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Scroll ūndēvīgintī
sourceWelcome to volume nineteen of Scrolls, a newsletter for sharing cool stuff from the IndieWeb, Fediverse & Cybersecurity realms. This week, we pick up the scraps, help others join the Fediverse and get a li’l phreaky.
Three issues in one week!? Yep, I’m back. Y’know, from time to time you just gotta recharge a bit I guess, and I’m not the only one! Sometimes, you don’t blog, you just blob.
IndieWeb
Before anything else, I wanted to share some sad news from the IndieWeb world. I found out from Adam that Anne Sturdivant (a.k.a. @anniegreens) has passed away. I enjoyed reading her posts and her WeblogPoMo was the first monthly writing challenge I ever participated in. She was a critical part of my early IndieWeb journey and for that I am thankful. Her spirit lives on through all the people, like myself, that she inspired—to bring kindness, humanity, creativity and individuality into the world through our digital gardens. 🌱
As I have learned, and personally experienced, having a site and a blog is an extremely rewarding journey. In fact, it can even be all-consuming at times. Once you settle into a nice writing routine though, it just makes for a great habit in my opinion. A place you control, where you can share whatever you want, whenever you want, and in whatever form you want. You can add to it, edit it, delete it, change up the look—anything. It’s yours! For my more comprehensive advice on blogging, check this post out! Interested in what other people are up to? Take a trip to URL Town! 🚙
Looking to make, upgrade or grow your current site? Here’s some ideas fresh from the IndieWeb-World! Axxuy, sainthood and Abhinav have all been tweaking their /links pages and Ross introduced his new “/connect” slashpage. Cool!
But my favorite new thingy I’ve seen recently has been from fyr.io. Scrolls went on an unplanned hiatus for a few weeks, which seemed to have left a bit of void. Many folks reached out to me during that time, and since returning, saying they had really missed it. That has been extremely heartwarming to hear, and quite frankly, pretty energizing. But fyr took it one step further, coming out with their own Scrolls-like newsletter/roundup, dubbed “Scraps”.
I love it, and speaking directly to Fyr, I hope you continue to publish it, in whatever form and cadence you like. These little roundups are one of my favorite blogging vehicles and if my experience with Scrolls has taught me anything, it’s this kinda human-curated boosting that really helps connect the broader IndieWeb community and supercharge discovery, especially in the face of rapidly declining search engine usefulness and increased fracturing of traditional social communities. You may have made Scraps to fill a Scrolls-shaped void, but I promise you we need as many of these things as we can get! 🧡
Fediverse
The Fediverse is, in my humble opinion, the best social platform on the web right now—and will continue to be for the forseeable future. Not because it has zero problems mind you, but because of all the unique benefits it has, that you simply can't get elsewhere. One issue stems from one of its benefits, that is, its decentralized nature. Specifically, it has proven difficult for many to decide what instance to join when they are first creating a Fedi presence. There are different instances, different platforms, and lots to consider between all of them. To help navigate this, StartHereSocial or suggestions from folks who have been here a while are great places to start. I for example have my own list of Infosec Instances that you could check out if that is your thing.
What else is happenin’ around Fedi’? FediCon is comin’ up for those near Vancouver, Bonfire has an Install Party you can check out and Tim Chambers has dropped his The Seven Deadly Fediverse UX Sins Part 2 which is 100% worth the read!
Cybersecurity
Gotta real grab-bag of cyber-ey things this week…. ‘ere we go!
I’ve got a lot of infosec certs, so I feel somewhat qualified in telling you that what you get out of most of them is really not much. But y’know what, I’ll let CrankySec explain instead 😈. Want some actual credentials? Or real skills? You don’t have to look far, and you don’t have to spend much (if anything). Just look around! The Internet is bursting at the seams with free resources, writeups, trainings, tools, everything! Wanna learn how to forge passkeys? Got you. Want to write secure Rust code? Boom! Wanna fingerprint some network devices? Here ya go. Wanna take a trip down memory lane ya li’l phreak? Everything is here (i.e. the Internet), if you know how to find it, and have the will to just dive in and start learning, tinkering and building. Get out there!
Thanks for reading Scrolls. Now, it’s coffee time!
