Same applies to all social networks and MS Windows, right?

The only social networks I willingly use are Fediverse instances, none I’m registered on are hosted in the US.

No device in my house runs Windows. Linux is an upgrade, I recommend it.

Things that rich people own manufacturing of?

As a socialist, I believe the working class must seize the means of production, and am doing my part in building that future for us all.

What about cars? They’re pretty much govt spyware now too.

Yes, I despise the ‘smart’ features shoved into cars, televisions, etc… I am also active in /c/fuckcars, I am critical of their overuse and rarely use one.

Now, none of this is necessary for us to recognize that giving the US control of important infrastructure is dangerous. But you did ask. And many governments are also moving away from US infrastructure, although more slowly.

As for Starlink, its common use is the result of laziness and neglect. Satellite internet is clearly not the cheapest, fastest or most efficient for most of its customers to get modern internet infrastructure. Governments should be reducing their citizens’ need for Starlink as a serious priority, by building internet infrastructure.

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private as possible

What are you trying to hide, and who are you hiding it from?

I dislike that some privacy forums, like reddit and therefore here by proxy, have a cultural habit of talking about privacy or security as an abstract value in itself. But when we start getting into more detailed questions, it’s all vague and vibes until we make it clear who we’re trying to hide from and what we’re hiding.

For example, most of the time I’m not hiding from my own government. Sure, I incidentally do make it a bit harder for them to track me, but I’m more focused on hiding from Meta/Alphabet/Amazon/etc. (plus from a small group of deranged online stalkers obsessed with some of my friends) so there are plenty of online services and stores I can buy from without taking inconvenient measures. It’s fine for me if some services can guess my name and know where I live and one of my phone numbers. It’s not fine if they learn some other details.

It’s important to get out of the habit of saying “more private”, “less private”, “most secure”, and talk about what you’re specifically concerned with and how tactics and tools specifically address that. What information will Google gain from knowing your investments? Is that a threat to you? Are there acceptable ways to mitigate that threat?

Using google to create an account would mean giving them my real data

I’ve been surprised how easy it was for me to make a fake Google account with no links to my real identity. I only use it for age-restricted YouTube videos, I wouldn’t trust it with money like investments, because the way I set it up is inherently suspicious and I wouldn’t be able to verify identity if challenged.

Redlib is an alternate frontend to reddit.com.

I can’t find “Ramble” so I’m guessing they might mean Raddle, which is a reddit-like website of its own, similar to Lemmy (without federation)

On one hand, yes. Someone posted it here and some more people voted the post up.

On the other, the bourgeoisie own lots and lots of megaphones. Most of the US media cycle is within the circus tent. It’s not us giving attention, it’s the mega-millionaire and billionaire -owned mass media organizations and social media platforms giving the attention.

It’s nearly useless unless you TRULY need the highest levels of privacy.

Absolutely not. My main adversary is simply commercial surveillance capitalism tracking and I daily drive Tor Browser. Most of the time, it’s fast enough for my browsing and video watching.

That’s why it’s annoying when people say “just use TOR”

I’m more annoyed when such people treat it as a panacea. See: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef5164845908

Tor is not a VPN, so something calling itself “Tor VPN” is ringing alarm bells. Is it official? Who developed it?

edit: Yes, it’s official - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/vpn/

I was confused since I didn’t understand the difference between it and Orbot, and misunderstood its name.

oh dont worry event security and LEA are neutral unbiased entities who can be trusted unlike the public

That would be far more provocative.

Yes, but depending on the country that could be (public + illegal) if it lists [what is legally considered] personal sensitive information or accidentally reveals someone’s secret like the Coldplay incident.

It would be fascinating, but IMO unnecessary and unethical.

extreme ironer

I did come across that hobby when I was trying to list examples of productive sports. Yeah, it’s a thing.

“How’s that going to work when ten years in the future you have no one that has learned anything,” he asked

Simple, I divest in your industry and/or die by then. We are smart. 🎩

no capitalist pig icon :(

🎩
🐖  

Check out the 4th, 5th and 6th sentence/paragraphs. (The 6th is on page 2.)

Lynx

I know of two other uses for it:

• Conveniently setting up a software with a web interface while on a headless server
• Looking busy at bullshit jobs - see the Looking Busy anecdote near the bottom

In my tired daze I mistakenly read ONLYOFFICE as OpenOffice and was about to yell No!

The article does well and links to their other article on the OO 9.0 release, which explains why it’s probably a smarter choice for this office situation when compared to LibreOffice:

ONLYOFFICE is one of two options that comes to mind when I think of a solid Microsoft Office alternative on Linux, the other being LibreOffice. Both offer a range of useful features and support a wide range of document formats. What sets ONLYOFFICE apart, though, is its focus on collaboration and generally reliable compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

xcancel is just one Nitter instance (just like lemmy.ml is one Lemmy instance). I recommend sharing the load around to other working instances, or better yet, as Avatar of Vengeance mentioned, use the LibRedirect browser extension which automates this for a huge range of other websites.

A good thing about tech is that if you have a spare device (even a cheap single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi or similar cheaper one, or a partly-broken laptop) or a working virtual machine, you can break things. That’s a core characteristic of the old-school hacker mindset, to try stuff and break stuff until you understand stuff. Usually, the worst case, you just reinstall the operating system and have a fresh clean environment (or, better yet, you restore a backup you made! Learning how to fail gracefully is a great skill)

I bricked a certain wacky laptop setup twice and had to start over (luckily with backups) just trying to get a custom startup loading screen. But once I realized why it was breaking and how to avoid it, I had a cooler looking computer!

It should show up fine in a mobile browser.

It’s just a flat-colored version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector-based_example.svg

I know it’s been said, but Brave is a hard no. Replace it with Ungoogled Chromium. I haven’t seen the video so I don’t understand why it’s in the “not ideal for a normal human” list, and I am biased since I use plenty of “not for normal” tools.