peacenotwar VS ArchiveBox

Today, with an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, some open source maintainers have taken it upon themselves to protest the war via changes to their code that express anti-war rhetoric via messages that display when the software is run. However, one maintainer in particular took it to the next level. Brandon Nozaki Miller, published a library on GitHub named peacenotwar that simply printed an anti-war message to the computer it was run on. This package is harmless on its own, but things got interesting when he included this package as a dependency in the node-ipc module he maintains. Users who downloaded the latest version of node-ipc to a machine in Russia would be subject to complete data destruction. Miller defended the act by claiming that this is all documented publicly and that users who don’t want this installed on their machine should lock their dependencies to older versions.

apparently an NGO working in belarus got affected

From that reddit thread, here is the github issue the paste originated from.

https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues/45

the repo where this issue was posted simply created a .txt file on the user's machine, doesn't wipe anything: https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues/45

This headline is fucking yikes, the node package that they're talking about is fully open source and does nothing but make a text file in 3 locations. It does nothing remotely close to "wiping" computers, lmfao.

His actions destroyed over 30,000 messages & files detailing war crimes committed by Russian in Ukraine belonging an American NGO that monitors human rights infringements in eastern Europe. Cool protest, bro.

Première victime collatérale

Links to drama: https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues, https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/node-ipc/issues

The package uses https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar to deliver the message.

But I don't understand why/how it would wipe the PC. Unless I missed something, the code from the package does not delete anything.

> This code serves as a non-destructive example of why controlling your node modules is important. It also serves as a non-violent protest against Russia's aggression that threatens the world right now.

Nah, the author knew it's would be controversial. The first sentence is there as an excuse.

Two projects I greatly appreciate, allowing me to easily archive my bandcamp and GOG purchases (after the initial setup anyways):

https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader

https://github.com/Kalanyr/gogrepoc

And I recently learned about archivebox, which I think is going to be a fast favorite and finally let me clear out my mess of tabs/bookmarks: https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox

If you really want to save the content for yourself, use something like https://archivebox.io/

I've been running a local instance for a few years now and download/save tech articles all time. I can search and find them as needed.

API is coming soon (relatively, it's still a one-man project)! Stay tuned https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/496

I have an event-sourcing refactor in progress now to allow us to pluginize functionality like the API (similar to Home Assistant with a plugin app sotre), it will take a month or two. Next up is the REST API using the new plugin system.

I guess your best chance is to use something like https://archivebox.io/.

Yeah this is a cool project but it was discussed 2 days ago.

As mentioned by the maintainer there, they even maintain a list of alternatives, very classy:

https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-...