y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2016/12-December/12.xhtml

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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => "Bandcamp isn&apos;t maliciously discriminating against $a[Tor] users, but University of the People may be unfortunately encouraging use of Adobe Flash.",
	'body' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2016/12/12.jpg" alt="Moss and glare" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
<h2 id="advertisements">Unsponsored advertisements</h2>
<p>
	Marc With a C has just rereleased their <a href="https://marcwithac.bandcamp.com/album/cark-live-in-studio-cassette">CARK (live-in-studio cassette)</a> album again, this time in your choice of cassette form or straight-up digital download! There&apos;s a good number of classics on that album, though I don&apos;t recognize every song.
	They might be classics that are normally only played live, they might be new songs, or they might just be from past albums that I haven&apos;t listened to much.
</p>
<p>
	When I bought the album, when it was first released, it came with a label stating that it was under &quot;a Creative Commons license&quot;.
	That&apos;s incredibly vague.
	As I&apos;ve only seen Marc ever release under {$a['CC BY 3.0']} and {$a['CC BY-SA 3.0']}, I thought it safe to assume that one of those licenses was the one meant.
	In fact, I wouldn&apos;t have even purchased the album if I didn&apos;t think that it was under one of those two licenses.
	I took a guess, and assumed that it would specifically be under {$a['CC BY-SA 3.0']} because that&apos;s the license that Marc&apos;s been using lately, but it turns out that they released under {$a['CC BY 3.0']} again this time.
	Next time I connect my external hard drive to back up my collection, I should remember to update the license in my records.
	In any case, no more assumptions! We now know the real license under which this album is released.
</p>
<h2 id="general">General news</h2>
<p>
	Today, I allowed one of the shift leaders to talk me into working an opening shift tomorrow, which was supposed to be a day off.
	I had plans to finish my essay tomorrow, but now I might need to finish it the next day instead.
	On that day though, I had plans to finish my &quot;learning journal&quot; assignment though, so I might end up needing to push that into the next week again like I did this week.
	Ugh.
	One day, I&apos;ll manage to get back caught up.
</p>
<p>
	A representative from Bandcamp got back to me about the first of the two issues that I&apos;d written about:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Hi,
</p>
<p>
	My name is Leigh, and I&apos;m the lead systems engineer at Bandcamp.
	The support team passed your email on to me, and I figured it would be best if I replied personally so I can explain what I think is happening here.
</p>
<p>
	We definitely don&apos;t block Tor exit nodes as a matter of course, and we don&apos;t have any plans to do so.
	However, we do block requests from particular IPs, either temporarily or permanently, when we see malicious traffic coming from them.
	Of course, some of this malicious traffic is going to come to us through Tor, so I think what&apos;s happening here is that you happen to be using Tor exit nodes that have been blocked by us because of traffic sent to us by other users using that same exit node.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;m sorry that this is affecting your ability to use the site, but unfortunately, I don&apos;t think there&apos;s anything we can do to help.
	I do hope that you&apos;re able to continue accessing the site via Tor, even if it&apos;s a little intermittent, but I also hope you can understand why we have to take these steps to protect ourselves from malicious users.
</p>
<p>
	Thanks<br/>
Leigh
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	Okay, sweet.
	Bandcamp has no plans to maliciously discriminate against $a[Tor] exit nodes.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Hello,
</p>
<p>
	Okay, sweet.
	I just wanted to check now in case anything was happening.
	Certain other websites have gotten a bit overzealous in their IP address blocking, and I&apos;ve been locked out of a few of my paid-subscription accounts.
	It feels, to say the least, like a rip-off.
	I&apos;m glad to hear that Bandcamp has no plans to follow down this same path.
</p>
<p>
	Between Bandcamp&apos;s Creative Commons licensing options for artists (I only buy CC BY and CC BY-SA music) and Bandcamp&apos;s multitude of download formats (I love FLAC and Vorbis files), Bandcamp might be irreplaceable.
</p>
<p>
	Thank you for getting back to me on this!
</p>
<p>
	~ Yst Dawson
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	I might have exaggerated a bit.
	I&apos;ve only been blocked from using one paid-subscription account, as far as I recall, and that would be my Patreon account.
	Stupid Patreon ...
	In any case, this makes the other issue that I&apos;ve written about, the one in which Bandcamp is rejecting my credit card, all the more strange.
	I kind of half thought that Bandcamp was doing something screwy because of my $a[IP] address.
	But if that&apos;s not going on, why won&apos;t they take my credit card?
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
<h2 id="dreams">Dream journal</h2>
<p>
	Last night, I dreamed that I was a member of a team of people that not only survived the apocalypse, but managed to fight it off and reverse it somehow.
	Our new base, after we&apos;d completed our work, was a mansion that we were now to live in.
	I had a huge bedroom and a my own bathroom off of the bedroom.
	My bathroom had a tub, as did the bathroom of the bedroom next door, and both bathrooms were connected to a shared room with a shower.
	I didn&apos;t have much time to explore though, because I needed to get laundry done so that I&apos;d have a clean work uniform to return to the pizza joint that I work at in the morning.
	I lived in a mansion and just helped reverse the apocalypse, but I was still stuck working at a fast food pizza joint.
</p>
<p>
	Before I could get laundry started, in an actual washing machine too, I got called away to a celebratory dinner.
	Along the way, we were told that the meal would be all organic, at which point my mother showed up and tried to convince everyone that I choose what I eat out of hatred, and that I hate meat.
	They then tried to convince them that I also hate eggs, but only sometimes.
	Other times, I do eat them.
	I had to explain that no, I never eat eggs, but my mother kept contradicting this.
	Then my mother started questioning me about my policy on tomatoes, which I of course don&apos;t have.
	After I explained this, my mother said that I <strong>*should*</strong> have a policy on tomatoes, because tomatoes are known to cause diabetes and cancer.
	In fact, all plants are known to cause some sort of health problem.
	I wasn&apos;t sure what to do with this information though, as I&apos;m not vegan for health reasons; this wouldn&apos;t convince me not to eat plants.
	Furthermore, meat is known to raise the risk of cancer as well.
</p>
<p>
	Somehow, I ended up sidetracked and not getting to the meal at all, and I started looking for work that wouldn&apos;t involve the burning of fossil fuels.
	I guess that somehow, the fact that I had a job no longer applied.
	I ended up trying to move a large cargo trailer to outside a tall, metal fence that surrounded it within a floor of a concrete building, to see if I&apos;d be able to do that for a living.
	I could somehow move it by hand, but it slowed me down considerably.
	There was a gate, but it was electronic.
	The button could only be reached before I entered the area through some sort of chute from an upper floor, at which point, I had a short amount of time before the gate closed again.
	As it turned out, I wasn&apos;t fast enough.
	Vanessa showed up, at which point I convinced them to hit the button again for me, I did some wall kicks to reach a higher platform, and found moldy pizza dough, on dough trays that had long been forgotten up there.
	I forget what I was doing up there, but Vanessa found a defibrillator and started messing with it.
	I had to get them to knock it off because it was dangerous, then other people showed up and likewise didn&apos;t want Vanessa messing with it.
	Vanessa put it down and we headed back, Vanessa on the floor and I on the raised platform, and I was worried that the people would try to get us out of the area.
	I&apos;d managed to convince them that I had Vanessa under control though, and in the process, it seems that they&apos;d come to believe that I belonged there as well.
	I wasn&apos;t technically an employee yet though, as I was just trying to test the job out.
	I was an intruder messing with stuff that I shouldn&apos;t be.
</p>
<p>
	At that point, my mobile crashed, and as the bright red Replicant logo showed up, I realized that all the preceding events had all somehow been a mobile game.
	I&apos;m not sure how that worked though, as while I was in the concrete building, I pulled my mobile out, saw it crash, and somehow the world around me was therefore not real.
	Whatever, dreams are weird.
</p>
<h2 id="university">University life</h2>
<p>
	I was going to complete my discussion assignment today, but not enough students have posted yet.
	Instead, I just responded to a question from our professor, asking why I think that the $a[FSF]&apos;s mission and strategy don&apos;t line up:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Their mission statement says that their goal is to protect the freedoms of computer users, yet their strategy involves actively encouraging the restriction of computer users.
	This contradiction is what shows that their strategy isn&apos;t in line with their mission statement.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	After that, I started working on my <a href="/en/coursework/BUS1101/Strengths_weaknesses_opportunities_and_threats.xhtml">essay</a>.
	I thought that I&apos;d created a full outline of everything that I&apos;d need, but it turns out that I didn&apos;t finish the section on threats to the business venture in question.
	I ended up going back and rereading the assigned article to find the rest of the threats that I&apos;d need.
</p>
<p>
	I received a letter from the university saying that they are holding a meeting on 2016-12-18 and I&apos;m welcome to join in.
	It&apos;s supposed to be the first time that they&apos;ve had all of their students together in one virtual place before.
	However, it looks like the system that they&apos;re using requires Adobe Flash, a noxious piece of software that is not only nonfree and unauditable, but known to be full of security holes.
	Even if you don&apos;t care about your freedom, you shouldn&apos;t have Adobe Flash installed.
	I was going to just ignore it and try to join the meeting if I had the day off, then see if it&apos;d even work out, but I decided to be more proactive.
	Instead, I wrote back asking if Adobe Flash would be required, saying that if not, I&apos;d request the day off from work, and if so, I wouldn&apos;t be able to access the meeting room anyway.
	Assuming that I even get a response, that should at the bare minimum alert them to the fact that Flash makes the meeting room inaccessible to some people.
	That alone is worth something.
</p>
END
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