Paul Sutton

settings

Mastodon Privacy and safety

So today I am presenting 3 more videos on Mastodon.

Firstly a video on how to hide sentitive content, which is more of a safety feature.

It is probably a good idea to hide all media, as different people have different views on what is sensitive.

The second video allows you to do two things

  1. Not be indexed by search engines
  2. Hides who you follow, and who follows you.

While the third video looks at how to ensure your timeline,feed etc remain private and away from public view. This also means people would have to sign up to the Fediverse to see and commuicate with you.

This is also an important safety feature as it reduces the risk of stalking, you also need to keep activity private from perhaps employers, potential employers or other parties.

My Mastodon sign up blog post is here

#Mastodon,#safety,#privacy,#settings,#YearOfTheFediverse

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay

Mastodon – Settings.

mastodon logo

After using Mastodon for a while, I found that the federated feed moved so quickly, that it was difficult to select and block post if needed.

Investigating further and asking on irc (#mastodon) on Freenode I found a solution to this.

Firstly to slow down the feed go to the settings menu (the 3 horizontal bars) and under settings, select preferences

settings 1

From here, you can tick slow mode as illustrated above. By default on the instance I am using sensitive content is hidden. If this is not the case on your instance or you want to change this setting, then further down is the option for this:

hide sensitive content

Hopefully this brief post is helpful to people out there. If you need further help there is further technical and user support available.

Paul Sutton zleap on IRC and @zleap@qoto.org on Mastodon.

#mastrodon, #settings, #safety, #filters, #fediverse


cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay

FreeBSD 6

Further to my previous post or probably more specifically the post before that I am sharing a little more about setting up twm.

I have been trying to find a way to share my config files here. The easiest way to this, so I thought, would be to copy the files to a removable media, this failed. So this morning I created a github repository and uploaded copies of the two files there.

So firstly there is the xinitrc file as below

#!/bin/sh

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/usr/local/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/local/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then

    xrdb -merge $sysresources

fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then
    xrdb -merge "$userresources"

fi

if [ -f "$usermodmap" ]; then
    xmodmap "$usermodmap"
fi

# start some nice programs

if [ -d /usr/local/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
	for f in /usr/local/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?*.sh ; do
		[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
	done
	unset f
fi
twm &
#afterstep
#xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
#xterm -geometry 40x25+494-0 &
exec xterm -geometry 40x25+0+0 -name login

The end section of this tells the X11 system to load twm as the window manager, the last line creates a special xterm window that, if exited will exit the X11 system too.

Following on from this is the system.twmrc file which is sets up the twm system.

#
# Default twm configuration file; needs to be kept small to conserve string
# space in systems whose compilers don't handle medium-sized strings.
#
# Sites should tailor this file, providing any extra title buttons, menus, etc.
# that may be appropriate for their environment.  For example, if most of the
# users were accustomed to uwm, the defaults could be set up not to decorate
# any windows and to use meta-keys.
#

NoGrabServer
RestartPreviousState
DecorateTransients
TitleFont "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*"
ResizeFont "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*"
MenuFont "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*"
IconFont "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*"
IconManagerFont "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*"
#ClientBorderWidth

Color
{
    BorderColor "slategrey"
    DefaultBackground "rgb:2/a/9"
    DefaultForeground "gray85"
    TitleBackground "rgb:2/a/9"
    TitleForeground "gray85"
    MenuBackground "rgb:2/a/9"
    MenuForeground "white"
    MenuBorderColor "black"
    MenuTitleBackground "gray70"
    MenuTitleForeground "rgb:2/a/9"
    IconBackground "rgb:2/a/9"
    IconForeground "gray85"
    IconBorderColor "gray85"
    IconManagerBackground "rgb:2/a/9"
    IconManagerForeground "gray85"
}

#
# Define some useful functions for motion-based actions.
#
MoveDelta 3
Function "move-or-lower" { f.move f.deltastop f.lower }
Function "move-or-raise" { f.move f.deltastop f.raise }
Function "move-or-iconify" { f.move f.deltastop f.iconify }

#
# Set some useful bindings.  Sort of uwm-ish, sort of simple-button-ish
#
Button1 = : root : f.menu "defops"

Button1 = m : window|icon : f.function "move-or-lower"
Button2 = m : window|icon : f.iconify
#Button3 = m : window|icon : f.function "move-or-raise"
Button3 = m : window|icon : f.quit "quit application"

Button1 = : title : f.function "move-or-raise"
Button2 = : title : f.raiselower

Button1 = : icon : f.function "move-or-iconify"
Button2 = : icon : f.iconify

Button1 = : iconmgr : f.iconify
Button2 = : iconmgr : f.iconify

#
# And a menus with the usual things
#
menu "defops"
{
"Twm"	f.title
"Iconify"	f.iconify
"Resize"	f.resize
"Move"		f.move
"Raise"		f.raise
"Lower"		f.lower
""		f.nop
"Focus"		f.focus
"Unfocus"	f.unfocus
"Show Iconmgr"	f.showiconmgr
"Hide Iconmgr"	f.hideiconmgr
""		f.nop
"Nethack"	f.exec "exec vulture-nethack &"
"Doom"		f.exec "exec prboom &"	
#"Xterm"	f.exec "exec xterm &"
"LXTerminal"	f.exec "exec lxterminal &"
"Thunar"	f.exec "exec thunar &"

"XCalc"		f.exec "exec xcalc &"
""		f.nop
"Kill"		f.destroy
"Delete"	f.delete
""		f.nop
"Restart"	f.restart
"Exit"		f.quit
}

IconManagers{
"Frame"	"=100x50+100+100"	1
"XTerm"	"=300x50+120+100"	2

It is fairly basic at the moment, but feel free to git clone from here.

I am sharing as they are more of a guide rather than something that should be just used.

#bsd, #config, #desktop, #settings, #configuration, #tool, #freebsd, #twm, #window, #icoms, #xinitrc, #system.twmrc

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca


cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay

FreeBSD 5

Carrying on directly from my previous post I have found a nice video tutorial to explain how to edit the .twmrc file. This can be found at:

While this is a short video, it is easy to follow and comprehensive.

#bsd, #config, #desktop, #settings, #configuration, #tool, #freebsd, #twm, #window, #icoms.

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca


cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay

FreeBSD 4

Carrying on from my previous post. I am now turning my attention to configuring the twm desktop [1]

twm is set as the default window manager in:-

/usr/local/etc/X11/xinit/ file : xinitrc

After finding some information on how to configure the twm desktop [2]. This document seems to be from around 1989.

I tried to find the configuration files in my local home directory structure on bsd but was unable to. However there is one

/usr/local/share/X11/twm/system.twmrc

Which, I think is more of a global configuration. Given the only two users are myself and root is fine.

I used this to add a second icon manager to the desktop.

I have also found some other documentation [3] which explains how add items to the menu.

So to add menu entry to menu for vulture-nethack

edit /usr/local/share/X11/twm/system.twmrc

“Nethack” f.exec “exec vulture-nethack &”

the & is important

If you need more help you may want to ask on IRC: * #freebsd which is hosted freenode. [4] I am on IRC as zleap but also frequent a few other channels.

References

  1. twm Desktop
  2. An Overview of twm (Tom’s Window Manager)
  3. Customizing twm
  4. Freenode IRC

#bsd, #config, #desktop, #settings, #configuration, #tool, #freebsd, #twm, #window, #icoms.

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca


cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay

FreeBSD 3

Following on from my previous post which discussed changing the X11 keyboard layout. I had to also change the console layout.

This can be undertaken through editing the appropriate configuration files or with a tool called bsdconfig which needs to be run as root.

The online man page can be found here

This is a menu driven / text based interface. I can't, as yet provide a screen shot, but the man page is comprehensive enough so a screenshot isn't really needed.

To change the keyboard map you will need to find the appropriate section and make the changes.

#bsd, #config, #menu, #settings, #configuration, #tool, #freebsd, #keyboard, #layout, #gb.

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca


cc-by logo

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)


MastodonPeertubeQoto sign up

Donate using Liberapay