so i have a coven now

Unknown — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

long time no see huh?

in all seriousness though, in the few years since the last blog post i didn't really have much to write about. most of the projects i tried doing didn't really go anywhere, and the ones that did were so tiny and boring that there wasn't really anything to write about.

this has been bothering me quite a bit lately, so i decided to do something about it.

and so i've started witchcraft systems</a>! the page itself isn't the important part (though i really like how it turned out), what is important is that i'm not alone in doing things anymore! together we can focus on the areas where each of us is the best at, leading to things actually getting done by people who like doing them :3

our main focus at first will be on building out the infrastructure for all our projects, which is quite a lot of work considering what we have planned, but we already have something to show off! you might have noticed that i've been very active on bluesky</a> lately, and one thing that has always bugged me about it was that if you host your own PDS - the page that you get on its URL is just a bit of text and ASCII art, with nothing else of interest. so the first thing we made is called pds-dash</a>, a front-end page for your PDS! It can show off all the users on a specific PDS, as well as all the latest posts from all of them, while not depending on any Bluesky PBC infrastructure. you can see it in action on pds.witchcraft.systems</a>!

of course, this is just the beginning, but i was just too excited about this whole thing to not share it here. hopefully we'll have more to show off soon, and thank you for reading this! 💜

you probably don't need a linux phone with a hardware keyboard

Unknown — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

setup</h2>
a few months ago, one of my friends gave me a nokia n810</a>, along with a nokia n950</a> and a nokia n900</a>. i've restored both to their "former glory", and tried using them for a while. by "using" them i don't mean using them as my daily driver, but rather trying to find situations where they're more suitable than my current phone (a samsung galaxy z fold 4</a>. i've installed pidgin on the n810, added support for XMPP, and used it as my main client for a bit.
after a week or so, i grew tired of the weak cpu power of the N810 and the tiny software library of N950 (it's a developer-only limited edition device, after all), so i bought an N900</a>, which was a bit faster and had much more apps, more than both of the other ones combined.

keyboards</h2>
however, after having access to all three for more than two months now, i've really struggled to find situations where having those phones (or some similar hardware with modern internals) was actually useful. i regularly found myself reaching for my smartphone after being tired of typing out a long message on the tiny hardware keys, my thumbs hurting from the amount of force i had to apply to press them. i typed slower (even though i was touch-typing), i had more typos, and the typing experience in general was just worse. not to mention that all of the 3 phones had very different keyboards with different key sizes, different actuation forces, and different layouts. they all sucked.
even worse, the only situation where having a hardware keyboard seemed like a no-brainer to me, using the terminal, was also significantly less comfortable than on my smartphone. every key combo was like playing twister with my fingers, it was terrible. when compared to using termux on an android phone, it was just a worse experience overall.
i've seen a lot of people recently wanting a phone with a hardware keyboard because it would be more comfortable or more productive, but after this - i just can't see it now. the ergonomics of a keyboard made for 10 fingers just don't work when you can only use 2 of them.
linux</h2>
i've also seen a trend in people wanting to run linux on their phones. the pros seem pretty obvious - run any already existing desktop app, have more control over your device, etc. but the cons are also pretty obvious - battery life, performance, and the fact that most apps are not designed for touchscreens.
as for the "running any desktop app" - you'll quickly learn that most apps are x86-only, and even if they're not, there's probably already an android/ios app that does the same thing while being secure (sandboxing is a good thing, you know), more power-efficient, and more touch-friendly. i genuinely can't think of any desktop app tha you'd want to run on a phone that your laptop can't run better, aside from maybe aircrack-ng, but unless you're 14 and want to hack your school's wifi, i don't see why you'd want to do that.
as for the "more control over your device" - that's a double-edged sword. as i've mentioned before, modern mobile OSes do a lot to make themselves secure: sandboxing, app permissions, full-disk encryption by default, etc. mobile linux distros rarely have that, and even those that do still loose out on the fact that they're not as widely used as android/ios, so there's less incentive for people to find and report bugs. i'm not saying that android/ios are perfect, but they're definitely more secure than any mobile linux distro, in my opinion.
conclusion</h2>
i think that trying to converge the laptop/desktop and the smartphone into one device is a bad idea. the two have very different use-cases, different ergonomics, and different security models. i think that the best way to go is to have a smartphone and a laptop, and use them both for what they're good at. i also think that more people should learn to write mobile apps, as most of my discussions on this topic have boiled down to "i want a linux phone because i can only write desktop apps", which is kinda sad in my opinion.
anyways, hope you didn't regret reading this rambly rant, and have a nice day!💜

new PGP key notice

Unknown — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512,SHA256

hi!

astra here, and i'm updating my pgp key

the old one was FD7540138819779A938F91F5EEF4A581ECE53137 (linked to astra@astrra.space) the new one is D07884E1756E05ED3ECA7FA81BE5BC0A5692875D (linked to me@astrra.space)

this message is signed by both keys, and the old key has signed the new one the old key will be destroyed as soon as this message has been published, so please update your keyrings if you are reading this, it means that i am no longer able to decrypt any new messages encrypted with the old key

the public key hosted on my webpage has been updated, as well as my WKD. you can also get the new key from keys.openpgp.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iIYEARYKAC4WIQTQeIThdW4F7T7Kf6gb5bwKVpKHXQUCZAdNdxAcbWVAYXN0cnJh LnNwYWNlAAoJEBvlvApWkoddO7cBAO99fPKjvrwboIe66jjpcK8dxNnWErzbjTWE ZOdx6xS/AP9P/4G6VhLrCt99jZxjMJDi8BzmFWVosSFAG3jgvEfhAokBxwQBAQgA MRYhBP11QBOIGXeak4+R9e70pYHs5TE3BQJkB014Exxhc3RyYUBhc3RycmEuc3Bh Y2UACgkQ7vSlgezlMTcVkQwAh0H+tJOw8DuWYTNybwkg5pq/B6V3j8NCBu/aiI28 Dm1u6ygZ56pSNTuAg971p8Eif7Fz8IjrplG3c8h3hianAG1B8eSFR6cCrbva+EMq MeABE4yUejnFnTVDeVgn3FZHKcajTNezW9ad0eXh9ec0eMmddHjqVxG1u7WgHJJS Nrqa7xqrLoP+ViYqmpOUePOSmMvhA7/rjdt2tqt0LzK5he9sYukaEyqxqkGLU0VU 2W38Sokm2ZZzv4SH/SEoiBqNPbEOoCXx4t+1kn8BADp5HMLgDg9+rvMIoQxZIf+9 CQeDQSOXtWoYQdi6Aa6A/UDNOry02lLwXB/Il2czv55TfOotRayWdEK+7bgQ+N6d KjYQIHMtnU+Jlzo27GPADiVTR3A5BsedVsXVkzFo7y3is/CfKzPj/TIVugUolkig VQw/anPtU0d2gBcxmFpZ79btyZtL2tD/1+9DTGmK+V/nrt46jgkAsmyDrvn+HhhH wITRm/HwrYLs1Id8omfUdJW7 =giEo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

original message: key_update.txt</a>

yet another blog

Unknown — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

soo, I finally got around to porting my page to zola</a>. not sure if i'm gonna stick with it, but at least i can create RSS</a> feeds here...

hopefully i'll publish a cool writeup on crypto1 and mifare classic here soon, though no promises.

have a nice day!💜