Post AwtwSUHkMmBlpSA7VI by sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com
(DIR) More posts by sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com
(DIR) Post #AwtdrwPT2TGtAMCHgG by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T15:00:30.780496Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
does sitting behind something like Mullvad actually do anything for you other than give you a false sense of security?i'm really asking
(DIR) Post #AwthtT6FNpUietBt8S by veinglory
2025-08-06T15:45:36.525160Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer depends on your threat model. Hardened browsers and some sorry of virtualization are usually necessary too if you want to prevent fingerprinting by strong actors
(DIR) Post #Awti1oB4trYELaQXwW by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T15:47:06.980056Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory virtualization? How would that work in this context?
(DIR) Post #AwtitB9kCHdMxgFhlg by veinglory
2025-08-06T15:56:45.707615Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer sorry i haven't had coffee yet. I should have said something like "identity isolation". Preventing fingerprinting by not risking cross contamination of identifying information. Doesn't matter how many proxies you're behind if a database leaks and you're using the same email address everywhere.
(DIR) Post #AwtuTqaciz7nO0VpE8 by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T18:06:38.636972Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory that makes sense; thank youthe curse of convenience strikes deep, hereby the way; what email provider do you use, if you don't mind sharing?
(DIR) Post #Awtw8BQOmO29XhWkhE by veinglory
2025-08-06T18:25:08.324531Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer Depends. I am an insane person, so I containerize my identities based on my threat/privacy level. Gmail to interact with normies (always seem normal to normal people), Protonmail for semi-secure stuff that still needs to look professional, and cock.li / 10minutemail for registration/verification. privacytools.io has a couple others IIRC but remember that nobody is going to prison to keep your emails encrypted and you can't know for certain what their backend looks like. Secure mail with PGP, but remember that state agencies hang people on metadata, so if you're doing seriously sensitive correspondence, you shouldn't be using email to begin with.keep a password safe and use unique several dozen character passwords for everything because databases leak all the time (cock.li had a database leak recently due to a webmail vulnerability I believe).
(DIR) Post #AwtwSUHkMmBlpSA7VI by sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com
2025-08-06T18:28:47.244607Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory @warmbeverageenjoyer also use POP instead of IMAP, "they" don't want you to download your mail
(DIR) Post #AwtxVSJ6HGdeW5m4q8 by veinglory
2025-08-06T18:40:32.978402Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer >the curse of convenience strikes deeppersonal philosophy rambling : Convenience is poison. It makes you lazier, fractures your attention, and makes you more irresponsible. Not to say that you should live like a monk, but almost everything that "makes your life easier" tends to come at a cost : control, privacy, mental acuity, flexibility, etc. Reading up on and understanding something like "user friction" is important here. https://medium.com/@sachinrekhi/the-hierarchy-of-user-friction-e99113b77d78For each additional interactable element in an interface that we need to engage with to complete a task, user retention tends to drop off by a certain percentage. If the meaning of life is on page 5 of Google Search Results, we'll never know it. Don't let the Id win tug of war in your head. Also keep in mind that interface designers use this to herd users into giving up data. Note that those "we use cookies to improve your experience" popups almost NEVER have a "disable all cookies leave me alone" button. They have "accept all" and "more info...." or "settings...". This is because the friction involved in navigating to a settings menu and disable all cookies is enough to deter most users. They click "accept all" to get on with things, and agree to tracking. Remember that corporations from every industry employ psychologists.
(DIR) Post #AwtxXt0XyYWFuHFtNw by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T18:40:59.339321Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory thank you. do you make individual proton accounts, or do you pay them for the "privilege" of having them consolidated?this is the main thing that bugs me about proton - they don't let you have multiple accounts technically (though they tolerate it to a point), and they happily close accounts that haven't been logged in to for a bit, so using them is something of a hassle unless you're very active...it also pisses me off they don't work with Thunderbird but that's secondary I guess
(DIR) Post #AwtxnB2nCRbIBlb4V6 by veinglory
2025-08-06T18:43:45.148070Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer I don't pay for a service that I think i can replicate myself. As it stands now i just have a couple that I have logged in on different devices with different use cases.
(DIR) Post #AwtyJWe0QThgRnQbMu by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T18:49:35.917415Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory did not know about the retention stat, but am aware of the resti've begun feeling similarly lately, but am only making slow progress to reintroducing inconvenience.i still balk at the idea of using something like librewolf, for example. but i'd really like to get there. the smart watch on my wrist disgusts me. the samsung flavored android in my pocket disgusts me. i am filled with an ever-increasing desire to recapture data that once was mine alone...and then there's my wife, who wants a google speaker and a robot vaccuum and a smart home in general, and nothing I do can pull her away from these.We actually got an amazon echo but thankfully it didn't integrate well enough with our smart bulbs and cameras (which at least have physical covers, jesus christ), so we returned it...but one day we'll have a vacuum, and the company that makes it will know the layout of our house and know our day-to-day routines...i just had to submit my ID and biometrics to a company I've never heard of just as part of the process of renting a new placeeverything is bad
(DIR) Post #Awtz6wEQ57oPzj1QsS by veinglory
2025-08-06T18:58:31.722211Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer >…and then there’s my wife, who wants a google speaker and a robot vaccuum and a smart home in general, and nothing I do can pull her away from these.We actually got an amazon echo but thankfully it didn’t integrate well enough with our smart bulbs and cameras (which at least have physical covers, jesus christ), so we returned it…Yeah it can be really hard to convince people of the danger of this stuff because it’s difficult to see it at work in our daily lives. This is by design, of course. Normies always blink at you when you ask them how tech giants make so much money. It may be uncomfortable to have these kinds of discussion with loved ones, and I’m not suggesting that you get drunk at thanksgiving dinner and rant about the technocrats, but remember that data collected about you on these servers never goes away. Almost every nerd i know has TBs of hard drive space sitting around, and we don’t have corporate funding. I could keep 10 copies of your smart watch data on my home server easy. >i just had to submit my ID and biometrics to a company I’ve never heard of just as part of the process of renting a new placeWhats wrong bro? Don’t you just want to live a normal life? Give up your personal sovereignty. What are you, some kinda nerd schizo? Nobody cares about you. Why are you making things so hard for yourself bro? Just take the easy way out.
(DIR) Post #AwtzYm5vMeZkfCK1GS by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-06T19:03:33.572025Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@veinglory >but remember that data collected about you on these servers never goes away.yes, and the fucked up thing is sometimes it is out of your hands what is collected on youdoesn't mean you shouldn't try but... for example: i've obviously always been against those DNA history kits.... one of my fucking parents went and got one done. DNA between you and your parents is close enough to where they basically more or less have your DNA now, too.Or, if you're just around regular people who have insta, fb, amazon, tiktok, etc all installed on their phones... all of those apps periodically check in on your microphone. i'm sure of it. everyone has had enough anecdotal experience which can only be explained by thisso if you're around regular people and you speak to them about anything at all, you're still feeding data about yourself to the corpos, you just have to hope it won't get connected to your own "advertising ID" >What are you, some kinda nerd schizo? Nobody cares about you. exhausting>Why are you making things so hard for yourself bro? Just take the easy way out.i literally asked the leasing agent if we could verify our IDs some other way.nope.i'm not going to lease somewhere else over this so i was SOL. absolutely bonkers
(DIR) Post #Awu0XYtr2JOXPCf6Dg by veinglory
2025-08-06T19:14:32.724833Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer yeah bro it's crazy. People just accept it too. And then when it comes out that their data is being sold off to the highest bidder or whatever they forget about it a month later when their instagram feed shovels some attention robbing slop down their gullet. It's quite tiresome. That's why I always try to share what I know with people who want to learn about or escape this giant panopticon. It is the responsibility of the sane to serve as an oasis to one another. All these User ID and biometrics requirements for internet usage indicates that it's gonna get a lot worse too, in my estimation.
(DIR) Post #Awvp7RYqzLr7w66OA4 by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:15:59.554021Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory problematic endorsements?
(DIR) Post #AwvpNqkN7GLwgKJRoG by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:18:57.453817Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory >"GNU approved firefox"free software is cool but i'm not adamant about it. I brought up librefox because its often touted as a good privacy-conscious browser due to features like wiping cookies on shutdown, etc>all firefox forks are just as bad as firefox itself in the long runI'm not going to use chromium if i don't have to. so far there are only 2 sites I need a chromium browser for, and i need to use them rarely.things like ladybird (and others that i can't recall) are years out. what do you suggest, if not that, then?>smart homeyeah i mean the concept itself is fine if you go through the hassle of self hosting it etc etc etc but i was talking in general about consumer products aimed at this sort of thing
(DIR) Post #AwvpuJWpdsbzDGSYgC by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:24:49.475792Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory >stock ff can do that loli understand this>just get used to it in our future interactions.i have an itchy mute-button-finger, we might not actually interact again>i hate the w3cbased>i want entirely different alternatives to take over, ones that allow for simpler software to exist.me too, i think. i despise that everything is a "web app" now. (or is a web app packaged to look like a normal program; fuck you electron)my wife the other day needed to do something with Calibre, and she was shocked and confused about why it didn't have a web app. Genuinely sad.>everyone who buys things is a consoomernerd
(DIR) Post #AwvqDMcKNnjmIJ77i4 by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:28:16.052377Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory >agoristhuh, learned a new word today. got any recommended reading (keep it light if you're able, i'm lazy), before i just go dig something up myself?
(DIR) Post #AwvrECsgARkgLEjC64 by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:39:37.492038Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory i like the sound of that but i also don't understand economics lol>separation of personal property and personal intentwhat do you mean by this?
(DIR) Post #AwvrgaqOfNgglpCDtA by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T16:44:45.301297Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory oh, yeah for surei'm not used to needing to specify that sort of thing
(DIR) Post #Aww6TKVja3Ivf4fHm4 by sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com
2025-08-07T19:30:24.692549Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory @warmbeverageenjoyer lies
(DIR) Post #Aww92L2Xnx05LXpgY4 by sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com
2025-08-07T19:59:08.993119Z
2 likes, 2 repeats
@wowaname @veinglory @warmbeverageenjoyer I use POP because I'm an honest, god-fearing christian. It's the "Peace Outreach Protocol". The only people I ever see use IMAP are child molesters. They don't call it I-"MAP" for nothing.
(DIR) Post #Aww9LSBNTPAl064yKu by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T20:02:37.497004Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@sicp @wowaname @veinglory love schizos
(DIR) Post #Aww9pACosIoHvyv8Jk by phnt@fluffytail.org
2025-08-07T20:07:56.514122Z
2 likes, 2 repeats
@sicp @wowaname @veinglory @warmbeverageenjoyer They don't want you to know this, but you can download email with IMAP. It's free.
(DIR) Post #AwwCwJcOZrbV13z9EG by irie
2025-08-07T20:42:54.114377Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer @veinglory VPNs in general *may* not protect you against certain governments (we tend to overestimate feds) but they offer general protection against private actors. Scouting for copyright infringements via torrenting, for example, is usually done by private firms.
(DIR) Post #AwwDXjQDbSMnl88BLU by warmbeverageenjoyer
2025-08-07T20:49:39.840805Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@irie @veinglory true; I'm not concerned about copyright as I use a seedboxI am wondering what I/we will do when id verification comes over here. I'm not uploading my id places, that's for sure
(DIR) Post #AwwEPuxguk07BecqMi by irie
2025-08-07T20:59:27.412503Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@warmbeverageenjoyer @veinglory that's probably a concern many of us wonder about right now. Perhaps it's a question of specific access and not one of needing ID to connect online at all. In that case perhaps certain difficult to police sites/platforms will gain traction, and others will lose traffic