ExtremeDullard

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

“I’m looking for a privacy respecting vacuum robot” must be one of the most dystopian sentences I’ve read in quite some time.

I mean there is no lack of dystopian stuff going around these days. But if you imagine someone saying that 30 years ago, that someone would have conceivably ended up in a lunatic asylum. In 2024 however, it’s a perfectly valid and apropos question.

What a sad, sad world we live in…

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago

…and how six months later, it all amounted to jack squat and Reddit is back to business as usual. Exactly how Reddit correctly figured outraged internet warriors would get all worked up for a while and then lose interest.

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago

Missing option that I use:

Free Google Drive mounted with rclone and then eCryptfs filesystem mounted on the Google Drive mountpoint.

I get the free space and Google only sees encrypted files.

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago

Aah yes, appimage, flatpak, snaps, progressive web apps, electron apps… The cross-compatibility of the lazy 21st century developer, where a simple IRC-like chat client comes with an entire operating system or an entire browser (which itself is an entire operating system too nowadays), takes up half a gig of disk space, and starts up in over 10 seconds with a multi-gigahertz multicore CPU.

Just perfect…

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is where you clearly see Apple is all about privacy posturing and not much about actual privacy.

If they really cared about their customers’ privacy, they would require notification servers registered with APN to push notifications encrypted with a key that only the recipient apps have the private key to. This would be true end-to-end encryption, and Apple would only relay encrypted notifications across, enabling them to deny all subpoenas and any kind of snooping requests from law enforcement on the simple basis that they plain can’t even decode the notifications in the first place.

The very fact that they do have access to the notifications in clear-text is undeniable evidence that they actively want and do collaborate with law enforcement.

Meaning Apple’s stance on privacy is utter BS - something anybody with a modicum of critical thinking suspected from the start, but now the evidence is crystal-clear.

ExtremeDullard, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Powered by open web standards

That’s the state of computing in 2023: a browser disguised as a native app running 15 layers of Javascript is used as a friggin terminal. And nobody bats an eyelids, as if the utter insanity of it made any sense.

And the installer is 117M compressed. That’s MEGABYTES… For a terminal!

The mind boggles…

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

Just take a screenshot of the QR code and save the image somewhere

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

Yeah, don’t: they know more than you.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

It was just a joke.

Although it’s true: they probably do know a lot more about stuff that matters to their generation than you do, just like you knew more than your parents about stuff that mattered to you as a kid.

And yes, I agree, they do get exposed to the Big Tech party line a lot. But don’t underestimate the kids: they’re smart, they can tell BS when they see it more than you think, and they’re not that easy to indoctrinate.

I know that because when I was a kid, we had our own tech overlords (in my generation, the phone company) and we walked all over them despite the propaganda and apparent overwhelming power. Why would today’s kids be any different?

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The fight for privacy is not new, and it predates the internet by far.

The problem is that, in the past, the state was on your side in the fight for privacy. Today, it sides with Big Tech and whoever offers it the most data to conduct its own privacy violations, or pays our elected officials the most.

It’s a bit overwhelming when giant, unchecked and unaccountable monopolies and your own country, both with almost infinite resources and legal ways to do whatever they want with impunity, gang up on you at the same time.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

I know what you did last summer…

…

Bwahaha! gotcha!

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

/etc/hosts

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

If it’s free, someone pays the bill and you’re probably the product.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

A lot of open source software is made by enthusiasts for free. A lot more of it is made by companies like Microsoft or Google for various reasons - I believe mostly to claim “we’re open source”, but also to entice others to contribute more code that they can leverage for free, which is a valid reason too. One thing is sure: they do pay their engineers’ salaries

Free services however… That’s different: we all know why Microsoft or Google propose free services.

Now this unknown search engine you linked to: they could be funded by idealists who want to promote privacy, like the Calyx institute for example. However, looking at their website, I see no obvious reason why they propose the service they propose: they do have a Donate button that leads to a page with 4 payment links - 3 of which crypto - and their About Us button leads to a page that just says “test”. Kinda sketchy…

Therefore, I assume it’s up to no good, because that’s the reasonable thing to assume with any unknown website that looks sketchy.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

Open-source isn’t a guarantee that whoever makes the open-source software is privacy-respecting. Android was made by Google for example, and it was made open-source for the express purpose of creating a mobile OS ecosystem that would become so dominant it would allow Google to collect data on as many people as possible. Google invested massive amounts of money developing an entire operating system for a reason: they didn’t do it out of kindness.

Conversely, closed source isn’t a guarantee that whoever makes the software is up to no good. There’s plenty of closed source software out there that’s perfectly legit. But of course it’s harder to verify the code if you have doubts.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Signal.

Not necessarily because it’s better or because I like it. I actually don’t like it: Signal requiring a phone number really, REALLY doesn’t sit right with me, I hate not being able to back up my messages and having to hold the tiny button on the screen to record an audio or video message really sucks.

But it’s the easiest and most common of the truly private communication apps to get non-technical people to install.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Hell no, and for two very good reasons:

• To comment and subscribe, you need a Youtube account. There’s no way on God’s green Earth I’ll ever open any Google account. They track me enough as it is without me helping them.
• Youtube monetizes your preferences - subscriptions and comments - which helps their business grow. I will never do anything to help Google if I can avoid it. Google needs to die, not grow larger than the cancerous blob they’ve already become.

I do subscribe locally to channels, and I have my personal playlists in FreeTube and NewPipe though, but Google doesn’t get to profit from that information. As for commenting, I’ve never seen any thread compelling enough to respond to. But if I do, I’ll abstain in the name of not helping Google.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

It always feels good when you find a new youtuber you like!

And when enough people like that fresh new Youtuber with fresh new content, before you know it, that Youtuber starts shilling NordVPN, Incogni or some electric shaver. Just like all the others…

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

I understand why they do it. I even sympathize. But I don’t have to like it.

I’m properly sick and tired of hearing about NordVPN and a handful of other brands that have decided to pollute the whole of Youtube with their shitty ads.

The other thing that disgusts me is when said Youtubers shill NordVPN as if they actually tried it themselves and recommend the service personally. They haven’t: they’ve been paid by NordVPN to spew out their bullshit convincingly on their behalf.

So why I understand why Youtubers sell out, they’re still sellouts, and just hearing them shill NordVPN brings a slight taste of vomit to my mouth.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/…/freetube-redirect/

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

Electron which is Google

How did you figure that out? Because Electron is based on Chromium?

In which case, I suppose you don’t trust Brave because it’s Google too.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

V8 is open source. Just like Chromium, Google doesn’t control it.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

No they don’t: you’re free to create your own fork, or compile out the stuff you don’t like from the main repo - which is what all the Chromium-based privacy-focused browsers out there do, including Brave.

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

What’s a Google account?

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago

I do my backups myself. I don’t trust Google for that, I’m not crazy.