Austin Miller's site

FLOSS National ID

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 17:03:20 -0700

Every American citizen should own a passport card (and a passport book.) A passport card is a convenient national ID and proof of citizenship. Owning a passport card removes the necessity to carry a Social Security card to apply for work. A passport card simplifies acquiring a REAL ID when you move across state or territory lines, and is much more convenient than a birth certificate (particularly for married women and others who have undergone a name change.)

The vast majority of countries have national IDs, and also require photo identification in elections. In the United States, acquiring a passport or passport card is significantly more expensive and normalized than acquiring many state IDs and driver’s licenses. However, a passport card is much cheaper than the IDs or driver’s licenses of many US states. Many states have created digital IDs, something which the Department of State has yet to adopt itself on the federal level. Unfortunately, these various state “digital IDs” are without exception tied to unfree corporate digital wallets, namely Samsung, Apple, and/or Google Wallet(s). A free, libre, and open-source software (FLOSS) implementation of the US passport card would provide many benefits and help encourage compliance with federal identification compliance laws among the several states and territories.

Firstly, it would create an open standard independent of operating system, which would streamline online age verification and ID processing when persons were on GNU/Linux, Microsoft, or BSD platforms. Secondly, it would simplify moving with our nation by removing dependency on the US Postal System for identification and ensuring such benefits were available in all states and territories. Thirdly, it would help phase out wildly insecure social security cards, reduce complexity for citizens who have undergone name change, were born outside US jurisdiction, or otherwise lack access to certified birth certificates. Fourthly, it would reduce the power of states such as California which enable and empower their populations of resident illegal aliens providing non-REAL ID compliant state licenses and identification cards by making it simpler and easier for US citizens to acquire federal identification, such that the disparity between illegals and lawful residents would be more apparent. Finally, it would encourage states without digital IDs to adopt a common FLOSS system, isolating the proprietary payment systems of Apple, Google, and Samsung from identification, and provide lawful non-citizens with comparable, state-level digital REAL IDs in general.

The Department of State should also work with foreign partners to improve international adoption of this standard, and simplify border processing and assistance to foreign nationals by their respective governments. El Salvador would be a particularly promising partner, given its impressive accomplishments in reducing crime within its jurisdiction and in adopting digital solutions. Likewise, reducing the bargaining power of proprietary, corporate operating systems and solutions in the long term will benefit America and offer resilience, and provide an incentive for alternative operating systems in use worldwide, such as Jolla’s Sailfish OS from Finland or Huawei’s HarmonyOS in China, to retain more FLOSS elements and compatibility.

Polly the Cat

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:56:30 -0700

In front of my house lives Polly, a feral cat which I feed. She finally stopped being afraid of me and hissing at me this evening, and so I decided to capture this interaction, the first time I petted her, in audio.

I would take in Polly, if it were not for Naxu. Someday, I may be able to get both to live in peace. Until then, Polly sleeps in my garage.

No I Do not Use Docker

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 15:49:26 -0700

I see plenty of tutorials online, particularly tutorials for server-side apps, which rely on or encourage the use of Docker. Full disclosure, I don’t use Docker. I personally like to rely on the command-line package manager for all my systems. At some point if I have a situation where I need to isolate an app, I may learn Docker. Maybe.

Woe Offline Shopping

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 19:19:51 -0700

Offline shopping is rather awful. The habit of going to a physical grocery store, wading through products I mostly would never purchase, wading through isles I mostly have no interest in, waiting in very long lines behind people using insufficient change, with insufficient funds on their payment cards, malfunctioning mobile payment apps, or excessively complete family gatherings is not one I have ever enjoyed. Regarding non-food purchases, there is even less reason to shop offline these days. I buy absolutely zero electronics in person, when NewEgg, EBay, Amazon, and OEMs provide anything I want at a much lower price and greater hardware and software freedom than is available in any carrier store, or Best Buy. Clothing I can get on Amazon easily, and yes, I have figured out how to make it fit. You can even purchase vehicles online at a much cheaper rate than in-person, and also weed out sketchy personalities quickly.

I also lower my impulse buying by not being in a space with strategic placement of brand-name goods, or checkout isles. I also don’t really spend any more, because there is much greater competition online than in person in a medium-sized city. I’d assume such behaviour reduces the incentive of local businesses to spend money wastefully on “atmosphere,” rent, and hype in redundant boutique and specialty shops, and transfer that effort into getting me a quality product.

People love to hate the likes of Bezos and I’m sure also Ma, but I don’t have much of a problem with the man. Perhaps it’s because Amazon is based in my hometown, perhaps its many bad experiences with incompetent or cognitively limited employment at brick-and-mortar retailers. Alibaba has costs which are quite difficult be beat (except by Temu), while Amazon has very high quality Solimo branded things at substantially lower prices than the likes of Target or Office Depot. It’s hard to feel the same way about WalMart once you’ve actually been inside a WalMart, and I assume in a few years hating WalMart will be awfully passé when the business starts to go the way of Toys-R-Us, or Sears.

I do buy from independent online businesses as well. I have purchased computer hardware from Purism and Pine64, and foods from Barnacle Foods and Maine Coast. That’s not something I am going to do for every sector of my life, and there is place for aggregators like Amazon. If someone else can create a decent comptetitor to Amazon domestically, that would be terrific; Jet.com didn’t make it. But AliExpress has Temu, and America would certainly benefit from a second Amazon. Maybe call it…Sacramento™?

Bed cutie

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:51:08 -0700

Here is my little one at the foot of my bed!

Why OpenSUSE?

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:59:04 -0700

Of all GNU/Linux distributions, OpenSUSE - specifically, OpenSUSE Leap - is the most practical, reliable, and generally workable. For beginners, OpenSUSE is preferable to Ubuntu, Fedora, or even Linux Mint. Advanced users will fall in love with the stability and robustness of OpenSUSE, as well as the simplicity of usage. And OpenSUSE keeps all of the customization GNU/Linux users love, without the pain of Arch.

Built for btrfs

The btrfs file system is most integrated into OpenSUSE of all GNU/Linux distributions, routinely creating snapshots to protect your system if anything should fail. zypper and snapper work to prevent the types of data loss which Linux Mint and Arch Linux alike can suffer under, and the beginner can load from a read-only snapshot with just a few clicks at startup.

RPM-based

Like Fedora, OpenSUSE is RPM-based. I have had issues with networking on more than one occassion on Debian-based systems, and as a result am somewhat weary of Ubuntu and Linux Mint alike.

Reliable

Being backed by a major corporation, SUSE, the user can expect from his OpenSUSE system a level of stability and quality he cannot from small community or hobbyist projects. Unlike Fedora from RedHat, OpenSUSE Leap is great for both servers and desktops, and is very reliable, with each package being thoroughly tested by SUSE prior to release.

Integrated

The integration of system software is very neatly and well-done by SUSE. Even with the deprecation of YaST, this continues to be true in the age of their replacements, Cockpit and Merlyn. Many other distributions lack this level of integration.

Multiple versions

SUSE’s server OS is the basis for multiple versions of OpenSUSE.

If you really want the latest software, Tumbleweed gives you a rolling release without the instability and precariousness of Arch Linux. Having been a long-term Arch user myself, I really appreciate the peace of mind I have using Leap over Arch, and I’m quite fine with the software release cycle. Slowroll is a compromise between Leap and Tumbleweed.

The immutable distros Leap Micro and MicroOS are great for containers or small installs, though they can also be used as desktop operating systems.

Issues with other distros

Fedora

Fedora, another rpm-based distribution and an upstream product of RedHat, is much less stable. Ever since RedHat shut down CentOS, I have been sceptical of using any of their products. SUSE still maintains compatibility between OpenSUSE Leap and SUSE Enterprise Linux. Finally, having used both Fedora and remote installations of CentOS Stream, I find OpenSUSE is a better ecosystem: RedHat’s products are not have btrfs-native, the dnf package manager is not as high-feature and -quality as zypper, and the RedHat-based distributions lack the powerful configuration tools of Cockpit or Merlyn.

Ubuntu and Debian

I dislike snaps, advertisements, and disagree strongly with Linus Torvalds that Debian is difficult to install. I have never tried Linux Mint, Zorin OS or anything similar, but I once had a Librem 14 with PureOS, which was quite nice.

Debian is not btrfs-native. I have had issues with Debian connecting to the Internet on more than one occasion, and that spooked me away from Debian and its descendants ever since. That being said, if SUSE ever does to Leap what RedHat did to CentOS, I’d probably switch to either Debian, or more likely Trisquel (PureOS is very tied to Purism’s hardware in a way Trisquel isn’t.)

Arch Linux

I used Arch for a while, but I had a few issues with it due to its poor stability vis-a-vis stable release distros or even OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. The AUR is very nice, but adding repos to zypper is pretty trivial, and I have never had to rely on flatpaks or random .rpm packages to install anything on my current system.

NixOS

I used Nixos for a few months, and the reliability and reproducability of NixOS influenced me in selecting OpenSUSE because it had snapper and btrfs features, which pretty much equal the dependability of a NixOS install. I also got sick of not being able to upgrade software in the command-line like I could on every other distributions, and didn’t see a nixfile as that beneficial when one can just can and paste or git clone config files onto a new machine. And the declarative PM could be trying at times, particularly when I couldn’t install ad-ons to Firefox. I didn’t feel I needed to learn an entirely new programming language for the scale at which I operate, which I would need to get the full benefit of the nix package manager. NixOS may make sense in some situations where horizontal scalability is a must, but that isn’t my situation. I may look back at NixOS (or it’s FSF-approved relative, the Guix system distribution) at some point in the future, however.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

I wanted a stable release distribution, so I chose Leap. I don’t feel I need the latest software at the expense of being able to send an email to my boss or access this website. Like I mentioned earlier, if Leap is discontinued at some point, I would probably move to a modified Debian system with btrfs for anything where I need to deal with UEFI, otherwise I would migrate to Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre. Then again, another distribution may come out or I may create my own as well if that does happen. Possibly I would move to Slow Roll, fortunately that doesn’t seem to be an issue any more, though it could change again.

I do like the OpenSUSE is supported by a large, reputable company, something at which most of the Debian community may scoff.

Personally, my opinion is that there is a reason businesses use Leap. The reliability of the stable release cycle cannot be underestimated.

Achieving data autarky

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:26:58 -0700

Data self-reliance is essential to controlling one’s own life in modern times. I have also found data autarky is pretty achievable, and does not hamper your online availability at all. In fact, data autarky gives you peace of mind Meta (or some other Big Tech firm) can’t extract facial scans or pictures of your ID, only to still keep you deplatformed. Even if you, as me, are in the process of reaching data autarky, self-hosting, keeping local copies, and avoiding unnecessary terms of service is critical for protecting your digital rights and freedoms. It also gives you a backup if you are deplatformed. Having your data be physically proximate is ideal; data localization is exceptionally important to protecting your rights and those of your community.

On this website I have spoken of the dangers of unfree messaging applications, mainstream mobile operating systems, and corporate-captured browser layout engines. In this era of hostile legislation, mass surveillance, and otherwise increasing threats to privacy and personal security, it is absolutely essential we at least augment our conventional presence online and offline digitally with free or self-hosted alternatives. Outside parties may simply be ignorant of the dangers of nonfree and mainstream software and services, but this is not always the case. Often times these outside parties are recalcitrant or heavily misguided, otherwise, they are straight-up con artists or agents of data brokers. As I pointed out in my piece on resisting Chromium, resistance to this type of aggressive monopoly controlling is crucial if we want to end tolerance of these types of practises in real life as well as online.

In addition to possessing libre and self-hosted or peer-to-peer options software as theoretical options, it is important we also avoid using the nonfree options. Resisting your family’s Telegram group until they get on XMPP, leaving your old Yandex mail be, turning off your Google Drive on an Android devices, suggesting to your boss that your Jitsi Meet server be used instead of MS Teams or Zoom, and promoting your SourceHut instance instead of GitHub, these are all important to fighting outside domination of your data. You do have the right to prohibit your public school from giving your child a ChromeBook, and you also have the right to refuse be a gadfly when everyone else is excited to get on the latest Silicon Valley-hyped bandwagon. The Internet, and the world, can be a dangerous, hostile place, and having as much control over your own life, not governments, corporations you do not really have power over, or activists who can ruin your life for ideological reasons. Data autarky is an ideal, and an ideal worth striving for. Since you can get pretty close pretty easily, if you have an alternative to something proprietary or hosted by a third-party, use your alternative as much as possible. Data self-reliance requires assertiveness for your rights, so always remember that when you cave to pressure or “just go with it,” you lose control over yourself, and your own life.

My first 'drive' in a self-driving car

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:50:38 -0700

Yesterday I rode in a friends’ Tesla Model 3. As someone who is a poor driver, I am very impressed by the near-total elimination of the need to intervene as a driver. You almost forget you need to pay attention at first and keep your eyes on the road; even so, it is far safer to ride in a (nearly) fully-autonomous vehicle than to drive. Driverless cars are the future, eliminating the shoddy, dangerous driving of elders, teenagers, persons under the influence of drugs or alcohol, people texting or looking at social media, people getting angry at the opinions of the person to whom they are listening to on talk radio, road rage in general, and other problems which lead to death, dismemberment, incarceration, and higher insurance premiums for drivers. And obviously it is far more pleasant than taking public transportation, certainly here in the United States.

My primary concern with the technology is the surveillance by Grok and probably the law enforcement and intelligence community, and loss of control over the vehicle due to being dependent on “the cloud” (and not just anyone’s cloud! Mr Musk’s cloud!), over-the-air updates, and the vulnerability of car owners to vender lock-in, subscription treachery, as well as further decreasing the right to repair one’s own automobile. However, these problems are not insurmountable, and are being tackled. Purism has managed to deactivate the Intel Management Engine, while RISC-V is beginning to moot hardware backdoors entirely, pushing them to the ashheap of the V chip, the Clipper Chip, and the Fairness Doctrine. Linux phones are coming into their own, even for regular people. Self-hosted and libre AI models are a thing. When combined with freedom in choice of cloud for self-driving cars, similarly to the freedom we have today in hosting providers and domain registries today, the locked-in, mass surveillance-friendly worlds of Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek and their ilk while face serious competition of the same type GNU/Linux gave to Windows and the old commercial Unices. Openness will also drive down costs and maintenence fees, increasing the right to repair. Of course, hackers, entrepenuers, and governments will need to enable this sort of competition and more importantly a paradigm shift. Libre automobiles would decrease costs, much as RISC-V will decrease costs of electronics. Finally, alternatives to rare, expensive, and politically-difficult lithium. Of course, some of these criticisms apply to traditional modern cars, such as the privacy implications and locked-down automotive software. However, in a traditional vehicle one does not need to worry about your car refusing to travel to your requested destination or obey corporate or government orders, perhaps incorrectly due to honest errors that still have serious consequences (e.g. an “I can’t let you do that Dave” scenario.) Still, modern cars can be made to do sneaky things if undesirable forces get their way.

Due to the profound benefits of self-driving vehicles, we must insist on avoiding the pitfalls of the past. Putting a damper in iPhone-esque stranglehold’s on cars, rather than living under similar tyranny for decades. Avoid overpriced materials that overperform and limit the accessability of autonomous automobile usage and manufacturing large corporations. The people who go along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, and so forth endlessly and unquestioningly must not be allowed to dictate the future any longer. People need to expect repairable, reasonably-priced autonomous vehicles which they themselves truly own. These cars must be safe, and indeed they shall be safer than human drivers, but safety is far too often used as a pretext to destroy freedom, prosperity, and flourishing for human beings.

Regardless, I look forward to a road with a lot fewer hooligans doing doughnoughts, teenagers racing, texting drivers killing drivers doing their makeup, and manslaughter of pedestrians and cyclists. And that is the world of autonomous vehicles.

Some Wolfberries in my backyard

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:30:20 -0700

Here are some wolfberries in my backyard raised bed. Mighty tasty dried!

My wolfberry bush

Walking my dog

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:11:02 -0700

Naxu walks fine when just with myself on a walk. However, if anyone else tries to walk with him, he becomes very excited and jumps on all the people walking as his leash permits. If someone is out of range of the leash and walking ahead, he tugs and pulls on his leash running in an attempt to catch up.

Messaging Mayhem

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:38:47 -0700

The contemporary landscape of instant messaging is a mess. Multiple, siloed and proprietary messaging applications dominate, with the very real potential for deplatforming, censorship, advertising, and other ugly problems which are simply unacceptable in our modern world of digital ubiquity. Nor can text messages take up the slack, given carrier charges and the difficulty of getting phone number-based text messaging to work on multiple platforms.

XMPP is an open standard that is federated like email, is end-to-end encrypted and includes group, voice and video call support. And you do not need a telephone number or two-factor authentication to get started with matrix chat either, just like email. I self-host an XMPP server under this domain.

XMPP is not dependent on the closed and locked-down ecosystems of iOS or stock Android. In contrast to unfederated Signal (which seems to steal all the enthusiasm), you can self-host your matrix chat account. It also does not depend on a single company, which has been the Achilles’ heel of WhatsApp and Telegram.

As long as we depend on a plethora of different messaging apps for our communications, our phones will be clogged, our conversations fragmented, and our pocketbooks will need to pay for telephone service. Utilizing matrix chat avoids these issues entirely.

For those of you still unconvinced on why you should switch to XMPP from unfree messaging apps, read on.

Why each alternative to XMPP isn’t worth it

Any argument for any siloed or unfederated IMing protocol based on ease of use, accessibility, or simplicity has to run up against the existence of email, which is ubiquitous. Yes, siloed messaging apps these days include voice and video call capability as well as text, but that is like saying that original email clients didn’t include HTML message capability and so were “inaccessible” to “regular” people who expect “user-friendly” (read: flashy and bloated) messages, emojis, motion effects, etc..

If you don’t want to run your own XMPP server, that’s fine, you can use a server run by someone else. There is nothing wrong with getting someone else to run your server. But just because your grandmother may think running a server is “hard” or your boyfriend thinks managing his own encryption is too difficult, doesn’t mean that someone with legitimate privacy or security concerns and/or the necessarily will and skills should be forced to use GMail or Google Wave, or ProtonMail, or iMessage. Like email, you don’t have to run your own custom domain or find a privacy-friendly paid provider if you are fine with someone else snooping on you and want everything to “just work.”

And yes, I know Google Wave doesn’t exist any more. Abandonware another problem which could befall AOL messenger or YouTube chat or Google Hangouts because they are siloed proprietary software.

WhatsApp is run by Meta (formerly Facebook), which has about as abysmal a record as a company can get in privacy. WhatsApp also deplatforms people routinely, for the usual any or no reason. If you run your own XMPP server, that can happen if you anger your domain registrar and hosting provider (or ISP if hosting at home), but it is a lot harder (plus there are more companies to chose from.) XMPP is also a open protocol, which means you can self-host a server (like I do) and tweak it to your heart’s desire, adopt your own choice of security protocols based on your actual needs, and not have to pay a licensing fee.

Unencrypted normally, “secret chats” have an unfree encryption protocol. Requires a phone number with SMS capability to register in account, also blocks VoIP numbers or quickly closes accounts attached to a VoIP number. Desktop clients exist, but some third-party clients (e.g. the client in GNU Emacs) can trigger moderation or account closures. Cannot register in at least some third-party mobile clients, as the company requires you use the official app to create a new account. Desktop clients cannot access “secret chats” and are do not show notifications if someone tries to begin a “secret chat” with you.

WeChat

Unencrypted, unfederated, heavily subject to censorship and ready MSS surveillance because the company which owns WeChat is very cooperative with the Chinese intelligence community.

Signal

Unfederated and siloed. Also, dependent on mobile phone apps; even though desktop clients exist, you still need an Android or iOS app to use Signal, and every once and a while you have to reconnect the desktop app with the mobile app. Finally, certain features are unavailable on desktop.

Threema

You have to pay money for an account; with XMPP, there are plenty of gratis servers to chose from. As with Signal, the desktop clients are dependent on a mobile app for one of the two duopoly mobile operating systems. Even more than Signal, if your Android or iOS phone is not currently on, you can’t use the Threema client on your desktop.

Federated alternatives (and their issues)

Delta Chat

Delta chat is a client for email which makes it seem like instant messaging when being used. I have nothing against the delta chat client, but email does not include audio or video calling. Further, certain providers such as ProtonMail simply do not work with the Delta chat client, while mainstream email providers like Yahoo! or Yandex Mail can be rate-limited. The delta chat client integrates Jitsi meet for live videotelephony, but videotelephony is not a part of the email protocol and so the integration does not apply if anyone else is using another email client, or webmail.

Delta chat is creative and has some advantages as out-of-the-box, use-what-already-exists thinking, but email isn’t designed around instant messaging like XMPP is. The protocol is still the same, and so encryption is not automatic and dependent on the OpenPGP standard, which deserves plenty of praise for emails but isn’t really suitable for group chats compared to the OMEMO encryption of modern XMPP. PGP makes a lot of sense for emailing an attorney, foreign spy, or journalist a sensitive message or documents, but it is a real pain to use on multiple devices, when messages need to be forwarded, or when more than two people are in a conversation.

In summary, delta chat is a client, not a protocol, server, or ecosystem. If you like delta chat, by all means use it. It certainly better than Outlook. But, being a client, it doesn’t cover everything. XMPP does.

Matrix chat

Matrix chat requires far more resources than an XMPP server to run. It also does not really provide anything XMPP doesn’t already: XMPP can do voice and videocall just like matrix chat. The XMPP ecosystem is also far more decentralized than the Matrix ecosystem in practice, with more servers and clients available. Also, while there are multiple matrix chat servers, only Synapse covers the full range of features of the matrix protocol, and Synapse is extremely memory-hungry compared to XMPP.

The argument that the greater diversity of XMPP server and client software and the lack of dominance of any of either in its ecosystem, in contrast to matrix, where the Synapse server and the Element client dominate substantially, is pretty much the same fallacious argument as to how GNU/Linux is at a disadvantage when contrasted with some proprietary system like Windows or macOS due to the presence of many GNU/Linux distributions. And it isn’t even really true, because there are still different matrix clients and servers from which one may chose. Matrix chat isn’t immoral or bad, but it doesn’t really offer any features you can’t get on XMPP with less computing power and more options.

If you tell your uninformed father-in-law to get a matrix chat account, he will still probably come to you asking you which client to install and where to sign up for an account. Alternatively, he could get an account on any server and install a client with fewer features than element. Again, this is pretty much the same as email: If someone is technically naive, you can just tell them to create an account with whatever provider, or simply create an account with login credentials for them and tell them to log in. Likewise, with both XMPP and matrix chat, you just add in the step that the person install a specific client to access their account (if there is not web client.) If the person is technically-inclined, they will figure these things out themselves.

XMPP can replace any other messaging protocol in a way really no other alternative can. It requires no phone number, face scan, or age verification to use. It is more secure and robust than any other protocol, and light as a feather compared to matrix chat. It doesn’t shovel your data at the MSS, NSA, or FSB. XMPP won’t change the colour of your chats because a Big Tech company is arrogant and unironically elitist. Say no to hype: Chose XMPP, chose sane, practical freedom available to anyone.

Avoiding artificial sweeteners

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:38:05 -0700

Mock indulgence is usually worse than no indulgence at all is my experience. Sodas with aspartame or saccharin in lieu of sugar taste off and are linked to numerous health problems, even compared to honest sodas sweetened with sugar. The existence of “diabetic cookies” provide a stunning example of the perils for those try to deny reality.

Artificial sweeteners have a checkered history at best, with Ludwig Von Beethoven dying from poisoning by an early artificial sweetener, and to this day virtually every artificial sweetener seems to be associated with cancer. I say, eat real sugar and accept it’s concentrated, purified, simple carbohydrates. Honesty is the best policy.

Faux Meat Luddism

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:57:39 -0700

There is no reason to consume the new, fancy manufactures from the likes of Beyond or Impossible if one is a vegetarian. These fancy, unhealthy, patent-encumbered, are merely corporate tactics to profit from hype and overtechnical solutions to problems long solved. Vegetarianism has produced tofu, tempeh, seitan, paneer, and has mushrooms, eggplant, nuts, beans, and seeds for protein and as meat substitutes. These can easily be made at home, are far healthier than the technically intricate meat analogues, and are also cheaper.

Being a vegetarian means not eating meat, but the vegetarian and the non-vegetarian alike need not rely on animal flesh to enjoy savouriness, a tough or chewy texture, and a dense mouthfeel to their foods. Tofu is not meat, but it can be flavoured like meat, or like fruit. I am pretty weary of technology in our foods, as this has given us Wonder Bread, margarine, food colourings, and vanillin. Unsurprisingly, both Beyond and Impossible’s uncanny meat substitutes are far less healthy than the established vegetarian cuisines of both the East and West alike. Many of those foods were devised or seriously improved by monastics or even peasants, and so were made by persons with a higher moral purity than a modern corporation.

I am of the persuasion that vat-grown foods are not necessarily bad, but we need to stop looking to replicate existing foods and instead take advantage of opportunities presented by the properties of the foods themselves. For example, mycoprotein is very nutritious and shows much potential, particularly since the patents preventing its replication outside a certain company have expired. This opens others to flavouring mycoprotein loafs and patties differently from simply chicken or turkey, just as there are many flavours of tofu which are not savoury. Because vat-grown foods such as mycoprotein, Spirulina, or Chlorella, do not attempt to mimic meats themselves, they are ethically akin to soy, and similarly versatile. This is absolutely something into which research is needed, not how to create an uncanny Valley of faux meats.

Soy for Schools

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:57:26 -0700

America grows vast quantity of soybeans. Soy-based foods are excellent sources of vegetarian protein and nutrition. They are also extremely cheap and cleaner than animal products in terms of ethics and disease.

Those of our children who subsist on government school meals suffer through poor-quality ingredients and excessive additives. At the same time, the meat and dairy industries are propped up in mind and money through the school lunch system, which relentlessly and normalizes pushes the milk of cows and meats of a quality banned in many other countries. Given that the livestock which produce the products used in school lunches across America are often fed on soy, it is quite reasonable to suggest we give our poorest kids better subsistence by feeding them soy-based foods. Soymilk, tofu, tempeh, and soy pulp could replace cow’s milk, cheese, mystery meat, and sloppy Joe’s in our nation’s public schools, with a considerable cost savings and improvement in health.

Our children deserve better than toxins and mad cow. Soy is cheap, heart-healthy, nutritious and delicious. Let’s give our kids quality foods and support reasonable pricing instead of disgusting rubbish from Big Dairy.

Quality soy-based food and drink for all ages

The author about to enjoy some warm, homemade soymilk; if I can do this, so can our schools.

GNU/Linux Phones for the Business

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:56:14 -0700

With news of the impending lockdown of Android, you may feel the desire to go to iOS as an alternative for your organization, assuming Apple’s crippleware has superior privacy or security to Android. However, please reconsider: If you are at all familiar with desktop operating systems, you may be familiar with the security and freedom of GNU/Linux. Know that you can obtain true GNU/Linux on mobile platforms today, with high-quality and price competative options.

Yes, Android does indeed utilize a (heavily modified) version of the Linux kernel, and so is technically a version of Linux; because Android refuses to utilize the GNU userland or glibc library, Android/Linux is most certainly not GNU/Linux. But the platform has always been highly isolated from mainline GNU/Linux, and this isolation has contributed to its hobbling idiosyncrasities when contrasted with GNU/Linux. But the freedom of accountless installation of software from whereever you please, superuser access, ad-free mobile computing on a reliable device is indeed available today. Several GNU/Linux phones, including a few which are reasonably or even cheaply priced, are available, including the PinePhone and the FLX1. Jolla’s SailfishOS requires payment (similarly to SUSE Linux Enterprise or RHEL), but is very useable and far freer than either member of the global mobile duopoly. Purism’s Librem 5 and Liberty phones are already in mainstream usage with some United States government employees due to their great security and reliability. Further, software such as Waydroid can enable you and your employees to run Android apps when deemed necessary on Linux phones, while MicroG has all the compatability of Google Play Services with none of the telemetry or restrictions on your devices’ software freedom. You can also install mobile GNU/Linux distributions on other hardware, similarly to the fashion in which GNU/Linux users replace Microsoft Windows with the GNU/Linux distribution of their choice.

Native GNU/Linux apps can also be obtained from various sources, as well as the traditional, text-based package manager of mobile GNU/Linux distributions. A great boon of GNU/Linux phones is the ability to use Flatpaks, Snaps, and AppImages, just like on the GNU/Linux desktop.

When your organization switches to mobile GNU/Linux, certain unexpected benefits will arise. You will not need to pay licensing fees to Apple any longer if you had been giving out company iPhones. You will still be able to use texts, including group texts; however, the very easy switch to Matrix chat can easily increase the privacy and security of your organization’s official correspondance, without all the issues of WhatsApp (and if you really want to keep using WhatsApp, you can still install it with Waydroid.) Software updates will continue to work until the devices naturally break, saving your organization much money.

Perhaps most importantly, your IT staff will be able to service and treat your mobile devices the same as desktop or server devices at the organization, with the same security practises, software, and protocols. This will greatly simplify maintenence and improve performance and reliability.

The amount of valuable, potentially compromising, data which Android/Linux can leak to adverseries and competitors ought to alarm any businessman fearful of leaks. Similarly, the inability to properly back-up data or move backup around on any of the two major global proprietary mobile operating systems is a cause for concern. These issues do not exist with GNU/Linux phones or any mobile GNU/Linux distribution, and give the businessman or administrator much needed peace of mind by comparison.

Mobile GNU/Linux is very accessible to the “Average Joe,” just as shifting from Apple to Android (or visa versa) is trivial. Employees seem to take corporate operating systems home and employ the same ones for personal use as they do at work or school; as a result, cybersecurity and software quality and freedom would be immeasurably benefitted through the mainstreaming of mobile GNU/Linux.

In conclusion, I urge the reading businessman and the philanthropist alike to consider GNU/Linux for the mobile operating system of their organizations’ fleets of devices. The benefits are truly profound.

Firefox and the importance anti-Chromium Resistance

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:55:52 -0700

Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers are far superior to anything based on Chromium or Blink. The level of customization and the improvements in rights and freedoms from being FLOSS software mean that the ability to use Firefox without issue for all Internet tasks must be fought for.

The difference between the power of the user with Firefox and with Chromium I have myself seen personally on multiple occasions. When I was at my old AI gig, my employer mandated the usage of Chromium on the company website, which curiously prevented me from cutting-and-pasting text from outside the browser into the workspace, or spellchecking it. I was even kicked off online banking for one of my banks (and whom I no longer work with) for using Firefox, which triggered a bogus “fraud alert” before my ability to use online banking was cut-off (even when I reluctantly tried Chromium afterwards.)

Gecko-based browsers such as Zen, IceCat, or LibreWolf ought to be able to everything Firefox proper can, but in practice some other, smaller or niche browser engines are in fact a bit problematic. Lynx is lovely if you do not need to work with CSS or multimedia, while Pale Moon has many commendable features but often screws up the text of a page, and Dillo lacks any effective ad blocker or support for JavaScript. Since Firefox now has digital restrictions management (DRM) baked in as “optional,” I have considered switching to IceCat, which enjoys the same compatibility as Firefox. However, none of the issues of limitations with any of these options is anywhere near as awful as Google’s push for so-called web environment integrity (WEI), which shows Alphabet is willing to do pretty much anything to prop up the tyranny of Chromium and gavage-feed the world AdSense. If Google’s abuse of “open-source” Android via Google Play Services and the Play Store is any hint, degoogling must go further than simply removing all the malware of the Californian advertising giant from Google Chrome proper. And for any of you who are fans of Brave, it still uses Chromium, and I’d assume it still has the same sneaky, controlling behaviour I saw in ungoogled Chromium with my former employer.

At all costs, avoid using Chromium-based browsers. Various tactics of forced compatibility can be utilized to keep using Firefox: Ad-ons such as Chrome Mask can trick pesky websites into accepting your digital right to use Firefox and keep your data safe, including on mobile. And there are other user agent spoofers as well. Other tactics include not indulging corporations and privacy-invasive websites which resist browser freedom, avoiding giving anti-browser freedom websites and platforms traffic via the use of proxies, and advocating for browser freedom in person.

Internet Explorer once dominated the web and propped up a sad online world under Microsoft’s thumb. Chrome’s dominance need not continue much longer. Worldwide, Google’s power is beginning to show cracks in Android and search. Help carry this over into the browser world. It is imperative that the struggle against Google’s stranglehold on the modern web be broken. The browser wars are not yet lost, and we need to stand up for the right to use a reasonable and compatable alternative whenever we traverse the World Wide Web.

Naxu

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:13:30 -0700

Naxu (“Gnaw-shoe”, from the Mazatec for “Flower”) is my dog. He is a very small, affectionate chihuahua. Here is a picture of him:

Vernal Pools

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:09:48 -0700

Vernal pools are short-lived bodies of standing water. They are very common in Central California where I live. Vernal pools are rich in invertebrates of various sizes, as well as tadpoles. A vernal pool in California

Cicadas

admin@austinmiller.pro (Austin Kingsbury Miller) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 09:24:04 -0500

Cicadas are a type of insect. There are multiple species of cicada, and scientists put all species of cicada in the family Cicadoidea. Cicadas are related to aphids, leafhoppers, bed bugs, and other so-called “true bugs” in the order Hemiptera.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground feeding on plant matter with their mouthparts; in this stage of a cicada’s life it is known as a nymph. Nymphs are young cicadas which have yet to become sexually mature. Cicadas can be grouped into two types based on how long they spend as nymphs: Annual cicadas, and periodical cicadas.

Annual cicadas are the most common type of cicada. Annual cicadas include many different species and genera (singular: genus; a group of closely-related species) and are found on all continents except Antarctica. Annual cicadas come out every Summer as mature adults of their species.

Periodical cicadas are found in Eastern North America, and come out as sexually mature adults every thirteen to seventeen years. The periodical cicadas of North America can be grouped into fifteen broods, and each brood appears regularly in a particular region of Eastern North America. The members of each brood come out as mature adults in the same year as other members of their brood. Periodical cicadas are members of the genus Magicicada.

Cicadas are edible, and are even considered a delicacy (very tasty food) in parts of China.

Cicadas are important in culture and mythology wherever they are located.