It’s for the protection of our users anon… trust us, we’re just some random company from China, installing proprietary software (anti-cheat) that actively scans your computer to protect you from those darn cheaters. Nothing to worry about, unless you have something to hide? Of course you don’t though, so let us just have that Ring 0 and protect you from those darn cheaters.
If people need to communicate with you specifically (landlord, potential employer, etc.) then have Protonmail account for that.
What exactly would this even accomplish? This would require those individuals to have Protonmail setup or use PGP.
Edit: If you’re going to down-vote, can you at least explain why? I was asking a question. If you feel my statement was wrong, please correct me instead of just down-voting me and not stating anything.
However, you’re going to need more than just “Facebook bad” to get people to use something else. The bulk of the population just doesn’t run the same calculus in regards to privacy vs convenience.
I understand the argument here, but again, this is more than just a privacy concern. Economically this gate-keeping approach is bad for the used market, not to mention I’d personally consider it monopolistic, and Facebook should be held accountable for stuff like this, especially after being able to get away with calling themselves not a monopoly in anti-trust cases. This isn’t even just a privacy, Facebook bad issue, it’s an issue of centralization and monopolistic gate-keeping that can hurt the economy and the used market.
Despite that, privacy is most definitely an issue here, and the issue is it is starting to come down to the point where you lack any choice. As I’ve stated, this goes in hand with the gate-keeping and locking users into Facebook. If you wish to buy something from someone, or contact them, for something they posted over Facebook Marketplace, you are required to make an account to even discuss with them. If this user did not decide to post to other platforms (Craigslist as an example) and only onto Facebook, this means users aren’t likely to find the post unless they are part of the Facebook ecosystem, and even if they did find it, they have to “join” the Facebook ecosystem just to even discuss it, never-mind purchase it. This means handing over personal information directly to Facebook, all the way down to your location and possibly meeting location if you decide to buy it. This is absurd.
Now there is an argument against this, you do technically still have a choice, you do not have to buy that item. If you did not buy an item off Facebook Marketplace, you do not have to hand over your information (never-minding the issue of if you visit the site, information can be gathered by them still), but this goes back to the bigger issue of destroying the used market. It can at anytime, end up a place where individuals do not even have access to be able to access Facebook, therefore creating an elitist situation of used goods. Ontop of this, it could cause prices to fluctuate heavily, or even inflate. There are many things that could go wrong, and many things that are already wrong with Facebook Marketplace, never-mind Facebook themselves which we have years of evidence based issues. Again, I never said people cannot use Facebook Marketplace, all I am stating is there are inherent issues here that people should be looking at that I rarely see discussed, and it was on my mind so I decided to rant a little.
I do think as I’ve stated, there are solutions that could help negate these issues. One being a libre platform alternative marketplace, this could maybe be integrated as a Fediverse platform where people could host instances as if they were their own online shops. This would kind of be like having a seller page on Ebay or Amazon, yet significantly more powerful. This could also be extended to eventually providing online services if users wished, offering shipping and what not. This could become a libre, Federated, ebay platform in time if users felt it should. You of course could always have the local used market right alongside it. In the time of constant issues, not being able to shop without encountering tons of third part dependencies just to browse, I think this could be a great idea. Of course this would require someone to create the platform, and this is only an idea that I wanted to throw out in the wild. But I’m sure there are a lot of users interested in the libre/FOSS community who would hop on a platform like this, and sell their merch. This could eventually increase to open source companies as it gains traction, and eventually big businesses and normies if interested. Of course, saying something like this sounds great on paper, executing it is the issue which involves time, effort, and hope that people will actually use it. Again, only an idea.
In the end I think a very easy start, would be if you talk to anyone about Facebook Marketplace, to just suggest they also throw up their post on another site. Something as easily as, not everyone has Facebook accounts, so people are more likely to find your post to buy it, would be a great excuse without even needing to mention economical issues, centralization, or privacy concerns.
I’m not against keeping archive.is as an option, but I do think we need a better option for archival. IPFS may be a step in the right direction, although I have little knowledge with it.
I mean, I think that’s too far. RMS’s personality is no doubt pretty controversial, but that does not invalidate all the outstanding things he has done for us, and I’d argue that we most likely would not be where we are today without him. I do however, think we need more people speaking out about these issues, and also trying to make change. Once we get people convincing politicians, and famous people to start using properly privacy respecting, FOSS apps, I think the future of tech will start to mature a bit. Right now, it’s looking kinda sketchy.
Just as an example, Ted Cruz switched over to Parler last I heard, they offer no real benefits over other social media (and wouldn’t surprise me at all if they payed him), all on a promise that they will not censor you. If he had switched to a Fediverse platform instead, and payed someone a few bucks and ran his own instance, he’d be in complete control over everything he says. I feel strongly that politicians should not be using centralized, un-federated, private, social media such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and that instead they should be running their own instances on platforms such as Pleroma, Pixelfed, Mastodon, PeerTube, etc. where they are in complete control over their posts and uploads.
Especially after Twitter censoring Donald Trump’s posts now, this is absurd. He is wasting time “regulating” social media, where instead he has all the tools to move to another platform. I do think partly it is ignorance, on-top of not being knowledgeable in the subject, as well as not even knowing the Fediverse exists. But if Trump moved to the Fediverse, payed someone to set up an instance for him and whoever else, and a sysop to maintain it, think about the absurd amount of outstanding traffic and press that would bring to the Fediverse, that is exactly what it needs. And you can argue, oh well the Fediverse is small, and cozy and bringing politics and thousands of people into it will ruin it… I disagree. If we are talking about an un-federeated, centralized platform, I’d agree. You can just start up your own instance, and block the instances you do not wish to see. You have the power of choice. We need people to start encouraging big names to proper alternative platforms, instead of meme platforms such as Parler, or removedute that do not provide any benefits in privacy, censorship protection, or freedom, and if anything are just as bad or worse as the current platforms.
Netguard with HOSTS
I was under the impression you cannot edit the hosts file without root? How do you do this?
Debloat Script
Also obviously a backup is recommended, but didn’t really want to fresh install, I should be fine to run the debloat script without fresh installing correct? Also will this break apps like Signal that check for Google Services and if it doesn’t find it doesn’t rely on them? I had an issue with Signal not sending notifications because of this (Blocking off Google Services with Netguard). I know on systems where Google Services are removed it works fine because it doesn’t detect them, but the debloat script looks like it just disables them correct? So I assume I may run into issues with Signal notifications? I don’t know why Signal can’t just allow us to choose.
Lemmy: I am sooo lightweight bro.
Lemmy-lite: Hold my beer…
Once it’s on fdroid I’ll download
Came here to ask about this, but yeah same.
Oat milk is my favorite. I enjoy Oatly Full Fat the most.
I grew up drinking rice milk, which was good in cereal, but on it’s own tasted a bit watered down. Texture wise, it’s a lot thinner than oat milk. Rice milk was still good, but just drinking it plain was only alright, oat milk is so much better all around. I haven’t had coconut milk, but I’m not a huge coconut fan so I have no intentions of trying it. I can’t drink almond milks, or other tree nut milks., heard they were good though. I have had soy milk, and it is alright, but I still find oat milk the best.
Also this may be better suited on /c/vegan, Edit: Oh, I just realized you cross-posted.
Google themselves are part of the reason why the internet is bloated and shit in it’s current state. Google Fonts, Google APIs, Google ReCaptcha, Google Analytics, AMP, etc…
Ontop of this, it’s not enitrely Google’s fault, but also the site owners faults for choosing to use their services. I mean seriously, do we really need Google for something as basic as fonts …? It’s just lazy, incompetent web design. Not saying Google is getting off clean here, because they are so not, but it is also up to the site owners to take a stance, as well as the people visiting those sites to constantly be complaining or just choose not to visit them. Of course this gets difficult with sites you actually need to visit, or if you basically want to do any sort of online shopping.
Unless you need to talk to others using Signal, you’re better off using a different service. Something decentralized and doesn’t require unique identification, because these are beneficial from a anonymity stance.
Signal provides no real benefits, from an anonymity POV, I personally use Signal because it supports SMS/MMS protocols, and I can easily get family onto Signal. I trust Signal from a security/cryptography stance, and I am again ok with handing over my phone number (even though I’d prefer not to) because anybody I’m talking to on Signal does already have my phone number anyways. If they removed SMS/MMS I might dip because again, I only use it for IRL people, and because I don’t need two different apps for SMS/MMS and actual E2EE chat just to talk to my family and IRL friends who are too stubborn to download Signal.
Despite this, Signal security/cryptography wise is supposedly one of the best as of right now, I can provide my sources if you wish I am just busy this week.
In some places you can get a prepaid sim card without needing to provide KYC so you can have a number not linked to you technically, I also believe you can import sims from these countries that don’t use KYC, and get them to work but for the most part the number registration is the killing piece from a privacy/anonymity stance as most places do require KYC identification and not everyone is going to import a prepaid sim from across the world.
Now, even if they got rid of requiring a number (even though if they do, I still wouldn’t be surprised if they kept it for registration for “spam protection” or some other stupid reason), I still most likely wouldn’t use Signal for anything but IRL encounters, as it is still centralized. Again, from a security stance, sure, but from a privacy/anonymity stance not the best.
Self-hosting your Searx is also an option to think about.
From an anonymity and even privacy stance this most likely is not the best option, as the traffic woooould be coming only from you unless you have get good solid amount of people on the instance.
it makes sense to look whether the remote Searx server can be trusted and also see what their privacy policy shows.
This, and if you have heard of them and trust them for other stuff then it would make even more sense. You still of course have to take their word. Also the location of the server may be of benefit, I’d at the very least stay out of the 5 eyes. Snoopyta’s is great imo, I just wish it was a bit faster and more bulletproof tbh. Sometimes it slows down or on rare occasions just dies for a few minutes. I assume just general load from their servers.
Websites aren’t generally helpful with stuff like audio recognition as compared to an app. Generally when you want to do audio recognition it’s somewhere public, or on a radio or something where you want to click a button to just know what a song is.
And it doesn’t help that education systems are literally locking them into the idea that these things are good, or at least not of worry, due to partnering with stuff like Google for Classrooms, and Zoom, etc. Kids grow up using Apple machines, or even Windows, but don’t bat an eye to even considering teaching kids Linux. Especially because it’s literally free, it baffles me. I understand using Photoshop in certain cases for example as these are still prominent in professional fields unfortunately, and will give them knowledge to use them, but they don’t even consider alternatives, or even show that they exist.
I’m not talking about college here, but more specifically high school and under. These are massive development periods for life, where stuff they learn here sticks with them for the rest of their life, and when you start introducing kids to all these programs, not even discuss issues that may be present with privacy or even collaborative efforts (FOSS). I guarantee you if teachers maybe did small privacy related courses, kids would start to catch on and say “Well why are we using Google Classroom?” and etc, and start to question things. Kids are curious, I mean not everyone, but there will be a lot more kids who maybe start to consider things. Ontop of this, when kids start doing something, other kids follow. As long as they are being educated on these subjects properly that is the most important thing, and as of right now they’re not even being educated on these subjects at all.
It sickens me how normies and even very skilled and knowledgeable people in the tech community can just so actively not care and actively hand over their entire life and information. Yet when something happens that affects them directly, they all of a sudden care, for maybe a month then they just forget about it. Such a shame.
Pretty sure this has been “allowed”, which makes zero sense because it’s essentially the same thing. Maybe they whitelist Nvidia’s IP’s? Idk. Still, to actually use Geforce now is not ideal. One it requires Nvidia, and Nvidia and Linux together is a pass for me, ontop of this ithere are privacy concerns to be had here with needing an account etc. Ontop of this, even if FOSS was a priority to you, personally I wouldn’t run a game with anti-cheat on my primary Linux machine, but I would be okay with hard drive swapping into a Linux machine that still ran all pretty much all FOSS software, but also had games on it. I’d take it anyday over needing Windows to play it. Especially because now most games work natively on Linux, it’s fucking stupid that we need to dual-boot or drive swap or have a dedicated machine specifically for one game if the user wants to play it.