texts.
From the above poll, while not conclusive, it gave a general overview on which format, or markup language, fediverse citizens use. The top two are: Markdown and Org-mode, followed by plaintext. While LaTeX is the de facto choice for scientific publications and in other fields 2.
I have heard good things about AsciiDoc, though it only received a few votes in this poll, it is a markup language that one should consider. It may be easier for you compared to the other popular choices.
Should you try one of these markup languages? Yes, you definitely should. Markdown is common in software development, for example, it is the markup language used by web repository services like Codeberg 3. It is also the default in many static-site generators like Hugo 4. There are also forum software which allow Markdown editing other than the old BBcode format.
And as was mentioned, LaTeX is the de facto standard in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) publishing. Authors can submit their papers as a LaTeX document, and the publishers converts it to their own preferred format without losing any text information, like bold, italics, images, and footnotes. Compare that to submitting PDF, ODF, and DOCX documents, more likely than not the publisher will have to check if the conversion was accurate. Or, the authors of the paper have to spend more time on these things when they can better spend it doing research and experiments.
Of course, plaintext is as good as any. If presentation is not important, like bold and italics, plaintext can fill our everyday needs in documentation and note-taking. Even before the age of computers, that is what we were already doing… writing down in plaintext.
For more information about the various markup languages mentioned, check these useful links:
This test page serves as a place to check a browser’s Unicode and font support for the various Baybayin script variants in the Philippines. There are different test cases to cover as many possible issues that may arise or were encountered.
Please note that I am using CSS @font-face to display these Unicode scripts. It ensures that you will see the scripts even if you do not have a Unicode-compliant font installed in your computer.
However, if you attempt to copy-and-paste these examples elsewhere, say in a social network service like Facebook or Twitter, it may display as boxes or circles if you do not have a proper/pure Unicode-compliant font installed.
The Barabara font is a typography based on jeepney signboards and sari-sari store boards in the Philippines.
The above Noto Sans Tagalog font displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
A | E/I | O/U | e/i (diacritic) |
o/u (diacritic) |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜀ | ᜁ | ᜂ | ᜒ | ᜓ |
Ba | Ka | Da | Ga | Ha |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜊ | ᜃ | ᜇ | ᜄ | ᜑ |
La | Ma | Na | N͠ga | Pa |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜎ | ᜋ | ᜈ | ᜅ | ᜉ |
Ra | Sa | Ta | Wa | Ya |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜍ | ᜐ | ᜆ | ᜏ | ᜌ |
Ra (archaic) |
Pamudpod (diacritic) |
Virama (diacritic) |
Pause (comma) |
Full-stop (period) |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜟ | ᜕ | ᜔ | ᜵ | ᜶ |
The font above can be downloaded from Noto Dashboard: Noto Tagalog.
The above Noto Sans Tagalog font displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
The font above is a subset of Nordenx’s Baybayin Modern Club Font before Unicode 14.0 (Tagalog pamudpod), used with permission for web embed.
The new Tagalog pamudpod is currently not working correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox. It is a bug in the webfont subset itself used on this website.
The above font by Nordenx displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
A | E/I | O/U | e/i (diacritic) |
o/u (diacritic) |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜠ | ᜡ | ᜡ | ◌ᜲ | ◌ᜳ |
Ba | Ka | Da | Ga | Ha |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜪ | ᜣ | ᜧ | ᜤ | ᜱ |
La | Ma | Na | N͠ga | Pa |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜮ | ᜫ | ᜨ | ᜥ | ᜩ |
Ra | Sa | Ta | Wa | Ya |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᜭ | ᜰ | ᜦ | ᜯ | ᜬ |
Pamudpod (diacritic) |
Pause (comma) |
Full-stop (period) |
---|---|---|
◌᜴ | ᜵ | ᜶ |
The font above can be downloaded from Noto Dashboard: Noto Hanunoo.
If the Baybayin diacritics are not appearing correctly, there is a bug in your browser or in the font itself. For the record, it works perfectly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox.
The font above is a subset of Nordenx’s Baybayin Mangyan Hanunóo Brush Font before Unicode 14.0, used with permission for web embed.
The above font by Nordenx displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
The above font by Nordenx displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
A | E/I | O/U | e/i (diacritic) |
o/u (diacritic) |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝀ | ᝁ | ᝁ | ◌ᝒ | ◌ᝓ |
Ba | Ka | Da | Ga | Ha |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝊ | ᝃ | ᝇ | ᝄ | ᝑ |
La | Ma | Na | N͠ga | Pa |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝎ | ᝋ | ᝈ | ᝅ | ᝉ |
Ra | Sa | Ta | Wa | Ya |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝍ | ᝐ | ᝆ | ᝏ | ᝌ |
Pamudpod (diacritic) |
Pause (comma) |
Full-stop (period) |
---|---|---|
◌᜴ | ᜵ | ᜶ |
The font above can be downloaded from Noto Dashboard: Noto Buhid.
If the Baybayin diacritics are not appearing correctly, there is a bug in your browser or in the font itself. For the record, it works perfectly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox.
The font above is a subset of Nordenx’s Baybayin Mangyan Buhid Font before Unicode 14.0, used with permission for web embed.
The above font by Nordenx displays correctly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox—and Blink–based browsers—like Naver Whale and Microsoft Edge.
If the Baybayin diacritics are not appearing correctly, there is a bug in your browser or in the font itself. For the record, it works perfectly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox.
A | E/I | O/U | e/i (diacritic) |
o/u (diacritic) |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝠ | ᝡ | ᝡ | ◌ᝲ | ◌ᝳ |
Ba | Ka | Da | Ga | Ha |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝪ | ᝣ | ᝧ | ᝤ |
La | Ma | Na | N͠ga | Pa |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝮ | ᝫ | ᝨ | ᝥ | ᝩ |
Ra | Sa | Ta | Wa | Ya |
---|---|---|---|---|
ᝰ | ᝦ | ᝯ | ᝬ |
The font above can be downloaded from Noto Dashboard: Noto Tagbanwa.
If the Baybayin diacritics are not appearing correctly, there is a bug in your browser or in the font itself. For the record, it works perfectly in Gecko–based browsers—like Mozilla Firefox.
You can learn how to properly display Baybayin scripts by reading The LANG Attribute.
You can type Baybayin-Buhid, Baybayin-Hanunoo, Baybayin-Tagalog, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa, using your keyboard today! Simply download the Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout applicable for your system. It does not include the needed fonts to display these writing scripts. Check the wiki for fonts you can download.
This is a Unicode and Emoji test page. You can use this to test if your browser can display Unicode characters.
Typed | Escaped | Label | Unicode |
---|---|---|---|
🄯 | 🄯 | Copyleft | 11.0 |
🄍 | 🄍 | No Rights Reserved | 13.0 |
🄎 | 🄎 | ShareAlike | 13.0 |
🄏 | 🄏 | Non-commercial | 13.0 |
🅭 | 🅭 | Creative Commons | 13.0 |
🅮 | 🅮 | Public Domain | 13.0 |
🅯 | 🅯 | Attribution | 13.0 |
Also see: Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout
Typed | Unicode | Font |
---|---|---|
ᜋᜊᜓᜑᜌ᜔ | 3.2 | Baybayin Modern Club |
ᜋᜊᜓᜑᜌ᜔ | 3.2 | Noto Sans Tagalog |
Also see: Paleo-Hebrew / Phoenician Unicode Keyboard Layout
Typed | Unicode | Font |
---|---|---|
𐤉𐤅𐤇𐤍𐤍 | 5.0 | Proto Canaanite |
𐤉𐤅𐤇𐤍𐤍 | 5.0 | Hebrew Paleo Gezer |
𐤉𐤅𐤇𐤍𐤍 | 5.0 | Noto Sans Phoenician |
Typed | Escaped | Label | Unicode |
---|---|---|---|
🐕🦺 | 🐕🦺 | service dog | 12.0 |
🧏🏽 | 🧏🏽 | deaf person, medium (brown) skin tone | 12.0 |
👨🏽👩🏾👧🏽👦🏾 | 👨🏽👩🏾👧🏽👦🏾 | [Filipino] Family: man medium (brown) + woman medium-dark (dark-brown) + girl medium (brown) + boy medium-dark (dark-brown) | 12.0 |
🧋 | 🧋 | bubble tea | 13.0 |
🫐 | 🫐 | blueberries | 13.0 |
🫰🏽 | 🫰🏽 | finger heart / money / snap: medium (brown) skin tone | 14.0 |
🫶🏾 | 🫶🏾 | heart hands: medium-dark (dark-brown) skin tone | 14.0 |
🪪 | 🪪 | identification card | 14.0 |
🥹 | 🥹 | face holding back tears | 14.0 |
🫤 | 🫤 | face with diagonal mouth | 14.0 |
🩷 | 🩷 | pink heart | 15.0 |
🪈 | 🪈 | flute | 15.0 |
🛜 | 🛜 | wireless | 15.0 |
🪭 | 🪭 | folding hand fan | 15.0 |
🪻 | 🪻 | hyacinth | 15.0 |
📅 📆
To see a uniform Unicode-compliant Emoji, I highly recommend installing Twemoji (Twitter Emoji).
Twemoji was used in the above examples. To know more about Twemoji, visit https://github.com/twitter/twemoji.
If you can see the Filipino greeting Mabuhay above in Baybayin script, your browser have support for webfonts. You should see the actual fonts of the websites that use webfonts (a.k.a. CSS2 @font-face rule) - as the designer intended.
]]>ᜋᜊᜓᜑᜌ᜔
If you can see the Filipino greeting Mabuhay above in Baybayin script, your browser have support for webfonts. You should see the actual fonts of the websites that use webfonts (a.k.a. CSS2 @font-face rule) - as the designer intended.
If you can see the following, then your browser supports the CSS Level 2 @font-face rule.
For example, all my sites are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-SA is:
🅭 🅯 🄎
If you can not see anything, then your browser does not support the CSS2 @font-face rule. Time to upgrade your browser or switch to a better one.
ᜋᜍᜋᜒᜅ᜔ ᜐᜎᜋᜆ᜔ ᜐ ᜉᜄ᜔ᜊᜒᜐᜒᜆ᜶ (Thank you for visiting.)
If you want to learn how you can implement cross-browser webfonts support on your website, read: How-To Implement Cross-Browser @font-face Support.
For more about Baybayin script, read: Baybayin - The Forgotten Pre-Hispanic Writing of the Filipino.
You can also check out the: Baybayin Typepad No.01 if you want to try typing the Filipino script.
If you are wondering if there is a way to add a colour to diacritical marks, also called accent signs, then you are in the right place! Why? Because the answer is, yes, and I will show you how.
Create a CSS style like this:
|
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Place the diacritics within the diacritics
class
|
|
Done!
Here are examples:
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It is also available via CodePen. Or, you can clone a simple test page from my test-repo: Noto Diacriticals Git branch.
What is this all about? Simple: being able to type the characters that Filipinos use, especially the ₱eso sign and ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔ (Baybayin) glyphs that has been available for use since Unicode 3.2 (March 2002). Other characters are: Ññ, ©, ®, ™, ¢, ¥, ¶, Pahilís (acute diacritic), Paiwà (grave diacritic), Pakupyâ (circumflex diacritic), Ng̃ (the shortened form of nan͠g), and many more.
How about Windows users? You will have to wait more or less 2 weeks, it will be usable for Windows 7, Vista, and XP; both 64-bit and 32-bit installations. It is now available for download.
Without further ado, here are the steps to get you started with using our very own Unicode Keyboard Layout.
]]>Today, 23rd of October 2010, Filipino Linux users around the world can now download and use the first release of the Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout, officially launched during the Philippines Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Release Party.
What is this all about? Simple: being able to type the characters that Filipinos use, especially the ₱eso sign and ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔ (Baybayin) glyphs that has been available for use since Unicode 3.2 (March 2002). Other characters are: Ññ, ©, ®, ™, ¢, ¥, ¶, Pahilís (acute diacritic), Paiwà (grave diacritic), Pakupyâ (circumflex diacritic), Ng̃ (the shortened form of nan͠g), and many more.
How about Windows users? You will have to wait more or less 2 weeks, it will be usable for Windows 7, Vista, and XP; both 64-bit and 32-bit installations. It is now available for download.
Without further ado, here are the steps to get you started with using our very own Unicode Keyboard Layout.
Download the PH-UKL-Linux file (available in 7-zip and zip format) here
Extract the content of the archive file you just downloaded
Install the font included so your system can display Baybayin (Alibata) glyphs
Then copy the file “ph” to the correct folder by typing in the terminal (be sure to adjust ~/Downloads/ to where the file is on your end)
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Open these two files by typing:
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Search for:
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After it add:
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Search for:
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After it add:
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Open these two files by typing:
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Search for:
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After it add:
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You’re done! Sort of. You need to activate it to actually use it, follow the next few steps to do so.
Let’s not forget to add the first Baybayin ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔) keyboard layout, it is QWERTY-based. Simply repeat the process above but place it as second in your Layouts list. Then if you want to switch between Philippines Latin and Philippines Baybayin scripts, simply press Shift+CAPS_Lock. It is the default shortcut in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
The font included in the zip file is a Unicode-only and Website-embed compatible version of Nordenx’s Baybayin brush font.
See the keyboard layout images here.
Official source repository: https://codeberg.org/yelosan/unicode-keyboard-layout-philippines. If you have suggestions or bugs to report, please do not hesitate to file a ticket here.
The Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout is a project of Ubuntu Philippines LoCo Team.
Get it now and start typing all the Filipino characters!
]]>I finished the port of the Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout for Linux to Windows much earlier than I hoped! Rejoice Microsoft® Windows users!
Get it now and start typing all the Filipino characters!
The process is simple:
You’re done!
The font included in the zip file is a Unicode-only and Website-embed compatible version of Nordenx’s Baybayin brush font. Update 2018-03-20: Removed the special font in the package as I do not have permission to redistribute the Unicode-only version. Check our font wiki here instead.
See the keyboard layout images here.
The Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout is a project of Ubuntu Philippines LoCo Team.
There are many browsers based on Chromium like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Samsung Internet, to mention a few. Of all that I have tried, there is one I only recently discovered and immediately fell in love with, Naver Whale (네이버 웨일).
Naver Whale (네이버 웨일) is a multi-platform Chromium-based browser developed and launched by the Korean company Naver (네이버) in 2011. It is available in English other than its native Korean language and is actively maintained.
Installation is very simple, Whale (웨일)" class="icon_external" rel="noopener external">download Whale (웨일) from the official website and install the browser. The official link will automatically detect the appropriate operating system installer file to download.
These are the unique features that comes with Naver Whale (네이버 웨일).
Dual-pane tab is a cool feature in Naver Whale (네이버 웨일). A single browser tab can have two panes to give the user more freedom in viewing content side-by-side. There are two modes: linked and unlinked.
In linked mode, clicking an active link on the left pane will open it on the right pane. This is very useful when reading or doing research. Instead of switching between tabs, the user can check the referenced document with ease.
In unlinked mode, the two panes work independently of each other. Any links clicked on either pane will open on itself; or a new tab entirely (if desired).
It is also possible to merge two tabs into a single dual-pane tab. This is useful when sharing content in an SNS platform.
Notice is a sidebar built into Naver Whale (네이버 웨일). It shows the notifications and updates related to the user’s Naver (네이버) account. It is basically an easy access removing the need to open a dedicated tab.
This is a very useful sidebar section Naver Whale (네이버 웨일) have. It offers easy access to common tools like a calculator, exchange rate conversion, units conversion, and even to see the latest in the stock market.
The toolbox currently offers the following tools:
Scrapbook is, by the name itself, a scrapbook for quickly saving information. Compared to a regular memo or note taking app or extension, Scrapbook automatically categorizes saved information into notes, links, images, videos, and files which can then be accessed anywhere, like a mobile phone, a desktop PC or laptop, and through a web interface. If Mozilla Firefox have Pocket, Whale has Scrapbook.
It is also possible to further place information into more specific topics by creating new categories or tags. One cool feature of Scrapbook is the ability to connect another service which has to effect of auto-saving items or links by simply clicking Like
or Watch Later
or Wish List
. Currently supported are Naver TV and Naver Keep; while Naver Shopping, and YouTube were recently disabled pending an update.
Naver Papago (네이버 파파고) is the company’s very own translation service. It is powered by a neural machine translation which uses an artificial neural network for its translations. A translation based on a neural network most often provide natural translations, as if a natural speaker did the translation. The name Papago is an Esperanto word for parrot.
This built-in feature also offers website translations. A flag icon will show up at the extensions bar when a site is in a language other than the default language set in the browser. If the browser is in English and a website is in another language, if Naver Papago (네이버 파파고) supports the language the icon will appear. The power of neural translation right at the user’s fingertips.
Naver Papago (네이버 파파고) offers neural translations for Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Hindi.
Naver Whale (네이버 웨일) also comes with Naver’s Music Player sidebar app. It currently supports Naver Vibe (네이버 바이브), Bugs! (벅스!), Genie (지니), and YouTube Music; the most popular music streaming platforms in Korea with a web player.
A fan of Korea’s webtoons, in particular the Naver Webtoon (네이버 웹툰) platform? Naver Whale (네이버 웨일) browser comes by default with the Naver Webtoon (네이버 웹툰) sidebar app.
With the Naver Webtoon (네이버 웹툰) sidebar app, users can easily check the latest webtoon episodes; the rankings; and discover new ones.
The Memo sidebar app is useful for users of the Naver Memo mobile app. It give users an easy way to access their notes across devices.
Naver Now was formerly known as Naver TV, the one place to watch live shows of K-pop acts, chat in real-time, and interact with fellow fans. It is focused more on a more professional production, like any usually seen on TV.
If Naver Now is focused on professional production of live performances, VLive is the platform for artists to interact with their fans, be more casual, and provide any content they can think of. On top of the free and no-IP restriction basic service, celebrities can choose to offer paid content through the service’s different tiers.
VLive is similar to services like Kumu" class="icon_external" rel="noopener external">Kumu, Chums Live, and Bigo Live but for established names in the industry. In addition, what makes this service more unique from other platforms is that fans can submit subtitles for the videos or past live streams.
Naver Vibe (네이버 바이브) is the company’s music streaming platform. Their former music service was merged after the latter was closed in late 2020. Users of Naver Vibe (네이버 바이브) can easily listen to their favourite music or discover new ones by just opening the Naver Vibe (네이버 바이브) sidebar icon.
A good feature of Naver Vibe (네이버 바이브) is its use of artificial intelligence when creating music recommendations to its users instead of the traditional charts. The service also does not offer a monthly subscription fee, rather, users pay for the songs they want to listen to.
The Whale (웨일) media control center is a built-in feature which displays all the active (playing or paused) media from any tab, extensions, and sidebar app. As shown in the screenshot above, it provides control for three active media recently played during the browsing session.
Naver Whale (네이버 웨일) is a very good alternative browser for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other popular Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Vivaldi. Whale (웨일) is geared toward ordinary users and professionals who prefer to have an out-of-the-box experience where the tools they need are but a click away.
It is currently my default Chromium-based browser, and the services offered by Naver (네이버) are quite useful.
Link icons are great. It signals to the reader what a link is. It is external? Or perhaps a video? If the link is clicked, will it start a download or will it open the default mail program? Link icons also helps a developer or content creator to easily find links, or the lack thereof.
Link icons started with and was popularised by Wikipedia a decade ago 1. Everyone were looking for CMS plugins to add link icons to their websites and blogs. The method back then was to use a small .png
image file as the icon. But today? We are going to use Unicode emojis and only use .svg
if an appropriate emoji is not available.
In this post, we will add link icons support in Hugo through Markdown links. No shortcode needed, just plain regular [text](https://example.com "Title")
links, thanks to the power of render hooks 2.
2022-06-17:
sftp://
protocol moved to ftp categoryfindRE
where appropriate[text](./path/to/content/)
and [text.ext](./path/to/file.ext)
formats2022-05-27:
To add link icons, follow the steps below:
Create a file called render-link.html
in this directory /layouts/_default/_markup/
Copy and paste this code:
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In your stylesheet file add:
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Download .svg
icons: link-icons.7z
Sources (all in the Public Domain):
It is possible to hotlink from the listed sources. However, there is no information if they were setup for it.
Extract the .svg
files in /static/img/
folder.
The following Markdown links
- External links
- [https://example.com/#fragment](https://example.com/#fragment "https://example.com/#fragment")
- Chat
- [irc://](irc://example.com "irc://") | [ircs://](ircs://example.com "ircs://") | [irc6://](irc6://example.com "irc6://") | [xmpp://](xmpp://example.com "xmpp://") | [jabber://](jabber://example.com "jabber://") | [discord://](discord://example.com "discord://") | [skype://](skype://example.com "skype://")
- FTP
- [sftp://](sftp://example.com "sftp://") | [ftp://](ftp://example.com "ftp://") | [aftp://](aftp://example.com "aftp://")
- Magnet
- [magnet://](magnet://example.com "magnet://")
- Mail
- [mailto:](mailto:noreply@example.com "mailto:")
- Remote
- [telnet://](telnet://example.com "telnet://") | [ssh://](ssh://example.com "ssh://") | [git://](git://example.com "git://") | [svn://](svn://example.com "svn://") | [bzr://](bzr://example.com "bzr://")
- Tel
- [tel:](tel:123-456-7890 "tel:")
- Books
- [doi://](doi://example.com "doi://") | [.epub](https://example.com/file.epub ".epub") | [.mobi](https://example.com/file.mobi ".mobi") | [.pdf](https://example.com/file.pdf ".pdf")
- Document
- [.odt](https://example.com/file.odt ".odt") | [.sdw](https://example.com/file.sdw ".sdw") | [.sxw](https://example.com/file.sxw ".sxw") | [.uof](https://example.com/file.uof ".uof") | [.uot](https://example.com/file.uot ".uot") | [.doc](https://example.com/file.doc ".doc") | [.docx](https://example.com/file.docx ".docx")
- Text
- [.txt](https://example.com/file.txt ".txt") | [.csv](https://example.com/file.csv ".csv")
- Presentation
- [.odp](https://example.com/file.odp ".odp") | [.fodp](https://example.com/file.fodp ".fodp") | [.sdd](https://example.com/file.sdd ".sdd") | [.sdp](https://example.com/file.sdp ".sdp") | [.sxi](https://example.com/file.sxi ".sxi") | [.uop](https://example.com/file.uop ".uop") | [.ppt](https://example.com/file.ppt ".ppt") | [.pptx](https://example.com/file.pptx ".pptx")
- Spreadsheet
- [.ods](https://example.com/file.ods ".ods") | [.fods](https://example.com/file.fods ".fods") | [.sdc](https://example.com/file.sdc ".sdc") | [.sxc](https://example.com/file.sxc ".sxc") | [.uos](https://example.com/file.uos ".uos") | [.xls](https://example.com/file.xls ".xls") | [.xlsx](https://example.com/file.xlsx ".xlsx")
- Audio
- [.flac](https://example.com/file.flac ".flac") | [.aac](https://example.com/file.aac ".aac") | [.mka](https://example.com/file.mka ".mka") | [.ogg](https://example.com/file.ogg ".ogg") | [.oga](https://example.com/file.oga ".oga") | [.opus](https://example.com/file.opus ".opus") | [.mp3](https://example.com/file.mp3 ".mp3") | [.mpa](https://example.com/file.mpa ".mpa") | [.mid](https://example.com/file.mid ".mid") | [.midi](https://example.com/file.midi ".midi") | [.wav](https://example.com/file.wav ".wav") | [.wave](https://example.com/file.wave ".wave") | [.wma](https://example.com/file.wma ".wma")
- Video
- [.av1](https://example.com/file.av1 ".av1") | [.webm](https://example.com/file.webm ".webm") | [.xvid](https://example.com/file.xvid ".xvid") | [.mkv](https://example.com/file.mkv ".mkv") | [.mk3d](https://example.com/file.mk3d ".mk3d") | [.ogm](https://example.com/file.ogm ".ogm") | [.ogv](https://example.com/file.ogv ".ogv") | [.divx](https://example.com/file.divx ".divx") | [.avi](https://example.com/file.avi ".avi") | [.mp4](https://example.com/file.mp4 ".mp4") | [.mpeg4](https://example.com/file.mpeg4 ".mpeg4") | [.mpv](https://example.com/file.mpv ".mpv") | [.mpeg](https://example.com/file.mpeg ".mpeg") | [.mpg](https://example.com/file.mpg ".mpg")
- Subtitle
- [.vtt](https://example.com/file.vtt ".vtt") | [.ttml](https://example.com/file.ttml ".ttml") | [.dfxp](https://example.com/file.dfxp ".dfxp") | [.srt](https://example.com/file.srt ".srt") | [.sub](https://example.com/file.sub ".sub") | [.sbv](https://example.com/file.sbv ".sbv") | [.scc](https://example.com/file.scc ".scc") | [.mks](https://example.com/file.mks ".mks")
- Executables
- [.deb](https://example.com/file.deb ".deb") | [.apk](https://example.com/file.apk ".apk") | [.exe](https://example.com/file.exe ".exe") | [.com](https://example.com/file.com ".com") | [.msi](https://example.com/file.msi ".msi")
- Scripts
- [.bat](https://example.com/file.bat ".bat") | [.sh](https://example.com/file.sh ".sh")
- Fonts
- [.woff](https://example.com/file.woff ".woff") | [.woff2](https://example.com/file.woff2 ".woff2") | [.otf](https://example.com/file.otf ".otf") | [.ttf](https://example.com/file.ttf ".ttf") | [.ttc](https://example.com/file.ttc ".ttc")
- Compressed files
- [.7z](https://example.com/file.7z ".7z") | [.7zip](https://example.com/file.7zip ".7zip") | [.tar](https://example.com/file.tar ".tar") | [.gz](https://example.com/file.gz ".gz") | [.gzip](https://example.com/file.gzip ".gzip") | [.bz2](https://example.com/file.bz2 ".bz2") | [.bzip2](https://example.com/file.bzip2 ".bzip2") | [.zip](https://example.com/file.zip ".zip") | [.rar](https://example.com/file.rar ".rar")
- Disk images
- [.img](https://example.com/file.img ".img") | [.iso](https://example.com/file.iso ".iso") | [.dmg](https://example.com/file.dmg ".dmg") | [.mds](https://example.com/file.mds ".mds") | [.mdf](https://example.com/file.mdf ".mdf") | [.mdx](https://example.com/file.mdx ".mdx")
- Image editing
- [.xcf](https://example.com/file.xcf ".xcf") | [.psd](https://example.com/file.psd ".psd")
Will render as:
An official list of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Schemes can be found at the IANA official website. 3 However, not all popular URI Schemes were registered and/or submitted, for example, discord://
and bzr://
(as of IANA document dated 2022-05-13). Regardless, these popular unregistered URI Schemes were included in the above code.
I hope you find it useful!
[text](https://example.com#fragment "Title")
.]]>One of the less commonly used feature of Hugo is render hooks. In this post, we are going to use render hooks to add internal cross reference support to Markdown’s default way of creating links: [text](https://example.com#fragment "Title")
.
Internal cross references in Hugo is usually done by using the built-in shortcodes {{< ref >}}
or {{% relref %}}
but did you know since Hugo v0.62.0 1 the advisable method is to use render hooks 2?
{{< ref >}}
and {{% relref %}}
, or any variation thereof, is a thing of the past2022-06-17:
[text](./path/to/content/)
and [text.ext](./path/to/file.ext)
formats2022-05-27:
[text](./path/to/content/)
[text.ext](./path/to/file.ext)
Create a file called render-link.html
in this directory /layouts/_default/_markup/
Add the code below:
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That’s it.
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The [text](./path/to/content/)
format is useful when you want to create a link to another part of your website, under the same (sub)-domain but not part of the current Hugo project. This format will not generate an external link icon if the How-To add link icons in Hugo markdown links is also installed.
The [text.ext](./path/to/file.ext)
is useful for download links hosted under the same (sub)-domain, within or external relative to the current Hugo project.
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Internal linking without a file extension and with a #fragment
produces a wrong link.
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Also take note of the following formats.
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Instead of the above, use [text](./path/to/file.ext)
like so [link-icons.7z](./techmagus/dls/link-icons.7z)
will render as: link-icons.7z
Feel free to improve the code above and share back to the community. Please provide your website and name so you will be properly credited.
In the early days of the World Wide Web (mid to late 90s) all the way to 2010 or 2012, linklists or blogrolls were not only popular but a standard part of webdesign. One fine morning it disappeared and no longer relevant. But is it really dead?
A linklist or blogroll is a collection of recommend links a website owner or blogger collected and displays on the site’s sidebar or in a dedicated page. It could be blog links of family and friends, or links to interesting websites.
Back in the early days of website building and blogging, socialising and creating a network of blogs was important. It was not because of search engine optimizations (SEO)—although later it became the focus—rather it was to help each other get discovered by visitors. One day everybody were creating their blogrolls, the next day it was all gone.
Websites were no longer “socially connected”. Any connection between websites turned into a business or a marketing. A link to another website was primarily because it was cited in an article and not because one found it worthy to be discovered by their own readers.
That was then. Today, we are bringing it back!
Since I started migrating my blogs from WordPress to Hugo, a linklist or blogroll has always been in my ToDo list. It is a way for me to recommended websites and bloggers I find worthy of constant mention instead of finding an article to cite. It is also a recommendation for the website itself and the author as compared to linking to a single article.
However, I kept on pushing it back. There are too many websites and bloggers I want to recommend, just thinking about the work in curating and maintaining the list is tiring already. Until now, I found a very good way and reason to do this in a small scale.
👉🏽 And here is the YourOnly.One Linklist! 👈🏽
(If we know each other and your blog is not listed, more likely than not it was because you are ranking in searches already. I might create a separate list for family and friends in the future and I’m hoping you will recommend me back.)
No. By adding a website in your linklist or blogroll you are endorsing it, or to put it another way, you are recommending it. rel=nofollow
is used only for links which you can not endorse such as but is not limited to: paid links, links in comments and forums, and yes, third-party theme footer credits (be sure to update those links).
To add a link to techmagus:
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If you want to link to my linklist:
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It’s that simple!
rel=nofollow
is but what are noopener
and external
?I’ll let the Mozilla Developer Network answer that.
rel=noopener
:Instructs the browser to open the link without granting the new browsing context access to the document that opened it — by not setting the Window.opener property on the opened window (it returns null).
This is especially useful when opening untrusted links, in order to ensure they cannot tamper with the originating document via the Window.opener property (see About rel=noopener for more details), while still providing the Referer HTTP header (unless noreferrer is used as well).
Note that when noopener is used, nonempty target names other than _top, _self, and _parent are all treated like _blank in terms of deciding whether to open a new window/tab.1
rel=external
:Indicates that the hyperlink leads to a resource outside the site of the current page; that is, following the link will make the user leave the site.1
Have you created your own curated bookmark list or blogroll? Share your link in the comments below and I will also add you in YourOnly.One Linklist. It is all about sharing trusted links and interlinking our linklists.
Shalom!
MDN Web Docs: Link types ↩︎ ↩︎
Yet main are asking: what else is there other than Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp? They cornered the market and are as good as a monopoly. They are the Internet. They are the social web. Right?
NO and no.
]]>The longest downtime in the history of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, should have had triggered meetings in many companies on business continuity and the importance of having a Plan B and a Plan C. This will also be remembered and used in schools and studies as the number one example on how not to setup security systems.
Yet main are asking: what else is there other than Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp? They cornered the market and are as good as a monopoly. They are the Internet. They are the social web. Right?
NO and no.
It was around 15:40 UTC when trouble began which led to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, to disappear from the Internet.1 It was only by 21:28 UTC that their services were reconnected to the Internet1, six hours of downtime for four services millions, if not billions, of people rely on.
There are a lot of factors which contributed to the longest downtime of Facebook and its services, one such is even Facebook relies on their own network to be connected to the Internet.2
But how about you? Do you have an online service which relies on Facebook as your customer’s login method? Or, maybe you have an online business and your only platform is Facebook and Instagram? How about communicating with your family, are you only relying on Messenger? There are also those who are using WhatsApp as a communication platform for their critical services, like say emergency response, what happens then if there is another major downtime?
It is not only Facebook who should learn from #FacebookDown, #InstagramDown, #MessengerDown, and #WhatsAppDown, all of us should learn from this. Here are some that I think we should all take into consideration.
There are other lessons we can list but will probably fall in one or two with what we’ve already listed above. As end-users of someone else’s platform and/or service, we should never rely on it solely, we need to be ready when it disappears for whatever reason.
Do I have recommendations? I sure do.
Us, and our family and friends, signed up in the same social media and social network platforms because there is no way to communicate with each other if we are on different services. But did you know that this is an outdated model and it already is possible to be on different platforms and services and yet socialize with each other? Yes, this is called “federation” and these federated platforms and services are collectively called as the “fediverse”.
If you think that this is new, surprise! Federation has been around since 2008, and for communication or messengers, it has been around since 1999 (called “XMPP” or formerly “Jabber”). With that said, here are some of the services I personally recommend.
Friendica, formerly known as Friendika, with project name Mistpark), is a distributed and federated social network. It was one of the very first software which started the fediverse.
If you want to give it a spin, choose one of the servers available here. Remember, it does not matter which server you choose, you can connect with everyone in the fediverse.
Hubzilla is similar to Friendica in that it was started by the same developer, Mike Macgirvin. Macgirvin is a man of vision and a strong advocate and proponent of freedom of choice, decentralization, federation, and anti-censorship. With Hubzilla, he developed a unique feature that no other fediverse platform (other than Zap) have to this very day: nomadic identity and cloning.
Nomadic identity means true ownership of online identity. With Hubzilla, you don’t have an account on a server, you own an identity that you can take with you across the grid. You can clone a channel across multiple hubs for resilience against network failures or censorship, or you can completely move a channel from one hub to another, taking your data and connections with you.3
You can have a channel in example.com and then clone it in example.net. While it appears that these are two separate accounts because these are on two different servers, they are actually one and the same. Any platform which understands the underlying technology of nomadic identity will treat both as a single channel, if you login via example.net, you will receive the same communication, connections, and be able to send back replies or create new posts/updates as if you logged-in via example.com.
When it comes to features, Hubzilla shares almost the same set with Friendica but by no means the code are identical. But this part? This is good for developers and server operators, as a user, rest assured that you are in good hands. Besides, nomadic identity sure is a great feature that all other platforms should implement, right?
You can sign-up for a Hubzilla channel (or account if you will) in any of the available servers located here.
Zap povides an experience that is familiar and comfortable to Facebook users, with some additional functionality and with some of the best privacy and anti-abuse features available in the Fediverse today.4
If you are ready to jump in and create your online social web identity, choose any server here.
Misskey is a decentralized microblogging platform. It exists within the Fediverse and is mutually linked with other social media platforms.5 It was started by しゅいろ (syuilo), a Japanese developer, and were joined by other contributors. Misskey is the platform of choice in Japan when it comes to the fediverse.
You can find a Misskey community which perfectly fits you here.
Pixelfed is a federated, privacy-focused, photo sharing platform part of the fediverse. The user interface of Pixelfed today should be very familiar with fans of Instagram which means it should be a no-brainer to use Pixelfed as a photo sharing platform.6
You can start uploading your photos into the fediverse today by joining any Pixelfed instance.
Mastodon is a network of thousands of communities operated by different organizations and individuals that provide a seamless social media experience.7 It can also connect to other platforms like Friendica, Hubzilla, Zap, Misskey, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Write.as, and any that is connected to the social web standard, ActivityPub, a decentralized social networking protocol.
If you are regularly use Twitter and you like its flow, Mastodon is the right platform for you. Join Mastodon today and connect with everyone in the fediverse.
PeerTube, developed by Framasoft, is a free and decentralized alternative to video platforms, providing over 400,000 videos published by 60,000 users, viewed over 15 million times8, from all over the fediverse.
PeerTube is not meant to be come a huge platform that would centralize videos from all around the world. Rather, it is a network of inter-connected small videos hosters. Users can still watch videos hosted from another server and their own uploaded videos can be seen in other PeerTube servers.
And because PeerTube is part of the fediverse, anyone from the fediverse can leave a comment on a PeerTube-hosted video directly from their own platform.
Ready to upload your videos and be seen by countless of fediverse citizens? Find the best server that suits your needs in this page.
Keybase is most secured platform and service for messaging, file-sharing, file hosting, web hosting, file encryption, and text encryption. On top of that, Keybase is the easiest way to verify your online accounts and PGP keys.9
Keybase Teams which offers 100 GB of storage per team and if you choose to host your files and website on your personal account, you will get a whopping free 250 GB cloud storage. If you know how to use git, you can use Keybase git and use it as your source file for hosting, like this blog.
Online identity verification
End-to-end encrypted chat: direct chatting, private group, and public chatrooms
Files for both Personal and Teams
Teams and sub-teams, each with separate end-to-end encrypted chat channels
Sites or Keybase hosting
Keybase git: for both Personal and Teams; can also be used to host your website
Wallet: to store your Stellar Lumens (XLM)
Encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify files and text manually. Here are examples:
Text encryption (decrypt this using Keybase)
BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE. kiPgBwdlv6bV9N8 dSkCcFVY51MqZ0Z jBhax0vmrFJnfxR fKGP8dQPl4QGdca VXX0fJ5dPQd8LPt fVZZHeiosRH3G2G aHISVcOaSDzkxGO Jzc473w8jfROHLB qjnBybJ7v1lPl2A ahivzqJlEVbdUqF xyOmsy2gw73KGak OLKpm2gHTOSlRA4 lN8JL1hDAoA0zww J6p17kYapfilkG9 0oPJQbYBddvW2oe 8h60aYtaXFkZtuw Upe8JRMEWA8rb9k yGq1rrR1iRZRHqQ N1DNsDkkwYcnOBG 1jVo6qC5s119yei OI0iZzxn0QIonnq EZT1BTXfNV8jLdt LlWUetCYjZX97IV W2WqklHqoCfJckJ 21gyWTDUDVyULET IhTtq6TWebof3zs K45laDdgfMMk8pO hxegpPToTMz0flR DS5D5WQv0scyHyH OlsphN9yzcmp5E4 AsU1hXMQYyeg1g5 k3AaSPpKAKBr1QB nMLA5nKVYMhGRic 0RWgfO1Ka988tVT 2DocXdLvAJhN1W4 o1tE46l2nt9mdPi B0o1fVKJ1ZFv6Pj Sj9HcoTtrwX4Yc1 x4H1vrYn8Iy1ixK m3jvocnQlF4XhLO 0eaeXI4LKh2gRqv aKOzVuQ6d2Tpt1g Y20j1yj8CFFg5Vq EplbHmaVxMDPvZ7 7T6HDZGjZ6MPcIE M9qGktljj3Gtv7a rz4GqOoCAbS733m J6N0gzRCuyKGFqc 15liiR8iPro0HJa QBGFHOTQArzJoNH 3kY7PfX00wJcyGt JC80YSp. END KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE.
Text signing (confirm I wrote this message by verifying the signature in Keybase)
To Amyrei,
I’m just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him.
From your secret admirer,
I’M YourOnly.One
BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE. kXR7VktZdyH7rvq v5weRa0zkP4VNyC 8WftM9nW4fgPe6n Zl3jKJsRhCjvlTD OXqz3yNPCDKpvKy Rj1fKVuc1iEn5x6 QyFOb76HQvVRy3B wF50Os0vkSv2Wgz U5nB6WXpanovzVT 5GWjzdQQASbv8O4 h6dPaDRzjtP80eU Uax3jtDZh71OSF3 icWhpVQLYL8QjLm MDDWN19aCn9ICr0 kpt457g7TpuOke7 fnrcIovfAAhGt7l yFfYHtgMMTVrolv DdaPeMRcJCIKh31 DBHqNkdGzeSTKOa dqY6QqKF9wDUHWT l7hRNKprld1GNBd Rng7c9gB2NPny70 yY2CSUBViAf1Pb2 ILvVGpGmz. END KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE.
Matrix is a secure, decentralised, real-time communication platform. Conversations in Matrix are replicated over all the servers participating in, there are no single point of control or failure. It also provides state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption which ensures that only the intended recipients can ever decrypt your messages, while giving a warning if any unexpected devices are added to the conversation.10
While there is far more to Matrix than what were mentioned, those great features only concerns the developers and server hosts. If your company is looking for a communication platform and you would like to know more about Matrix, visit their official website.
Try Matrix today!
Session is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that minimises sensitive metadata, designed and built for people who want absolute privacy and freedom from any form of surveillance.11
Download and use Session in your desktop or mobile phone.
I hope that the above list of platforms and services are more than enough to give you a start in building your backup plan. While many would say that you should migrate, and probably even delete your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp accounts, here at YourOnly.One I am only suggesting that you should have a backup platform and service. You can keep using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp, but not having a ready alternative or secondary platform and service after the #FacebookDown, #InstagramDown, #MessengerDown, and #WhatsAppDown we had today is a decision you will regret when, not if but when, it happens again.
Last but the most important of all, it is time to embrace fully the decentralization, distribution, and federation of data, platforms, and services. What happened today has proven that this is the only logical step to ensure that the Internet, and the services we rely on, will continue to exist and work.
Enjoy and Shalom!
Cloudflare: Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet ↩︎ ↩︎
Sheera Frenkel: … employees unable to enter buildings this morning … because their badges weren’t working to access doors ↩︎
Hubzilla: Nomadic identity and cloning ↩︎
Misskey: Let’s start Misskey ↩︎
Pixelfed: A free and ethical photo sharing platform ↩︎
Mastodon: Social networking, back in your hands ↩︎
PeerTube: A decentralized and free/libre alternative to video broadcasting services ↩︎
Matrix: An open network for secure, decentralized communication ↩︎
Session: Send Messages, Not Metadata ↩︎
A friend of mine noticed that Philippine ISPs started to hijack connections to certain websites and they are also using a fake SSL certificate. If a user choose the option to continue despite the warning about an invalid SSL certificate, they will see a Philippine government warning and the related Republic Act explaining why they–our ISPs–are hijacking our connection.
Let’s take a look at an example.
MediaFire is a popular file sharing and cloud storage. A file sharing and/or cloud storage service by itself is not “evil” as most governments, politicians, and the corporate world is painting it to be. Unfortunately, as with all services and technologies, there are people who use it for “evil purposes”. This was the basis for the Philippine government [supposedly] ordering Philippine ISPs to hijack the connection to MediaFire, as shown in the screenshot below.
Based on the message shown in the screengrab above, MediaFire is a suspected child sexual abuse or exploitation material (CSAEM)
. They then explained that they will initiate decryption of traffic for possible CSAEM content and block access as mandated by Republic Act No. 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009.
In other words, they admit that your connection to MediaFire was hijacked and their all-seeing eye is watching you closely.
This is a very bad reality. There is now no doubt that all it takes for Philippine ISPs to intercept our Internet connection is an order from the Philippine government suspecting services and websites of CSAEM and/or whatever other laws they can use to justify breaking the privacy and security of the people.
Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox, probably does not have “illegal content” because they can police their users. But you have to ask the question, how? Could it be they can read all the files uploaded to their storage? We will never know but at least one of those mentioned admitted that they do (it’s even in their Terms).
It is understandable why they are doing this, no good person would tolerate child abuse and child pornography, that is a line no sane human being should ever cross. However, the way they are doing this policing is never acceptable, this is a clear violation of the user’s privacy and hijacking connections is a clear act of compromising the user’s security. No one can guarantee what these ISPs will do with the data they can see. They usually can not be held accountable if one of their “trusted” employee leaks confidential information he or she saw while searching for CSAEM materials. It is easy to say they will never do anything else other than to watch out for CSAEM but clearly, all it takes is a government order and we will never know what they are doing with all the other data.
We all know that we can never trust ISPs, government order or not, so let this be a lesson for everyone in the Philippines: encrypt your files before uploading; and use only services which offers end-to-end encryption; and always use Tor (The Onion Router) or better yet a highly reputable VPN. Our privacy and security matters.
MediaFire was also informed and they are looking into addressing this.
Keybase offers a lot of features, there is end-to-end encrypted Chat, a free 250 GB File storage, a signed hosting, and the ability to easily sign any text, images, and the usual document files. However, there is one feature usually ignored and this feature was one of the hottest when Keybase first sent invites to testers. That is what I will guide you through today.
]]>Once again congratulations on creating a Keybase account. You have joined a growing number of people worldwide who have taken their privacy and security to the next level.
Keybase offers a lot of features, there is end-to-end encrypted Chat, a free 250 GB File storage, a signed hosting, and the ability to easily sign any text, images, and the usual document files. However, there is one feature usually ignored and this feature was one of the hottest when Keybase first sent invites to testers. That is what I will guide you through today.
A Keybase identity is a secure online representation of someone (a person) or some entity (an organisation). It lists all the verified online assets (social network accounts, domain names, microblog accounts) of the owner of the Keybase account.
By design, it is near impossible to gain an unauthorised access to any Keybase account without an active “device” (see our previous post). This generally give us the assurance that whoever is updating a particular Keybase account is the actual owner.
However, a bad element can simply create their own Keybase account to impersonate someone. This was solved in two ways by Keybase. The first is by adding third-party identities; and the second is by being followed by other verified Keybase users.
A third-party identity is an account well-known to be under the control of the Keybase account owner. This could be a Twitter account, a domain name, a Mastodon account, or any of the different services supported by Keybase.
By adding multiple third-party identities, a Keybase account’s trust factor—if we can call it that—increases. An impersonator will not be able to add the official Twitter account of their target under their fake Keybase account. They can add their own fake Twitter account or if they successfully gained unauthorised access to the official account. It becomes harder for an impersonator to establish trust to their fake Keybase account when the official one also added a well-known Mastodon account or the domain names he or she owns.
It is impossible for a fake Keybase account to acquire the same level of trust the official account have by that point. Check my Keybase account here and count how many third-party identities are listed. An impersonator will need to have access to all of those social media accounts and domain names before they can add it to their fake Keybase account. Unless they put a gun on my head, they will not be able to do it (especially since I also use two-factor authentication in those accounts).
It is quite simple, follow these steps.
See the verication tweet live.
Repeat the process for every third-party account you have which is supported by Keybase. If a third-party service is a shared account, for example domain names or corporate microblogging accounts, it is possible to have multiple Keybase accounts verified. Check the Mastodon account for the Kolverse Worldbuilding and Writing Project, there are two Keybase accounts which verified ownership of it: @VersesSpace@writing.exchange.
Let’s say your Twitter account was hacked or you no longer have access to it. It is imperative to revoke it from your Keybase account. Simple go back to your Keybase profile, click your Twitter account, and revoke it. What it means is you are officially declaring that Twitter account to be no longer yours and any posts from it did not come from you.
It is true there could be a delay to the timestamp when you disavowed your third-party identity to when it was actually compromised, however, remember that by the time we discover our account was compromised it is always after the fact. There is nothing that can be done in that regard other than to revoke it in your Keybase account so you have an official timestamp for record purposes (especially if later you are accused of the content posted by your compromised third-party identity).
When other Keybase users follows your Keybase account, they are automatically signing your profile or Keybase identity. A follower is virtually saying “I verify this account is who s/he claims to be and the third-party identities s/he added as of this date and time I also verified to be owned by this Keybase user”.
Whenever a Keybase user changed anything in their third-part identities, their followers can optionally verify those changes by visiting the account. If they do, they are signing it effectively saying “I have checked the changes in this account’s third-party identities and have confirmed it as valid”. The more Keybase users who follows and/or verify the changes, the higher the trust factor.
Getting your family & friends to follow your Keybase account and verifying changes in your third-party identities makes it very solid that your Keybase account is actually yours and those third-party identities are also actually yours and have full control. An impersonator or fake account will not be able to build this kind of trust level.
Again, what if a third-party identity was compromised? Revoke it. Your Keybase followers can then visit your profile and confirm the change. By doing so, they are signing or adding their Keybase signature into your revocation update. We can probably say they effectively stand as “witnesses” when you revoked your compromise third-party identity.
There you go. Add all those third-party identities into your Keybase account as a “verified identity” and get your family, friends, and followers to verify those changes. The higher the trust factor of your Keybase account, the stronger and more secure your digital identity becomes.
There are various software, apps, services, available which offers one, two, or maybe three features mentioned. However, there is one which is largely ignored, that is Keybase.
]]>Freedom, anonymity, privacy, & security, are the most important part of our lives, and this is especially true today as we move faster into the digital world. We need to secure our online communications to prevent anyone from listening. We need to prove the identity of the other person we are working with. We need an easy way to use encryption to keep private data from being seen by unauthorised individuals.
There are various software, apps, services, available which offers one, two, or maybe three features mentioned. However, there is one which is largely ignored, that is Keybase.
To put it simply, Keybase is a tool which makes it easier for regular users to do encryption and signing. Private stuff stays private. Accounts are secure against spoofing, phishing, and scamming.
It also helps in establishing which online accounts are officially owned by a Keybase user, effectively nullifying online attacks through impersonation.
In other words, every person who takes their freedom, anonymity, privacy, & security very seriously must have a Keybase account.
The first thing to understand is registration through a web browser is not possible by design and for security reasons. New users must download Keybase which is available in GNU/Linux, Android, iOS, and Windows: download Keybase here.
* We’re using Keybase for Android below, the process is the same regardless of platform.
Congratulations! You have successfully created a Keybase account and have taken your first step in establishing a way for others to prove your online identity beyond any reasonable doubt as well as to chat, share files, collaborate with your team, with a peace of mind everything is automatically end-to-end encrypted and signed.
Establishing a way for others to prove our online identity, chat with family & friends, and collaborate with teams, would be practically useless if we later can not login our account. In Keybase, each [re]-installation is considered a “new device” regardless if it was exactly the same device used.
A “device” in Keybase is simply an access point or a “device” where an account is logged-in.
Registering each devices creates another security layer, if a phone was stolen one can simply “Revoke” the device. If for some reason the account was not automatically logged-out, any actions made from the “Revoked” device is automatically invalid.
Let’s create a new paper key.
A Keybase paper key is technically a “device”. It’s main purpose is to give the account owner a way to confirm a “new device” if a registered literal device is not or no longer available.
Many new Keybase users skip this step, uninstalls Keybase, and later can no longer login because they are stuck in the “new device” process. Without an existing device logged-in to Keybase you can not confirm a “new device”. A paper key acts as an “existing device” to approve a “new device”. The used paper key can be optionally revoked and a new one created (a very good practice); or create a new paper key every three months (an even better practice).
There is another way to recover a Keybase account if a paper key is not available. The catch with this method is your Keybase account will be reset back to start, all confirmed online accounts, domain names, devices, teams, followers, following, will be removed; it is as if you created a new account. The reason behind this is if you no longer have access to any of your “devices” (including your paper keys if you created any), then it is assumed all of your devices were lost and/or compromised.
Welcome to Keybase! Before you start exploring Keybase, noticed how you were not asked to enter a password/passphrase? It is only used if you want to login via a web browser—which is not advisable—and if you prefer to auto-logout when you close the Keybase app (an added security; if you reinstalled Keybase it will be considered a “new device”). We will discuss this another day.
In Android 7 Nougat, the developers decided to switch to the much better Noto font family. The Noto font family have the necessarily fonts to display the Unicode code points for Baybayin-Buhid, Baybayin-Hanunoó, Baybayin-Tagalog, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa. This allowed Android 7 Nougat users to see Baybayin Unicode characters, however, to be able to type in Baybayin users have to use third-party apps or other methods … until today.
(If you want to jump to the How-To visit how to activate Baybayin in Gboard.)
Google silenty released three new Baybayin layouts for their Gboard (Google Keyboard) app for Android (not yet available in iOS). The Baybayin community first requested support when Android 7 Nougat and Gboard were released a few years back. The wait was worth it, the new layouts were well thought and studied.
For example, in Baybayin-Tagalog, the layout was split in two groups with a space in the middle. If a user taps a Baybayin-Tagalog character, the “a”, “e/i”, “o/u”, and virama diacritical marks will appear in the middle of the keyboard. This is the first time this method was used and seen in any Baybayin related keyboard layouts (mobile or desktop) and is very inspiring. Baybayin-Buhid and Baybayin-Hanunoó could use the same layout feature and hopefully in the future we will see this implemented.
Where is Baybayin-Tagbanwa keyboard layout? Unfortunately it is not yet available in this release. It is possible that the R&D team are still studying how best to create a layout for Tagbanwa especially since it has fewer characters of the four Unicode Baybayin code points.
2019-08-24 update: Baybayin-Tagbanwa is known as “Aborlan” in the Gboard app. Thanks to Ki Wakat for informing us.
The continued Baybayin request by the Baybayin community finally showed results. Our sincerest thanks to all and the Gboard team, especially the unique and inspiring Baybayin-Tagalog layout.
Download the Gboard app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store (not yet available for iOS).
Check our How-To guide on how to activate Baybayin in Gboard.
Here is a short guide on how to activate and use Baybayin-Buhid, Baybayin-Hanunoó, Baybayin-Tagalog, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa, using Google’s Gboard app.
Download the Gboard app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store (not yet available for iOS).
Go to the Gboard settings
Go to Languages
Tap the “ADD KEYBOARD” button at the bottom of the screen
In the “Add keyboard” page, choose:
Optionally, add:
Then remove any other keyboard layouts which were automatically added.
If you can not find the keyboard layouts mentioned above, one possible reason is your Google Play Store account and/or unit is yet to receive an update push. Until then, joining the beta is the only way.
Still no Baybayin related keyboard layouts? The last option is for you to download the latest Gboard APK, which is not advisable. But if it is your cup of tea, then download here. Remember, it may not be compatible with your phone model!
Baybayin in Gboard is now available for everyone.
It was discovered that the Gboard app is automatically disabling the layouts if there are no font support in the system.
For example, manufacturers Samsung and MyPhone deleted the Noto Tagalog font in their Android 7 and Android 8 models but left Noto Buhid, Noto Hanunoó, and Noto Tagbanwa. This is the reason why Samsung and MyPhone users can not see the “Filipino (Baybayin)” Gboard layout.
The best way to test this is to open this article in your favourite mobile browser and check if you can see the following texts.
If you can not see one of those, then your mobile phone is missing the appropriate Noto font support for that script. This in turn will automatically disable Gboard support for it. It means it is time to switch to an “Android One” model.
The recent announcement by Microsoft giving up on their EdgeHTML browser engine as well as their Microsoft Edge browser frontend marks the end of the Browser Wars 2.0. Their revelation that their next flagship browser will be Chromium-based and thus powered by the Blink browser engine, signals the beginning of Browser Wars III a war to control the Internet through browser engines.
To understand Browser Wars III we need to realise that there are two fronts in this new war: the Browser Frontend and the Browser Engine. Allow me to differentiate these two fronts.
A browser frontend is simply the browser that users see. In this case, we have Chromium and Mozilla’s Firefox [Quantum]. Before there was a Chromium browser (the frontend and the engine), the most forked browser was Firefox. Some of the most popular Firefox-based projects are Pale Moon (also forked the Gecko engine into Goanna), Waterfox, Comodo IceDragon, Tor Browser, and the original Flock browser.
When Chromium arrived in the scene, it slowly gained converts. Flock migrated from being a Firefox-based browser to a Chromium-based browser bringing with them their loyal users (much later though, Flock development has ended). Opera Software, the company behind the Opera Browser, ended development of their browser frontend and its Presto browser engine. From there, they created a new Chromium-based Opera! Exactly what Microsoft has announced they will be doing too.
If that was not enough, fans of the Opera Browser also created their own browser called Otter Browser and Vivaldi (which happens to be far better than the new Chromium-based Opera Browser).
Other Chromium-based browsers are: Yandex Browser; Comodo Dragon; Brave; Epic Browser; and Torch, to mention a few. No one is choosing Firefox any longer!
This brings us to the …
The browser engine part of the Browser Wars III is the most important and largely ignored in the past two Browser Wars. Today, articles are interchanging Chromium and Blink. However, Chromium is a browser frontend while Blink is a browser engine.
The frontend and engine are not interchangeable. A developer can …
Gecko, the browser engine behind Firefox, had seen a lot of products with the use-cases mentioned above. Blink’s use mainly concentrated on Chromium; after all, why build a browser frontend from scratch when there is already Chromium? Why add a built-in browsing feature when one can use Chromium directly as if it’s part of the software or app in both the desktop and mobile platforms? (I came across software where its browsing experience was locked into Chrome itself even if your default browser was set to Firefox. Chrome is a Chromium-based browser by Google.)
Yet, it does not mean Chromium and Blink are interchangeable, especially when …
When frontend developers design software and websites, they test it against different browsers. The reality is they are testing it against the engine powering these browsers. As long as a product or website has been tested in any browsers powered by Blink, Gecko, and WebKit (Safari and all Apple products), a developer can generally interpret it as the same in any other browsers powered by the same engine (to reiterate, generally, there are other factors involved that may change the result even if the engine and its version is the same). There is no need to install Chromium, Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and Yandex, these are all powered by Blink through Chromium.
With everyone choosing Chromium as their underlying browser frontend (developers) or daily browser (end-users) we are heading once again to the days of “this website works best with” and “please download a Blink-powered browser like Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Yandex, and Brave to continue to this website”. In addition, developers and companies who only cares to get a website running and money flowing as fast as possible, will only do tests against Blink now that it has the largest share of the market… today.
It puts an imbalance in the Internet. The Chromium developers, who are also the developers behind Blink, now have more power over how the Internet should be displayed. Not that they will abuse it, hopefully, but there were, are, and will always be decisions within the W3C Consortium (the group that sets Web Standards) based on numbers or how a particular element or attribute should work; or if a new web feature should follow Chromium’s version or Mozilla’s interpretation.
Chromium is just the surface. The browser engine is the real danger here. Chromium is simply the flagship browser of Blink. Since most do not want to start a browser from scratch, they obviously decided to use Chromium and tweaked it to their desired look and added their own features. But no one is stopping anyone from building a browser frontend from scratch and use Blink as their browser engine, Chromium have less count while Blink has a higher count.
It does not matter which browser frontend is the most popular because “this site works best on” and “this website was tested fully on” is all about the browser engine. It is about Blink, Gecko, WebKit, Goanna, and KHTML.
Use Firefox Quantum, yes, but if you do not like Firefox for whatever reason, then use a browser powered by the Gecko Quantum engine. A Chromium-based browser is not the only alternative, there are Firefox-based browsers too. If you are a frontend developer, test your website projects on Gecko Quantum powered browsers too. Let us not put the Internet in danger by letting one particular browser engine have a major gap and dominance in the market.
From my personal experience, Gecko has always been way ahead when it comes to implementing the W3C recommended specifications, always. There are also bugs in Chromium that are always ignored or were repeatedly closed as “not a bug” and/or “working as intended”, for example, in its font fallback mechanism which is affecting some [Asian] scripts but is working perfectly in Gecko-powered browsers!
One final thought. There are two Asian browsers with three browser engines (Trident, Gecko, and Blink): IE-based Avant Browser by a Chinese developer and IE-based Lunascape by a Japanese developer. Yes, there are multi-engine browsers (and extensions in the case of Firefox).
This Browser Wars III clearly is about the browser engines Blink and Gecko, the browser frontends that is Chromium and Firefox are only secondary, we just see them mentioned more because the average Joe and Jane are only familiar with those “names”.
The Phoenician Unicode Keyboard Layout or PHNX-UKL is the first Unicode-compliant keyboard layout for the Phoenician Unicode block. Its main feature is the incorporation of the characters commonly used in various ancient Western Asian writing scripts.
In addition to the above, the Phoenician Unicode block is also compatible with a much earlier script than Palæo-Hebrew/Phoenician which is Ancient Hebrew (a.k.a. Proto-Canaanite; Early Hebrew; Proto-Sinaitic), a pictograph script which was in used from 6000 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. As the Ancient Hebrew script is still being deciphered and might have more glyphs, the Unicode Consortium in the future may assign a separate block for this.
There are also some exceptions. While the Samaritan script is similar and one of the closely related and surviving writing system to the Palæo-Hebrew/Phoenician family, the Unicode consortium assigned a separate block (U+0800…U+083F) for the Samaritan script. As such, do not use the Phoenician Unicode block when creating a font for or typing in Samaritan.
Lastly, why “Phoenician” and not “Palœo-Hebrew”? Simply because the former was the name chosen by the Unicode Consortium to refer to this Unicode block. As this keyboard project is a Unicode-compliant layout, using the name assigned by the Unicode is part of it. If in the future they change the block name to the latter, then this project will implement the same.
A project of Yelosan Publishing.
To see the glyphs that you are typing, you will need a Unicode-compliant or mixed-Unicode set of fonts. For more information and download links, visit our wiki here.
There were some keys which were left unassigned, what I did was assign a value. These are:
If you would like to master the pure Neo-Paleo Layout, just remember not to use the keys Y; U; F; and K. These were only added in the keyboard layout to help in transitioning to the Neo-Paleo Layout (and eliminate the chance of getting a “missing key” bug report).
I also added 3 Unicode code points for inline directional use. These are:
Examples:
Without these invisible markers, in the first example, the “C++” will become “++C”; in the second example, the exclamation point “!” will be on the right side not left. Also, you would have to cheat by first typing “C++” or the exclamation point “!” before typing Hebrew just to achieve the correct format (which is not advisable as far as semantics, relationships, and typing-flow are concerned). See https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/.
Thank you for the strength and support. You deserve all the glory, honour, praise, and worship, now and forevermore. AHMEIN! 𐤄𐤋𐤋𐤅𐤉𐤄 (HalleluYAH)
This site, Neo-Paleo Layout, was shown to me by brother Ted Walther, I am very grateful, blessings to you from 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 (Yahuwah) and his son 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤔𐤏 (Yahushua).
This Unicode-compliant keyboard layout is for you. I hope it will help in spreading the Besorah of Yahushua and in learning the original Hebrew language.
The keyboard layout shown in the images were:
Since I got my first ever smartphone, Samsung Galaxy Y (S5360), (and Android too) I was having some problems with calibrating phone’s compass. The compass applications I found in the Android Market instructs users to do a figure-8 wave. I did all kinds of figure-8 wave and well, nothing.
Until I found this video showing the one figure-8 method I haven’t tried - wrist movement. It is as simple as that, all I can do is laugh at myself for doing all the silly figure-8 movements I can think of.
Watch the video:
It works for all other phones with compass features like iPhone and Symbian based phones.
Bittorrent is a type of peer-to-peer network. It is not “evil” as some groups are trying to paint it to be. Even in films, there are those that actually encourage the piracy of their material or more exactly, the sharing of their production via torrent. Mainly to show that this piece of technology is neutral.
As someone who downloads materials via the bittorrent network, we have all seen those acronyms or lingo used in this space. Here are some terminologies and acronyms you will find and probably have encountered already when searching for a new torrent show to download.
]]>We all use the bittorrent protocol, anyone who claims they do not download anything “torrent” is probably someone from the 90s or possibly from the future where a new technology replaced it. For example, if you are playing World of Warcraft then you are getting the game patches via the bittorrent protocol, because Blizzard’s game launcher uses this technology.
Bittorrent is a type of peer-to-peer network. It is not “evil” as some groups are trying to paint it to be. Even in films, there are those that actually encourage the piracy of their material or more exactly, the sharing of their production via torrent. Mainly to show that this piece of technology is neutral.
As someone who downloads materials via the bittorrent network, we have all seen those acronyms or lingo used in this space. Here are some terminologies and acronyms you will find and probably have encountered already when searching for a new torrent show to download.
WP means Workprint. It is a copy that is not yet finished but already released for public consumption. It can be missing music and scenes. The quality ranges from poor to excellent.
SCR or Screener is a promotional pre-VHS tape usually sent to rental stores.
TC for Telecine, a film-to-tape or film-to-digital copy. The quality is generally comparable to a DVD copy.
R5, short for DVD Region 5. Often lack image post-processing and special features common to a traditional/normal scheduled DVD releases.
R5line, is an R5 release but whose audio is a direct English copy (usually direct line from a theatre audio system).
DVDscr for DVD-Screener. This is a copy sent to film critics, awards voters, producers, distributors, and any other important groups or people prior to the official DVD/Theatrical release date. It often has no post-processing. In other words, for review purposes.
CAM or camera. A recording of a film by the use of a camera and a tripod inside theatres.
TS or Telesync is the same as a camera release except it uses an external audio source like an audio jack.
Most of these are self-explanatory.
Note that a “BDrip” and “BRrip” are usually interchanged in releases without subtitles. It is not easy to detect if it was a direct rip or a re-rip of a BDrip. However, when a release includes an embedded subtitle then it is no doubt a BRrip. Meaning, the source was from a BDrip file re-encoded with the subtitles. Unless the source material also have subtitles and it was digitised together with the material, then it still will fall as a BDrip.
“BDrip” and “BRrip” are the best rips you can find online, provided the encoder used the best combination of codecs and settings. Otherwise, a Blu-ray Disc rip can and may turn out bad or have artifacts.
Firefox 3.6 “Final” was released today and one of the major addition is the support for the Web Open Font Format or “WOFF”. The result of a collaboration between the font designers Erik van Blokland and Tal Leming with help from Mozilla’s Jonathan Kew.
What is it for? How can you use it? By using the CSS2 @font-face (yes CSS2 not CSS3). This new format is promising because of the large number of support from the font creators and font foundries. Hopefully this will be the first font format that Microsoft® will accept for Internet Explorer browser other than their existing Embedded OpenType or “EOT”.
If IE9 supports WOFF, then this format will be the first cross-browser @font-face/webfont format. There is no question when it comes to Chromium/Chrome, Opera, and Safari, the problem with cross-browser technology is always with MSIE.
Update: Microsoft added WOFF support in Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 3.
So how can you start using WOFF? Just follow these simple steps:
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And here’s what happens when a browser reads your font stylesheet:
The table below presents which font format is supported by the four major browsers - Chromium/Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari. As you will see, no font format is supported across all five browsers except for WOFF… in the near future.
Microsoft’s EOT is out of the race, even though many font creators and foundries support it, the other four browsers are likely never going to support it. Then OTF, SVG, and TTF are out too because Internet Explorer is surely never going to implement it, and font creators/foundries do not like these formats for @font-face use.
That is where WOFF comes in. Commercial font creators and font foundries wants control (or restriction if you want it that way) to the fonts that can be used for the CSS @font-face rule.
Of course there are other advantages to WOFF like compression. WOFF is compressed, which site administrators will like because it eats less bandwidth. You can go check the fonts that came with your FontSquirrel generated font kit, WOFF is the smallest of them.
For now as with all new technologies, we have to wait until all major browsers adds support for WOFF. But that should not stop you from using it today. Just like with CSS3 and some HTML5, you can use it right now. It will save you time later if you do the update now than whenever you feel like to, which you will probably forget.
Chrome (WebKit) |
Firefox (Gecko) |
IE (Trident) |
Opera (Presto) |
Safari (WebKit) |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
EOT | No | No | v4.0 | No | No |
OTF | No | v3.5 | No | v10.0 | v3.1 |
SVG | v0.3 | No | No | v10.0 | v3.1 |
TTF | v2.0 | v3.5 | No | v10.0 | v3.1 |
WOFF | v5.0 | v3.6 | v9.0 | No | No |
If you see the Baybayin writing script below, then your browser supports one of the font formats - EOT, OTF, SVG, TTF, or WOFF. If not, then you should upgrade your browser because my font stylesheet captures all browsers. (At least from my testing, on two computers without any Baybayin fonts - it displays correctly on all the major browsers.)
Filipino-Baybayin: ᜀᜅ᜔ ᜊᜓᜃᜓ ᜀᜌ᜔ ᜉᜍ ᜐ ᜆᜂ ᜇᜑᜒᜎ᜔ ᜏᜎ ᜈᜅ᜔ ᜉᜓᜏᜒᜇᜒᜅ᜔ ᜋᜁᜈᜓᜋ᜔ ᜈ ᜄᜆᜐ᜔᜶
Filipino-Latin: Ang buko ay para sa tao dahil wala nang puwedeng mainom na gatas.
English: The coconut is for people because there is not enough milk to drink.
Filipino-Baybayin: ᜉᜓᜏᜒᜇᜒ ᜃᜅ᜔ ᜌᜓᜋᜋᜈ᜔ ᜇᜑᜒᜎ᜔ ᜐ ᜊᜄᜓᜅ᜔ ᜍᜓᜎᜒᜆ᜶
Filipino-Latin: Puwede kang yumaman dahil sa bagong roleta.
English: You can be rich because of the new wheel.
Enjoy!
Sources:
This January 2010 Blue Moon is rare because it falls on New Year’s Day (or New Year’s Eve depending on where you are). This type of Blue Moons only occurs every 19 years, the last was in 1990/1991 and the next will be on 2028/2029.
]]>An hour and thirteen minutes after Aseans and China welcomes the New Year 2010, we will be treated with a rare New Year’s Day Blue Moon. No, Earth’s Moon will not turn color Blue, it has nothing to do with color (if it turns color Blue, then it is because of Earth’s atmosphere at that time). What “Blue Moon” means is that it is the second Full Moon in a single month.
This January 2010 Blue Moon is rare because it falls on New Year’s Day (or New Year’s Eve depending on where you are). This type of Blue Moons only occurs every 19 years, the last was in 1990/1991 and the next will be on 2028/2029.
Every year, we only get 12 Full Moons. But since the Gregorian Calendar (a Solar calendar; ie based on the sun) and the Lunar Calendar (based on the Moon) are of different lengths, every 2.7154 years we get a 13th Full Moon. This extra Full Moon is called a “Blue Moon”, now you know where the idiom “once in a blue moon” came from ;)
For us in the Asean region, our Blue Moon will be on January 1, 2010 at exactly 1:13am UTC+0800. This is equivalent to December 31, 2009 5:13pm UTC/GMT, which is probably the one you’ve read in many news portals.
Here is how the sky will look like in Manila, Philippines by then:
Click to enlarge (will open in a new window/tab).
So to my fellow Aseans (meaning Filipinos, Singaporeans, Malaysians, VietNamese, Laotians, Khmerians, Burmese, Indonesians, Bruneians, Thailanders), it looks like 2010 will be a great year for us. At least that’s how I want to interpret this January 1st Blue Moon ;)
Bonus, this is how sky will look like when New Year’s Day strikes.
Happy New Year to everyone!!