EngineerGaming

EngineerGaming , 1 day ago

Still, a decentralized protocol, not a platform, would have a much easier time circumventing stupid laws like this, as well as censorship.

EngineerGaming , 5 days ago

As someone who has most of her socialization on IRC now... Eww, mIRC is proprietary and for Windows. Maybe it's just me having learned about IRC only a couple years ago and thus not having a sentimental attachment, but why use it if you have open-source ones like Hexchat, Irssi or Weechat?

EngineerGaming , 6 days ago

"And the government officials can sell this data to me. Relatively inexpensive too".

EngineerGaming , 7 days ago

Just strap them into a stroller tethered to the back of the EV.

EngineerGaming , 7 days ago

They need data collected by Windows themselves though.

EngineerGaming , 8 days ago

AND there have been news that RCS can be blocked for rooted phones and custom operating systems!

EngineerGaming , 7 days ago

If it is a public groupchat - why not?

EngineerGaming , 7 days ago

Not to mention an XMPP server is lighter than even Conduit, let alone Synapse!

EngineerGaming , 7 days ago

What about using a normal, non-Cloudflare VPS for this?

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

Because this is an excuse to KYC all users.

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

To be fair, this could be an argument. I don't have a car now, and when I do buy it - the usecase would be long road trips to where public transport is bad or carrying cargo to my vacation house. Only half of that would be easily doable with an EV's range. For city commutes, public transport is preferred, and trips to the vacation house without cargo could be made on electric trains faster.

EngineerGaming , 12 days ago

I don't think it would be enforceable for everyone hosting servers for themselves. I personally use XMPP, Matrix and recently Simplex.

EngineerGaming , 12 days ago

Probably won't even need anonymizers for this! Chances are concealing usage of your own server would not be that hard on the clearnet either.

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

Indeed. Protecting the metadata is already a completely different task from protecting the contents. But how would this law in particular change this aspect? It concerns message contents, surveillance of metadata stays the same (aka full). I was saying this about getting back access to encrypted messaging even with a low threat model.

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

IDK about houses, but this would be the case for people in apartment buildings. What should you do? Not even joke about "lowering a cord from your window" because it's not guaranteed that your street parking is near your windows!

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

I am uncomfortable with this as a permanent solution because new cars of today are old cars of tomorrow. Apparently at least in some vehicles, the telematics module is possible to remove with loss of some functionality - seen some videos and posts on that. I think we need an iFixit-like database comparing vehicles on that front - how easy is the unit to remove and what functions it affects. To be fair, the ones I've seen were on newer gas vehicles, so idk if EVs usually have that integrated tighter.

EngineerGaming , 10 days ago

I don't see them getting better either - so at least I, maybe because I am not educated enough, think the solution is also in learning to rip out the privacy invasions rather than waiting for regulation or privacy-conscious models.

EngineerGaming , 10 days ago

I mean the cell modem specifically. But yea, the touchscreens are also a problem.

EngineerGaming , 12 days ago

What about renting a VPS itself over Tor using Monero, and then letting the VPS do its work normally in the clear?

EngineerGaming , 11 days ago

kycnot.me lists a bunch of providers that accept XMR directly.

EngineerGaming , 13 days ago

If there is payment, better support crypto too, because this way you wouldn't force people to KYC themselves, as well as wouldn't exclude people from sanctioned regions.

EngineerGaming , 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago)

"Cryptobros" =/= "people using crypto", because this is a legitimate usecase. You can see it discussed on Lemmy too. This is how I can pay for my VPS while my card doesn't work. This is how I would pay for a service even if my card did work, but I didn't want to attach pretty much my real name to it. But yea, I agree that it might be complicated logistically. Have seen services where you can buy prepaid cards for crypto - at least that should work.

EngineerGaming , 14 days ago

Yea, it is clear if there is just one closed-source app. But if we're talking XMPP/Matrix - they have multiple open-source clients, even if some of them does introduce scanning, no way it wouldn't be forked to remove it.

EngineerGaming , 14 days ago

If I cared about the contents of email staying safe, would rather not depend on a provider and just use provider-independent PGP. If safety is more important than universality - then I'd use something outside of email in general, like XMPP+OMEMO or maybe Simplex.

EngineerGaming , 14 days ago

Where I live, a lot of popular services, including major foreign social media and torrents everyone uses, are blocked - yet they still have a massive userbase.

And since the scanning is supposed to be client-side, how would a server check if the scanning was really performed? What if the server does receive and log the needed responses, just to be safe, but the client actually just sends them automatically while lacking such functionality?

EngineerGaming , 15 days ago

Effectively not encrypted, requires a smartphone, can be anal about bans, etc.

EngineerGaming , 15 days ago

To be fair, pretty much all major XMPP clients have adopted OMEMO encryption, so doesn't seem like much of an issue.

EngineerGaming , 15 days ago

Signal is annoying to use if you don't have a smartphone you can trust, since they do not allow registration from desktop. So either an Android VM or Signal-cli. But maybe it was just a one-off bug that the desktop client didn't bind to signal-cli for me. Still, the fact that you need an unofficial command-line application just to register makes it not exactly user-friendly.

EngineerGaming , 15 days ago

I am suspicious of it because you pretty much cannot host a node. Well, you can - but you'd have to deposit an INSANE amount of money (like $2k or something). While Simplex, even though I do have a concern with its initial centralization by the power of default, is decidedly easy to selfhost.

EngineerGaming , 15 days ago

Did you have trouble setting up XFTP one? SMP was fine but XFTP seemed to have some error in the systemd settings provided in the manual.

EngineerGaming , 14 days ago

Yea, but a typical cellphone is not as easy to make private as a typical laptop or desktop. Lineage has some tradeoffs and not accessible on all devices, and Graphene needs even more specific, quite expensive hardware!

EngineerGaming , 14 days ago

I meant telemetry to Google and/or manufacturer. With grandma, I can at least install Linux on her laptop and say to message me there (that's pretty much what I did with mom).

EngineerGaming , 16 days ago

I still keep the pirated have DRMless copies of games I bought on Steam though - just for ownership.

EngineerGaming , 18 days ago

Plus, ideally, working with or storing sensitive data better be on a non-exposed machine.

EngineerGaming , 19 days ago

But you can listen to YouTube music for free too, no?

EngineerGaming , 19 days ago

Does Ublock Origin not work for it anymore? And for phones, there are alternative apps - I use InnerTune.

EngineerGaming , 18 days ago

I don't watch YT from phone much, but I find Newpipe for videos to be a better experience than browser (it is also much lighter). And similarly Innertune for music.

EngineerGaming , 19 days ago

The hardest part is finding a place to buy, especially without KYC. Once you do have Monero, it is VERY easy to use.

EngineerGaming , 21 days ago

There are degrees of trust though. You can trust the developers and people who audited the code if you have no skill/desire to audit it yourself, or you can trust just the developers.

And even closed systems' behavior can be monitored and analyzed.

EngineerGaming , 22 days ago

Even if this is illegal - how would such usage be detected? Your device just makes a request to a random domain on a random VPS, and the traffic is TLS-encrypted - would usage of XMPP/Matrix/whatever be that distinct?

EngineerGaming , 21 days ago

I much prefer physical books, and have quite a big library. But most of my textbooks would be either hard or outright impossible to get in paper, so they go onto my e-reader as DRMless pdf and djvu files.

As for movies and music - I don't see much appeal in physical, since there is no difference in experience between playing from a CD/DVD or from my drive. I still keep my DVDs from childhood, but no longer have any device that can play them (removed the CD drive from the old laptop a while ago). However, I would never rely on streaming like you mentioned either. Only local, DRMless collection. Streaming is just for discovery.

EngineerGaming , 22 days ago

Imagine being able to opt into an long term support branch when you feel your phone starting to lag

That's kind of what LineageOS does.

EngineerGaming , 22 days ago

I am very anxious even with normal maintenance - heating adhesive up is not something I am capable of now. So was looking at new last-gen Pixels instead, and 7a is $300 :( People I know who have it say it's good hardware, but that's still an insane sum to spend on a phone.

EngineerGaming , 24 days ago

Yea, my main issue is that because of the price, you're locked to phones that are either out or almost out of support, or secondhand. Even the last generation's cheapest model is $300! Though very tempted to try to save that anyway.

Plus they are not officially sold here, so always a bit of a gamble.

EngineerGaming , 24 days ago

I grew up when social media was already ubiquitous, in the 2010s. Still mostly video games, walks and studying.

EngineerGaming , 24 days ago

Yea, my main concern for now is that most people are using default servers. Good thing their servers are very easy to host, but still, power of the default. I would really like to see lists of public servers, like what we see now for XMPP and Matrix. The thing is still young, so looking forward.

EngineerGaming , 24 days ago

I self-host too, that wasn't the problem, it's that there is the power of the default. Just like with Matrix. You can ask a friend to use your server or another one and delete the main ones entirely, but chances are you won't be avoiding them in a random chatroom.

EngineerGaming , 24 days ago

First - it does still require one for registration, just no longer requires it to be public. Second - this still has nothing to do with the fact that desktop doesn't allow registration and tells you to register from a smartphone instead.