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Why The Lunduke Journal matters
In a sea of ad-filled, Big Tech aligned, highly political Tech Journalism... The Lunduke Journal is an island oasis of nerdiness
November 11, 2023
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Tech News sites overflowing with ads!  Political rants in place of computer articles!  Tech Journalists writing puff pieces about Big Tech!

The state of Technology Journalism is... not great.  To put it mildly.

The Lunduke Journal (Lunduke.Locals.com) is taking a stand -- four key guiding principles that set this publication apart from almost every other Tech News site in existence.

  1. No Advertisements
  2. No Big Tech Influence
  3. No Mixing Politics With Tech
  4. No A.I.

Those may seem like simple rules... but they make all the difference in the world.

No Advertisements

We all know that advertising on Tech Publications is absolutely out of control.  Pages filled with more ads than actual content.

Here's just a few examples of how The Lunduke Journal compares to a selection of other Tech news outlets.  You choose which you would rather read.

ZDNet vs The Lunduke Journal

ZDNet, on the left, is almost entirely advertisements.  The Lunduke Journal, on the right, is 100% just the article (with the exception for the small "Back" button up top).  Clean.  Easy to read.

OMG Ubuntu vs The Lunduke Journal

Both OMG Ubuntu and The Lunduke Journal regularly cover Linux-related news stories.  One is so filled with ads, sometimes it's almost impossible to find the actual article (seriously... find the article in that screenshot on the left... I dare ya).

Once again, The Lunduke Journal... no ads.  Just article.  A title, followed by a tasteful header image for the article... then the article itself.  That's it.  Nothing more.

Phoronix vs The Lunduke Journal

Both Phoronix and The Lunduke Journal cover Open Source and Linux-powered hardware.

Phoronix has three advertisements in view (more if you scroll)... including an auto-played video that covers up the text.  Sure.  You can close the video... if you're lucky.  That sucker doesn't like to close unless you hit that little, tiny "X" just right.

Once again, The Lunduke Journal has nothing but the article.

Be honest.  Look at those screenshots.  Which would you rather read?

We could go on and on here.  Darn near every major Tech Publication on planet Earth is filled to the brim with ads.

Except for The Lunduke Journal.

No Big Tech Influence

Part of having no ads is to make The Lunduke Journal easier on the eyes.  Sure.  That's a bonus.  It is definitely one of the easist to read of the major Tech publications.

But that's simply a side effect -- an added bonus -- of one of the biggest advantages The Lunduke Journal has over nearly every major Tech Publication on Earth:

The Lunduke Journal doesn't take any money from any Tech company.

Not a dime.

Sure, some Big Tech firms have offered to do sponsorships and advertising... but The Lunduke Journal has a firm policy about this.  No money from Tech companies.  No income from advertising.  Ever.  Period.  No exceptions.  No excuses.

Why?  By being free of all advertising and Big Tech money... The Lunduke Journal is able to tell the truth.  Always.

It is entirely because The Lunduke Journal is 100% funded by its readers, that we are free to cover any topic and any organization.  Including some that most outlets are afraid of.

Just a few examples:

Sure.  We can take on Microsoft, Google, and Apple.  But The Lunduke Journal is also not afraid to take on Mozilla, Wikimedia, and any others.  We follow the truth.  No matter where it leads.

Hard facts.  Extensive research.  And nobody can ever -- not ever -- accuse The Lunduke Journal of being in the pocket of any company or organization.

No Mixing Politics With Tech

Every now and then a story comes up where the worlds of Tech and Politics collide.  It happens.  There are times when a Tech Organization does something political... and it becomes relevant to report on it.  Read those three articles above, and you'll find some examples.

But, as a rule, The Lunduke Journal of Technology (Lunduke.Locals.com) avoids politics.

And the results of this rule are striking.  Here's a quick comparison of how a few other outlets compare.

Gizmodo loves politics

Do a search on Gizmodo.com (aka "The Gadget Blog") and you'll find, literally, thousands of articles about "President Trump" -- with many being purely political, with no technical or computer related content whatsoever.

The Register rather likes politics, too!

As a general rule, I tend to like the reporting at The Register.  But, after you scroll past the gigantic banner advertisements, and do a search for political topics (again, such as "Trump")... you'll find thousands of results.

Same with ZDNet (2,438 results for "Trump").  All of these sites, and many others, regularly fill their pages with political content.  Sometimes relevant to Tech... sometimes not.

So.  Moment of truth.  How does The Lunduke Journal fare in this test?

The Lunduke Journal content page.  Zero politics.

Yeah.  You're eyes aren't deceiving you.  "0 articles found" when searching for "Trump".

In fact, you'll find similar results when searching for just about any political phrase (political parties, etc.).  

Because The Lunduke Journal keeps the politics and the Tech separate -- only mentioning politically related topics when it is 100% necessary for a story that is, otherwise, specifically about computers and technology.

And, even then, those mentions are done as little as possible.

Which means, no matter what your political leanings... you can read the articles on The Lunduke Journal without slowly going insane.  Here, you can get a break from the politics.  Just Tech.  All the time.

No A.I.

Which brings us to our final reason why The Lunduke Journal is important... no Artificial Intelligence is used in the creation of... anything.  Ever.

Every image.  Every word.  Every idea.  It all comes from a human mind.

No ChatBots.  No AI image generators.  The Lunduke Journal is human-made, artisinal Tech Journalism.

Many publications (including at least one mentioned earlier in this article) are rapidly moving towards AI-generated Tech content -- they feed press releases into a ChatBot and it spits out an almost completed article for them.  Then they use an AI system to create a header image for the article.

Not The Lunduke Journal.  We draw the line right here.

Subscribers Make This Possible

In order to pull all of this off, The Lunduke Journal relies on subscribers to pay the bills.

Every subscription -- big or small -- goes directly to running the publication.

In fact, the only "promotional material" you will ever find within the pages of The Lunduke Journal... are for The Lunduke Journal itself!

What's even better: The vast majority of articles and shows within The Lunduke Journal never even mention subscriptions in any way.  The articles stand on their own, free from all forms of promotion!

It's pretty spectacular.

A huge thanks to all off you amazing Lunduke Journal Subscribers who make this all possible.

If you haven't picked up your subscription yet, there's no time like the present to support one of the only truly independent, ad-free, AI-free, Big-Tech-free, major Tech Publications left on planet Earth.

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Groupthink, Tech Journalism, & The Lunduke Journal

Why The Lunduke Journal uses the "10th Man Rule" to counter groupthink in the Tech Industry. (And why you'll definitely disagree with Lunduke sometimes.)

Stick it to Big Tech, 50% off everything at The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/stick-it-to-big-tech-50-off-everything

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The Age of Non-Woke Open Source is Beginning

Non-Woke "Political Protest Forks" like XLibre & Redot are thriving. Non-DEl Linux Distributions like Open Mandriva are as well. But Woke projects? Not doing so well.

The Article:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/open-source-political-protest-forks

00:21:04
Ladybird Proves You CAN Just Build a New Web Browser

The Google / Mozilla stooges said, "It can't be done!". Ladybird said, "Hold my beer."

The Article:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ladybird-proves-you-can-just-build

00:09:58
November 22, 2023
The futility of Ad-Blockers

Ads are filling the entirety of the Web -- websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. -- at an increasing rate. Prices for those ad placements are plummeting. Consumers are desperate to use ad-blockers to make the web palatable. Google (and others) are desperate to break and block ad-blockers. All of which results in... more ads and lower pay for creators.

It's a fascinatingly annoying cycle. And there's only one viable way out of it.

Looking for the Podcast RSS feed or other links? Check here:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4619051/lunduke-journal-link-central-tm

Give the gift of The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4898317/give-the-gift-of-the-lunduke-journal

The futility of Ad-Blockers
November 21, 2023
openSUSE says "No Lunduke allowed!"

Those in power with openSUSE make it clear they will not allow me anywhere near anything related to the openSUSE project. Ever. For any reason.

Well, that settles that, then! Guess I won't be contributing to openSUSE! 🤣

Looking for the Podcast RSS feed or other links?
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4619051/lunduke-journal-link-central-tm

Give the gift of The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4898317/give-the-gift-of-the-lunduke-journal

openSUSE says "No Lunduke allowed!"
September 13, 2023
"Andreas Kling creator of Serenity OS & Ladybird Web Browser" - Lunduke’s Big Tech Show - September 13th, 2023 - Ep 044

This episode is free for all to enjoy and share.

Be sure to subscribe here at Lunduke.Locals.com to get all shows & articles (including interviews with other amazing nerds).

"Andreas Kling creator of Serenity OS & Ladybird Web Browser" - Lunduke’s Big Tech Show - September 13th, 2023 - Ep 044

Finally got around to doing the official article on the mid-2010 iMac upgrades I'd previously discussed here. Enjoy!

https://retropunk.substack.com/p/lets-upgrade-a-2010-imac

Stick it to Big Tech, 50% off everything at The Lunduke Journal

What The Lunduke Journal does is unique among Tech Journalists.

Because of you, The Lunduke Journal has been able to shine a light on the shady practices of Big Tech corporations and Tech Foundations alike. Been able to publish massive leaks from whistleblowers and do real, deep, investigative journalism on everything from Open Source projects to the biggest Big Tech firms.

Stories which have had a real, measurable impact on the world of Tech and Computing. (And, of course, we’ve had a little nerdy fun along the way.)

If those organizations had their way, The Lunduke Journal would be wiped off the face of the Earth.

But, luckily, they don’t have that power. Thanks to you.

To every one of you who grabs a new subscription this week — and those who have already subscribed — I owe you a high five.

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/stick-it-to-big-tech-50-off-everything

11 hours ago
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Open Source “Political Protest Forks” Thriving
Many called XLibre & Redot nothing more than “political protests” that would quickly die and be forgotten. Boy were those naysayers wrong.

Over the last year, we’ve seen a couple of high profile forks, of large Open Source projects, which were inspired — in part — by a desire to move away from the political discrimination and Leftist Extremism within the original projects.

At the time, when each of these forked projects were started, many predicted that they would go nowhere. That they were nothing more than “political protest forks” — and they would die out quickly.

Let’s check in on both of those project to see if that has happened.

XLibre - The Xorg Fork

Since officially launching, at the end of June (last month), the XLibre project has published a handful of official releases (now up to version 25.0.0.5)… with a significant number of changes and fixes.

 

In fact, considering the significant new features (such as XNamespace Extensions), the first release of XLibre is larger (in every way I can think to measure) than any Xorg release in the last decade. With the number of contributors growing.

How about Operating System support? Many predicted that XLibre would be ignored by every Linux distribution on the planet. That it would go nowhere and nobody would use it.

According to the “Are we XLibre yet?” wiki, a number of systems have already (officially) adopted XLibre. Including: Devuan, Artix, GhostBSD, and (my personal favorite) OpenMandriva.

 

This is important to note: All of that support has occurred even though XLibre has only existed for one month. Several systems already officially supporting it is nothing short of “crazy impressive”. Borderline unprecedented.

In addition, a number of systems have 3rd party repositories which allow users to install and use XLibre. Including: Arch, FreeBSD, Gentoo, NixOS, Slackware, and (seriously) macOS.

 

In short: Growing group of developers. Rapidly growing platform support. New releases which put the original project (Xorg) to shame.

Redot - The Godot Game Engine Fork

The Redot project — which forked off of Godot back in October of 2024 — had a stable release (4.3.1) back in June, and just had a new test release (4.4 Alpha 2). Both with both new features and fixes.

 

In fact, Redot has had 13 releases since the project started late last year.

With an absolutely massive number of commits since then.

 

In short: Steady, new releases. New features and bug fixes. Both stable and testing releases.

These Projects are Thriving

It’s hard to look at either of these projects and come to any conclusion other than they are absolutely thriving.

At this point, it’s looking like those who predicted rapid failure for these “Political Forks” were not only wrong… but wildly, obscenely wrong.

There’s a lesson in there.

Read full Article
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Groupthink & Tech Journalism
Why The Lunduke Journal uses the “10th Man Rule” to counter groupthink in the Tech Industry.

If my audience always agrees with me — 100% of the time — I’m probably doing something wrong.

That’s core to the ethos of The Lunduke Journal.

Any Brand X Tech Journalist can publish articles and shows filled with ideas, and facts, which their audience is known to already approve of. It’s easy to play it safe. To tell people — and corporations — what they want to hear. To pander.

We have enough Tech Journalists who do exactly that. Heck, we’re lousy with ‘em.

Put another way: The Lunduke Journal is not here to make friends. Not here to win some “Tech Reporter Popularity Contest”(tm).

Why The Lunduke Journal Exists

The Lunduke Journal exists to tell the truth about the Tech Industry (and world of Computing) — as I see it — no matter what. To tell the stories the other Tech Journalists are terrified of touching, for fear of losing that afore mentioned popularity contest.

The Lunduke Journal publishes leaks from major corporations — royally ticking off all of Big Tech in the process.

The Lunduke Journal shines a light on the discriminatory, DEI, & woke practices of Tech — causing nearly every Tech Industry person, with a Left-leaning political stance, to label me enemy number one (often attacking me, with wildly vulgar statements, in a desperate attempt to discredit me).

The Lunduke Journal investigates the shady business practices of Open Source Foundations and organizations — resulting in nearly every leader within the Free and Open Source world to either fear or despise me (often both).

In fact, The Lunduke Journal publishes stories — ranging from investigative pieces to pure opinion and analysis — which will, undoubtedly, infuriate (or at least annoy) every single nerd on this green Earth of ours.

Prefer Linux, Windows, or Mac? Left, Center, or Right politically? Pro or Anti-Government control over Tech? Star Wars or Star Trek?

Never fear. There will surely be a Lunduke Journal story which you will strongly disagree with. Just give it a little time.

Let me tell you why.

The Tenth Man Principle

Groupthink can be a very dangerous thing. Especially when you already agree with the consensus of the group.

There is a concept where, if 9 men all agree on something — an idea, a fact, a strategy — it is the duty of the 10th man to take a different approach. To pursue a contrary idea or strategy.

In some ways this is a variation on “Playing Devil’s Advocate”, but I prefer the “10th Man Principle” — it is more focused on challenging an entrenched consensus.

Which is where The Lunduke Journal comes in.

When I sit down and read Tech News — and listen to Tech Podcasts or Videos — and 90% of the coverage is all repeating the same position… whenever an extreme consensus has been reached… a red flag is raised. The 10th Man Principle is triggered.

My job is then to take whatever that topic is — a piece of breaking Tech news, a historical fact, an opinion on how Tech should be governed, etc. — and spin it around. Look at it from a completely different angle — and pursue that new line of thinking.

This isn’t about simply being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

I must investigate that topic rigorously. Focus on known, verifiable facts. Challenge any assumptions made (by myself or others) in whatever that consensus is. Dig deep. Dig where others have not. See where that investigation leads.

Sometimes that investigation leads to nothing overly interesting or worth publishing. Other times… the results are illuminating and profoundly valuable.

If you’ve followed The Lunduke Journal for any length of time, you’ve seen the results of this ethos. Over and over again.

And I Love It

There are, obviously, some challenges with this approach. To put it mildly.

Corporate sponsorship is — for reasons I clearly do not need to explain — impossible.

Luckily, The Lunduke Journal has an amazing (and generous) audience which keeps the lights on, making corporate sponsorship completely unnecessary. So Big Tech can kiss my tuchus.

On that note, getting employees of any Corporation or Foundation to talk “on the record” is simply not going to happen. In fact, many organizations have firm (and, often, stated) policies of “Don’t talk to Lunduke… ever”.

But, you know what? The brave whistleblowers within those companies have proven far more enlightening than any official statement from an executive could hope to be.

Oh, and that “Tech Journalism Popularity Contest”(tm)? Pshht. Forget about it. Not a chance. Not as long as I continue with the “10th Man Principle”.

If I’m doing my job right, the list of people who consider me an enemy of whatever entrenched, consensus position they hold… will continue to grow.

While, at the same time, the rag-tag group of Lunduke Journal supporters — those amazing nerds who see the need for this work (even though, on occasion, I publish something which challenges one of their deeply held convictions… or, perhaps, because of it) — will also continue to grow.

You know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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The Tea App Breach - 60GB of Personal Info
Selfies, Drivers Licenses, & Locations. All made publicly available by the developer.

The “Tea App” — an online dating app marketed as a dating tool that “protects women” — has been hacked. And a lot of data has been exposed. An extreme amount.

Not the first major breach this year. And it certainly won’t be the last.

 

First published over on 4Chan (of course), the “hack” of Tea App wasn’t even really much of a “hack”. The developers of Tea App apparently simply left the user data open for the world to download at their leisure.

And Tea App was becoming pretty popular — which means roughly 60 GB of user data was made available before the developers finally thought about locking things down.

 

What kind of data was made publicly available — because, presumably, the developers simply didn’t think about “security” much — by this Tea App Hack?

Selfies. Drivers licenses. All manner of private information which will, no doubt, be exploited by unscrupulous types over the days to come.

 

Even worse — meta data appears to have been preserved on uploaded photos. Meaning that many of the user selfies included location data (in addition to the address on the drivers license). Which said unscrupulous types have already begun using to create maps of Tea App users.

 

The developers of Tea App have put out a statement which says 59,000 images used for “account verification” were made available (read: Government ID). Which would already be catastrophic… however a quick look at details of the data (including the file size alone) would suggest that number could be much, much larger.

Here is the full statement from the developer:

 

Which brings us to an important lesson which we — as humans — never seem to learn:

If user data is stored, it will get hacked.

It’s simply a matter of time.

There are currently close to 15 Billion (with a B) accounts listed on Have I Been Pwned. And those are simply from hacks and breaches which were reported to that one website.

 

The reality is, the vast majority of hacks and data breaches are never made publicly known. Either by the people doing the hacking, or by the company / government which got hacked.

As systems continue to grow ever more complex and interconnected — and more systems become AI-developed (aka “Vibe Coded”) — these hacks and breaches become easier to pull off.

Combine that with the ever-expanding quantity of data — and the growing number of services storing it — and we are quickly reaching a point where everyone will have at least some of their data breached at some point. For some people it will happen regularly. Repeatedly.

And those will just be the breaches we find out about.

The only way to minimize the damage of such hacks & breaches is to minimize the amount and type of data stored, long term, by a service.

  • Need pictures of government ID for age verification? Delete that picture immediately after verification.

  • Need payment and shipping information? Delete all of it immediately after payment is processed and shipment is verified.

  • Need location data (GPS, IP, etc.)? Delete it immediately once done with it.

You get the point. Unless a piece of personal data is absolutely 100% necessary, delete it.

It’s hard for a hacker to obtain files… that aren’t there.

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