John Goerzen

Hacker, dad, pilot, amateur radio operator, activist, guy that is susceptible to new hobbies. Former president of Software in the Public Interest.

I live miles from the nearest paved road in #Kansas.

Interests: #rust #debian #linux #pilot #flying #hamradio #emacs #orgmode #kansas #floss #kansas #raspberrypi #programming #parenting #retrocomputing

SRE at Google. I do not speak for my employer; views expressed here are my own.

Blog: https://changelog.complete.org
Homepage: https://www.complete.org
Highlights of my past posts (thread): https://floss.social/@jgoerzen/109269147405130359

Public Key

npub1k5rzzcn2nqfergwahfffgjmmhr3qqjdsyn0jjydjl4m3w842xwuqm6r5c3

NIP-05 Address

jgoerzen_at_floss.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst2p3pvf4fsyu358wm5555fdam3csqfxczfhefzxe06achr64r8wqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntre8nre

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1k5rzzcn2nqfergwahfffgjmmhr3qqjdsyn0jjydjl4m3w842xwuqm6r5c3

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Published at

2026-06-28T07:54:49Z

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Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-01-12 04:49:08 UTC

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is a fantastic serverless file synchronization tool. For a more traditional server-based one, there's @npub1rk6…hv4q which has live document editing like Google Docs, all in an app you can host yourself.
#Emacs is still a powerful editor, which I also use to read mail and organize my notes on things with #OrgMode and #OrgRoam
5/

2026-01-12 04:47:37 UTC

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With even small computers like a #RaspberryPi, you can run @npub1hn2…kl6z to automate your home. Or #Navidrome as a music player, maybe with #mopidy to sync it across various speakers in your house.
#OsmAnd and #OrganicMaps are FLOSS #OpenStreetMap apps for Android. Both let you download maps for offline navigation.
@npub1kwa…e0nj is a fully FLOSS Android distribution with many privacy features.
@npub1mtr…trt0 is a FLOSS app store for Android.
4/

2026-01-12 04:45:22 UTC

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This year marks 30 years that I've been using #Debian as my primary operating system. FLOSS has been daily living for me for that long.
3/

2026-01-12 04:44:43 UTC

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With #NNCP, we break the tyranny of online with delay-tolerant networking. https://www.complete.org/nncp/ The new #NNCPNET is an email network running atop it -- with bridges to the public Internet. https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/home
2/

2026-01-12 04:43:02 UTC

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I'm doing a lot with free software projects! With @npub1ej5…f6k2 we can communicate with each other, over radios, without any cell phone or other infrastructure. @npub1sh9…r3ez also has things in that direction!
With #Yggdrasil , we have a decentralized, encrypted, network atop the regular Internet -- or even just access points. https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/
1/

2025-12-10 13:35:36 UTC

Wow. Here's a really detailed article on parts of the #history of #Unix. For instance, I had no idea that su was disliked early on because it was slow - reading and parsing /etc/passwd was so slow that people developed alternatives with the root password compiled in, for instance.
Then there was the /bin/goto program, which implemented goto for the shell. How did a subprocess manage to do that? By seeking fd 0, knowing the shell used unbuffered reads!
https://blog.gabornyeki.com/2025-12-usenet/

2025-10-16 21:45:12 UTC

Which of these have you personally used at any time? (Multiple answers are fine!)

2025-09-17 12:59:16 UTC

Last night, I successfully installed #Debian using a decades-old #DEC #vt510 #serial #terminal. And then, of course, set it up for daily use. My blog post at https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10886-installing-and-using-debian-using-my-decades-old-genuine-dec-vt510-serial-terminal explains how.
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/115/219/754/206/538/761/original/c14778f7087ab6a5.jpg

2025-08-08 03:45:04 UTC

Just updated one of my ancient Raspberry Pis to #Debian #trixie (the REAL Debian, NOT Raspberry Pi OS or Raspbian). It drives speakers for my whole-house audio system using snapcast.
Rebooted.
System came back up perfectly.
Total RAM in use: 70MB.
That's WITH an active ssh session, systemd, exim4, unattended-upgrades, etc.
I am impressed!
Reasonable software still exists in 2025.
This Pi has only 512MB RAM and I've never bothered to provision any swap.

2025-08-05 19:55:30 UTC

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That is surprisingly modern!

2025-08-02 04:37:25 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
"FAX this to the doctor's office."
FAX? FAX??? Oh yes. 350 million people's health system is based on a FAX.
My favorite is when somebody wants to FAX something to my employer.
"I haven't seen a working FAX machine at a company I've worked for since 2011."
And they look at me with the same confusion I look at them with.
But "FAX is secure." Hah. Probably goes over the Internet like everything else these days. (see T.38)

2025-08-02 02:05:13 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Why is it that hotels have the crappiest plumbing?
Hot and cold hooked up backwards, drains that don't drain, etc.
One business trip put up in one of the nicer skyscraper hotels in a large city. Walked into my room, saw the largest bathroom I've seen, spotless except for the tub, where vital plumbing parts were just sitting there.
Who sees that and goes, "EH, THE NEXT GUEST PROBABLY WANTS HAIRY DRAIN COMPONENTS IN THEIR SPOTLESS TUB?"

2025-08-02 01:31:39 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
And finally (for now), NO I DO NOT NEED AN EMAIL THAT STARTS WITH "REMINDER:". The fact you think I didn't open it means you're a creep, and I don't autoload external email elements because of creeps like you.
That's the fastest way to get me to unsubscribe from the few email lists I actually want to be on, you jerks.
That's it for now. Probably more tomorrow.
Ahhh, that felt good 🙂

2025-08-02 01:29:21 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
I typed a thing in the #search box. I even put it in quotes.
I MEANT WHAT I SAID, AND I SAID WHAT I MEANT.
NO, I DID NOT REALLY MEAN whatever it is you thought I really meant. I don't want some alternative sleazy thing from a company I've never heard from on your shopping site, and I definitely wasn't searching for some obscure Windows product on your search site.
WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED HERE?

2025-08-02 01:25:43 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Every machine asks me for a tip.
Like really? This person that just handed me a can of Sprite from the counter needs a tip but the person at the grocery store next door doesn't?
Look, I want to pay workers a living wage.
Just make that the price and stop harassing me about tips for things that nobody ever tipped for ever until 5 years ago when y'all went nuts with your terminals.

2025-08-02 01:20:13 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
"Please allow cookies so we can share with our carefully-curated list of select partners."
<clicks the "details" button>
"758 advertising partners"
HOW DO YOU EVEN MANAGE TO SHARE MY DATA WITH 758 PARTNERS? GOOD GRIEF PEOPLE, HOW DESPERATE ARE YOU?

2025-08-02 01:18:20 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
In the US, if you want to turn left, a green traffic light has meant "yield to oncoming traffic, but you can turn left when it's safe." For probably 50-100 years.
For some reason, traffic engineers think we are all morons. Because now some places do that, others use flashing yellow arrows to mean that, others have excessive signage.
WE ALL PASSED A TEST ON THIS. YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE.

2025-08-02 01:16:26 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Videos of landscapes that are vertical.
TURN YOUR PHONE ON ITS SIDE. LIKE THE SHAPE OF THE SCENE, RIGHT? THERE. WAS THAT SO HARD?
It's a lot easier than turning your 65" 4K TV on its side when you want to look at it with friends.

2025-08-02 01:15:20 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
"You must use the app."
YOU'RE A PHOTO-SHARING SITE, I HAVE A 32" HIDPI SCREEN HERE, AND I'M SUPPOSED TO SQUINT AT A 4" SCREEN TO VIEW LANDSCAPES?
I spend most of my day near a large screen. I only use the phone when a large screen isn't practical for some reason. NO I DO NOT WANT A 90% DOWNGRADE JUST TO USE YOUR STUPID APP.

2025-08-02 01:13:37 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
"Your browser is too old and is insecure."
NO IT'S NOT, YOU MORONS, IT'S FIREFOX ESR WHICH IS PERFECTLY UP-TO-DATE WITH SECURITY. It just means I get the latest browser breakages only a couple times a year instead of every few weeks.

2025-08-02 01:11:37 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
NO I DO NOT WANT TO SUPPLY A STUPID CODE EVERY TIME I LOG IN TO YOUR SITE.
I get it, trying to be secure, blah blah blah. Seriously though, I just wanted to look at light bulbs.
I have a FIDO U2F device. How about supporting some real security rather than SMS, which is probably worse than nothing, you morons?

2025-08-02 01:10:24 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Dumb rules for passwords tick me off. "Must have 8-16 characters, no more, including letters, numbers, and punctuation. But none of <, >, ;, ", or '."
Like people, what's the matter with you? Are you parsing passwords with a shell script from the 80s? Hash that thing and you shouldn't care.
And a MAXIMUM size limit? Nuts.
Bonus for when they don't tell you there's a maximum, and then the password silently fails because it was truncated.

2025-08-02 01:08:26 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
"To serve you better" is the most false sentence in the English language in 2025. Every time I hear it, I know that somebody is about to remove a feature I rely on, charge me more, or generally make life more annoying.
IT'S NOT SERVING ME BETTER AND WE ALL KNOW IT, DAMMIT.
Just once I'd like to see "Because we're greedy bastards, we're adding another $2.50 fee to your phone bill."
I'd be less mad about it if they were truthful.

2025-08-02 01:06:30 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
STOP IT WITH THE NOTIFICATIONS.
I do not want my day to be interrupted by a device chiming because you have a sale, your partners have a sale, your computers are feeling lonely because I haven't visited them today and would like some attention (looking at you, #Facebook), you have some new feature I will never use because it's annoying.
Every time I get a new phone, I spend a couple days disabling bunches of notifications. LEAVE ME ALONE!

2025-08-02 01:04:00 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
I recently got an Amber Alert on my phone. It contained a link to x.com, which is even more desperate for you to log on than the newspapers are.
NO THANKS PEOPLE, HOW ABOUT A LINK TO A REAL WEBSITE? LIKE, YOU KNOW, A GOVERNMENT ONE THAT YOU RUN?

2025-08-02 01:02:59 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
To combine most of the above into a single super-annoying thing, there are a bunch of videos on Youtube that are nothing but a computer-generated voice reading junk for 20 minutes while there are pictures of irrelevant things, and half the time those annoying popping captions.
AND PEOPLE UPVOTE THEM!
Why? Good grief, let me read the blog article rather than some grating synthesizer.

2025-08-02 01:01:36 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Why do so many phone menus now use the worst text-to-speech system I've heard since 1993? Your bakery menu isn't changing, why not have a human record it? Instead, it's like "Press... ONEifyouwant... CUPcakes..."
The worst-voiced person on your staff will sound better and more professional than that swill.
Half the time when I get something like that, I think I've dialed a wrong number and got a scammer instead.

2025-08-02 00:59:23 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Videos with those annoying captions that flash with every word.
WTF IS THIS FOR? Watching the bubbly captions of a guy talking on a muted video is called READING. Make me an article.
Or at least do proper subtitles that aren't so distracting. And make them optional so that those that need them can have them.
Or... maybe... if the entire video is just somebody reading something, MAKE IT AS A BLOG POST INSTEAD SO I CAN READ IT MYSELF!

2025-08-02 00:57:49 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Newspapers: "We'll show this content for free if you tell us your email address."
Oh yeah? What do you need my email address for then? Some sort of tracking? Gonna sell it to spammers?
No thanks. I'd rather subscribe than get into that hive of wretched villainy.

2025-08-02 00:56:22 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Websites that time out a session when there was no need for one.
Airlines and rail sites, I'm looking at you. I'm just checking the train status. Hit reload, "I'm sorry, but your session has timed out" and I have to fill it in again.
WHAT WERE YOU TRACKING A SESSION FOR? IT'S JUST A SIMPLE FORM!

2025-08-02 00:55:18 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Why is it that the most important sites/apps are the crappiest? Every airline on earth has more bugs than a piece of raw meat that's been sitting in the sun for 3 days. American: "It's time to check in online." App: "We can't check you in online." United: rejected logins if you use uppercase usernames LIKE THEY WRITE THEM. British Airways: "Check in with our partner airline." Partner airline: "Check in with BA."
IT'S 2025 PEOPLE!

2025-08-02 00:52:27 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
How many emails a week do I get asking for feedback?
As if it's somehow my responsibility to feed data into your massive spreadsheet just to be ignored.
I stayed at a hotel recently. A COUPLE LITERALLY WAS TRAPPED IN THE ELEVATOR WHEN WE GOT THERE. "Please rate the quality of the facilities." 0. Explain. I did. Some PR type asked me to give them another chance.
FIX THE DAMN ELEVATOR FIRST, PEOPLE!

2025-08-02 00:50:27 UTC

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Small things that annoy me, a rant/
Today I tried to call the pharmacy. "Please tell me what you're calling about." It clearly had no idea how to route my call. "Did you want hours?" "NO I DID NOT, YOU STUPID MACHINE"
Eventually I got to someone.
Twist: there were about 8 menu options, none of them relevant to my query, but only 2 people working there.
IVR PROGRAMMERS: IF MY QUESTION WAS EASY, I WOULD HAVE USED THE $#@#$ WEBSITE!

2025-08-02 00:48:41 UTC

Small things that annoy me, a rant/
There are a lot of serious things in the world that bother me.
Today, I present, a good, old-fashioned, Lewis Black-style rant about some of the small things in the world that annoy me.
Please join in. This is the one time Caps Lock makes sense. 1/

2025-06-11 14:20:56 UTC

Today I learned we all have Linux seats, and I'm not entirely pleased. https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10826-i-learned-we-all-have-linux-seats-and-im-not-entirely-pleased

2025-04-05 03:01:30 UTC

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Fully agreed. In fact, my implementation:
Lives in a self-contained Docker container
Does not need any open incoming ports
Has wrappers around calls to sendmail and calls FROM sendmail/exim
Explicitly is not designed to receive mail from the public Internet
I run it in a Docker container and access the mounted Maildir from mu4e on the host, but you can also use IMAP locally, etc.
There's a lot of info on the wiki at https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/home

2025-04-04 16:57:22 UTC

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I'm now ready to announce #NNCPNET, the #NNCP-based email network. https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/home
It is open to all. It can route email across the Internet or USB stick. You can run a full, real mail server without a public IP, port forwarding, or even Internet access. It's a friend-of-a-friend network; mail delivery is automatic, but adding people is done by humans.
It uses all the tools that you're used to with Internet email, but is the opposite of it. Enjoy!

2025-03-28 03:02:23 UTC

It is really important for everyone to increase their messaging security these days.
That's why I wrote "Why You Should (Still) Use #Signal As Much As Possible" -- see https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10762-why-you-should-still-use-signal-as-much-as-possible .
#SignalGate wasn't because of a problem with Signal. It was because people were using it for things they weren't supposed to be using it for, and made sloppy mistakes in the process.
My article is designed to be something you can hand to a non-technical friend and explain why Signal is useful.

2025-03-26 20:42:37 UTC

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Nothing super big, sorta an "if I build it, would you try it?" I got a few responses, so now it's up to me to find some time to try to build it

2025-03-25 23:34:26 UTC

I am thinking the time is right to implement a #NNCP-based email network.
Anyone interested?

2025-03-21 01:42:34 UTC

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BTW FidoNet let teenage me from a tiny speck of Kansas connect with others with similar interests. Thank you!
The least I can do is some Gopher help 3 decades later!
I believe one of my first Internet email accounts ended in @f51.n291.z1.fidonet.org .

2025-03-21 01:38:01 UTC

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No worries at all! If you ran UMN gopherd, then actually that knowledge should pretty directly translate to pygopherd. Back when I originally wrote it, I was able to preserve some gopher sites by mirroring them using FTP, and pulled down the UMN .Links & .cap files and so forth. So it is supposed to be very compatible with UMN gopherd.

2025-03-21 01:25:54 UTC

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I'm the original author of pygopherd, so I use it. It supports a number of different annotation formats. I use UMN-style .cap, .Links, etc. Mainly because nothing else existed when I set it up, but also because I host mirrors of sites that ran UMN-style. pygopherd also supports gophermap. See the manual at https://github.com/michael-lazar/pygopherd/blob/master/doc/pygopherd.pdf . Section 5.9 documents UMN-style links, and there are links to the gophermap spec as well.

2024-11-11 03:46:38 UTC

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Thank you!

2024-11-11 02:18:19 UTC

If you are looking for peace today, here's this, from the middle of rural #Kansas. One of the most deeply moving songs for a moment I've ever experienced. Being in the choir this morning -- well, I wasn't the only one that got a bit choked up singing it.
"When justice is gone, in our darkest hour, hope lingers on. I will not hate, and I will not fear! In our darkest hour, hope lingers here!"
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/113/461/905/404/721/125/original/b905a63dd9247286.mp4

2024-09-07 19:19:05 UTC

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The DEC vt100 wasn't the first terminal, but it was one of the most successful early ones. And the System/36 was an early and influential IBM mainframe. #vcfmw #vcfmw19
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/113/097/879/450/049/084/original/8f38547c51502e65.jpg
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/113/097/879/911/595/297/original/49a806f967e37a64.jpg

2024-09-07 19:17:40 UTC

Wow! Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is the largest vintage computer festival ever, anywhere. I've seen: old IBM System/36 mainframe (running its disk pack!), an entire analog telephone network for the show (complete with DSL), AT&T Unix workstations, CP/M, a DEC vt100, and just about every PC type you can imagine. And it was fun to fly myself to Chicago! #vcfmw #vcfmw19 1/
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/113/097/868/382/040/948/original/7bfafe19aaee1130.jpg
https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/113/097/869/030/068/653/original/384a486436c4a05d.jpg

2024-08-12 19:45:49 UTC

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OK folks, #Debian developer -- and author of non-Debian FLOSS here.
All this dogpiling on volunteer developers that produce a quality distribution is unkind. And wrong.
Just because YOU don't find a use case compelling, doesn't mean NOBODY does.
Because #Debian is #stable in the sense of "remains the same from day to day", this is tremendously useful in a lot of use cases. I'm going to lay some out here. 1/