Crypto is doing kind-of ok. But what about other blockchain apps and startups, or blockchain integrations into every tech imaginable? There were so many popping up, just like there are with AI now. Business models and use-cases that are based solely on the hype of the tech in question, without any consideration about whether it’s actually a good fit for the tech. That is the point, and what it has common with AI and other “buzzwords”.

I’m not sure about other countries, but here in Czech we actually have a mandatory subscription, that’s absolutely bullshit.

So far, the law is that if you own any TV or radio, you have to pay monthly fee for public service broadcasters (national Czech TV). It’s bullshit, the channels are full of ads anyway, and the shows they run and create is insultingly bad. Sure, it is important to have public service broadcasters that are not dependent on the state (because state-owned TV is reeaallly bad idea), but FFS can they just reduce costs and stick to news, instead of doing another stupid series, and stop forcing us to pay for something I don’t care about or use?

You could just not pay the fee, if you state you don’t have a TV capable of receiving it (which I don’t). But now, they are changing the law that everyone who has any kind of internet-capable device has to pay the monthly fee, while also rising prices to something like 6 EUR per month. Fuck that and fuck them.

I self-hosted it few months ago, and it’s actually surprisingly easy! Someone has made an Ansible script for Matrix with Element and some bridges, that (at least a month ago, IaaC tends to be pretty fragile) worked out of the box on a first try. I just set up some config values (mostly about enabling bridges I want) based on their amazing documentation, and then ran it once and everything is working so far. I even updated it several times already, and every time it was smooth, and it was basically just running a single ansible command. Their documentation is pretty well written, and with my basic cloud, IT and Linux knowledge I had no issues with following it. All you need to know is how to set up cloud VM, get a domain and set DNS, and set up SSH keys to access the server.

In total it took me about two hours in total, from when I decided “I’m setting up Matrix tonight” without any prior knowledge, looking up my options and finding the ansible script, setting up cloud and getting Matrix up and running.

I’m renting a VM on Hetzner for like 6$ per month, and it worked without issues so far. I use it for Discord and Messenger, although the Meta bridge does have some problems, for example I didn’t figure out how to message someone with whom I haven’t had a conversation since I set up the bridge, since only then it creates the room for it. But that can be solved by keeping the Messenger app or usign the browser to send a first message, and it immediately shows in your Matrix bridge (and stays there forever).

Looks like I’ll finally get a reason to cut off another website I hate using, but never found the willpower to get rid off.

Good

Ever since I played watchdogs and shadowrun, I wanted to work in cybersecurity, especially as a Red Teamer, which is literally Shadowrun - you run complex ops that have to break in, and steal stuff from largre banks without anyone but the management knowing about the test, with almost nothing being off-limits, as long as it doesn’t cause some kind of damage.

Five years later, I do work as a Red Team Lead. Hpwever, our company was just scrambling to start doing RT since thats the buzzword now, and while we did have amazing pentesters, unfortunately pentesting and Red Teaming requires vastly different skills. Ypu never need to avoid EDRs, write malware with obscure low-level winapi, or even know what kind of IoC ajd detections will a command you run create, when you are doing a pentest.

But since no one knew better, and I love learning and researching new stuff, while also having Red Teaming romabticized, my interrest in it eventually led to me getting a Lead position for the barely scrambling team.

Mind you, I was barely out of being a junipr, with only three years of part time pentesting experience. It was NOT a good idea.

I quickly found out that RT is waaay harder and requires the best of the best from cybersec and maleare development. We didnt have that. Also, turns out that I love to learn now stuff and take on a challenge, but being a Lead also means you are drowning in paperwork and discussions with client, while also everyone from the team doesn’t know what to do and turns to me about what should we do. Which I didn’t know, and barely managed to keep learning it on my own. Our conpany didnt want to give us much time for learning outside of delivery, I was only working parttime, and I was slowly realizing that we don’t have almost any of the skills we need.

We were doing kind of a good job, most of our engagement turned out pretty well, but it was atrocious.

Turns out, I’m not good at managing and planning projects, or leading people. I’m better just as a line member.

This is actually a great question, in the context of the Fediverse.

Usually, every social network or forum has in their ELUA that anything you post is theirs, and you can’t do anything about i.e Reddit using your data to train AIs.

Hlwever, here, we’re on private instances of regular people. We can make our own rules, can’t we? If an instance would say that anything you post is copyrighted by the author, i.e by CC, would it be enforcable if someone would decide to scrape (or repost) the content for profit?

I suppose it’s written in a way to sound way worse and alarming than it actually is, due to the upcoming elections. It sounds almost unreal, i mean “EU secret plan to ban any kind of encryption or privacy” can’t be reallistically happening, right?

I know about Chatcontrol, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but this article sounds pretty overblown, to the point of sounding more like a wild conspiracy theory. Does anyone have more resources or info about this, that don’t read like an election ad?

I’m not trying to dismiss or disrespect the author, and I trust that it was written with best intentions, but it’s a really worrying topic about which I’d like to get more information about.

However, thanks for bringing it up, I contacted our local Pirate party about the topic, because they don’t have anything related to crime prevention vs. privacy in their programe. I suppose that I know what the answer would be, but getting a confirmation before I vote for them would definitely be nice.

It helps a lot. Because then, a Linux support won’t be such an afterthought, and you wouldn’t have to deal with stuff like popular games adding anti-cheat that bans Linux users.

Right now, some game developers aren’t even willing to enable EAC Linux support, which is like a one checkbox they need to enable for it to work.

you need to do it not only for every Discord server you want to use on matrix, but every channel as well. It’s a huge chore. And ofc it doesn’t work with Discord DMs.

This wasn’t my experience at all - all I had to do was message the Matrix bot with servers I want to join (I’m not a mod on any of them), and it bridged all channels in that server. Also, Discord DMs are working fine.

I’m using the mautrix bridge, which doesn’t use a bot or anything like that, but uses your Discord session instead.

If you don’t use Discord for voice much, Matrix has a pretty solid bridges you can use.

Hosting your own Matrix server is suprisingly way easier than I though - got a VM on hertzner for like 5$ a month, and there is an Ansible script that takes care of the setup for you. It’s also one of those rare cases where someone made an Ansible script that actually works, instead of you getting stuck in dependency-hell (seriously, fuck npm. Not a single docker or ansible tool that has used it ever worked for me out of the box. Python can get simillarly annoying).

They have a pretty easy to follow guide, and the whole setup took me like 20 minutes. I only edited a few options in config.yml (mostly to add Messenger and Discord bridge), and ran the ansible, and it worked at first try.

So I could at least ditch both messenger and discord apps from my PC and phone, without having to convince anyone to quit their poison - with only issue being that you can’t use Discord voice. And that the messenger bridge is still unreliable sometimes, but those are still minor inconviniences in comparison to my deep-seated hate for Meta.

Of course - Meta still gets my chat data and content, same as Discord. But at least they don’t get anything else from my phone or PC.

Why, though? I have helpful answers in many threads, giving support about arcane issues people have been dealing with. I don’t want this content to be monetized further.

Same issue. I guess I’m never going back there. I’ve already stopped doing it, but from time to time a question I was researching let me to Reddit.

What’s the best tool to delete your account, while also overriding all of your posts and comments?

If I have more items with club price that would make a larger difference, I just quickly register a new one-use account with disposable email and random address in the app, and delete it afterwards

That’s seriously impressive. I wonder, what is your threat profile for all of these? It seems to me like some of the things you do have a drastic impact on user experience, while also not providing that much of a benefit unless you have some really sensitive data.

My own setup from the top of my head would be:

• Browser: Mullvad with Mullvad VPN, LibreWolf for stuff that breaks. Brave if I really have no other choice.
• Phone: Pixel with Graphene, main profile is Google-less, second profile with Sandboxed GServices for apps that don’t work without it but I need them, downloaded through fresh gmail profile. Third profile linked to my old gmail with credit card for the two apps I bought and sometimes need to use.
• Mail: I use Protonmail, with my own domain that sounds vaguely corporate. I have a catch-all address, and generate random name.surename@mycorpdomain.com addresses for each service.
• File storage: I have a NAS, that I use for most file sharing I need.
• Music: Jellyfin server with Headphones and redacted.ch account, and I also make sure to support artists every month by spending what would be my Spotify subscription price on Bandcamp albums
• Desktop: I run Nobara, too lazy to run QubesOS - plus I game a lot, so it would be infeasible. I mostly try to get stuff on GoG and back it up on my own NAS. I have a ZeroTier network set up for streaming through Sunshine/Moonlight when I need to game from a laptop.
• VPN: I use Mullvad paid for with Monero, because it plays nicely with the Mullvad Browser fingerprint.
• Home automation: I have a few basic stuff made for Home Assistant that is running on RockPI I have at home, everything local and without any cloud, mostly through ESP32s.
• Messaging: This is the one I hate the most - most of the groups I’m working with or volunteering for use Messenger, so I have a Matrix server hosted that bridges it and Discord. It’s not ideal, but better than having anything Meta on my phone.
• Payments: This one is the one I’m struggling with the most. I pay by card almost everywhere, because cash is so much effort. I’ve tried looking into crypto or prepaid cards, but it’s really hard to find anything without KYC in Europe, so I’ve given up. I’m looking for advice regarding this, but I’m afraid that aside from switching to cash I’m out of luck.
• Passwords: I just use Bitwarden with YubiKey setup, same as using YubiKey for every important MFA I can. I have two backup keys stored at home, so I don’t need to use other recovery methods that would render it useless.

Few recommendations from the top of my head, from skimming the post.

I’d recommend checking out QubesOS (https://www.qubes-os.org/), especially since it seems you switch between ToR and already use Silverblue, which is AFAIK similar, but why not go all the way in?

Also for VPN - I’ve switched Proton for Mullvad VPN, because I really like the idea they are going for - if you pair Mullvad browser, that is designed to have the same fingerprint for all users, with a VPN that’s from the same company, you can kind of expect that most of the Mullvad VPN users will also be users of Mullvad Browser. Which means you will not be one of the few Proton VPN users with Mullvad fingerprint, but will have the same fingerprint as most of other users of Mullvad VPN. This will make it harder to fingerprint you based on your browser. One word of warning, though - don’t install extensions to Mullvad. If you do, you break the “same fingerprint” premise, and the more extensions you install, the more identifiable you are. Mullvad should be used without any extensions.

Another thing I see is music streaming - I think that in general I’d recommend just getting a cheap laptop/NAS and run your own Jellyfin, and slowly start building your own music collection. You can also run Matrix server as a bonus, and bridge all your communication (including Signal, even though that may not help that much) - but it does help if you need to use some kind of service, i.e Messenger, for group or work related purposes.

My approach to music was to cancel my subscription, and then use the money I save to spend on albums on Bandcamp, so I still support the artists I want. I make sure to do that every month. Since there’s just wast amount of music to get, I use Headphones with an account on redacted.ch to fill my library, but I still make sure to buy albums I like even if I already have them downloaded. The added bonus is that you actually don’t loose any of your music, if the artist decides to pull it off the streaming service, which has aready happened to me several time.

If you want hosting your own LLM, take a look at https://refact.ai. But note that it’s not really cheap, I’ve recently upgraded my computer and decided to use my NVIDIA 1060 to run refact, and it still didn’t work well - 8Gb of GPU memory is borderline usable, and I couldn’t do the finetuning.

Why would anyone use stock OS on Pixel anyway? Graphene is so easy to install and so much better.

I don’t think surface would make for a good work laptop, but I have amazing experience so far with using it for the ocassional traveling, or just as a carry-on.

I just Parsec into my desktop at home, and can comfortably work without having to deal with performance, and Surface is amazing for that.

I also really like the pen support, so I can make notes or draw bascially anywhere.

And I also use it for DJing, where it works pretty well and is compact enough to not be a bother carrying it around.

Ooh, you are right, I can actually file bug reports or try to fix it myself now that I switched to FOSS from Windows. Tbh that didn’t really occur to me, since I was switching only like a month ago. I’ll look into it, so far I suspect that it’s actually covered by one of those troubleshooting cases mentioned in their FAQ, and I’m not really confident enough to start recompiling libraries with additional flags. Especially since I’m on Nobara and don’t want to break anything, AFAIK that OS is pretty customised from the start and figuring out what I can safely touch isn’t something I have the guts for yet.

I was using LibreWolf before, but I really like the idea of bundling VPN + Browser, and also the way they handle payments - not only is Mullvad VPN kind of cheap, I can just pay with crypto and don’t need any account (kind of - you just generate username that also serves as an password, without any other contact information required).

But what I like the most about it is the idea of making a browser with the goal of having the same fingerprint between users (as much as possible), and offering it with a VPN - becuase that means that most of other users of the VPN will probably also have the same fingerprint from the browser, so you will blend in with them. I wasn’t really sold on the idea of VPN before that and didn’t use one, but this was what convinced me.

But tbh I haven’t done much research into the company, or into the effectivness of their implementation. I’m kind of betting on their cooperation with Tor Browser, which should have most of this stuff already figured out. But it’s possible that other browsers are just better at it, I never checked.

I do however still use LibreWolf for the occasional site that breaks with Mullvad, but it’s not something that happens too often.

I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on “hints” regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.

Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anything about DNS. I think I’ve actually never click on the browser vpn extension, though :D Is it the encrypted DNS hint?

EDIT: Found this, apparently it’s doing pretty well https://privacytests.org/