Blog posts from English (#english)
The illusion of Surveillance Capitalism narrative as we knew it.
Exactly one year ago, I made the decision to withdraw myself from those surveillance capitalism narrative where corporations and governments are ambitioning for extracting your data in exchange for all the fun and convenient things of the cyberspace. And you have to take action. As a person who have ever worked with real FLOSS organizations before real technological startups and real government, I too can connect such one narrative to another. To justify my reasons on dropping the surveillance narrative altogether, I need to say that we live in a society where technological ambitions—including Surveillance Capitalism and Artificial Intelligence—often come and go and leave a huge loss of money and effort. Learning from the fall of Big Data Let's say about the old tale of Big Data, which was perceived as "revolutionary towards the rapid globalization and digitalization" as many people including me believed 5 years ago. And today, we can no longer deny that the role models of Big Data—Google and companies alike—are being beaten by the legal forces of European Union, and surprise, the United States' Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. "Data is the new oil" suddenly posed business threats that are barely different than those dealing with real oil. Huge legal battles about monopoly in the energy sector, workplace practices and ethics, cases of environmental and sustainability are keep coming towards the industry. It is also recently known that ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiative, which PwC pitched three years ago to be highly significant for investors, suddenly became nothing but a massive virtue signalling campaign to psychologically stimulate humans to buy and consume their products. It is clearer each day the industries honestly no longer want to establish such goals. Some of you may already relate those "real oil" company issues with those dealing with "digital oil". The people behind such "digital liberation" movements, including the EFF and FSF, writing their own personal book of corporate sins for email companies, your operating system (including Apple and even Linux), your well-known search engine, your smartphone brand, your "smart" printer, and at the end of the day, towards governments with their law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Here's a page taken out from one of their books of corporate sins: The new version of MacOS — and therefore the new generation of Macs — informs Apple of every time the machine launches a program. The Guardian press seems blissfully unaware of this spying. It even repeats Apple's claims to help users protect their privacy — but only some aspects of their privacy. Just as software developers have redefined "security" to mean "security against everyone but us", Apple is redefining "privacy" to mean "privacy from everyone but us." Reasons not to use Apple by Richard Stallman Not to mention the latest incidents in the tech ambition world: the Apple fallacy of privacy, Google finally get convicted for monopoly with DoJ proposing to sell off Chrome. The Big Data and ESG-like "blockchain-first" corporate pledges are going away, and as we know before, those influencers who were hyped with Blockchain jumped ship to AI. To whom it may concern, double the red pill, please. The Cyberspace is never meant for freedom. Some who support the anti-surveillance liberation movement may be proud for being "red-pilled" (as in The Matrix) over this situation. But it's also an irony that they forgot to take another red pill. A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace believes that the Cyberspace itself is independent from the forces of the industrial governments, which they accuse for not being wholeheartedly involved in their conversation, and instead enforces laws by raising issues which the people claiming to be part of the Cyberspace claimed never existed. But is it? It is clear that the early origins of the Internet significantly came from ARPANET, an United States government project. ARPANET was not a regular, political or democratic effort of establishing the computer networks for the public, but it is a military project in the first place. Now what did the military project bring into the design of the modern-world Internet? Yes, the basic TCP/IP network that we still even use as of today. By using the present-day Internet, knowingly and unknowingly, we are using the designs and the arts of the military government to our personal benefits. Like a peanut forgetting their skin. Okay, long story, but some of you cypherpunks wanted to stay away from the government by using a technique named encryption. But think again what made encryption freely available to you, and especially for United States citizens, to people outside of your country. Did you know that the US government has provided a set of encryption algorithm that we blindly use it for day-to-day encryption!? Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) is everywhere, and even it is used for HTTPS and validating your Linux software packages with a checksum. And as the goodness of SHA itself came from the militant nature of the United States government agencies, so are they protected by the cryptographic exports laws. Thanks to such laws, almost everyone can enjoy the benefits of encryption, including your ambitions to lock yourself out from the governments. I would recommend you to thank to your (government) enemy to give the kindness and permission to you, which the government may identify you as an enemy of theirs, to use such algorithms for use inside and outside the countries where such algorithms are developed and respectfully belong to. So, is freedom synonymous to stealing? Reflecting my actions over the past 12 months of not engaging with such ideological narratives, I wonder if I keep supporting defeating surveillance capitalism, either the enterprise or the government side of things, could eventually benefit me in the long term. If I believe that my personal life and data are stolen as part of a social experimentation from those parties, then I and others decided to take them back by stealing their opportunities, then what makes us different from our own enemies if we altogether love to steal? I know that the Holy Bible has all the answers that we are tasked to pray, give ourselves away, and even bless our own enemies. Applying the basic principles from Mark 12:17, and as the Internet partly bears the image of the government ambitions to organize their (military) missions to protect their own country, I am giving back what belong to the Caesar to Caesar, those who are God's to God, and those belong to the governments, to the governments. I will apply the same principles to the other parts of the Internet, too. The images of academic research efforts for academia, the images of enterprise ambitions to enterprises, and organizations for organizations, and my own intentions for myself. And in addition to that, while accounting to the same Bible, I am a product even in your own terms, as I did not pay anything to be born as a boy on this world (I would rather stay happily in the heavens in exchange for that). Being light—wholeheartedly transparent of our identity, existence, and actions—is indeed a great consequence of following Christ. But I would doubt you shall believe the Bible if you stay true to your ethical beliefs, because all the stories I referenced from the Bible, are all the personal information gathered from real people who were recorded before your establishment of modern human rights and digital rights. Remembering that blessings come from privacy invasions. If I truly follow the current modern world definition of digital privacy as a human right, then I would proudly present the Holy Bible as a great written historical record of people that we even read everyday without each of these people’s consent. The process of recording and distributing the events in the Holy Bible should be considered a privacy invasion, as I and we did not even ask for the consent of the descendants of Abraham, Samuel, or so, just to be able to read, modify, and/or reproduce their stories and quotes either for commercial or non-commercial purposes. We did not ask for the legal consent of the parents of Joseph, Jacob, and David in order to do the same with their stories. Unlike the former ones, these people and their guilty sins were recorded since their childhood days, making the Holy Bible a product of the biggest children’s privacy invasion conducted over more than 1,000 years. If you uphold the values of purity and digital privacy against preying companies and governments, but at the same time love the stories of the Bible, it may be an indication of a double standard. Just as I said last year, God did not ask us to be a light of the world except for Facebook, or even having our shine end-to-end encrypted to peers that you can only trust in such a rigorous process. This Bible is why I left my beliefs on surveillance capitalism.
Cyan stands for sustainability.
While others choose to go green, their colored posters are fading away, leaving only cyan. Though that we officially named the color as "Dilan-Milea Blue 400", the primary color for the Reinhart's (so early) 25th Birthday branding resembles one of the core colors in digital printing: cyan. It really looks like if the colors were all washed out, as some of you commonly see in printed posters and banners. Time has told that amongst all of the colored Cyan-Yellow-Magenta inks, cyan withstands the longest. This is sustainability at its simplest. Unlike those mainstream ones pushing the agenda of paperless, plasticless, environmental friendliness, and more, we simply stay bold and silent when those ambitions are fading away. True sustainability comes from the ones who withholds their values, just like how nature holds their values, for years and generations to come.
I am going to machine myself. Here's why.
This title might sound like a clickbait. But well, it seems that the next year could be the year where I would not be just Shift, but also Ctrl-Alt-Shift all my way towards my new life and ministry. For those who don't know, Ctrl, Alt, and Shift were the original codenames of controld/pr0xy, alterine/alt1e, and Shiftine! As I recently considered to redesign the green-shelled beings, it is my responsibility to present myself as an example of how these two remaining characters would live their life. Since they are machines, so I decided to machine myself. Again. And here's what's next for the (#_ )s! As a recap to the recent news, Shiftine now has her own new website in celebration of the fun that we had as digitally-transformed virtual avatars. But what about the original characters of controld and alterine? After extra months of research, I came to this very conclusion. The rootheads were designed to be bland and boring. Intentionally. The Unix philosophy that I mentioned earlier encouraged software to be "just enough". So are the (#_ )s. Note that I made them in the first place to support our Computer Science Multiculturalism initiative in lieu of other operating systems (i.e. bot characters inspired by Windows, macOS, and Linux). But with the blue-shelled me and Shiftine leaving out of the Windows character arc for a real-life mission of me and my world, now it's never a better time to redesign the rootheads. In other words, reinstalling root. Redefining root. Well, I know that you might be bored reading at this point, so here is a splash of the green energy that might root your way out. (Note: this is an AI-generated concept that may not entirely end up in the final artwork). Note: There's a cool easter egg here. See that her hair noclips through her hoodie? We treat this AI generated funny software bug as a feature (#- ); Just like Shift(ine), root represents a movement of its own. As the designer of my digital universe, I still likened root as an unnatural form of energy that flows and empowers within its followers. You know, like how God made me to do this. Yes, this roothead redesign is somehow sponsored by the Holy Spirit for a serious purpose. While Shift and Shiftine exists to cater tech developers and enthusiasts in general, these mean green characters are now redesigned to cater gamers of all ages. Redefining the next ctrl && alt. Continuing that Holy Spirit saga that inspired me, Shift, to become a Shift to these characters, controld the control daemon (which was also introduced as pr0xy), was rebranded to feature a plus sign, originally representing the directional pads of video game controllers. And alterine was rebranded to feature a heart sign for both obscure and obvious reasons. The original keyboard symbols for Alt (and the Mac equivalent Option) are ⎇ and ⌥, featuring design hints of an alternate option, which we could imaginatively derive to signal another way to live your life. And after all, gamers don't die but respawn, don't they? The common interests between the old and new rootheads were changed. As we are called to impact, the introvert and phlegmatic culture of the roots are completely removed. It's a significant change that allows us to sign off these characters to be more empowering to people, as gamers of all ages already have those energies that keep them engaged in such stories, challenges, and tournaments. And they now have cool names that just resonate with the new audiences: Anyway, you can call the duo as ByteHearts. And like our very Shiftine fandom policy, we'll gonna call our fans as CrossBytes and PixlHearts, too! For those who are interested, I will be publishing a full testimony behind the creation of the ByteHearts, and how God would endorse this never-seen-before idea that would help achieve the dreams of churches to minister the tech-savvy generations that are on the brink of losing their lives through addictions and fantasies, just like my latest blueprint for Shiftine. But at the meantime, we already renamed @alterine0101's Instagram account to @theByteHearts, and preparing to release a temporary microsite as I start to imagine myself as CrossByte and PixlHeart. I would apologize for not announcing any new merchandise on our last 20 November event, but ByteHearts is the main theme for the next year's merchandise. It's "a year of victory and international blessings," my church said. And we will claim a victory from the strats these two characters would bring across the virtual, digital, and real worlds! ➕💚
Establishing electronic signatures for PDF documents.
After months of testing, we will start to notarize PDF files with signatures, with real Electronic Signatures that comply with real Indonesian laws. This means that our signatures, powered by PERURI Certificate Authority, are legally acceptable to replace the use of handwritten signatures without compromising the legal integrity of digital documents. This also means that you can soon verify our signatures, including Electronic Duty Stamps (Meterai Elektronik / e-Meterai) on https://tte.kominfo.go.id/verifyPDF and https://verification.peruri.co.id. In addition to these, we may also produce detached OpenPGP File Signatures which you can verify using our public key at https://pgp.reinhart1010.id. To learn more how we use Electronic Signatures and how you may verify them, visit https://legal.reinhart1010.id/electronic-signatures for further information. Perum Percetakan Uang Republik Indonesia (PERURI) is a Registered Electronic Certification Provider (PSrE) in the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs of Republic Indonesia.
Have a Shiftine website!

WWDC24 is why we don’t let Apple to design our products.
Apple has been the Qibla of product for decades. With the Apple Park as the Mecca, and people flocking to WWDC as its annual pilgrimage for world-class product designers and marketers. The Human Interface Guidelines became their Holy Scripture to define their product, which we don’t. But really. Today, if you want to build a physical product, an app, or even redesign your own website, you may still consult Apple for that. And everyone in the industry just follow the cult that’s full with iMessage and Memojis and the love of the Apple typeface since 2015 as well as its well-known open-source counterfeit. Who knows that great apps like Linear and Arc, which neither made by Apple, Inc., are initially, exclusively, made for the Mac? These, and other tools marketed as the de facto of “modern, intuitive, and practical apps for desktop and mobile,” put their product screenshots front and center, that based on nothing more than the macOS or iOS version of their apps. We tend to forget that a handful of “productivity” tools that we may use today: 1Password, Any.do, Notion, Zoom, yet the lesser-known ones like Spark Mail and Shortwave, still presents those iPhone, iPad, or Mac-based screenshots even though you’re not browsing on one (these screenshots are taken from Firefox on Android): So, is this a coincidence? No, it has been a public secret. Most designers behind your apps already expect you to have a Mac, iPhone, or an iPad for the best experience. In most cases, it’s not because the companies are lazy enough to adjust the screenshots to match people’s current operating systems. No, it’s just styled that way to look aesthetically beautiful… on a Mac or iPhone. But Windows is a Recycle Bin. Beyond apps, there’s also real products that are either modeled like Apple, or presented in a way that has ever popularized by the company. For example, this rabbit r1 thing looks familiar… Oh, right! It’s the iPhone 7! Or how about these colorful assortments of Analogue Pocket? There’s a bit reference to the famous iMac G3 commercial featuring colors arranged in a circle. 2024: The ugliest year of Apple? Now, this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC24) annual event pilgrimage was met with disappointments because of some questionable things the company has done with iOS and iPadOS 18. Take iOS 18. The new Control Center with slightly inconsistent choice of button shapes and weird navigations? The dark mode app icons that brings out those early Jailbreak nostalgia? The new customizable app icon colors that works just bad for most colors (compare that with Samsung’s One UI)? The useless new layout of the Photos app? Like, how would you really like this, vampire-worthy theme? A decade before, I can still sense the disappointment people had when Apple announced iOS 7. It was a major visual design change than iOS 6 that angered almost everybody. But this time, those new app icon colors are just minor; you can still disable the ugly thing. I believe the redesigned Mail app makes it awesome to combat the numbness of Gmail, who previously pioneered the distinct email folders to filter out important and unimportant stuff. Some negative things I do agree include the Photos app, making it feel more alien than those other Android phone makers’ version of Gallery app. Despite all of this, I just love the fact that some fanboys became disappointed by what Apple products has become. It reminds me to stop following trends just because they have a significant wealth and market share in the international community. These kinds of people took the Human Interface Guidelines as their way of life without thinking that one day their own apps would have been Sherlocked.
Light as a consequence of following Christ.
Our flesh desires peace through privacy and anonymity, because we often suspect and afraid of people who do evil. But when you decide to follow Christ and bound to His own rules, you have to accept one of the consequences to the desires of your flesh: being the light. [14] “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. [15] Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. [16] In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:14-16 NIV [16] “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. [17] For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Luke 8:16-17 NIV Jesus has explicitly given us these two commandments: be the light, in the public, and don’t ever try to hide yourself as the light of the world. Again, there is no point of putting myself in a place that’s private from others. I may personally grow but not others. Being an unhideable light is an identity and a must for me and others.
Turns out, I am the product.
Some of you came here to advocate for the social justice in the cyberspace. Those of you said that the tech products I and others use each day are unethical and evil, converting their users to become “useds”. *We call them 'useds' rather than 'users' because Facebook is using them, not vice versa. Richard Stallman I used to understand some of your beliefs during my early days with Mozilla, including one of the famous quotes of the Internet that clearly says: If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. Various Authors (incl. Andrew Lewis) Turns out, I never paid anything to prepare for my birth, nor I paid for my tuition fees from kindergarten to college except one as an apology. Does that now qualify me as a product even without mentioning anything about GAFAM? Again, I do neither have my personal desire nor my legal consent to be born on Earth—where my spiritual self would definitely prefers to stay in the Kingdom of God in heavens instead of here. The Holy Bible, who describes who I am, also defines myself as nothing more than products and commodities: either as the salt and light of the world, a healthy seed and tree that grows the fruits of the Holy Spirit, a dirty scarlet piece of cloth who was washed away to become as white as the snow, and as a humble plant that would grow into nutritious grains of wheat, instead of the strikingly poisonous tare or darnel. So that really means I already am the Product. Even before the TV, media, and tech industries came all along and influenced me as a whole. And as a Product, I shall embrace my way as how the Product embraces itself. It’s just a big irony for those who conspire about these without realizing that they, too, are already destined to become products since their own birth.
Site and Infrastructure updates, September 2024 edition.
Hello, world! We’re currently in the middle of something great, and we can’t wait to finally tell about that. And at the meantime, here’s what’s new and improved in our website. 1. We’re making (https://)shiftine.sh. What could that really be? Reinhart personally wanted to relocate our fandom from reinhart1010.id to shiftine.sh, stuffed with command-line easter eggs that fits with our new website name (.sh is also a file extension for shell scripts). But we still need a lot of time to finally ship that to you. Well, queue and jump in to the happiest website that (we’ve) ever shipped! 2. We’re also remaking our color palette website. Our color palette website is currently being rewritten from scratch, this time using Remix and Cloudflare Pages. We’re almost done with Codepen who have helped hosted our color palette website for almost two years, and had blocked our login attempts for months due to a then-ongoing DDoS issue. And we’re rebuilding our codebase to be able to export our color scheme into a number of apps and design systems. That would make us easier to make and share our custom themes for your favorite apps, from Firefox to Visual Studio Code. 3. We’ve upgraded our website to Laravel 11. This is nothing exciting for most people, but hey, we’re still taking care of updating our website libraries for the better. 4. We fixed a Dark Mode bug. Starting today, when you visit our website, we will always set a new cookie named r10-current-auto-theme to fix an annoying Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC) bug as we changed how our Dark Mode was implemented to support our new 404 webpage (introduced July 2024). We can point you to the exact source code on GitHub where we set and use those cookies. This feature is GDPR-safe as those cookies are made for functional and UX purposes. 5. Search result now include dates. Finally, and finally (this is the last update we’d like to announce for good), we’ve improved our search results a bit by adding timestamps, the date and time where those articles are originally published (not updated). The date and time should be adjusted to your local time settings, so no need to figure out your time from UTC or Asia/Jakarta. So that’s all for now. Welcome to MY world (>_ )!