furrowsofar
@furrowsofar@beehaw.org
Interests: News, Finance, Computer, Science, Tech, and Living
- Comment on I am a victim of the network effect who wishes to degoogle. What do I do? 7 months ago:
The DGI Mini 3 Pro. Looks pretty cool. For that. Frankly you could just buy a separate cheap phone or tablet to use with just that or use an old one you already have. When you buy something to replace it later you could also consider openness and compatibility too.
- Comment on I am a victim of the network effect who wishes to degoogle. What do I do? 7 months ago:
Also decide what apps that you must have. If you can use the browser version or the progessive webapp version which is just the browser version installed that is probably better. Or if you do not need it on your phone use the browser version on you laptop.
In the end though you will have some of these platforms for network reasons. Mostly things like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Google is not one of them though except for android itself. You also do not have to spend a lot of time contributing to these platforms. Use them when you need to nothing more.
- Comment on Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule? 7 months ago:
Well that is the point isn’t it. Companies are not very reliable. The only thing they can be relied on to do is whatever butters their bread and that can change at any time. There is also a PR component and a fact component and they do not always agree.
Proton is really no different. I seem to remember they changed what they said on their website after outing that activist. Presumably to be a little less misleading. Again, I am impressed with Proton but not infinitely impressed.
- Comment on Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule? 7 months ago:
Security audits do not guarantee security. They are just the best we have. Just as code reviews do not guarantee good and trustworthy code. In the end, we do not know what we do not know. In the end, every system has its weaknesses.
Sure I believe Proton is a reasonable supplier. Even with that Proton for example is on the record of giving out user info to governments. I am sure they did not meet the expectations of that activist.
- Comment on Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule? 7 months ago:
All security is porous. So there is every reason to believe that Proton or any other org will have a major breach at some point.
- Comment on Proportion blog: Are security questions terrible for account security? 8 months ago:
Security is always porous. The article really had no suggestions really. They say 2FA but account recovery is often a combination of access to you email account or questions. None of this stuff is particularly secure.
- Comment on Best service for filing taxes? 9 months ago:
One way to find providers is to go to your states tax site and see who supports your state. This list is often a lot shorter list. The ones I would look at in general sorted by decreasing popularity of their web site last year:
- TurboTax. 52%.
- H&R Block. 31%.
- FreeTaxUSA. 8%.
- TaxAct. 5%.
- TaxSlayer. 2.4%.
- OLT.com. 0.58%.
- 1040.com. 0.26%.
The % numbers are really just relative website popularity of the options I listed at a point in time. As I said before, I favor FreeTaxUSA. Interesting they can import from TurboTax, H&R Block, TaxAct, TaxSlayer, CashApp, and OLT so they must consider those their major competitors. Also note that I believe the same company that is behind FreeTaxUSA also markets under TaxHawk and Express1040.com.
TurboTax, H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer tend to be the high end products in decreasing popularity and price. The first three tend to be somewhat similar pricing, and TaxSlayer a bit cheaper. FreeTaxUSA, OLT, and 1040.com tend to be the lower end offerings again in order of decreasing web site popularity though not always decreasing price. FreeTaxUSA appears to be the low end market leader.
I have not used all of these but I have used FreeTaxUSA and TaxAct. Both were fine. We finally ditched TaxAct a few years ago due to rising prices and their stupid tiered pricing plans. FreeTaxUSA is just so much simpler then many of the other providers because it comes without most the marketing BS and it has a good price/value ratio.
Others, feel free to comment and make any corrections to what I have said.
- Comment on Best service for filing taxes? 9 months ago:
Like others said FreeTaxUSA. We use it. Just know one downside is that it does not do direct imports from financial firms or other data sources. You have to enter the data. Other wise for individual taxes, it is pretty complete. It also does not do Form 1041 returns which is for Trusts and Estates as separate entities, that is under their own EINs. Most people do not need that.
- Comment on Why Not Store Encrypted Emails in Plaintext Locally? 1 year ago:
I am annoyed by this too. The big limitation would have had you could not use IMAP as that is remote.
The other issue is implementation. It would be easy to forward or attach or just store unencrypted in an insecure way which may not be desirable. Frankly for what I do I would prefer Thunderbird decrypt on receipt but place all content in a vault. If one wanted to add some more restrictions one could make it hard to forward by accident mail that was originally encrypted.
The big issue with PGP has always been a combination of bad implementations and key distribution.
- Comment on What do you use for cloud storage and why? 1 year ago:
I have Nextcloud on my Media Center. That is just on our LAN. For sharing I use Bitwarden Send. If I had a big file to share I probably woyld load it to Backblaze B2 and share the link.
- Comment on Lemmy is most censored social media than instagram,facebook,reddit,etc... 1 year ago:
Moderation has always been required on the net. It is only a question by whom and for whom. To participate in any social setting either IRL or on the net, you need to conform to the expectations of that community. If you choose to do otherwise then you can expect consequences. What is shocking about this?
- Comment on Standard Notes change license 1 year ago:
This is what F-droid says:
- Comment on Spyware can infect your phone or computer via the ads you see online – report 1 year ago:
There are plenty of ways. They probably just do not want to do it. Easiest might be only certain allowed formats and all the content must begin the ad networks servers. They could allow more options for vetted business partners.
- Comment on Spyware can infect your phone or computer via the ads you see online – report 1 year ago:
This is the crazy thing about ads. The ad network and site operators should be responsible for making sure both the ads and the people putting up the ads are trustworthy. The reason I now block all ads is this reason. Neither party cares and they are willing to act as a conduit for this stuff. In most other industries orgs are responsible forvtgeir supply chains.
- Comment on XMPP vs Matrix: Whose King of Federation? 1 year ago:
Thanks. Yes it had a lot of potential. Was always confusing too… what client… what server… what should work.
- Comment on XMPP vs Matrix: Whose King of Federation? 1 year ago:
What is the story with XMPP anyway. For a while, maybe 10 or more years ago it looked like the thing. Then it kind of imploded. Do people actually use it?
I know FSF may still have a server. DuckDuckGo did for a while. Maybe still does.
Biggest issues I ever had with it were firewall traversal. Most servers did not offer tls 443 at the time. The video chat extension was not wide spread either. Good public servers were sometimes hard to find too plus there was some spam.
- Comment on Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2022: lower than fossil fuels 1 year ago:
Maybe I am wrong, but geothermal I think is quite site specific. You either have that resource our you do not. Solar and Wind seem a lot more general. Agree, most of the hydro sites are probably taken.
Biomass. Note sure most biomass is specifically grown. It is usually waste disposal. Not even sure this is really that sustainable long run. Are there sustainable biomass plans?
- Comment on OpenVPN vs WireGuard 1 year ago:
This is my issue with Wireguard. It is not good a firewall traversal. On restrictive nets really you have to get out via TLS port 443. No other way often works. So for the traveler OpenVPN TCP option can be way better. Nice to see Proton has a solution.
The other problem with Wireguard is that it is not necessarily as anonymous. The good VPN providers had to do special things to make that so.
Other then that, Wireguard is wonderful in terms of performance and presumably security too.
- Comment on Signal is Flawed, Why XMPP is Amazing! (new animated video) 1 year ago:
Question. Did XMPP ever solve the firewall traversal problem. What I found back when I used XMPP was that I simply could not use it on a lot of networks because the server port would be blocked. 443 would often work but not all XMPP servers support 443. Not sure but maybe NAT traversal was sometimes an issue too.
Thanks for the post. Kind of blast from the past. Mostly XMPP as died and blown away in my neck of the woods but some people still use it. I think the fsf does, and maybe duckduckgo has a server. All for it coming back though, but good luck with that. I’ll keep it in mind though in the event I have an application. Thanks.
- Comment on Do any hardened Linux distributions exist? 1 year ago:
Keep in mind that security is boring. You want it to be boring. Long established distributions with good team and release cycle, really good security team, and minimal software (i.e. less is more). Just mention because Fedora is a test bed really, and so not exactly what one would choose for a secure system.
This is why of the list that people provided I would personally favor Rocky (RHEL), Debian, or OpenBSD. All of the others have a lot to prove to me frankly. Not saying bad, lot were good suggestions, but they have the downsides of being less mainstream and/or more cutting edge, or more specialized.
- Comment on Do any hardened Linux distributions exist? 1 year ago:
You might want to look at Debian, and just read through the security guide. If you care about security, I am not sure automated is the way to go, or at least not without some personal knowledge and a personal audit of the supposedly secure system.
- Comment on From FaceID to Amazon One, should you share biometric data online? 1 year ago:
The problem with a lot of bio based systems is that they are spoofable on one hand, you cannot change them on the other, they are not secrets, and using them discloses them.
Face ID is a good example. Lot of these systems you can just hold up a photo. Apple is the only vendor that I would consider using face id with.
- Comment on Mullvad slowing down internet 1 year ago:
How much speed do you need? That is still a lot of bandwidth. This is from someone with 8 mbps up/ 60 mbps down. So your still way better then I am. I am envious. Well no so much as this is enough for me.
Other thing to keep in mind is that bandwidth is only half of performance, latency is the other. So check that too.
- Comment on How did you guys use reddit and discord? 1 year ago:
By the way, another approach is AI. It can act as another interface and entry as long as you do not plan to take it too seriously. AI can give a great summary and sound really authoritative but be very wrong in crazy ways. So useful but not an end point.
- Comment on How did you guys use reddit and discord? 1 year ago:
You take me wrong. Not saying your question is a bad question. You ask what I do when I have a software dev question or other similar questions.
Software in particular but for many topics a web search leads you to the answer. If not that, then a more particular search of Wikipedia or alternativeto.net for example. Lot of these searches lead to familiar places some of course Reddit included though not that common for really good software dev answers. Software stuff is very well documented this way too. Source code, documentation, discussions … literally anything. I generally work my way back. In the end one can just read the source though we all try to avoid that.
You asked about a bridge. Search is the bridge. If I actually needed some direction from someone else I would find a specific forum or the actual dev community for that specific piece of software nut only after I had put in the up front work.
So my answer was a serious one. Encouraging a way of thinking.
- Comment on How did you guys use reddit and discord? 1 year ago:
It is called a web search. I use DuckDuckGo. Most things are already answered. One should only waste people’s time with a question once they have made a good faith effort.
For me, rarely do I need to ask a question and if I do it is usually too hard and I get nothing anyway.
- Comment on Why there aren't ad blocking apps on Google Play 1 year ago:
Such a shocker.
- Comment on iPhone vs Android 1 year ago:
The big issues with iPhone I have found are overly complicated, overly expensive, walled garden, and so locked down you cannot remote control, and cannot install your own software from your own sources. Researchers cannot even easily reaseach security issues and they do have them.
So with all that, iPhone is a no for me. On the other hand probably more secure. It is also not from an Ad company which is good.
- Comment on Contacts synceable with cloud back up privacy friendly app 1 year ago:
Just confirming what some others said. Basically I have a Nextcloud setup where I sync all my devices though Nextcloud and can see Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks on Nextcloud, Android, and Linux (though this side could have been Windows for example).
The software I use for this is Open Sync on Android. This is a free fork of DavX5 which like others said also should also work. Then I just use my stock calendar, and contacts app, but I use OpenTasks for my tasks. On the other end I also sync with Thunderbird on Linux and can see my calendar, contacts, and tasks.
Little techie to all setup just because of all of the components. But otherwise works well.
OpenTasks: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.ta… Open Sync: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.deepend…
- Comment on My ISP has taken total control of my network 1 year ago:
I never use this device for anything other then a transceiver/bridge. I would just get my own gateway and place it inside theirs. Do get one that has updates. Replacing theirs is not a bad idea too.