viking
@viking@infosec.pub
- Comment on It was nicer when Duke Nukem Forever was famous for never coming out 1 day ago:
Those were awesome!
- Comment on AdNauseam is a uBlock fork that goes further: it actively attacks marketers by auto-clicking every ad before blocking 1 day ago:
Chameleon add-on for Firefox, randomly rotates your browser, OS, screen size, timezone, device type, language, and other customizable parameters every x minutes.
I’ve set it to do so every 5 minutes, and to omit desktop & tablet as device types (else some websites display the respective page) and timezones (messed up 2FA).
I also disabled blackberry and windows phone from the manufacturer ID, that would have the opposite effect from obscuring me.
For the rest of it, it’s working great.
- Comment on Sketchy social media post gives BlackBerry fans hope for the return of the smartphone brand 5 days ago:
Swype enabled keyboards are awesome though. I loved my BB, but the screen real estate that a digital keyboard clears up is quite significant.
- Comment on Reddit’s 50% Plunge Fails to Entice Dip Buyers as Growth Slows. 6 days ago:
Oh we did use third party tools, and there were 5-8 moderators depending on which sub. I just loved the mod queue on reddit sync to just approve/delete reports on the go. Since I’m in Asia I often got them before my US counterparts, so could clean up the queue early on.
- Comment on Organic Maps migrates to Forgejo due to GitHub account blocked by Microsoft. 6 days ago:
As long as they are still publishing the apk to f-droid, as a user I hardly care where it’s hosted.
- Comment on Organic Maps migrates to Forgejo due to GitHub account blocked by Microsoft. 6 days ago:
Wrong thread?
- Comment on Reddit’s 50% Plunge Fails to Entice Dip Buyers as Growth Slows. 6 days ago:
I left with my 14 year old account after they banned third party apps. Moderating large communities (1M+) with the official app was impossible, and I was moderating 3 of those, plus a bunch of smaller ones. I did Secret Santa 4 or 5 times (move countries frequently for my job, so it wasn’t always feasible), and still have the Guinness World records certificate somewhere, plus a lot of free merch from the mod appreciation giveaways back when they weren’t a shitcorp. Leaves quite the bad aftertaste.
Pretty sure that by now I’d have been banned as well, I never held back with dark humor and speaking out against evil corpos. In a way I’m glad I left on my own terms before it all went fully to hell.
- Comment on Why I recommend against Brave. 1 week ago:
Weird, youtube with ublock origin is all I need to enjoy no ads. Are you using some additional scripts that modify youtube in some way?
- Comment on Why I recommend against Brave. 1 week ago:
What about infosec.pub? Been my home instance ever since .world blocked piracy discussions, and I never had any issues there.
- Comment on Why I recommend against Brave. 1 week ago:
Use Firefox with the Canvas Blocker addon, works on Fennec as well (Android fork with Mozilla telemetry removed).
- Comment on 'Don't Buy a Swasticar': Tesla hit by UK boycott campaign over Elon Musk's far-right support 5 weeks ago:
France and UK have higher purchase powers than UK, thanks to Brexit, so I wouldn’t put that down to people being more sceptical.
- Comment on BlackBerry's iconic keyboard patent has expired 1 month ago:
I loved my BB Bold 9600, but the physical keyboard did reduce the screen size to a rather small form factor compared to modern phones. And I dare say that swyping is faster and just as accurate, so even if there would be new phones coming out with hardware keyboards of the same quality as old BlackBerry’s, I doubt I would switch back.
- Comment on You can see who upvoted and downvoted a post by viewing it in friendica. 1 month ago:
How exactly can I see who downvoted? Can’t seem to find it in the regular view, and the debug info only shows the vote count, not the voter.
- Comment on Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. 1 month ago:
I have a first generation kindle that I bought 16 years ago. They used to be awesome, and Amazon shaped the way ecommerce worked. The lesson here is not to be fully dependent on one supplier, not to boycott everything just because it’s big.
- Comment on Are "Lifetime" Cloud Storage Plans scams? 1 month ago:
Yeah what I also saw in the terms was that they reserve the right to sell their company without informing users other than through an update in the terms & conditions, and based on play store reviews, they terminate lifetime accounts if they find that you upload copyright protected files, even if you don’t share them with anyone.
Indexing my stuff and comparing it against external databases is a big no no for me.
So far I’m quite happy with sync.com, been using them for well over a decade. Data is fully encrypted during upload, so no matter if the server is ever breached, they wouldn’t get anything useful out of it.
I also got my own nextcloud instance up and running, but it’s with a shared hosting provider where I don’t feel as secure.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 1 month ago:
True, I meant anonymous in the sense that participants are not generally identifiable by one another.
- Comment on Are "Lifetime" Cloud Storage Plans scams? 1 month ago:
pCloud, under business terms fairly towards the end:
Term & Termination
This Agreement may be terminated by either party at any time, for any reason. This Agreement will remain in effect until Customer’s subscription to the Services expires or until the Agreement is terminated. In the event of termination by the Customer, the Customer will remain responsible for payment of all fees and charges applicable to the period during which the Agreement was in effect.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 1 month ago:
To an extent. Lemmy is a useful substitute for reddit because it’s anonymous, so I don’t know and to an extent don’t care who I’m talking to. With messenger services it’s a different use case, I need the exact people I want to talk to on there, or it’s essentially worthless.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 1 month ago:
That’s what YOU get since you’re neither in China nor Japan. They only get to see their relative government’s name. China in fact gets to see nothing since they block Google, but it you happen to be in Hong Kong or Macau, you would.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 1 month ago:
Nah. I’ll start boycotting google when there are useful alternatives. Amazon, facebook, reddit - no problem.
Google search - fine, I can get by with DDG or Yandex. Gmail - sure, whatever. Maps? Organic Maps (and other openstreetmaps front-ends) works alright for getting your bearings, but it’s a far cry from useful for finding businesses, and terrible for navigation. Waze used to be the only viable alternative, but ever since Google bought them, it’s hard to justify a full boycott without massively inconveniencing myself.
Same for meta as a whole. Facebook and Instagram, sure, no need. But living without whatsapp is simply impossible in some countries, where it’s the de-facto standard for communication, and even used as the only means of contact with government agencies.
- Comment on PayPal owns brands like Venmo, Honey and is heavily integrated into eBay - if you're looking to stop giving your money to bad companies, take a second to search their subsidiary brands as well. 1 month ago:
Didn’t actually know about Aqua Panna, that’s the only one I occasionally consume when going to a fancy Italian place where this is the default when ordering still water.
I’d say a good 90% of the rest is completely unknown to me. All the rest that I do know seems to be overprocessed junk food that’s easily avoided by buying fresh ingredients exclusively.
- Comment on ‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off 1 month ago:
What screens are you talking about?
- Comment on Trump wants to tax the world 1 month ago:
Too bad that Trump listens to some rednecks on Twitter more than any economist out there.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
What exactly do you think happened with slaves too old to fulfill their duties?
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 1 month ago:
Anytime! You could also check some blogs like nomad capitalist and others, they offer solutions like incorporating a ltd. company in Georgia (the country) or Belize and stuff, but that also comes with a host of other requirements, reporting and otherwise.
Depending on your assets, there are also some countries like Grenada for example that come with a citizenship by investment program, where you get a passport if you invest either into government bonds or buy a property that you must hold for a certain number of years. If you’d be a citizen from there and casually forget to tick the box for US citizenship when opening your Hong Kong account, you might just get away with it. (Strictly not legal, though).
- Comment on How can a US citizen invest outside the reach of the federal government? 1 month ago:
Outside of the immediate reach requires you to open an offshore brokerage account; however thanks to FATCA reporting requirements, most banks don’t want to deal with you unless you have significant assets under management.
Back when FATCA was first introduced I was working in private wealth management for a bank in Luxembourg, and we decided to terminate all but 3 accounts held by US citizens, all of whom had assets above 700k USD. I believe 500k was the internally communicated cutoff.
Banks in Switzerland now typically require 1M CHF to open new accounts for anyone who isn’t onshore (Swiss citizen or resident), Hong Kong, Singapore and Panama also require minimum amounts between 500k to 1M USD. I think Bahamas, Bermudas, Virgin Islands, Caymans and all the other money islands ask for even higher deposits now.
One thing you could consider are the British channel islands (Jersey and Guernsey in particular), since Brexit they’ve had a bit of an offshore renaissance. HSBC Jersey for example only requires 100k GBP to open offshore accounts (though I didn’t check about FATCA requirements since I’m not a US citizen myself).
If all you want is keep smaller amounts outside of the US, you could look into wise.com, revolut and other money transfer services, they allow you to hold different currencies in physical accounts domiciled in other jurisdictions. Read: If you deposit USD and convert it to GBP, AUD or EUR, those funds will be physically stored in UK, Australia and Belgium respectively. Since wise is a British company (revolut as well btw), the US government at least won’t have immediate access.
If there are any online brokers that accept US customers with casual portfolio sizes, no idea.
Crypto of course is also an option, but I don’t trust it enough as long term asset storage solution.
- Comment on Anyone knows what's this on the 5.25" bay? 1 month ago:
HDD tray with external fan, I had one just like this.
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 2 months ago:
Excellent, thanks. Just installing.
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 2 months ago:
Is there a chromium release for Android? I thought they only launched a desktop version?
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 2 months ago:
Damn, I was so happy to get an update yesterday after I thought it had died, only to find out it did.
Kiwi was (is) my backup browser if something absolutely refuses to work in Fennec/Firefox; what are y’all using as a last resort chrome substitute?