The metadata in the headers can be avoided using Memoryhole and similar protocols which embed the headers inside the encrypted payload. The problem is again barrier to entry. Low-tech users generally can’t even handle app installs on desktops.

When you say “worry”, that’s not the right word for it. My boycott against Google is not fear-driven. I will not feed Google anything it can profit from as an ethical stance. Even if an expert linux tor user were on Google, I’m not sure we could exchange email in a way that ensures Google gets no profitable data. If we use PGP coupled with Memoryhole to strip out the headers, I’m not sure Google would accept a msg with a missing or bogus From: header. But if so, Google still possibly learns the user’s timezone. Though that may be useless if Google learns nothing else about that user. But we’re talking obscure corner cases at this point. Such an expert user would have no Google dependency anyway.

MS/google-dependent friends are generally extremely low-tech. They don’t know the difference between Firefox and the Internet. They don’t know the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet. Linux – what’s linux? They would say. At best, they just think of it as a mysterious nerd tool to be avoided. So what can I do wholly on my end to reach them via gmail without Google getting a shred of profitable data? Nothing really. So I just don’t connect directly with a large segment of friends and family. Some of them are probably no longer reachable. Some are in touch with people who connect to me via XMPP, so sometimes info/msgs get proxied through the few XMPP users. It’s still a shitshow because Google still gets fed through that proxied inner circle of friends and family. In the past when someone needed to reach me directly, they would create a Hushmail or Protonmail mail account for that temporary purpose (like coordinating a trip somewhere). But that option is mostly dead.

I just had to reach out to plumbers for quotes. All of them are gmail-served. All I could do is refuse to share my email address and push them to use analog mechanisms. They are not hungry enough for business to alter their online workflow or create protonmail accounts.

That’s exactly what I did with hushmail. I would tell low-tech folks to get a hushmail account then I would use hushtools.com to do all the key management, putting my key on the keyring and grabbing their key. So the other person did not need to know anything or take any special steps. That was best option of my time. But last time I checked hushmail was still entirely non-gratis.

Protonmail emerged when HM became non-gratis and messed with hushtools. But PM requires every one of their own users to do key management which creates a barrier to entry. I would have to walk a PM user through adding my key to my record in their address book and walk them through sending me their key. That effort is a show stopper for many. I might as well walk them through setting up a PGP-capable MUA. But then if they keep their gmail or MS acct the metadata still feeds those corps.

This simple answer is no doubt the most overlooked; probably as a consequence of the tyranny of convenience… people too lazy to go to the library.

I give out my XMPP address and offer Snikket accounts. Some go along with it and some do not. I lost touch with some friends. Some people are in contact via phone but that’s not ideal some connections are lost as phone numbers change.

I used to push some people toward Hushmail until they dropped the gratis plans. Then for a while I pressured people onto Protonmail but then distanced myself from PM when the brought in Google reCAPTCHAs and killed off Hydroxide. Tuta is a non-starter because Tuta’s variety of e2ee is incompatible with open standards, thus forcing me to periodically login to a web UI (also due to them sabotaging their Android app by way of forced obsolescence pushed in the most incompetent way).

So it’s a shitty state of affairs. 2024 and simply sending a msg to someone has become a total shitshow.

I refuse to fund my oppressors

Bingo. I live by this philosophy.

Although more precisely: I refuse to fund feed my oppressors. The reason for s/fund/feed/ swap is that our oppressors profit from our data too. So e.g. I won’t even email a gmail user because my data would then feed Google (an oppressor because of how they dictate e-mail terms among other oppressions).

The others are right. Trying to stream from a torrent seems wasteful and complex.

But if you must for some strange reason, perhaps it would work to use webtor.io to produce an http-reachable audio file which could be curl/wget-fetched and piped to an audio decoder/player. I doubt you could make webtor fetch pieces linearly from the beginning. You would likely have to wait until the last piece is fetched to start streaming.

I’ve not fetched subtitles in a while but back when I did, I recall all the websites hosting them were extremely protectionist… more so than any other category of content on the web.

Of course the fix is to have torrents for the subtitle collections, perhaps by language.

It basically is saying that if you have more money then you have more “votes”.

That’s simply true. It doesn’t do anyone any good to disregard the facts.

Or to put it in another way: If you have more money you matter more.

That abstraction doesn’t help much. And first of all, it’s more accurate to derive the statement “If you have more money then you have more influence”.

It’s still a shitty status quo, but it is what it is. The worse thing you can do is tell people not to boycott shit products on the basis of rejecting reality. It’d be like telling people not to vote in elections because their vote is a drop in the ocean.

Some people vote for democrats, then they cancel their own vote by getting their internet service from Spectrum, buying fuel from Chevron for their car, shipping their packages using FedEx, getting their phone service from AT&T, banking at PNC Bank, flying on Boeing planes, shopping on Amazon, doing their web searches on a Microsoft syndicate’s site (e.g. DDG), buying Sony devices… etc. They either have no clue that most of their voting is actually for the republicans, or they think that drop-in-the-ocean vote that comes once in 4 years somehow carries more weight than the daily votes they cast with reckless disregard.

Greg Abbott’s war chest is mostly fed by oil companies. If you buy fuel for a car, you help Greg Abbott and other republicans. And if you buy from Chevron, you give the greatest support to republicans (Chevron is an ALEC member).

You might let her know that she can borrow DVDs from the public library at no cost. Another little-known gratis option is freesat and terrestrial broadcast. I recently started using MythTV as a PVR to record broadcast TV and was pleasantly surprised to find no commercial interruptions (but if there are commercials in her region, MythTV can cut them out).

I didn’t see the OP’s pic but these groups generally work against enshitification of the world:

• !asshole_crappy_design@slrpnk.net
• !activist_investing@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
• !escapebigtech@lemmy.escapebigtech.info
• !cyber_activism@sopuli.xyz
• !netneutrality@sopuli.xyz
• !right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz
• !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
• !anticonsumption@sopuli.xyz
• !fightforprivacy@feddit.ch
• !offgrid@slrpnk.net
• !foss@beehaw.net
• !privacy@links.hackliberty.org
• !climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net

Notice that none of those communities are on Cloudflared instances (thus also avoid propagating the enshitified portion of the fedi).

Ending capitalism is not the /only/ way. Within a capitalistic system, you can boycott shit. Most consumers are pushovers but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m boycotting hundreds of shitty companies. Off the top of my head:

• Amazon
• Cloudflare
• Microsoft
• Facebook
• Google
• Apple
• (surveillance advertisers in general)
• (all closed-source s/w)
• HP
• Proctor & Gamble
• Unilever
• all ALEC members (American Express, Anheuser Busch, Boeing, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Chevron, FedEx, Motorola, PNC bank, Sony, TimeWarner)
• many shitty banks
• Paypal
• AT&T
• GMA members (Coke, Pepsi, Kraft - Heinz, Kellogg’s, General Mills, McCormick, Hormel, Smucker)
• BetterThanCashAlliance.org members (visa, mastercard, unilever) – war on cash
• Bayar-Monsanto
• Dupont
• Hershey
• Nestlé
• Exxon/Mobil
• Comcast
• Koch
• Home Depot
• Lowes
• …etc

Those are all shitty companies that significantly worsen the world. Giving money or data to any of them contributes to enshitification of the world.

Of course it’s an option to stop supporting assholes. Become ethical. Be the change you want to see.

I appreciate the tip. The shank was ½ a bicycle axle bolt with non-standard threading. I could not have switched to a standard bolt because the nuts that interface to ball bearings needed to be on the bolt.

Good to hear your anchors held up over 10 years. Someone else just mentioned they’ve not bee so lucky: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/5372639 I suppose it’s important that they be used in a dry climate.

That’s good to know. I would hope a metal anchor to reshape when temp causes expansion. It’s a shame to hear it’s the brick that’s forced to expand. In my case it’s a solid metal rod, so it sounds like the metal is guaranteed to split the brick in a temp change.

It sounds like I have to pull out the shank, bore the hole to 10mm, and either use chemical anchor or fasten it using a sheet metal w/2 nuts.

Is this a friction anchor?

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/f504ebc8-a015-4b7a-907d-85eabdfc260a.webp

I just learned these exist from the other thread. Though I doubt it would have helped in my case. At this point I’ll just have to check it over the seasons and see if temp changes have caused any issues.

I was mainly asking for future reference whether I should repeat what I did or not. I suppose it’s rare that a smooth rod needs to be installed on brick.

EDIT: looks like the link died due to the comment containing that image being deleted. Sorry about that.

Both… functional art.

The original problem is that there was a water shut-off valve for the whole floor in the shower. Very ugly to have a valve in the corner on the floor and somewhat in the path of the water if someone were to point the showerhead slightly outside the pan. The valve handle was rusting. It was embedded in a solid block of concrete with the handle sticking out. The valve started to fail (did not completely shut off the water). And it was the kind of valve where the whole valve needed to be replaced. Terrible work by the builders. I had to demolish the concrete to reach the valve.

So I replaced the valve with the kind of valve that has a replaceable cartridge. But I also refused to embed it in concrete again. I will build a removable sealed box around it. But the box could not be both waterproof and also easily removable on the fly whenever the valve needs to be accessed. So I put a hole in the wall (shower to bedroom). Then I attached a 90° gearbox drill accessory and a shaft to that goes through the wall. On the bedroom side, I could have just put a handle. But I found a wood helm to a ship (miniaturized). I thought that would be the perfect steampunkish valve handle. But it did not clear the wall (in a corner). So i got carried away and put a bicycle sprocket on the shaft, and mounted the helm to another sprocket, which i attached to the wall higher up. And wrapped a chain between them.

I could not pull it out with my hands after tapping it in. But to be clear, there’s only a sheer force to deal with, and it’s light.

I cut a bicycle axle bolt in half, and embedded it in the brick so there is a bicycle sprocket on the wall. Then a chain wraps another sprocket, which turns a shaft that goes all the way though the wall to the other side, where it connects to a right-angle gearbox, which attaches to a water valve. It’s lightweight overall… just the weight of a sprocket, chain, and a small decorative wood thing out of wood to serve as a handle.

This might come a bit too late but why didn’t you just get threaded rod and use one of these instead?

I did not know anchors like that existed for machine bolts. That’s good to know! However, it would not have helped in this situation. The bicycle axle has non-standard threading (~9mm bolt with a thread pitch that’s 2 steps away from the norm). Since it had a special nut that interfaced to ball bearings, I could not bring in a standard bolt or threaded rod. And the threaded portion of the axle was short enough that no threads could have gone into the wall. I could have added threads to the bare portion, but my die set skips the ø=9mm size.

I was asking more for future reference – whether or not I should ever repeat this. And I think you answered that. Even if I get lucky in the future on getting a perfect fit at that moment, temp changes could blow it. I guess I’ll assume anchors (chemical and mechanical) are designed to handle the temp changes.

Old red brick, which is solid. It’s light duty, and unusual. I cut a bicycle axle bolt in half, and embedded it in the brick so there is a bicycle sprocket on the wall. Then a chain runs to another sprocket, which turns a shaft that goes all the way though the wall to the other side, where it connects to a right-angle gearbox, which attaches to a water valve. But it’s lightweight overall… just the weight of a sprocket, chain, and a small decorative wood thing out of wood to serve as a handle. I suppose you’re sorry you asked at this point.

product 1:

• maintenance: 2 caps/week (a cap is big, looks like ~100ml if i eyeball it)
• clog clearing: 500ml (½ bottle)

product 2:

• maintenance: 25ml/2 weeks
• clog clearing: 300ml (⅓ bottle)

product 3:

• maintenance: 25ml/week
• clog clearing: not mentioned for this purpose

Going from memory I rotated between the products and I think I poured in about ⅓ of the clog clearing doses on the first two every few days… because I was a cheap bastard and just wanted to constantly have the enzymes in there. But yeah, probably a mistake. I think I tried a 300ml dose of product 2 just once. But I probably should have tried a full dose more often.

Right, but these were specifically for cleaning drains. One of them was kitchen drain specific, and the other two were for drains in general. But indeed it’s possible that the clog was not even organic… perhaps calcium deposits from hard water.

I wonder if pouring a whole bottle of enzymes would have worked. When pouring just 50—100ml or so, it would spread out on the bottom of the pipe and only touch the bottom part of the clog. But if a whole liter rushes through at once then it would cover the whole clog. But it’d be a pricey test.

I documented a drain horror story here, the fiasco of which involved 3 different enzyme-based drain cleaners. They seem to have a dual purpose: use a small amount every 1 or 2 weeks as a maintenance task, or pour down a large amount to work on a clog. I had a very slow drain and the enzymes made no apparent difference. But I know in general enzyme cleaners are quite good. It’s amazing how well they work on the oven. I had a general purpose enzyme based cleaner that worked great for things like food spills that dried on a wall.