virtualbriefcase

@virtualbriefcase@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am tired of corporatist technology and I need help to get away from it.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My advice would be to look into things one at a time while also avoiding taking the sledgehammer approach. Based on what you mentioned, some things you might want to look into:

  Look into some encrypted cloud storage/backup options. Filein comes to mind but there’s plenty. I’d recommend against self hosting your own cloud in most cases (like nextcloud) in most cases it is both less secure and less private especially on a VPS - and if its on a home server it makes your backups less redundant.

  Try doing more stuff in web browsers, web wrappers, or front ends. Unlike an app, there’s a lot less sneaky stuff a web browser can do, even if it’s the same platform. The Brave browser does cookie isolation and progressive web apps well, it might make a good second browser dedicated to progressive web apps. Apps like newpipe are great for YouTube and piped/invidious for yt or nitter for twitter are two good examples of front ends.

  Installing apks is easier than you might think, and if you install FDroid it’s three clicks (download, allow installation, install) and worth checking out. Once it’s installed you can treat it like any other app store, and in combo with Aurora (on FDroid) you can get about any app without going through a Google account.

  As for email, you can forward emails from a gmail account to a proton account. And as for content, consider trying to follow via RSS (you can follow just about anything with RSS one way or another).

  For social media look into activity pub and nostr. Just about any alternative social media is going to have the crazies from one or both sides of politics kicked off of mainstream platforms, but federated and decentralized platforms allow you to pick and choose a lot more.

  Last, as the phone goes, whenever possible try disabling background data and setting aside pre-installed apps you don’t want to use and going from there. A step up from that would be to uninstall/disable them (either in settings or adb bridge for those you can’t disable). Custom Roms would be the biggest leap, and the most technological. If you’re going to buy a phone with the intent of installing one, Graphene beats everything else hands down while still being one of the easiest to install.

  Good luck

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will Microsoft drop the TPM requirement for Win 11 once Win 12 rolls around?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Rufus or registry editing during installation can both dodge the requirement if you need it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If I vaguely remember, symmetric encryption is more or less halved by quantom computers using the current encryption breaking methods right? That and just the growing computer power IF they continue to grow at a similar rate. 32 bit encryption used to be the military standard, now it’s a joke that a kid’s laptop could break.

  Makes it potentially vulnerable to governments who are dedicated, but as long as the common laptop theif doesn’t have a quantum computer or a generic technical literacy and years to wait and we’re not making enemies with governments we’re all fine regardless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  IPFS?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework 13 With AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes For A Great Linux Laptop⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe I didn’t word that right. Meant that they run out of the box, but if they break they can be repaired fairly easily.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework 13 With AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes For A Great Linux Laptop⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  ‘DIY Edition Build it yourself and bring your OS, including Linux. Starting at $1,399.00’

  I hate to crap on a project like framework too much, but I fail to see the value it brings to the table compared to other options. 900$ for a Chromebook, 1.4k for a “DIY” laptop, 1.7k for the same laptop but assembled.

  300-400$ used gaming laptops can be found on eBay, are repairable, and run Linux just as easily (minus maybe switching to official Nvidia drivers, but it’s still only a couple commands a way). For 1k I’m sure you can get a variety of very premium laptops.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Political statement? Ease of use? Social experiment? Ideological preference? Spending crypto you were paid in? A stand in until more merchants accept Monero directly? For no reason, but it’s not hurting anybody and it’s not illegal so why not?

  Pick any of the above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The reasons why it isn’t suitable to be used as a currency are exactly what I listed, and you failed to interrogate …

  My original point I meant to make was just that your first argument, XMR = bad because NFTs/FTX/Luna was either that you didn’t understand the differences of them, or that you did and were presenting a disingenuous argument.

  The other points are more of a come to your own conclusions type of deal. But, if we’re on the topic:

  Volatility? I’d point out that, yes, it’s volital like every other thing that’s new. It’ll figure out a stable price (what price that’ll be, or if it’ll be 0, I can’t say). New tech and volital speculative markets and all that, churning out crap and jems alike.

  Anonymity, consumer protections, & no transaction reverses? Again, cash, see what my take on it is above. + If tracking serial numbers stopped crime they’d be doing that already.

  Energy useage? Yup, there’s a lot, and that’s a good criticism. But as these things grow there’s work towards more efficient models. Also, it’s not like everything else (from mining gold to making a PlayStation) uses energy in an often inefficient way.

  No use as a currency? There’s already a growing amount of using it as a currency. A lot of people are talking about the “Monero circular economy” with the idea being a community both earning and spending Monero amongst themselves. There’s also a surprisingly large amount of merchants accepting Monero compared to a few years ago, and a large number of crypto services (including Monero) that offer a middleman type service to allow you to spend XMR and have a business get fiat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My point on the comparison wasn’t that that they’re 1:1, but more so when a market does crazy stuff in a speculative frenzy there’s things that potentially have legitimate value and things that don’t. Comparing one to the other isn’t really a a good way to debate the value or lack of.

  As for unlicensed banks, yeah probably an imperfect comparison, but not entirely irrelevant IMO. Something like Coinbase (that does have licenses BTW) is probably a lot less likely to go bust than some shady exchange based in the Bahamas. Now, as a counter point they probably had the appropriate licenses for their US based front, but then just funneled that elsewhere right.

  And sure, they were one of the biggest, but back to my original point: in a crazy speculative bubble the scams and legitimate projects all have to be evaluated individually.

  Speaking of banks though, its kinda hilarious you brought up Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank. Last I checked two of the three were kinda involved in a pretty thing known as the 2008 financial crises and would have collapsed had they not been bailed out. Their executives aren’t in prison, but many people believed they should be.

  Finally criminal useage is valid criticism, but Monero is not the first thing to be used to transfer illicit funds. Cartels, hitmen, and people who kidnap children for ransom all seem to like cash (well, that and the banks, some of which have a horrendously bad record of transferring illicit funds). If you were to convince me that Monero is making the world a way worse off place then maybe you’d change myind, but right now as it stands it appears a small percentage of criminals find Monero slightly easier than cash and are using it because it’s the path of least resistance. Last I checked, the drug trade, computer hacking, and any other active criminal enterprise existed before the use of Monero.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re going to use Luna, FTX, and NFTs as arguments about something like Monero, and I don’t want this to sound to mean (hard to convey tone through text), but you probably don’t really understand any of them.

  I have been both a long time supporter of crypto and the ideas behind it, and I was quick to make fun of the NFTs and have always warned against both keeping large sums money in exchanges and warning against trusting stable coins. I certainly can’t garuntee crypto’s future, but your argument sounds a lot like somebody saying “a trading card site and two unlicensed online banks went broke so you’re stupid for buying Cisco stock” right after the dot com crash.

  I reccomend looking into it just a bit more. Even if it’s just to be a better anti-crypto advocate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Corrupt' cop jailed for tipping off pal to EncroChat dragnet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Bear forearms only. Doesn’t apply to any other animal

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple makes staggering claim about Google Android online tracking | TechRadar⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Just as a quick warning, I think /e/OS is still getting ironed out. It’s not fully de-googled and security updates can be significantly delayed. Not that it’s some evil or unsafe OS to be avoided, but it’s definitely with knowing if you end up going with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the breakdown and the link, cool to learn about the new (well new to me) tech, sad to see it’s gonna probably bit us in the butt at somepoint.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t mean like they just strait up embed video.mp4 on page for the video, but as far as I understand on their backend they still have actually video files of various resolutions and such that they serve to you.

  Even if the page isn’t giving you a copy of a strait up file in the way it might in 2000, the player is still pulling a copy of a pre processed video file stored on YT’s servers, and in order to have the ads as part of that same file in order to make adblock very hard to implement they’d need to re-process it any time they want to show an ad that hadn’t been already inserted into the video.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube intensifies fight against ad blockers showing pop-ups, and users are frustrated | Blocking ad-block users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If they did that then they’d have to re-encode videos for each veiwer (which would require an insane amount of processing power), or give up on tracking and have contextual only ads.

  Their only real option is to have ads as separate files and then use the magic JavaScript to tell your computer to play one file then the next, which is where adblock comes in like “naw, let’s not do that”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  As much as I love making fun of Apple, isn’t it all Apple silicone made in house? If they’re not coming with Nvidia cards and Apple is not open to the idea of people modifying their computers it shouldn’t matter.

  POSIX is just a set of Unix-like standards for software. Mac is based on BSD if I recall correctly, they had Xorg and stuff as an option to install and things aren’t 1 to 1 compatible but closely related.

  robust networking Dude you just gave me flashbacks to traumatic times trying to get networking to work

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  As weird as it sounds you can (with poor performance). With something like Limbo or Termux you can actually get Windows or any x86 OS running underneath Android on a phone.

  Fun project maybe, but not really utilitarian though. Never used apple so can’t actually report on how well their emulation and/or translation layer is working on Arm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here comes another Netflix price hike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the issue is that Netflix always had a lot of debt and thought they could grow a lot more. They had a really solid income, then suddenly their catalog was shrinking thanks to the million other streaming services while they simultaneously started declining in subscriptions right when the cost of debt skyrocketed (even if some of their debt is still at lower rates).

  Not that I’m cheering on the price increase by any means, nor am I currently a subscriber. Still though in some way I can see why they’re doing it and have a feeling we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in how bad tech corporate services are going to get for a bit.

  On an unrelated note, VPNs and/or I2P are cool things to check out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The FCC is Expected to Propose the Return of Net Neutrality Protections Oct 19th⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My understanding is that they mostly haven’t, with a couple exceptions like a few ISPs offering to priorities to pings for gaming (as FeelThePower mentioned), throttle certain protocols (e.g. Torrenting), or refuse to carry traffic for certain sites (e.g. Kiwi Farms). All of this would be prevented under net neutrality.

  As far as I’m aware though, an extremely overwhelmingly portion of traffic (like you’d have to do a lot of digging to find an example otherwise) already adheres to net neutrality since it’s pretty pointless for a company to spend resources and goodwill to mess with traffic.

  I don’t think too much will change. It is nice in the sense it will prevent an ISP from doing things against specific sites, although like mentioned above most of the protections are theoretical ATM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not on IOS, but I’ve heard Brave browser on IOS has adblock so that might be a way to avoid ads. Sites like various Invidious instances run in any browser would also be a way to dodge ads.

  Any browser that accepts plugins would also work, but I’m not sure if they exsist or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People Want Threads to Be Old Twitter. Threads Would Prefer Not To.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not quite sure social media accounts and the Nobel Prize make a good comparison. I get what you’re saying about the exclusivity idea, but in my mind “exclusive” social media can’t really be that much of a draw if there’s a million alternatives and it doesn’t bring anything new to the table (it’s not decentralized or federated if you need approval from a central authority).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I do find it a bit funny that their adblock-block is to my knowledge just client side JavaScript. Ya’ know, the kinda stuff adblock is built to cutout.

  Unless they’re going to be splicing up videos to put the ads into the same file (which would be astronomically resource intensive) or only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers it’ll be impossible prevent a device from running or not running code as the user see’s fit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  YT isn’t going to drop premium any time soon. Subscriptions are astronomically more revenue generating then ads, and given YT was always operating at a loss until they stopped reporting revenue altogether premium will probably be the only route to scrape by.

  Not to say they can’t enshittify it by raising prices and adding restrictions, but I can’t see them doing anything but trying to force more people to it.

  I paid for it for a bit a while back, and it was decent. Of course free tools give considerably better features (adblock, sponsor block, DRM free downloads, better privacy). That and personally not wanting to financially support YT for a variety of reasons has kept me away from it for a long time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Google's Pixel 8 Pro Will Change Smartphones Forever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  They usually drop in price. They were just selling the 6a for $200 like a month ago, so given a bit of time you can get a good deal on the second-to-latest generation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Running AI is so expensive that Amazon will probably charge you to use Alexa in future, says outgoing exec⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re seeing this all over the tech and tech adjacent space. Can’t grow forever at a loss, especially not with increased interest rates and a potential economic downturn.

  My guess, if you want to have decent services we’re going to end up needing to pick few (or a suite of the basics) to pay for on a monthly basic and cut out all the “free” stuff that is/will get enshittified.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Pixel devices, devices with custom roms, and devices that you used ADB bridge to disable or uninstall “system” apps.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Only in the most remote deserts, wilderness areas and oceans can you find a sky as dark as our ancestors knew them.

  It varies depending on what country your in, but I don’t think people realize how little of a percentage densly populated areas make up of the world. If you’re in the US unless you’re in a place like NY City a 20-45 min drive can get you to a place zero light minus occasional blinks from cell towers/planes/sattalites - and there will also probably be public land there you can go on for free.

  And hey, look, the fact stuff like sattalites are interfering with observing the sky isn’t great, but if that sattalite is used for powering agricultural equipment and gathering agricultural data that keeps a billion people from starving to death I’d say that’s a worthy trade off.

  Like a life saving drug with side effects, there’s always trade offs as technology and society advance. And mitigating side effects when possible are great, but I thinks it’s important we don’t act like the side effects are occurring in a vacuum, and I would rather live now than in the past without the tech we have now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of the FBI’s most wanted hackers is trolling the U.S. government | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You can usually override zoom controls in the accessibility settings of most browsers. Comes in real handy for me

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games consoles are infuriatingly exempt from California's otherwise important new right to repair bill⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My guess is it would be considered a general purpose computer, assuming it runs standard Win/Linux and can run any software even if it’s specs and shape are geared towards games.

  Not a lawyer though, just guessing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shoplifting up driven by rising cost of living - Coles responding with employee body cams⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The Australian Retailers Association said one in every four of these shoplifting incidents involved “abuse or assault” against workers.

  In an ongoing trial, staff at 30 Coles stores across Australia are being fitted with cameras to only be turned on in “threatening situations”.

  The title sounds misleading, from the text of the article it’s more of a panic button to alert emergency services than it is passive monitoring of employees or customers.