Yeah you are right, posting a youtube link was a bad call from op, even the rules on the forum frown on it. (First rule even!) A better approach would have been a summary or article with the important points.

And I have to be fair with you… you guessed right. The video is too long, I had to skip a lot since they were repeating the same things over and over. Worse part is that, my awareness pitch, fell flat. I just checked the comments in the video, half of the section reads like this:

“I wont buy from LG anymore” “FuckLG” “Thas why i don’t use tvs”

They didn’t understand that the problem is bigger than one brand or device, that there’s a whole system behind this. Nor the irony of being horrified of spying software while signed to google services.

Sigh… maybe i shouldn’t rush to be a devil’s advocate anymore… it always bites me back.

Anyways, I still think is important to reach people where they are, and youtube videos should help, it has reach and its were the more oblivious guys are. Although, it would have been really really nice from them to host it in a less hostile platform for everyone else.

Now like you, i will end my rant here. Loved yours, even if it was a little spicy, which may have offended some people. But there was truth there, and for me at least, made me reconsider some things.

Cheers!

Look you are right, but everything that promotes awareness about privacy it’s a plus in my book.

Being the devil’s advocate, nexus gamer is not a privacy channel. They are a tech one that started doing some journalism and they seem to be new to the privacy side of things. This story come about after the monitor ad pop stuff.

Related rant: For me phones are way more scary, they are everywhere, and you have no control on your friends and family devices. You can´t ask everyone to buy pixels and install graphene os on them.

When our parents say they want to be our friends, that’s nice. But we better also respect them as teachers. Totally equalizing them is demeaning them and arrogant of us. When Jews say they want to be everyone’s friends and allies, that’s nice. But Gentiles better also give them respect as their teachers.

The first time I read this kind of nonsense I thought it was a joke, then that it was an exception. Now I know, that I was being naive. Even now, I had to check it because i couldn’t believe that it was real.

This is probably my fault, I will explain.

I wrote in the op that i tend to skip leagues. Well, my friends tell me that the ones i skip are the good ones and the ones i play the bad ones. Just so you get an idea… I played Bestiary and Synthesis, skipped Expedition and Sentinel. Also played Kalandra but skipped Mirage… Every time I played a league Reddit exploded in how bad the league was lol.

Still, I’m enjoying it, coming back after a year has been really enjoyable, but my friends that play every league had a similar experience to you.

Although I’m surprised about the player retention, this felt like an easier league for casuals, lots of power creep, easier crafting, etc.

I have been enjoying voyages, but i don’t try to make an efficient setup nor i engage with the tile mechanic… I just make a circle or snake and go through it. Probably inefficient, but i don’t want to engage with the tiles mechanics, way too tedious. Why would they re-introduce them after Synthesis push-back is a mystery to me. I may watch a guide to see how worth the tedium of fishing tiles and borders is, but for now, I pass.

Anyways, i will probably play for 2 months and then try poe2, which i haven’t play since 0.1 launch also excited to try!

I love Debian, I use it as a desktop and it’s installed on all my machines, but it has some problems/quirks that make it hard to recommend it for desktop usage.

First one is that it doesn’t have sensible defaults, the OS expects a user who is an admin, one who will configure things to their liking. I would consider this to be a feature, if it weren’t for the second problem, the documentation. The documentation is wayy too dated, lots of pages in the wiki haven’t been updated since Debian Buster days!

A better recommendation would be probably a Debian derivative like MX Linux. They are more opinionated, but as far as I know, they come with better defaults and offer newer guides, documentation, etc.

The Crypto AG story shows that the location of a company doesn’t matter that much. The US simply made legal what they were already doing behind the scenes. Intelligence services have always been and still are above the law.

Unpopular takes incoming.

Signal.

Way too many red flags.

• Why ask for mandatory phone numbers? You could at least make it opt in.
• Why we can’t inspect the latest server code?
• Why not make it easy for people to run their own servers?

Do you truly believe that a company that wants to preserve your privacy would take this direction?

And i don’t care how secure the protocol is, how well the code is audited. They can still map your social graph.

Anyways, because of my threat model, i still use Signal. But if i were an activist i wouldnt touch it.

More unpopular takes:

Tor and Mullvad probably compromised too. If a service gets too mainstream, I dont believe for a second that they would let it run without care. They would take it down, or control it.

Now, these services are still usefull. For example mt threat model is to deny my shit to the big tech. So they are useful if you want to escape data collection for adversiment purposes.

I don’t think they would burn the reputation of these services for low hanging fruit like selling data for ads.

There are plenty, as others have said, it has been able to help a lot in science. It has been used for finding new drugs, search for composite materials.

Sadly i don’t think the pros will outweigh the cons, the society as is right now won’t let it happen. I truly think this tool, even without any fancy AGI, if used in a responsible manner could help us solve some of the most pressing problems the world has.

But it won’t happen, look at the irresponsible manner the capitalist society has rolled out this tech, which is still in its infancy. It has wasted tons and tons of energy on models that are not yet fully mature. Brute force training of shit models just to get the best monthly benchmark over competitors. It’s so sad to see all the promised goals in terms of saving energy and water that went to garbage the moment the AI hype exploded.

And what we got for that? A bunch of models causing problems because they are not ready. Executives cutting workforce, in part to justify the use the new shiny tooling, only to get shittier services. And worse of all, shortage of water and energy to pump more compute.

Even if we get to a future where AI is cheap, powerful and capable, it will only be used to widen the gap between the wealthy and the common people.

Link Article

Sorry for the doomer rant, its a conflicted topic for me, feel free to skip.

(From South America)

About phones, same advice as monovergent, i use a separate phone for things that require google and another one for work. It’s not ideal since they probably can correlate them, but it’s the best compromise i found.

About ID, you are required to show it for most of the things you ask, which I think is reasonable. We don’t have face id thankfully yet

A bit off topic but i used to had a fiber provider which on rainy days internet would intermittently go down. I think the outside terminal was exposed or something. Also between 2AM and 6AM internet would start dropping packets like crazy.

Thanks for the clarification, i read you wrong, and you are completely right. Whats worse is that even if you are a bit savvy or informed is hard to fully get away from them. But anyways, even if i cant escape them i will try to give the minimum data possible.

whatsapp requires phone numbers. surely they can be called

Sadly the phone number is only for messages, in most cases it’s automated with a bot giving you options.

if you have tech skills, try running a matrix bridge

I didn’t know about matrix bridges. To be honest i’m not familiar with matrix but i have been learning about networking and self host on the side. I could make it part of the project.

Thanks for the suggestions! I should interact more with the community, i have been receiving lots of good feedback recently, i was always a lurker on reddit.

In Latin America most public services, banks ans bussines uses whatspps as their main support line.

To give you an example, if you have no water in your house you need to report on wp. No other way. And this is the standard for a lot of services, wp is the ONLY way to ask for support.

Also, if you are a freelancer or have a bussiness, your clients expect you to have whatsapp, 90% of inquiries and sales goes through wp.

It’s a nightmare, i really want to get rid of meta services but it is impossible for my case.

I have decided to decouple what i can, and use different phones for meta services, but i suspect that they still correlate and collect data. (Based on location, wifi, mac of iot, browsing etc)

Anyways, i ask people to be aware that for some of us, our situations makes impossible to remove some of the meta, microsoft or google services.

My aproach for now is to only use the minimum neccesary, i still search for ways to gradually switch out what i can.

Whatever i can’t rid off, i have another phone for it, how effecrive this is idk but for now is the best solution i found.

Lichess is great. My recommendation would be to switch over a month so you can see if it has everything you want. You can always use both depending on what tools you like more, i know some people who have a casual account on lichess and another on chess for more serious matchmaking.

As for chessdotcom, i don’t really have an opinion since i have not used it much, they are a for profit but that doesn’t mean is unethical per se.

What i do know it’s that what licches offers is a great contribution to the chess world, and for those who have the means, it’s worth to support it. They offer a complete platform for free. This is huge for people without the means to afford a subscription since it lowers the entry to new and young players.

As i say before since one is free, you can use both depending the use case! I hope this helps you, i have to thank you tho, since i stopped playing chess a few months ago and now i itch to go at it again. Cheers!

Nice suggestion i will look it up, thank you!

Thanks for the reply, i will keep it mind.

I will keep it in mind, i will be mindful of commands and flags. No typing without being certain of what each command does.

Thank you, even if its simplified, the browser example was really helpful. So in summary, having software up to date and being aware of what you do, should in most cases be safe. I was asking just in case there was some configuration i should do before connecting. With browsing i know that if i use something like firefox and ublock, i should be safe from most malware unless i screw up pretty bad. I will probably research ssh a bit more, as how it works, but you put some fears away. Thank you again.

Since we are on the topic of signal… im not tech saviie but i have read lots of blogs and people about how secure is the signal protocol. My question is … how can i be sure that the protocol is implemented as the open source code shows? Please correct me if im wrong but from what i read on their website the apk they provide has the capability to update itself at anytime. So what stops them to change how it works with an update? is it posible to build the apk yourself and stop the ability to update?

Np, happy to help. I had the exact same question a few days ago.