@kuro_neko have you ever thought about making the app open source? I’ve used Connect for a little bit and I really like it, it would be really cool if the app was open source. You practically don’t have anything to loose, as you don’t sell the app or insert ads and trackers. Lemmy is an open-source plattform, and many (if...
If Connect was open source software, we couldn’t just submit bug reports, we could even fix bugs ourselves and submit the patches to be included in the app! That way, the developer might even have less work to do, as community members could help out.
I just mean I feel like the developer has abandoned it.
Oh, that would be unfortunate.
I don’t know if they’re even looking at this community anymore.
I hope they do and I hope they see this post, because if the app is abandoned and gets open sourced, a new maintainer could take over and continue development and maintenance of Connect.
All distributions of free, open-source and user-empowering software like Linux are great and deserve recognition. Whether it’s simple, new user-friendly distros like Linux Mint that make the transition process from proprietary garbage like Windows as easy as possible or advanced distros that are meant for power users like Gentoo, Arch or Void Linux. But these specifically deserve more recognition in my opinion:
Gentoo. People hate it for being hard to install or because it’s source based, but it allows you to customize everything, including build options for programs etc. It empowers users and teaches them a little about how their system works. Gentoo doesn’t tell the user what to do, the user is in full control of their system. ChromeOS is based on it, because it offers infinite flexibility and customizability.
Also, Tails OS. It’s what keeps many oppressed journalists and activists anonymous and secure, and it’s what Edward Snowden used to inform the public about the horrible things going on at the NSA. The same goes for Qubes OS and Whonix.
Vanguard, BlackRock, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Twitter/X, any company owned by Elon Musk, pretty much every Big Tech company, Disney, almost any media company, as well as every major bank.
Of course, it’s better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I’d like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible....
Nah, that’s what actual Linux distributions are for. Linux runs on almost every server and powers nearly the entire internet while Windows is used to play fancy video games.
I will never understand why people liked Windows XP, I’d rather use Gentoo Linux from 2002 compiled from a stage 1 tarball than this steaming pile of shit. Windows 7 was solid, but 10 was (again) the biggest piece of garbage. Horrible UWP UI, Cortana, the garbage Windows Store, the Windows Phone integration, the useless Xbox app, the shitty version of OneNote, crappy MS Edge, Candy Crush ads in the fucking start menu and tons of data collection. Oh yeah, what a great operating system!
I installed the mull browser revently. People who are familiar with this will know that it’s a fork of firefox android. It’s hardened but I haven’t noticed much difference b/w the two. Mull has a few visible tweaks like Https mode by default, strict protection etc. but I haven’t come across other backend/not so visible...
That’s the Mullvad Browser. I know that it’s available on Desktop, in fact, it’s only available on Desktop. OP is referring to the Mull browser, which has nothing to do with Mullvad VPN or Mullvad Browser. Mull is a fork of Fennec (Firefox for Android) created by DivestOS. It’s basically Firefox for Android with arkenfox user.js and some other neat privacy tweaks.
Nah, it’s fine. I’ve been using GrapheneOS for quite some time and it’s been rock solid. This only happened once, and it went away after closing and reopening the settings app. It was just a rendering glitch, but it was kinda funny so I screenshotted it and posted it here.
And if so, why exactly? It says it’s end-to-end encrypted. The metadata isn’t. But what is metadata and is it bad that it’s not? Are there any other problematic things?...
First, it is very likely that the WhatsApp encryption is compromised, it definitely shouldn’t be trusted, as it is completely proprietary and thus not transparent to users and independent auditors. Also, unlike Signal, WhatsApp doesn’t encrypt any metadata. The biggest source of WhatsApp user data for Facebook though are address books. When you grant WhatsApp permissions to access your contacts, that data is sent to Facebook servers unencrypted. That way, Facebook can see the names and phone numbers of all of your contacts. This is not just bad for you, it’s also bad for everyone whose phone number you saved in your address book, their data is sent to Facebook, even if they don’t use any Facebook services themselves. Also, when you have WhatsApp or any app installed on your phone, it by default has access to many things that you can’t control or restrict. For example, it can access some unique device identifiers and look at stuff like the list of apps you have installed on your phone or access sensors like the gyroscope and accelerometer which can absolutely be used to track you. It’s better to keep shady apps like those made by Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft or other surveillance corporations off your devices. Use FOSS alternatives with a proven track record like Signal if they are available.
You don’t have to use the Play Store. You can either compile Signal yourself or use a trustworthy 3rd party build of Signal. Personally, I use Molly. It’s Signal for Android but with some neat tweaks. It’s not even available on the Play Store, it’s exclusive to F-Droid and Accrescent. You can’t do any of this with proprietary garbage like WhatsApp. Neither can you modify it to add features, nor can you look at the source code or compile it yourself.
Facebook has your address book, so they have the phone numbers and names of all of your friends, work colleagues, family members and other people you happen to know. They can see your entire social graph. This kind of metadata is extremely valuable. If you just have the phone number of someone in your phone book who at some point becomes a terrorist, you are now also under full investigation. I don’t know about you, I find this scary and dystopian, but unfortunately it’s real. If someone you know does something that’s wrong, you are now also a suspected criminal. Metadata is sometimes even more valuable than the actual data itself. To quote the former NSA director Michael Hayden: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”. Especially since the Snowden leaks we know that we should protect ourselves from corporate/government overreach and surveillance and the best way to do this is avoiding proprietary software. FOSS is superior in any way: It’s built by voluntary individuals who just want to help out other people and try to make the world a better place, it’s transparent to the user and can be verified, you have the freedom to do with it whatever you want. We really shouldn’t be supporting multi-billion dollar corporations lead by weirdos. Did you know that Mark Zuckerberg bought all the land around his house, so that none of his neighbors can see what he is doing for privacy reasons, while he probably caused the biggest invasion of privacy in the last decade? We shouldn’t be supporting such people. We really shouldn’t.
I knew devices were getting blocked, but not to this extent. Or the fact that mexico’s own government/regulatory bodies condemned the blocking itself....
I agree, an Android Auto alternative would be nice. I mostly use public transit, but when I occasionally have to drive, it’s what I miss the most about the iPhone and its CarPlay capability.
Hey! I’m currently on Fedora Workstation and I’m getting bored. Nothing in particular. I’ve heard about immutable distros and I’m thinking about Fedora Kinoite. The idea is interesting but idk if it’s worth it. CPU and GPU are AMD. Mostly used for gaming.
I tried Fedora Silverblue as well as uBlue Linux and it was pretty ok. My favorite though is NixOS. I look forward to trying out blendOS and VanillaOS.
Oh, I completely forgot about Guix. I definitely want to try it out at some point, but for some reason I feel like it will be more complicated than Nix and it will lack features.
It’s similar to Nix in the sense that it’s declarative and can entirely configured in a single config file, but I think the Nix implementation of this concept might be better. Have to try out Guix though.
I need extremely small tiling windows, say something with only a width/height of 10px. However, by experimentation I found that my window manager Sway (and likely also i3) has a hard-coded minimum height of 60px and minimum width of 100px....
I hope this will enable us to have an easy to setup smart home system that runs completely locally, powered by Home Assistant. I’m tired of all this cheap chinese IoT garbage that connects to the cloud and sends all of your data to the CCP.
I already use ZigBee devices along with some Z-Wave stuff, but it was kind of a pain to set it all up with Home Assistant. To be fair, my setup is also quite complicated, but there are definitely some steps in the configuration process that could be easier.
The massive Chinese social media network Sina Weibo informed its platform’s most popular users last week that they must display their real identities, including names, gender, IP locations, as well as professional and educational background, on their account page starting at the end of October....
they enabled DNS over Oblivious HTTP (no idea what that means but you probably do)
It’s basically the standard DNS-over-HTTPS functionality that is already present in almost every browser but routed over a special proxy server. Unfortunately though, Firefox uses Cloudflare services for this.
For me, I’d rather have cookies.
I also have LibreWolf configured to store cookies. It blocks 3rd-party cookies though.
Thanks, just realized that this is not !privacy and people here are probably not aware of threat modeling. But in this context just the word ‘thread’ might actually fit better as the threat model pretty much stays the same.
It doesn’t make you anonymous. Torrent protocol wasn’t designed with anonymity in mind and there are a million ways you’re going to leak your actual IP address....
I’d err on the side of caution. I always use a VPN for privacy reasons, my ISP doesn’t need to know what websites I’m visiting and which P2P protocols I use. Also, there’s no need to expose my approximate geographical location to every service I connect to.
If you plan to get a new phone, get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS on it. By default, it doesn’t have any Google spyware services. It also has substantial security improvements compared to normal Android. It’s probably the most private and secure mobile operating system that currently exists.
Open sourcing the app
@kuro_neko have you ever thought about making the app open source? I’ve used Connect for a little bit and I really like it, it would be really cool if the app was open source. You practically don’t have anything to loose, as you don’t sell the app or insert ads and trackers. Lemmy is an open-source plattform, and many (if...
Microsoft now thirstily injects a poll when you download Google Chrome (www.theverge.com)
😬
Which distro do you believe deserves more recognition?
For me it’s PeppermintOS....
What are some companies that deserve to be boycotted to death?
So far my list includes Comcast, EA, and Nestle. Tell me yours, and I’ll help out.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake (www.theverge.com)
Nadella, Gates, and Ballmer have all admitted to Microsoft’s mobile mistakes.
Do any of you pay for carbon offsets?
Of course, it’s better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I’d like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible....
Funtastic 😅 (endlesstalk.org)
Mull Vs Firefox
I installed the mull browser revently. People who are familiar with this will know that it’s a fork of firefox android. It’s hardened but I haven’t noticed much difference b/w the two. Mull has a few visible tweaks like Https mode by default, strict protection etc. but I haven’t come across other backend/not so visible...
Meta is promoting Threads posts on Facebook and there’s no way to opt out (www.engadget.com)
Meta is starting to ramp up its growth-hacking tactics for Threads in a bid to boost engagement on the Twitter competitor.
I see what they were going for when redesigning the settings app (sh.itjust.works)
Is WhatsApp bad for privacy?
And if so, why exactly? It says it’s end-to-end encrypted. The metadata isn’t. But what is metadata and is it bad that it’s not? Are there any other problematic things?...
Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage until Mexican government stepped in (youtu.be)
I knew devices were getting blocked, but not to this extent. Or the fact that mexico’s own government/regulatory bodies condemned the blocking itself....
Opinions on immutable distros
Hey! I’m currently on Fedora Workstation and I’m getting bored. Nothing in particular. I’ve heard about immutable distros and I’m thinking about Fedora Kinoite. The idea is interesting but idk if it’s worth it. CPU and GPU are AMD. Mostly used for gaming.
[Solved] Window manager with no (or very small) minimum window size?
I need extremely small tiling windows, say something with only a width/height of 10px. However, by experimentation I found that my window manager Sway (and likely also i3) has a hard-coded minimum height of 60px and minimum width of 100px....
Matter 1.2 is a big move for the smart home standard (www.theverge.com)
New policy requires Chinese influencers to display their personal information on Weibo (globalvoices.org)
The massive Chinese social media network Sina Weibo informed its platform’s most popular users last week that they must display their real identities, including names, gender, IP locations, as well as professional and educational background, on their account page starting at the end of October....
Brave browser quietly slips a VPN service onto your Windows PC (www.androidcentral.com)
PSA: Don't torrent over TOR (tor.stackexchange.com)
It doesn’t make you anonymous. Torrent protocol wasn’t designed with anonymity in mind and there are a million ways you’re going to leak your actual IP address....
whats the best FOSS IDE (and why?)
graphenos
Hey...
What alternate Youtube frontends are there? And which ones do you recommend?
I’ve heard of piped due to the piped-link bot, but I am curious about others.