Hi, Anton Shepelev!
I read your message from 31.01.2026 18:46

Wouldn't open for me even 128-tailed FireFox (115.31.0esr), not
to mention such decent browsers as Dillo[1] or Kristall[2].
JavaS'creep to blame!

Hmm. It is a well known "Vkontakte" messenger and video is there.

Yes, I know.

Maybe, if you tried to see it at your office you could meet the
messenger blocking -- a very usual policy now in many offices, at
least in Russia now.

Nope -- my employer does not employ any such blocking. The problem
is that these "apps"[1] are what I call web-trash, authored by web- destroyers. They only work in major browsers, and even then stop
working as soon as you skip a few updates -- the proverbial upgrade treadmill! There is total and universal abuse of Javas'Creep, and I
am thankful to websites that raise awareness of it, e.g.:

<https://eldritchdata.neocities.org/>

(I was impressed to see the PGP SIGNATURE ;-))

I agreed that after the programmers gave up smoking their programs started demand constant bug removing and updating. I remember the time when the smokers made good operating systems in assembler codes! ;-)

But as a Russian proverb says "If you live among wolves you should howl like them." ;-) The the world is not perfect, but surely there are some people who are not very bad, and you can make some efforts and use the modern means of communication software. :)

In the way of messengers, I should consider IRC (+ZNC), deltachat,
and mailing lists (e.g. GNU Mailman2). Failing those, there
are "contemporary" solutions, such as the XMPP protocol.

Vkontanke like Facebook is not just a messenger -- it creates your own space in the Internet where you can post different materials for the wide auditory. You can make friends, join different groups etc.

For privacy and anonymity, I recommend:
GNUPG : <https://gnupg.org/> and
OmniMix: <https://danner-net.de/omd.htm>

Well, but I don't need any additional privacy or anonymity. At least unless I start a big political activity. ;-) But, IMHO, from another side -- any anonymous opinion worths much less than an opinion of a concrete person.

There are builds of GPG that still work on my Windows XP, and my
mail client (Sylpheed) has excellent integration with gpg (GnuPG)
1.4.9 (Gpg4win 1.1.4). Omnimix supports Windows XP as well.

I don't like AI. It a useless thing, unless you want to undress somebody. ;=) Even such a thing as robot call centers make me mad.

You can try Tor browser -- it still allows watch what you like to.

Yes, I am using it with some bridges I recevied in response to an
e-mail to bridges@torproject.org. But then again, this Tor Browser
is based on Firefox, so it is not updating on older versions of
Windows, even post-XP.

I am also using SOCKS5 proxies with browsers, e-mail, IRC, and

AS Usenet clients, because our blessed govt. are blocking or
AS throttling all my IRC, NNTP, SSH, and IMAP connections (except
AS Gmail!).

NNTP you use when you use Tommy's fidogate. Tor indeed is based on Firefox, but it works well at least on Windows 7, even if it tells that there are no more updates available on this operation system.

I use my desktop only for old things, FIDO, for instance or CBuilder -- my old friend ;-). If I need bank applications and something like that I use modern smart phones and update the important apps often. And I recommend you that, too.

Bye, Anton!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2026

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* Origin: news://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/1.0)

Hello, Alexander!

Monday February 02 2026 09:33, you wrote to Anton Shepelev:

I agreed that after the programmers gave up smoking their programs
started demand constant bug removing and updating. I remember the time when the smokers made good operating systems in assembler codes! ;-)

I don't remember any good original Soviet operating systems, they were all trash.

Vkontanke like Facebook is not just a messenger -- it creates your own

VK is a messenger for Russian idiots - our FSB has very simple tools to search through all user-generated content and people are constantly getting jailed for writing via VK.

Well, but I don't need any additional privacy or anonymity. At least

You don't need anything that is not allowed by our totalitarian State. That's fair!



Best regards,
dp.

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