ExtremeDullard

ExtremeDullard , 14 hours ago

Privacy isn't a cutesy. It's absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, just like not doing stupid shit when you're a teenager, you get to find out how important privacy is years later when the stupid shit you did years before comes back to haunt you and it's too late.

The problem of course is that Big Data has made it exceedingly difficult and painful to maintain your privacy. Because of course the last thing they want is for you to have any. It hurts their bottom line.

Because of the corporate surveillance collective, in 2024, if you truly want to maintain your privacy, your life becomes significantly crappier than if you didn't bother. But that doesn't mean privacy isn't as important today as it's ever been.

ExtremeDullard , 1 day ago

Ain't you glad you gave Reddit content for free and they're reselling if for millions?

ExtremeDullard , 7 days ago

I think privacy and social media are inherently at odds

It doesn't have to be.

I've spent decades online on Usenet, IRC, Slashdot and elsewhere before modern social media, and today on (some) social media sites, and nobody knows who am I because I've always been super-careful to keep my online personae and my real identity totally separate. It takes a bit of paranoia, but it's possible to have an online footprint that's watertight and completely divorced from real-life.

I have many, many online identities and none of them tie back to the real me. But Big Tech sure is aggressively trying to deanonymize me, and it takes a lot more care and effort than it used to to make sure that they never do.

ExtremeDullard OP , 7 days ago

It's not just soda bottles here, it's milk bottles, cream, fruit concentrates... Anything in any kind of plastic container with a screw-on cap.

Actually the soda bottles are the least egregious examples. The milk bottles are terrible: you're 100% guaranteed to spill milk if you don't detach the cap.

ExtremeDullard OP , 12 days ago

The only problem with that theory is, they didn't even open my box. I know that because the box still had the tape I closed it shut with. So they couldn't know I had replaced the cord.

Besides, it wasn't a shitty splice: I actually opened it and replaced the whole cord. You could never tell it wasn't the original thing.

ExtremeDullard OP , 12 days ago

Plus, they very likely can’t sell electrical equipment that has had its cord chopped up and repaired

I did it proper. You couldn't tell the cord had been replaced. For the rest, yeah I know what you mean. That doesn't mean it's not crazy that the Red Cross should refuse free shit. My Dad lived through the war and the food restrictions, and let me tell you, he would have been outraged.

Next time, find a friend with small feet who would like to take it off your hands.

The funny thing is, I'm a clear foot taller than my wife, but my own feet have been shortened surgically a few years ago and are now shorter than hers, and I fit inside the machine just fine. But I didn't want the machine because I hate foot massages 🙂

ExtremeDullard OP , 12 days ago

With a scalpel and a bone saw - at least that's what the surgeon said - and because sometimes people are born with issues that need fixing later in life.

ExtremeDullard OP , 11 days ago

Thanks!

ExtremeDullard , 14 days ago

Three of the countries forced to be in a union for 69 years take measures to avoid being attacked by the country that forced them into that union after seeing it attack a 4th country that was also forced into that union. Gee, I wonder why they're hostile...

ExtremeDullard , 17 days ago

The less Google can figure out who you are accurately, the longer the ReCAPTCHAs get. For instance, if you run Librewolf with Resist FingerPrinting, you're going to eat a metric shit-ton of buses, stairs, bicycles and fire hydrants.

Captchas are maddening, they're forced labor and there's a special place in hell for whoever invented them, deploy then and maintain them. However, you should take comfort in the fact that if you have a really hard time getting past a particularly stubborn ReCAPTCHA, it means Google has a harder time tracking you.

ExtremeDullard , 22 days ago

All your anecdote tells me is that you have questionable ethics.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Firstly, using a VPN ultimately consists in trusting the company providing the VPN service that it won't be fucking around with your privacy. Considering that all your traffic goes through it, that's a lot of trust to place in one company. And I generally don't trust any tech company to resist the lure of selling your data for profit for very long in 2024 - even those that profess to be privacy-friendly.

Secondly, modern corporate surveillance doesn't rely on IP addresses anymore. So if you think a VPN protects your privacy, it really doesn't. All it does is tell Google et al. which VPN provider you're a customer of - i.e. you're giving them even more data that they don't need to have.

That's why I don't even bother with a VPN. I only use one to evade geo-blocking every once in a while.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Is that any different than the trust we place in our ISPs?

It's not. Your ISP is probably selling your data, and your VPN may or may not do that too. Just assume everybody sells your data.

The difference is, when you leave home and you connect to a wifi, you start using another ISP. If you then lose the wifi and connect using 4G, you're using yet another ISP. If you use a VPN, you funnel all your traffic to a single provider all the time. In other words, instead of distributing the risk over several potentially bad actors, you concentrate it on a single one.

Like I said, that's a lot more trust that I'm willing to place in a single company that only essentially pinky-swears won't put me under surveillance.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

But you can trust some of them. You need to know which ones have a history of caring about privacy

All I see in the tech world is the companies that have been caught red-handed doing shady stuff and those that haven't yet.

You say you can trust some of them based on their history of caring: can you? What's their history of caring other than how long they've sworn to do the right thing and haven't been caught doing otherwise yet?

Like I said, tech companies don't resist the lure of big data money for very long these days. If you think any VPN provider isn't at least seriously considering monetizing the traffic you send them to make more money on you than the few dollars you throw their way every month for the VPN service, you're deluded. I would never trust a VPN with all my internet traffic. That's just too much of a risk.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

half of the video is solely a critique of NordVPN

I don't know how good or bad NordVPN is. I have never used it. But I never will. EVER.

You know why?

Because they paid so many interesting Youtubers to shill their stupid VPN service, ruined so many otherwise interesting Youtube videos and wasted so much of my time that I swore I would never give them a single dollar of my money.

I can't stand advertisement and advertisers, and NordVPN has been truly heavy-handed. They're not the only ones: Brilliant comes to mind too. They can all fuck off. They've achieved the exact opposite of what their ads was supposed to achieve with me: I'll never patronize them.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

Ok and if you don’t trust anyone, you don’t have any protection at all.

Correct. I assume I don't, so I'm always super-careful not to give away any information I don't need to give to begin with. Or I give fake information whenever possible, to pollute the well. For the rest, as the old saying goes, if it's on the internet, it's as good as public.

They are never American.

Agreed. If you have to trust a company with your privacy in any way, don't use an American company. It's not even their fault: they operate in a country that's fundamentally dangerous for your privacy.

My email provider is in Norway. for instance.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

Actually I use Freetube with sponsorblock on the desktop and Newpipe with sponsorblock on Android. So I mostly don't see shitty sponsors anymore.

But my Formuler TV box - which runs Android - has some weird crashing problem with the default Newpipe player, so I have to use an external player (MX Player) which doesn't have sponsorblock, sadly.

So whenever I want to watch Youtube videos on my TV, I have to eat some NordVPN shilling - at least a little bit, just time for me to grab the remote and skip it - and I'm too cheap to replace the TV box.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

SmartTube works very well. The problem is, it requires a Youtube account to have subscriptions, playlists and the like. That's a hard no for me.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I've long since started assuming I'm getting data-raped by tech companies until solidly proven otherwise. I am rarely proven otherwise, let alone solidly.

Also, don't fall into the cloud services trap - coyly called SaaS or PWA: those "apps" don't run on your machine. Your machine is just a fancy terminal. The trap is, even if your machine runs free software, it's still a terminal and you're still getting data-raped.

That's why cloud applications need to be fought every step of the way. As long as the application runs locally and it's not closed-source code made by greedy big data for-profits, there's a way to escape the corporate surveillance. If any one of those two premises is missing, your privacy will be invaded with 100% certainty.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

I'm probably a bit older than you, and when I saw the first interactive web things coming along, I thought "Uh oh... This is the mainframe-terminal model coming back to haunt us".

You may not remember this, but the PC revolution basically freed us from the shackles of big computer companies dictating who could do what and at what price, and BOFHs thinking they were gods because they had absolute power of everything anyone could do on "their" systems. Suddenly ordinary people had their own computers at home, installed (or programmed themselves) the software they wanted and gave IBMs and the likes a giant middle finger.

But at some point in the early 2000's, the giant companies figured out a way to get control back through "Web 2.0": they sold it as a convenience and people bought it. But the ultimate goal was to claw back control. The corporations had found a way to subvert HTML, which was just a document model thing, into a framework to relocate part - and now, all - of the computing back onto their mainframes.

I've been saying this for 20 years. And now here we are, running things like CAD programs, word prcessors and spreadsheets over the internet, with the software vendors essentially free to do whatever the hell they want once more. The mind boggles...

I guess people only learn from the past when they get old enough to remember it, and too old to do anything about it...

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

You don't need Noscript anymore uBlock Origin handles everything Noscript handles and much more, and it affords more granular control.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

Oh the humanity!

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

I found many many old movies video files on archive.org. If you like old movies, it's a treasure trove.

ExtremeDullard , 1 month ago

Here's the takeaway:

28 people between the age of 20 and 49 were convinced by a rapper to bully a Youtuber.

Let me rephrase that: 28 FULLY GROWN ADULTS who should know better elected to heed a local celebrity's incitement to ruin someone's life on the internet.

This is pathetic on so many levels...

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

How is this infuriating?

You haven't been taken for a fool. You haven't been taken by surprise. Thule isn't an unavoidable monopoly you have to give money to.

If you feel it's overpriced, you can, ya know... not buy Thule.

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Imagine you're visiting a dystopian police state with ubiquitous surveillance and a non-zero chance to be thrown in jail without due process, because you are.

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

I applaud your efforts and I admire your idealism.

Unfortunately, the minute you get the bill from your internet provider, you'll need to find a way to pay for it, and your good intentions will instantly dissolve in the murky realities of modern corporate surveillance capitalism.

But at least while you haven't gotten your first bill, it's refreshing to watch your enthusiasm.

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

From TFA:

The Brave-haters are almost certainly foaming at the mouth reading that paragraph. They’ll cite concerns like Brave’s affiliate link scandal, the collection of funds ostensibly on behalf of creators without telling them, the installation of programs without user consent

You don't have to hate Brave to distrust Brave.

If any of your friends in real life did something fishy to you once, you'd immediately stop talking to him. Possibly, maybe, if your former friend apologized and swore he'd never do it again, and he was convincing enough, and he treated you right for quite some time, maybe you'd take him back as a friend. But even if you did, if he did something fishy to you again, surely you'd dump him for good this time - and probably punch him in the face too.

The Brave company did this THREE TIMES and there are still people who trust them?

Me, I don't hate them. I just don't trust them. I wouldn't trust them to run a calculator utility on my computer, let alone something as critical to my digital life as a browser. They lost my trust not once, not twice, but three times.

In addition, their cryptocurrency thing doesn't help build trust either. I classify anybody who dabbles in crypto as instantly sketchy by default, and they'd have to work extra-hard to earn my trust. Brave has done the exact opposite: they're a crypto-scheme-running bunch who made a supposedly privacy-friendly browser, and I could kind of believe they needed the crypto scheme to make a living. Kind of, but I chose to believe it for a while. Unti Brave did their first fishy thing, and then I instantly uninstalled their browser, never to install it again.

Brave is NOT trustworthy. In my opinion, if you trust them. you're gullible, or you actively want to believe them too much. It's not hatred, it's just plain common sense.

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

• Brave browser CEO apologizes for automatically adding affiliate links to cryptocurrency URLs
• The shady world of Brave selling copyrighted data for AI training
• Brave browser installs a VPN service on Windows without users' consent

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

Well ya know, the best infosec researchers are former hackers, and the car alarm designers are former car thieves.

ExtremeDullard OP , 2 months ago

I tried to take them off a few times until I realized it was on purpose and not a manufacturing defect.

The problem isn't the force it takes to rip it off: that's easy enough to do. The problem is that the now-free cap has sharp edges that really hurt, and the plastic bottle now has an annoying dangling plastic tail.

ExtremeDullard , 2 months ago

And this is a surprise how?

The entire digital economy is based on spying. It's called corporate surveillance and it's been around for 25 years. Why would AI escape this business model? If anything, it turbocharges it.

ExtremeDullard , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I get you want privacy, but there’s a line where it just stops making sense, and your personal info isn’t that valuable. Anyway

Actually, you don't need perfect privacy. You just need good enough privacy, and here's why:

If you're a low-value target - i.e. a random internet user, that's you and me - always remember that your value is low: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook... expend a certain amount of resources to fish for enough of your data to earn them a return on their investment. We're low-value targets, so they first and foremost go for the low hanging fruits: the people who don't know, don't care, wallow in social media without any restraint and make it particularly easy to gather data from.

All you have to do is make it hard enough and expensive enough for the corporate surveillance collective to lose money on you: create accounts full of fake data and don't post personal information - or make up fake personal information in your posts - to poison their wells. Don't post photos of you or your family. Use throwaway email addresses. Use a deGoogled phone. Don't browse without an ad blocker set on reasonably high. Use a browser with anti-fingerprinting. Don't fill out Costco membership cards. Pay with cash stuff that you don't want anybody to know about. Etc etc.

In other words, adopt a reasonable-enough privacy hygiene so that you're not part of the low hanging fruits. It doesn't have to be drastic, just good enough to make you not worth the sonsabitches' time and effort.

If you're a high-value target however, a Snowden or an Assange, that's a different proposition. But for the rest of us, private enough is good enough.

ExtremeDullard , 3 months ago

This is my general method to find and install apps:

• First hit F-Droid

• If F-Droid doesn't have it, hit the Play Store through Aurora. Carefully assess each and every candidate returned by the Play Store search by searching for feedback on DDG, as I treat anything served up by Google as adware / spyware even if the Play Store says it's free of ads, doesn't need permissions or it's open source.

• If the Play Store doesn't have it (an older version of an APK I specifically need for instance) hit APKPure or Aptoide. Download each promising APK manually, unzip it, look for sketchy things in the archive manually, then run the APK through Hypatia before sideloading it, because I treat anything served up by APKPure or Aptoide as malware.

ExtremeDullard , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I sell specialized content on one particular specialized platform. That platform requires a scan of your ID card, and a selfie of you holding your ID card to your face when you open a seller's account.

For payouts, they partnered with one particular payment processor that also uses the same system (ID card scan + selfie with ID card) to open an account.

Well, I opened both accounts using a fake ID and heavy makeup - of course under a fake name and with a Tutanota email account. I bet they didn't actually check the ID and they didn't:

• In the case of the content platform, how would they?

• In the case of the payment processor, in theory they're supposed to abide by KYC rules. But they're headquartered in the Dominican Republic, so I bet they only paid lip service to KYC and it seems I was right: I've had both accounts for over a year and earning money from my content without any problems since.

So it's just a matter of knowing who you can feed fake information to and what the consequences are if you get found out. In my case, the only risk is having my payment account shut down and losing whatever earnings I haven't withdrawn yet.

Of course, don't feed fake information to your real-life bank, your employer or the IRS or something... But for internet content, that's your pretend life: unless your content creation activities are frowned upon by the real-life laws of your country, assess you risks feeding the platforms BS and have at it.

ExtremeDullard , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Haha thanks 🙂 But no, I don't lead a super-exciting life: I just happen to be able to provide something people want to buy and I rabidly defend my right to stay anonymous at much as possible. So I just put two and two together, is all.

ExtremeDullard , 3 months ago

You're correct: certain facial features always stay the same, such as interpupillary distance. But you know what? On my selfie, I'm blind in one eye: ain't that a shame for the poor algorithm eh?

Besides, they're not the police: they don't have a database of facial features of everybody in the world. So even if they do have my exact facial features despite the makeup, what are they gonna match it against?

It would only be of use if they went to the Dominican fuzz with my selfie, who then would have to contact the police in my own country, to have a chance to cut through my disguise. Good luck with that...

And at the end of the day, the aim isn't necessarily to be 100% impossible to identify: it's just to make it as hard and least cost-effective as possible for the fucking data brokers who sell our lives for pennies on the marketplace.

ExtremeDullard , 4 months ago

I block CNN by not visiting their website.

The only CNN worth anything is CNN International, and that still works fine with all ad blockers raised. But even CNN International started pulling the same stunt, it's not remotely good enough that I would miss it either.

ExtremeDullard , 4 months ago

Missing option that I use:

Free Google Drive mounted with rclone and then eCryptfs filesystem mounted on the Google Drive mountpoint.

I get the free space and Google only sees encrypted files.