ExtremeDullard

ExtremeDullard , 4 days ago

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

ExtremeDullard , 4 days ago

Isn’t not buying anything on Black Friday generally a good advice?

ExtremeDullard , 4 days ago

Yeah, don’t: they know more than you.

ExtremeDullard , 4 days 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 , 5 days ago

Google loves open source too

Google loves open source when it suits their agenda.

For example, they created an entire OS almost from scratch. It cost them billions and the vast majority of it was open source, so people would be enticed to get onboard the Android ecosystem.

Now that Google has a virtual monopoly with Android, look at the state of AOSP: it’s a shell of its former self. Most of what’s left in it is becoming old and stale, because Google is quietly replacing the open-source bits that are now an inconvenience to them with their proprietary, more up-to-date counterparts.

ExtremeDullard , 6 days 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 , 6 days ago

I know what you did last summer…

…

Bwahaha! gotcha!

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

If you have the money and you care about not buying or owning a Google product, and / or you care about repairability, get a FairPhone: you can install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS on them and they too support relocking the bootloader. It’s not just Pixel phones.

Bonus: they have a SD card slot, unlike Pixel phones.

They’re not the speediest or sleekest devices, but that’s not where the interest lies with Fairphone cellphones: they’re mostly designed for long life and easy maintenance, and they’re made by a cool company I want to support personally. And they’re not made by Google, so buying one won’t support Google or the Pixel ecosystem in any way.

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago

Murena is a weird company. I tried to purchase a cellphone directly from them a few months ago, and they have this weird system on their website that forces you to create a full-blown cloud account with them - complete with email, calendar, file transfer and all - before being able to order anything. And in fact, even after creating the account, I couldn’t even figure out how to order with my brand-spanking new murena.io email.

After fiddling with this for a while, and mostly reflecting on the fact that this company that knows absolutely nothing about me just gave me an email address and a bunch of storage for free at the click of a button, I decided this was all a little too sketchy for my taste and gave up on the whole idea. That’s not how I expect to place an order with a normal company: I expect to have a cart and do a secure pay, not go through this kind of account creating rigmarole.

So, I’m not saying Murena is a bad company. I’m saying be careful with them, because the purchasing process is highly unusual with them.

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago

Yeah they’re not cheap 🙁 It’s too bad because they’re really decent cellphones. But they’re twice the price of anything equivalent from any of the big manufacturers.

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago

Ah yes you’re correct. I got confused.

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago

When did you get it? Maybe they changed their web store since I tried to patronize it.

ExtremeDullard , 5 days ago

Okay, then I guess Murena made their web store simpler or less sketchy-looking. I tried ordering from them around the end of June.

ExtremeDullard , 9 days ago

I don’t buy stuff from Youtubers. If they had a real business, they wouldn’t spend most of their time making Youtube videos.

ExtremeDullard , 12 days ago

/etc/hosts

ExtremeDullard , 13 days ago

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

ExtremeDullard , 13 days 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 , 13 days 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 , 13 days ago

Google too open sources a mountain of code every year - most of it very good code. It doesn’t make Google any less evil.

ExtremeDullard , 15 days 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 , 15 days ago

If GrapheneOS isn’t about being anti-Google, what the hell is it about then?

People who take the trouble of installing GrapheneOS on their cellphone want to escape Google badly enough to actually do something that’s less than trivial, and kind of scary for the vast majority of cellphone users. Surely they’re the complete opposite of Google fanbois…

ExtremeDullard , 15 days ago (edited 15 days 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 , 15 days 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 , 15 days 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 , 16 days ago

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

ExtremeDullard , 16 days 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 , 16 days ago

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

ExtremeDullard , 15 days 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 , 16 days ago

What’s a Google account?

ExtremeDullard , 16 days ago

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

ExtremeDullard , 21 days ago

If you’re in Linux, you can use eCryptfs to setup a private encrypted directory, move the ~/.thunderbird directory into it and just leave a symlink to it in your unencrypted home directory. Then you can store your emails in plain text in the encrypted private directory.

It’s not even complicated to set up: most Linux distributions are setup so that the private directory is automounted upon login: when you’re not logged in, your data at rest is encrypted. It only becomes readable when you’re logged in.

Both my Thunderbird and Firefox directories are stored in my private directory.

ExtremeDullard , 22 days ago

Whoever thought 1984 would become a documentary - and V for Vendetta a possible solution.

ExtremeDullard , 23 days ago (edited 23 days ago)

Fairphone 4 with CalyxOS too here

ExtremeDullard , 24 days ago

That was just the first salvo. This proposal was a feeler: now Google has learned what they couldn’t get away with and they need to boil us frogs more slowly.

This will come back on the table. Less aggressive, less visible, but they won’t give up on it.

ExtremeDullard , 24 days ago

What worries me is that usually people tire of the fight and then the corporation wins.

Exactly. Big Tech grinds everybody down into accepting the new dystopian normal they want.

ExtremeDullard , 24 days ago

People forget very quickly. And people’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter.

ExtremeDullard , 25 days ago

I use this OpenBoard fork with Swype-like typing: github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/releases

I believe it is exactly what you want.

And it looks like this:

…backblazeb2.com/…/7f19394211783aee8d88a7b0ec4e6f…

and in other languages:

…backblazeb2.com/…/b22f24f7bd8ef581bf76977ec279f0…

ExtremeDullard , 26 days ago (edited 26 days ago)

it’s baffling to me that these big tech companies haven’t created a subscription that lets you opt out of data collection

It’s not baffling when you understand that big data makes a lot more money out of the data they steal from you than any money you’d be willing to give them directly. Not to mention, it allows them to cozy up to the police state agencies - possibly their most important customers.

The other reason why they haven’t offered it is because nobody would take them up on the offer: most people are cheapskates who are perfectly okay giving up their privacy if they can save a buck.

And those who would gladly pay to escape the corporate surveillance machine know that it won’t stop tracking them even if they do, so they don’t.

The corporate surveillance economy is a self-fulfilling prophecy (as in “we do it because people like this deal” even if people don’t and in reality have no other choice) and a race to the bottom.

ExtremeDullard , 26 days ago

There are 3 important factors that drove me to CalyxOS rather than GrapheneOS:

1/ There’s no way in HELL I’m buying a Pixel phone and giving my money to Google for the privilege of not being tracked by Google. That’s really too rich for me.

2/ I want a repairable device.

Therefore I bought a FairPhone 4 (repairable and not Google), and only CalyxOS supports it - of those two that is.

And finally 3/ The GrapheneOS community is toxic. Although in fairness, now that the Chief Toxic Officer is gone, maybe it’s gotten better. At any rate, the Calyx community is completely peaceful and exemplary compared to Graphene.

This may not matter to you, but it seems to me like a sane thing to do not to trust software made by someone who talks that much shit.

ExtremeDullard , 25 days ago

Absolutely. It is recommended in fact.

ExtremeDullard , 24 days ago

1/ I know Pixels are technically the best. That’s not the issue. My issue is: I am not giving my money to Google, and certainly not for the purpose of escaping the Orwellian dystopia they’re building around us. It’s not a technical problem, but a question of principle.

I know some people argue that buying Pixel phones specifically to install a deGoogled OS sends Google the message that people are willing to pay for the privilege of preserving their privacy, and the more people buy Pixel phones for that purpose, the louder the message and the more likely Google will finally listen and convert at least part of their business model away from corporate surveillance.

But you know what? That’s bullshit. Google will never stop violating people’s privacy and monetizing people’s data. They just take your Pixel phone money and laugh all the way to the bank at how naive you are.

I will NEVER give Google a single dollar. Full stop. It’s not even an option. I’ll take the additional risk of using a non-Pixel phone - which, for my threat model, it completely insignificant anyway.

2/ I’ll pay whatever it takes to escape Google, and also give the throwaway economy the middle finger. As a well-to-do first-worlder with plenty of disposable and grown up children who have left the house, I have the means to buy overpriced equipment that’s compatible with my worldview.

3/ I don’t care about drama regardless of where it comes from. Quite frankly, I don’t even want to know: I’ve read enough about and around what was going on with DM to just give the whole thing a pass. Besides, like I said, the man seems crazy enough that it basically invalidates any trust I might have in his code, and it’s precisely the type of application for which I desperately need trust. I don’t trust DM nor his code, and that’s not even a community issue.

I have neither the time nor the desire to review MD’s code. I need a working cellphone OS that I can place a reasonable amount of trust in. The Calyx Institute looks 100% legit, run by normal, rational people who aren’t off their goddamn minds, and I trust what they do a lot more than GrapheneOS because a lot of GrapheneOS was put together by a nutjob.

ExtremeDullard , 23 days ago

Really ? This is the first time I’m reading this

Yes. There are deluded, wide-eyed idealists who believe Big Tech should be shown that there are honest ways to make money off of direct sales and they don’t need to put people under surveillance, and the best way to show them is proving it with their wallets. What they fail to realize is that Big Tech is unprincipled to the core, and the unprincipled way of making money off of people’s privacy is orders of magnitude easier and more profitable.

he was open about having mental issues and he needed and still needs help…

I have nothing against people who have mental problem. Hell, many people who get heavily involved in computers and into free software are on the spectrum and I have no issues with them or the software they made, which I enjoy using.

What I have a problem with is code made by people who make threats. I don’t care why they make threats: if they can code, they can code revenge code. And I have a problem with code made by people who have a persecution complex for the same reason.

DM thinks he’s persecuted and he did make threats. Repeatedly - unlike Linus. I’m sorry for him and I sympathize on a personal level, but that makes his code quite untrustworthy, because his motivations for making the code and the state of mind he was in when he made the code make the code inherently suspicious. And like I said, I don’t have the time nor the desire to go through and vet his code. I have enough projects to take care of myself without having to second-guess someone’s suspicious code.

He may be a genius security researcher and he may be the most talented individual on planet Earth. But in the line of work he chose, having a squeaky-clean reputation and credentials is everything, and his personality issues unfortunately damaged both and tainted his work.

Personally, I preferred not to take the risk and I went with Calyx’s work which, while perhaps not as hardened as DM’s libraries, is adequate enough for my threat model and - most importantly - made by people with a clean rep. At least it was one of the factor, since I was never going to buy a Google phone anyway, and GrapheneOS only supports Google phones.

ExtremeDullard , 27 days ago

If you believe Facebook will stop abusing your privacy if you pay them, I have a bridge to sell you…

ExtremeDullard , 27 days ago

Exactly this!

The article confuses privacy and ads-free. As in, you pay $10 a month not to see what the data they collect on you would be used for if you didn’t pay. But they still collect data on you and monetize it in many other ways.

ExtremeDullard , 27 days ago

…thefreedictionary.com/I+have+a+bridge+to+sell+yo…

ExtremeDullard , 28 days ago

What’s “safe and ethical advertising practices”? Is it like pacifist inclusive Nazism?

ExtremeDullard , 28 days ago

I post on Reddit infrequently. It’s not a very nice place to be. I might have posted something about my implants there in the past but I doubt it: I tend to avoid mentioning them on there because it invariably attract unwanted comments from religious nutcases.

You may have read something another implantee has posted. I’m far from the only one out there :)

ExtremeDullard , 6 days ago

It’s not very likely, unless you’re a heavy sleeper who happens to sleep in unsafe places regularly - or your partner at home is up to no good.

Also, implants are kind of finicky with respect to reader placement, because they’re sitting under a layer of skin full of conductive water, and they’re usually not symmetrical, so the reader has to be positioned a certain way to score a good read. You as the implant owner know “the move” (in fact, it quickly becomes second nature and you never think about it anymore) but unless you explain it to someone or they know about this shortcoming, they’ll have a hard time getting a read. That’s assuming you don’t wake up because someone is touching you, because the read range is very short - like 1/4" when the reader is ideally placed - and you don’t hear the loud bing from the cellphone.

But yeah, you’re correct: strictly speaking, if you have a good memory, a long and complicated password - or a mental “recipe” to make one - and a healthy habit of changing passwords regularly is better. Or better: a password in your head and an implant as a second factor.