New website and BBS for BeOS/Haiku

I was waiting to share this until the custom graphics were done, but… I have a new website & BBS for BeOS/Haiku and would love to see fans of those operating systems there. Website is at https://beos.retro-os.live and the BBS is reachable via telnet at beos.retro-os.live. A benefit of the BBS is you will get a email address and can use smtp/pop/imap as well. The BBS has lots of door games to play with too. I’m archiving the downloads I find and the downloads can be downloaded via web or FTP. I also am seeding both the torrent files in germany and australia. I would like to get my website added to the software connection page.

Looking forward to meeting all of you. :slight_smile:

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The site looks quite interesting,but I have some privacy-related questions…
Why does it ask me for access to my location?
That’s really scary and absolutely not needed for such a site.
Why is third-party stuff from Facebook and Google embedded?
That also doesn’t seem really necessary,but harms the privacy of your users.
Why do you link to Discord,which is known for everything but being a nice place?
More information here: Reasons not to use Discord
You could simply promote our Matrix channel at #haiku:matrix.org instead,it offers more or less the same features but is open-source and most of the users are there.
I don’t want to make the site look bad with my concerns,I think that it can become a cool addition to what we already have here and I really like those good old BBS :smiley:
I only hope that it can become even better if the problems mentioned above are removed,so that I can recommend it to others without feeling bad.

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Thanks for the comments. I believe the location is for the map, but as others had that same concern I am trying to track down where it is exactly coming from to disable it. You can of course just decline to give it your location and it will remember that.
The facebook, google, etc links are there so a user can log in with their account on those services and don’t need to keep track of another password and get their avatar etc automatically populated. I just added the discord link but due to your concerns I will remove it. I’ll try taking a look at Matrix and see about adding a link to it. Thanks again!

There is a request to maps[.]googleapis[.]com,but as I block that using uBlock Origin and the location request pops up anyway,that must come from your site directly.
Have you looked at OpenStreetMap,by the way?
It should allow for the same functionality,but without selling your users data to Google.
For the Facebook link,isn’t there a way to make it only send requests to Facebook when the link is clicked?
Currently I see network requests to facebook[.]com and facebook[.]net directly when loading your site,without even having an account there.

Ah - that pointed me to it. I switched it to use openstreetmap so that should have removed the google call… I didn’t know it was accessing FB just on loading, as it doesn’t use anything from there until the visitor clicks the button. Do you suggest I remove it?

Sure,removing Facebook completely is always the best solution.
Everyone who uses Facebook must already have an email account as well,so the manual sign-up works just fine.
Tip: If you use Firefox,you can hit Ctrl+Shift+I to see all requests that the page is making.
Most stuff only shows up after reloading the page while the inspector is open.

Ok done! :slight_smile: :+1:

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I just rechecked and the requests to Facebook are gone now :tada:
The requests to Google Maps are still active,unfortunately.
The weird thing is that it always tries to do one request to Google Maps,no matter on which page I am currently,and a additional one if it’s the Member Event Map.
I would expect a map only to load on the Member Event Map,or am I missing something here?
The switch to OpenStreetMap hasn’t worked as it seems,there are no requests to OpenStreetMap shown in the network log.

Hey there, the website looks great! Though I think the screenshots are a little old, they seem to be way back from when Haiku was still in Alpha.

You can find some more recent screenshots here: https://github.com/haiku/website/tree/master/static/files/slideshow

Yes the map should only request it when you visit it. That other request must still be coming from somewhere else. I turned off the location features of the classified area that it was using to locate ads that might be in your area, but that wouldn’t come up unless you are in the classified area already. Since it happens on multiple pages it must be from a extension displayed on every page. The links feature is one possible source as that is on the bottom of every page. I’ll take a look and see. How about I turn off the bottom display and see if that fixes it? Give it another try…

Did you change something already?
The request is still there.
I just tried to find in the source code of your page where it comes from,but it’s in a whole block of different Javascript files,so I have no idea which plugin may cause it.

Yes, since that didn’t fix it I re-enabled it and I am looking at all the enabled plugins… just a minute…

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Hmm nothing I noticed there. Is there a string I can grep for in the source?

Yes,you can search for maps.googleapis.com

Ok I found a lot of occurrences and the community software that I switched to the openmaps had lots of occurrences hard coded to google. The floating toolbar might have done it as it is on every page too, so I have disabled it. Let me know if it is gone now…

No,unfortunately it’s still there.

:frowning: I suppose I can ask in the community software support and see if they have a version that doesn’t depend on google. For now I suppose the only option until I track it down is to check the box to remember the setting and decline the location feature as that was working before.

Hm ok,I wish you best luck to get a ungooogled version.
But now I have other problems…
There is a new Sign in with Google button that also sends data to Google while only viewing the homepage.
The new Sign in with LinkedIn button seems to be fine,I can’t see any requests being sent to LinkedIn.
Registering also doesn’t work here because it wants to load a Google ReCaptcha (and that’s blocked for good reasons in my uBlock).
Can you please disable the captcha or replace it with a more privacy-friendly one?

Ok both those should be fixed now… BTW: What would you think about adding a sign in with twitter feature? Is that respectful of privacy?

Thank you very much for taking so much time to optimize the privacy of your page :+1:
I don’t know if the Twitter login add-on of your page will send any data before you tried it.
I can give feedback then.