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+title = "Blog posts"
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diff --git a/content/blog/ai-art-contest.md b/content/blog/ai-art-contest.md
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+title = "The AI takeover is near?"
+date = 2022-09-21
+tags = [ "art", "ai" ]
++++
+
+## Context
+August 29, 2022.
+The Colorado State Fair gives out prizes for various art categories in a contest. Let's have a look at _Théâtre D'opéra Spatial_, the winner for category no.5: _Digital Arts / Digitally-Manipulated Photography_ ([leaderboard](https://coloradostatefair.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-Fine-Arts-First-Second-Third.pdf)).
+
+![Théâtre D'opéra Spatial](https://www.tuttotech.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Intelligenza-artificiale-quadro-1.jpg)
+
+That same day, a heated debate started on Twitter (as if that weren't the norm there). That's because the winner of this art contest used Midjourney, a popular AI image generator, to generate their entry.
+
+> We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes — if creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, then even high-skilled jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete
+
+Source: [@OmniMorpho](https://nitter.it/omnimorpho/status/1564782875072872450).
+
+## The debate
+While you could argue that the effort the creator (Jason M. Allen) put in was minuscule in comparison to the years of study and preparation an artist needs to undertake, I don't think that actually matters when it comes to winning a competition or making an artpiece in general.
+
+First of all, _art is totally subjective_. I could spend 5 seconds drawing a stick figure in MSPaint and have a contemporary art critique tell me it's garbage, while people from another age might see a complaint towards modern, lifeless technology. This feels like a hyperbole, but I don't think it's that far from reality.
+
+In 1961 Italian artist Piero Manzoni put his [literal feces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit) in 90 cans and sold them as an artpiece. He also created a "magic base", in the sense that you could put anything or anyone on it and that would become an artpiece in itself.
+
+![Merda d'artista](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Piero_Manzoni_-_Merda_D%27artista_%281961%29_-_panoramio.jpg)
+
+He created this because he saw _art as a relic of the artist_. Any object or even person can become an art piece if an artist puts his sign on it. But how do you become an artist? By making something that makes people discuss, something new and innovative that nobody ever thought about doing before. That's what Mr. Allen did and that's why I think he deserves his price.
+
+Before photography was invented, artists generally strove to make their painting as realistic as possible. As soon as people were able to cheaply make perfect copies of reality, artists began experimenting with new techniques, things that a camera could never do. Allen showed everyone how technology just reached a new milestone, introducing a new need for artists to innovate and create something exclusive to their abilities. Something an AI can't reproduce. Yet.
+
+## A slight hole in this argument
+But wait. The competition judges did not know he used an AI to make his art piece. So how could they have considered it innovative and revolutionary?
+
+If you take a look at the 2nd and 3rd entries of the contest, you'll see they're clearly made by humans and clearly have a symbolic value. This does not apply to Allen's entry, which is just VERY good looking. If I were a judge, I would not have chosen Allen's work to win the competition, but again, _art is subjective_.
+
+I tried to find out more about the criteria for the evaluation of this contest's entries and I found this:
+
+> “And there should be no lagging or hanging back by anybody who has anything worth exhibiting”
+
+[Source](https://coloradostatefair.com/competitions/general-entry-fine-arts/fine-arts-exhibition/).
+
+Also, they wrote this about the "under 18" art showcase:
+> Art must be original in painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, photography, jewelry, and more! Have fun, be creative, enter to win.
+
+[Source](https://coloradostatefair.com/competitions/general-entry-fine-arts/amateur-art-2/).
+
+## Conclusion
+Whichever way you put it, Théâtre D'opéra Spatial deserves to be called an art piece. The judges apparently valued aesthetics more than symbolic meaning, and their opinion cannot be logically disputed. Everyone gives a value to an artpiece based on their personal studies and experiences.
+
+Now, knowing about the tools he used, we know Allen did something that nobody ever thought (or managed) to do before. If he hadn't won that contest, this debate would never have started, but he did. That's what makes him an artist and, consequently, his creation a work of art.
diff --git a/content/blog/data-volatility.md b/content/blog/data-volatility.md
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+title = "Data volatility"
+date = 2022-01-14
+tags = [ "privacy", "foss", "advice" ]
++++
+
+I tried to access my domain at smol.pub yesterday and I noticed the service went down. Fear started rushing through my veins as I noticed I would have to choose another platform and, most importantly, write everything back from scratch since I don't have a backup. This made me think about the importance of always having a backup stored somewhere.
+
+## Why though
+Creating a backup of your important data is crucial. On a daily basis, people discover vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution on any host machine. Try to imagine what would happen if someone ran a ransomware program on your PC. Would you be safe?
+
+This genuinely feels like fearmongery, but it's something that can seriously happen: you can be attacked by someone that specifically targets you. If you run Windows, you might be part of a botnet (think about all of the unsigned EXE files you've run since you installed the OS). What happens when someone doesn't need your machine anymore? Well, that person might try and squeeze some money from you by holding your files hostage.
+
+## Cloud backups
+Most people define cloud storage as follows:
+> Cloud storage is a way for businesses and consumers to save data securely online so that it can be accessed anytime from any location and easily shared with those who are granted permission. Cloud storage also offers a way to back up data to facilitate recovery off-site.
+
+Source: [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cloud-storage.asp).
+
+In reality, cloud storage is no more than some dude's computer.
+
+As soon as you upload your personal data to any service, you're trusting it to store it in a safe and private way. If that software is not open source, you're basically asking to get spied on.
+
+Most people do not care about that, that's why cloud storage solutions are very popular and basically enabled by default on any device you might buy nowadays.
+
+I personally use cloud storage but I would never actually upload anything I actually care about on it...
+If you have to choose, I have a few suggestions.
+
+### Don't trust non-encrypted solutions
+Everybody has a Google account nowadays. If you forget your password, there is a way to recover it and get access to everything inside, including your Google Drive contents. As long as there is a password that can be changed or reset, your files are NOT encrypted and fully visible to anyone who has access to the Drive servers (Google or any other government agency that might want to take a peek).
+Most cloud solutions work like this, and it's actually frightening how many people trust megacorporations to have all of their private information available unencrypted.
+
+One encrypted solution I use is mega.nz.
+While I can't be sure that the mega team isn't spying on me, at least they're hiding it well if they do.
+Mega includes an encryption key with your account, which is not tied to your login information.
+This means that if you lose your key, you also lost all of your files, there is absolutely no way to get them back, even if you change your account password.
+
+Now, Mega is not open source, so you can never be sure that there isn't any backdoor, or that keys aren't stored together with your personal information, but at least it's something.
+
+### Encrypt your data yourself
+If you really need to trust Google, Apple or Amazon with your files, you can encrypt your files locally with the gpg command. This way, feds and big tech are going to need another password to actually access your private files.
+
+It's really easy, just two commands mainly.
+
+Encrypt:
+```
+gpg -c --cipher-algo AES256 secret.file
+```
+
+Decrypt:
+```
+gpg segret.file.gpg
+```
+
+If you need to encrypt a folder, you can compress it first:
+```
+tar -cf output.tar.gz secret-folder
+```
+
+Then encrypt your output.tar.gz archive as if it was a single file.
+
+After decrypting it, you can extract your archive through this command:
+```
+tar -xf output.tar.gz
+```
+
+Check out Mental Outlaw's [video](https://invidio.us/M0O7vhvQW30) about this very topic.
+
+## Local backups
+This is the best way to backup your data.
+You don't need to encrypt it if you have full physical access to your data, but you would still be vulnerable if it gets lost or stolen, so it's always better to keep it encrypted and safe.
+
+Of course, if you have a backup hard drive always plugged in your PC, it's not really secure at all, since one could remotely execute a ransomware that encrypts everything in your PC, including all drives both internal and external, so you would get your backup encrypted with the original files voiding everything you've done.
+
+This is why you should keep a GNU/Linux device that only serves backup purposes and is turned OFF most of the time. As long as no current runs through your CPU, your files are safe. You should only turn it on once a month and copy everything important over, so you have a safe and offline backup.
+
+You could also use a USB stick or external hard drive, as long as you only plug them in your PC when necessary.
diff --git a/content/blog/fomo.md b/content/blog/fomo.md
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+title = "My opinion on FOMO"
+date = 2022-03-06
+tags = [ "advice", "minimalism" ]
++++
+
+## What are you even talking about
+Let me preface this by saying I know nothing about psychology and behavioral studies, so anything you read here is just my personal opinion.
+
+Let's start with defining FOMO, to make sure we're all on the same spectrum.
+> Fear of missing out (FOMO) is the feeling of apprehension that one is either not in the know or missing out on information, events, experiences, or life decisions that could make one's life better.
+
+Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out).
+
+The Fear Of Missing Out is what drives modern society; It keeps us hooked to mainstream social media and drives newbie investors towards obvious rugpulls.
+
+[Studies](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563213000800) have correlated it to various negative behaviors, like social media addiction and even distracted driving.
+
+## Am I affected by this?
+Probably. As long as you have a friend group and an account on any mainstream social network, yes you are.
+It's the feeling that drives you to check out your friends' Stories on Instagram, the dread you feel when somebody else reaches a life goal before you do, the fear that pushes people to buy limited-time merchandise before it runs out of stock.
+
+## My experience
+FOMO has been a constant for my entire life and just now I'm trying to write this as a way to think critically about it and try to avoid being pushed by stupid instincts. I've come to realize that Discord is the thing that slows down my productivity the most: as soon as I enter a voice chat with my friend, I stop being productive in any capacity and I'm also uncapable of resuming for the whole day.
+
+Even after I turn off my PC, I still think about what my friends are doing and what I'm missing out on, be it a Gartic Phone round or any stupid discussion I might have had on there. The biggest problem is, it's entirely subconscious. I often find myself uncapable of concentrating and don't know what's the cause of it; I've been eliminating elements one by one to find out the cause of this and turns out that distancing myself totally from social media AND Discord actually solves it.
+
+It's not immediate either, it took a few days for me but your mileage may vary depending on a lot of factors. Of course, I plan on restoring my online presence after I have graduated but it's useful to know what exactly was causing me to waste all of my time for months.
+
+## Any solutions?
+I think you should evaluate possible solutions yourself, as FOMO is strictly dependant on your personality and experiences. You could try eliminating or replacing parts of your habits regularly, like I did, to find out if something is more destructive than you might initially think.
+
+As I was researching this, I found out about JOMO. It stands for "Joy Of Missing Out" and it's the exact opposite thing.
+Embracing JOMO means you dedicate a few hours of the day to yourself and stop worrying about how your friends are doing at life and which continent gets invaded next.
+
+Modern society does not wait for anybody, there's nothing wrong in taking a break and focusing on yourself. You can always catch up later.
+
+* [Another interesting article about FOMO](gopher://republic.circumlunar.space:70/0/~katolaz/phlog/20190219_fomo.txt), on Gopher;
+* [Same article](https://gopherproxy.vern.cc/gopher/republic.circumlunar.space:70/0/~katolaz/phlog/20190219_fomo.txt), but proxied to be viewed on modern browsers.
diff --git a/content/blog/modern-web-bloat.md b/content/blog/modern-web-bloat.md
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+title = "Modern web bloat"
+date = 2021-04-09
+tags = [ "foss", "minimalism" ]
++++
+
+This is it. My first blog post; I suppose this officially makes be a boomer.
+
+## Inspiration
+Some time ago I stumbled upon a [video](https://invidio.us/cvDyQUpaFf4), where the popular Linux influencer [Luke Smith](https://lukesmith.xyz) talked about the effort of looking up a Chicken Parmesan recipe in 2021 without having any adblock or privacy extensions enabled.
+
+That's because most modern websites take a lot of time to load framework files, ads and trackers. While that's kinda functional, I think we should change our habits and start making simple websites again.
+
+Yeah, this looks like a first world problem and it probably is, but it's not as subtle as you think. I'm actually convinced that the internet could actually benefit from this way of thinking, and that's what I'm going to talk about.
+
+## The problem
+In the early days of the internet, it was common for webpages to be written using only HTML, so we had very ugly but functional websites.
+
+As technology went on, sites needed to get more modern-looking and interactive; that's why CSS and JavaScript were introduced into the mix, allowing for dynamic websites that could actually change based on user input.
+As of nowadays, a lot more stuff went into the mix, to the point where the browser is now the most common program we use in our OS: you can, in fact, use it for doing things that 15+ years ago required external programs, like:
+
+* playing music and video,
+* reading PDF files,
+* doing office work,
+* checking e-mail,
+* cloud storage,
+* etc...
+
+I guess people just find it more comfortable if they can do everything with a single program, and they're not to blame for that. This IS the easiest approach for unexperienced people: just have a program that does everything, instead of having to learn how to use a bunch of different software.
+
+This plethora of uses is possible today because of the existence of various libraries and frameworks that simplify JavaScript and CSS and make them easier to develop complicated websites with.
+This is good for basic web users who just want functional websites, and great for developers since they can easily code advanced functions inside the browser, which makes them work in every OS.
+
+Sadly, this brings us to the problem: any modern website has become a burden for any browser to load, since our browser needs to download and parse through each library and often fill the page content as you scroll through.
+In his video, Luke Smith found that a simple Chicken Parmesan recipe would take up to 5-10 megabytes, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it actually is.
+
+It's easier to understand it if you think about it with video-games; any game on 16-bit consoles and earlier, including full-fledged 30+ hour adventures like Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, weighs less than one single recipe page (as stated [here](https://blogs.umass.edu/Techbytes/2014/02/10/history-of-gaming-storage/#attachment_2827)).
+
+## The solution
+Well, I don't think this "problem" is getting solved soon, as new frameworks for web development are constantly being introduced. Sadly, it's a one-way train, but if you're a web-dev you could actually make a difference yourself!
+
+I mean, this can not apply to all websites. Some of them just NEED to be as responsive and interactive as they are; most of them actually just became bloated at a certain time period (probably mid-2000s) when having a flashy website was cool and different from what everyone else had.
+Nowadays you can make a difference by using plain HTML and CSS for your website: this ensures your pages will load instantly and be compatible even with the oldest of browsers!
+If you like this philosophy, you can check out other projects that aim for a simpler and faster web, like these ones:
+
+* [gemini://](//gemini.circumlunar.space/): a new, purposefully limited, internet protocol;
+* [based.cooking](https://based.cooking/): a modern recipe website based on user collaboration via GitHub;
+* [wiby.me](https://wiby.me/): a search engine that aims to only index classic style webpages.
diff --git a/content/blog/reflector.md b/content/blog/reflector.md
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+title = "Update your mirrors!"
+date = 2023-01-29
+tags = [ "foss", "advice" ]
++++
+
+Nah, I'm not talking about [bluetooth mirrors](https://www.bathshack.com/blog/bluetooth-mirrors-everything-you-need-to-know-before-you-buy/). Mirrors are what powers all distros: they're a (de)centralized solution for downloading pre-compiled binaries and scripts for your operating system.
+
+## Suspicion
+I like always having the most current version of packages, so I usually update my system several times a day. When, after a day, I ran `sudo pacman -Syu` and it reported the system being up to date, I was pretty weirded out.
+
+Another day passed, and the system was still up to date. It was not a connection problem, I was connecting to my mirrors and they were reporting absolutely zero updates for my system.
+
+## Problem
+
+At the third day of stagnation, I was sure something was up. I looked up the [Mirror Status](https://archlinux.org/mirrors/status/) page on ArchLinux's website and saw that loads of mirrors were out of sync.
+
+I had never touched my mirrorlist before, it was just generated by the  [archinstall](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall) script a few months ago; a lot of Arch-based distros by default ship tools to update your mirrorlist, but I honestly thought I'd never need that.
+
+Pacman's mirrorlist is located in `/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist`. You can filter out uncommented lines with this command:
+
+```
+grep -v "^#" /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
+```
+
+And check the actual status of your mirror(s) on the Mirror Status page linked above.
+
+## Solution
+
+This will overwrite your mirrorlist, so you're advised to make a backup before proceeding:
+
+```
+sudo cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak
+```
+
+I decided to use [reflector](https://xyne.dev/projects/reflector/) to fix this problem. I didn't want to have to deal with this again, so I enabled the provided systemd timer.
+
+First, install it.
+
+```
+sudo pacman -S reflector
+```
+
+Then, edit `/etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf`. I only needed to edit the `--country` parameter and select countries next to the one where I reside; you can list available countries by running `reflector --list-countries`.
+
+```
+--save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
+--protocol https
+--country Italy,Switzerland,France,Germany,Austria
+--latest 5
+--sort age
+```
+
+Finally, start the service and check if it worked.
+```
+sudo systemctl start reflector.service
+cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
+```
+
+If everything went smoothly, enable reflector's timer so it runs weekly.
+```
+sudo systemctl enable reflector.timer
+```
+
+Done!
+
+Now, by default pacman _does_ update its mirrorlist. It creates a file called `mirrorlist.pacnew` and it expects you to pick your favorite mirrors each time its generated. You can disable this (now unneeded) behavior by uncommenting and setting `NoExtract` in `/etc/pacman.conf`:
+
+```
+...
+NoExtract = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
+
+# Misc options
+Color
+ILoveCandy
+ParallelDownloads = 3
+...
+```