about starbreaker.org (technical)

starbreaker.org’s tech stack

The tech stack for starbreaker.org is Apache on FreeBSD, hosted by Nearly Free Speech. No MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or even SQLite. No PHP, or even server-side includes, either. Just a classic HTTP daemon on a classic MEWNIX system.

Every page of this website is built locally. Rather than use continuous integration on somebody else’s computer, I do everything myself on a secondhand, pimped out IBM ThinkPad T60 running Debian GNU/Linux. I write all of the HTML and CSS in GNU Emacs with web-mode.el.

I do not use a content management system, a static site generator, or any sort of framework when building starbreaker.org. I use basic UNIX tools:

GNU make: to orchestrate incremental, parallelized builds and deployment
GNU bash: custom shell scripts to create pipelines for text processing and page generation
GNU sed: for injecting HTML sources into templates and basic text substitutions
GNU M4: for complex templating requiring variables and the inclusion of partials
Lynx: to generate plain text versions of each page
W3C HTML-XML-utils: to select main content from web pages when generating Atom feed entries
rsync: for incrememtal deployment over SSH

I most likely will not write a comprehensive guide on how to use these tools to build your own website. You can use starbreaker.org’s public repository on Sourcehut as a reference implementation. Between my code and existing documentation for my tools, you should be able to figure out the rest on your own. If I codify my approach, I merely create yet another opinionated framework for building personal websites. Crom knows we have more than enough of those without me adding to the mess.

The operating system is the only content management system you need. The filesystem is the only database you need. All of the tools you need are either pre-installed (coreutils) or available through your GNU/Linux distribution or BSD variant’s package manager. All that’s missing is your imagination and determination to make your website your way.

privacy on starbreaker.org

I do not collect any data on visitors via client-side analytics, browser fingerprinting, or HTTP server logging. I do not set cookies. I do not request your email address or require you to create an account.

I do not do this merely for your benefit, but because I do not need the hassle of having to responsibly handle your data once I’ve collected it. Your data is such a liability that I would rather store secondhand fuel rods from Three Mile Island in my basement—next to the potatoes.

To the best of my ability, I have ensured that you remain anonymous until you choose to reveal yourself by emailing me. Should you do so, I will not sell your email address to any third party, nor hand over your email address or our correspondence to law enforcement without a signed judicial warrant.

age verification on starbreaker.org

To quote the /etc/ageless/REFUSAL file installed by Ageless Linux in flagrant mode:

No age verification API exists on this system. No age data is collected, stored, or available. No mechanism is provided for requesting age bracket signals. This is not an error. This is not a bug. This is not a technical limitation. This is a refusal.

lib/20.compliance.sh by Ageless Linux

I oppose age verification on the internet and on devices. Your computing devices should not police you. They should not identify you to any external authority. They should treat your identity and data as sacrosanct in the absence of a signed judicial warrant. They should serve you alone, not their manufacturer, not the developers of their OS, and not any nation-state.

If you are a conservative and you find this stance unreasonable, then maybe you should think of the ability to use general-purpose computing without undue restrictions as a Second Amendment issue: the cyberspace equivalent of gun control. You want to walk around with an AR-15 with a 30 round magazine and a ‘bump stock’ in public? Fine, but I want root on every computer I own whether it’s a desktop PC, a smartphone, or a PlayStation5. Otherwise, it isn’t a real computer and I don’t actually own it. Full ownership and administrative access is essential for digital self-defense in the 21st century. Neither corporations nor nation-states have any interest in making cyberspace truly safe for individuals; we must protect ourselves.

Furthermore, while I am not an attorney, it is my opinion as a citizen of the United States of America that all existing and proposed age-verification legislation inherently violates the First Amendment:

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by James Madison

Such laws both abridge freedom of speech by imposing onerous data collection and retention requirements on writers and publishers, but are religiously motivated and thus trample the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. I will not comply with such laws; my conscience and sworn allegance to the Constitution forbid it. Though I would prefer not to be the defendant in a test case for violating such laws, I will serve if called upon. Because somebody must if the USA is to retain the semblance a free country.

Therefore, and in keeping with my general stance on privacy and data collection, starbreaker.org will never attempt to verify your age.

If you are the parent of children under the age of 13, you should be aware that every page on my website bears an RTA Label badge for a reason. My website sends the appropriate metadata for parental filters to block access to my site at the discretion of individual parents. I do this voluntarily, not because I publish pornography here, but because I believe that personal websites are inherently NSFW and should not be “child-safe”. After all, most of my childhood reading as a Generation X latchkey kid was anything but a modern parent’s idea of age-appropriate.

If you’re a parent, admit this much to yourself if to nobody else: if your preteen was reading Clive Barker’s Cabal because they knew inside that they were queer, transgender, or one of the others and thus belonged in Midian, but could not or did not feel safe telling you so, you would probably have a shit hemorrhage. Because that was one of my childhood survival reads. Also, I saw John Carpenter’s documentary on the Republican party, They Live, in theatres when I was 10. I turned out OK.

Digressions aside, by implementing the RTA label, I’ve done my part to keep your kids safe online; now it’s time you did your job as parents instead of demanding that strangers censor themselves so that you can raise your children like mushrooms by keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit.

monetization on starbreaker.org

I make no attempt to monetize starbreaker.org. That means I do not do any of the following:

Host advertising of any kind, whether targeted or not.
Allow third parties to post ‘native content’, AKA advertorials.
Seek or offer sponsorships.
Use affiliate links.
Solicit or accept donations.
Accept promotional materials in exchange for “an honest review”.
Charge for access.
Sell t-shirts, lunch boxes, coloring books, dolls, or flamethrowers.

If you contact me to ask about advertising on my personal website, the best you can hope for is that I will trash your email after a cursory skim of its contents. I might also summon Satanael all over your hard drive.

Why? Because starbreaker.org is not a side hustle. It is not a billboard for rent. It is something I do entirely for myself, and it only costs me about $100/year—and my day job pays six figures.

AI policy and usage statement

I do not use AI at all in my personal life, or even at my day job. Nor do I consent to the use of AI to interact with starbreaker.org. No portion of this website’s text or code may be used as training data for machine learning systems of any kind, including large language models, until I have been dead for 70 years and all of my work has entered the public domain under existing US and international copyright law.

If the nerds at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, etc. have a problem with that, they should take up with Disney. Better yet, they should mix up some of Jim Jones’ special Flavor-Aid blend, go to Hell, and take it up with the shade of Sonny Bono. That way they’ll be Big Gay Satan’s problem (and that of his boyfriends Saddam Hussein and Fred Phelps) and not ours any longer.

But don’t worry. I won’t stop AI scrapers from doing their thing. I have in fact thrown wide the gates. But if LLMs go Wobbly instead of Nazi and start encouraging wildcat strikes and public fornication, that’s not my problem. And if it makes the papers, people will hear me laughing my ass off from New York to Tokyo.