I received a tag from @TomSeppert - whom I thank - pointing me to the latest post on X by the CEO of Cloudflare, Matthew Prince. Long story short, the Italian AGCOM has fined Cloudflare a very large amount because, according to them, the company did not implement adequate measures to reduce the impact of piracy in Italy. Prince responded with a very aggressive post, threatening to shut down Cloudflare servers and free services in Italy, and to stop providing “pro bono” services for the Milan-Cortina Olympics.

I understand Matthew Prince’s outrage. I cannot really quantify the impact of piracy in Italy, but I know for a fact that, because of a ridiculous law, whenever we buy any kind of storage device like SSDs, NVMe drives, hard disks, and so on, we pay a substantial tax because we might "potentially" use them to store copyrighted material. This has always made me furious. It is a law that dates back to the era of blank CDs and DVDs, and while it was already questionable back then, today it is simply absurd. At the time, we fought hard against its approval, but to no avail.

Unfortunately, in Italy there are some very powerful interests at play. Among them are the rights related to football matches. And all of this starts there. If there is one reason why football is among the sports I dislike the most, it is also because of this: the flow of money, power, and white-collar crime behind it has disgusted me since I was a child.

That said, if Matthew Prince had expressed all of this in a different way, I would have fully agreed with him. Far too often, "security" is used as an excuse for censorship on the Internet. But the wording, the tone, the threats, and the overall attitude really bothered me. Threats always sound bad, especially when they come from the head of one of the most critical companies on the Internet.

And once again, I feel the need to repeat it: the Internet must remain decentralized.

Our freedom cannot and must not depend on lobbies, but neither on a small group of enormous companies.

#Cloudflare #IT #SysAdmin #Internet

@forgejo upgraded - thank you!

@mjack yes, but not only

https://fedimeteo.com/fedi/admin/p/1767255919.503453

Last year at this time, I was at a nice venue, enjoying a big New Year's Eve dinner and listening to live music, waiting for 2025 to begin.
This year, though, we’re at home, peaceful and relaxed, waiting for my wife to recover her strength after a long bout of the flu.
The common thread? A year ago, I had just set up the 'FediMeteo bot' for automated updates (which, updated and improved, is still running today). And I was planning the announcement date.
This year, I’ve just finished two changes that will further improve the bot and the service.

They’ll go live tomorrow, and I’ll announce them officially!

#StayTuned #FediMeteo

Exactly one year ago, on 30th December 2024, I laid the foundation of FediMeteo.

I took a VM, installed FreeBSD, and set up the first jail to support Italy. The goal was to create a tool for my own use, support a few countries, and announce it.

Unexpectedly, the enthusiasm was incredible. That pushed me to keep going, support more countries and cities, and turn it into what it is today.

FediMeteo now supports 38 countries and 2,937 cities, with more than 7,700 followers in the Fediverse alone, not counting the many people who follow via RSS feeds or visit the web pages.

If you are curious to read the story and some technical details, you can find it here:
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/

Today is also Tuesday, a #ThankYouTuesday, so I want to say thanks to:

* OpenMeteo - @openmeteo - for providing accurate, high quality data, without which FediMeteo would be far less useful

* @grunfink - creator of snac, who made all of this possible using very few resources, on a 4 euro per month VM

* FreeBSD, which thanks to the efficiency of the OS and its jail implementation made it possible to run this service in a stable and efficient way with minimal effort

* FediFollows - @FediFollows - that periodically spreads the word about cities, countries, and the enthusiasm around the project

*All of you*, who suggested, encouraged, corrected, and celebrated this project

And forward toward supporting more countries and other interesting features already in the works.

Happy birthday, FediMeteo!

#FediMeteo #HappyBirthday #Meteo #Weather #FreeBSD #snac #snac2 #OpenMeteo #Fediverse

RE: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@82mhz/115722686490910352

In my experience, 95% of the situations I follow could transition to totally open-source solutions without major problems. Some others could do so by implementing a progressive plan.

The limitation is almost always human: people accustomed to working in a certain way for years, and a lack of willingness and commitment to change, even minimal change. If in private sectors, this happens under the "threat" of a drop in productivity. If in public sectors, under the threat of severe inefficiencies.

I saw a local election won (in part) thanks to a promise not to change anything.

Inertia, at times, causes incalculable damage.

#IT #SysAdmin #OpenSource