TimLovesTech

TimLovesTech , 6 days ago to Technology in [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs

In their current state, I would argue none of them are actually alternatives in the sense of being a real replacement. None of them is setup to scale, making the moderation/filtering point kinda moot.

TimLovesTech , 6 days ago to Technology in [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs

To your point, the amount of money/effort to even try and rival YouTube (and/or Google) would be a hell of a task for sure. Since you would want it to be open, well moderated (but not so much that the majority of people scream "censorship!"), and be able to store/encode/serve a wild amount of video daily. And the later 2 things get exponentially more difficult as you scale.

It would need to be like the Fediverse on steroids, doing a distributed filesystem allowing every federated member to host/encode/serve part of the burden (like Kazaa/Limewire/DC++) but in some manner that people could be assured node hosts couldn't tamper with videos. And then you would also need some sort of reward for creators that wouldn't somehow lead to greedy power struggles causing an implosion of your open platform.

Ah, to dream.

TimLovesTech , 6 days ago to Technology in [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs

Just took a look at them, and Rumble is for sure a hard pass. The 2 rows under "news" is all far-right extremist videos, which is great if you are aiming for the Parlor/Truth Social/Nazi and Nazi sympathizers of the internet, but I think you'll miss most of the world going that toxic on the frontage.

TimLovesTech , 10 days ago to Technology in Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined

What platform are you on that you need to use VLC?

TimLovesTech , 10 days ago to Technology in Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined

You ever heard of a man Hannibal Lecter he was a "nice guy".

• Donald J Trump

TimLovesTech , 10 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

What percentage of Signal users is "grandma" that uses Linux and would be messaging from her PC? I would have to imagine the overwhelming vast majority of Signal users are on mobile only, so packaging for specific distros is probably far down the priority list.

TimLovesTech , 14 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

OP, what distro are you running? You mention a whole bunch of package formats they don't provide, but never mention what format you require. Depending on the distro, making a build script (or converting the .deb) really isn't Rocket Surgery ™.

TimLovesTech , 14 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

Or, if you are running one of those distros you could just take the .deb and repackage it for whatever distro you're running. Expecting a project to package for every distro, and then be required to support them for every release is a lot of work. And unfortunately some people have no issues expecting from others, but baulk at the idea of doing it themselves.

TimLovesTech , 14 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

Sometimes it comes down to support. For every distro specific format you build and package for, the more you need to do with every release (and need the proper config and to be comfortable packaging for each).

TimLovesTech , 16 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

Could always do what looks like the Arch AUR package is doing and build it yourself from source. Or if you are running a Fedora/OpenSuse distro you could find a package on COPR or something that converts a package from a .deb to .rpm and just change source and stuff to match signal.

TimLovesTech , 22 days ago to Technology in Petition | Meta has announced it will be abandoning CrowdTangle, its industry leading transparency tool, this August - in the middle of the biggest election year on record

He's shown you who he is, I think we need to start believing him. He has also surrounded himself with even more unhinged and dangerous people this time around. They have a plan this time to keep power and end elections. Putting your head in the sand doesn't make him and his cult any less of a threat, and plays right into their playbook. They want you to become disengaged, to burn out, to think he is "just joking", or just "telling it how he sees it", or worst of all "the new normal". These all leave his cult emboldened and with less resistance to grabbing power.

TimLovesTech , 22 days ago to Privacy in The Cloudflare Poison

Agreed, it can work for those wanting to be an admin (and know enough to be "dangerous"). I think the bigger issue comes when you want to open services to the internet, because unless you are an admin you probably don't want to do that without a proxy (and possibly firewall) of some kind in front of your home network. Which is kinda what I was thinking with this anti-Cloudflare post. If you are interacting with the Internet you have to trust a network and hardware outside of your own. And I think it's naive to fear the 3-letter orgs being inside Cloudflare, and then thinking that putting your data in a datacenter you don't control is any "safer".

I think ultimately if the 3 letter groups want your data that bad because you're on some list, I think the internet as a whole is something you should probably be avoiding anyways. And for randoms, if they are sweeping up data like that you can be sure they would do it at more than just Cloudflare.

TimLovesTech , 23 days ago to Privacy in The Cloudflare Poison

So does everyone here that fears Cloudflare as secretly out to get them not believe that the NSA doesn't have their hooks in all the major datacenters? The same datacenters used by all the major web hosts people are using to "self host" for privacy.

Personally I think you have to have faith at some point that everything from your node to the destination is on the up-and-up unless you have a concrete reason to assume otherwise. Otherwise you should be suspicious of your ISP's network and every switch/router/firewall/node your data traverses on the internet. And being that paranoid basically means anything you didn't review the code of and compile yourself should be out of bounds.

TimLovesTech , 23 days ago to Privacy in The Cloudflare Poison

This rant is about using Cloudflare as a proxy, nothing to do with who you buy your domain name from.

TimLovesTech , 23 days ago to Technology in Petition | Meta has announced it will be abandoning CrowdTangle, its industry leading transparency tool, this August - in the middle of the biggest election year on record

I know I'm feeding a troll, but US democracy is on the ballot this year. Previous years have been big years, but this could be the last election in the US. Trump getting to the White House will allow him to save himself, and he will be bringing Fascism to a whole new level in the US with Project 2025 and all the truly evil folks in his cult leadership circle.