BadgerInATrenchcoat @ThreeBadgersInATrenchcoat@social.privacytools.io

Isn't the premise of TikTok so strange? What are essentially children, doing provocative dances to lyrically sexually implicative songs. Not just like doing it among friends as a joke or something either, they're recording it and posting it publicly on a platform owned by a Chinese company with known ties to the Chinese Communist Party. I don't know, just something about that doesn't sit right with me.

First post just went live! Its an in-depth post about hardening Firefox that I've been slowly working on in my free time for a long time now.

Enjoy!

Just got an invite from the great people over at PrivacyTools.io to their WriteFreely instance. On there I'll write guides and informational posts about privacy, security, computers, system administration, and more! New posts coming soon, if you'd like to check it out, the link is now in my "profile metadata" page, which is right below my bio.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Rust is faster than C now lol

Good for devs because y'know... speed.. But also good for everyone else because of wider adoption of memory safe languages.

Hopefully that means that more devs will actually use it.

Facebook really just tried to screw everything don't they? Like buttons that more or less implement trackers across the entire internet, forcing Oculus users to make Facebook accounts (I was so mad about this after I spent $400 on a fucking hmd that will now just pretty much be a paperweight), they make WhatsApp users bow to the zucc, they took giphy, the list goes on. Like come on - have some mercy..

Its crazy to me how less toxic Mastodon is versus Twitter. Like I used twitter for four years and that community was filled with toxicity, death threats, and doxxing. You come to Mastodon and it's like people explaining the platform to newbies, supporting other users, teaching people basics of privacy and security, etc.

Its just weird how much the platform varies with the attitude of its users.

Oh no the k-pop stans have found mastodon. This is the end my friends..

/ˢ

Myth 3; Linux is more private!
Now this one is true for the most part, desktop Linux tends to be more private out of the box. The myth comes from people frequently portraying it as the one catch-all solution. If you're still using anti privacy applications on your computer, then your privacy will still suffer, actually to a worse extend compared to something like Windows or MacOS due to the whole no sandboxing thing.
4/4

If there are any that I missed, comment them and I'll try and add them.

Myth 2; Everyone should switch to Linux, its the best OS!
Now, I used to be of this mindset, but it is also far from true. Software support is limited (unless you're really into SuperTux), command line can be daunting to new users, you've mostly got to have someone who can guide you through and teach you the basics, which not everyone has, and much more.

3/4?

Myth 1; Linux is more secure because FOSS!
This is false. Linux is actually notably less secure, due to lacking exploit mitigations, no sandboxing, etc. While it can slightly improve it, no amount of hardening can fix it. Linux is actually beat out in security by almost every other major OS, Windows 10, MacOS, and ChromeOS most notably.

2/4?

There is too much misinformation in the Linux community, to the point where even Linux veterans are even misinformed. That said, I've created a list of a few common misconceptions and their truths, all typed below. This also isn't like some of the Linux myth lists online that just include worthless garbage like "Linux can not play DVDs or any other media", "Linux can't play music", or my personal favorite "Linux can't open images" (all real examples from a list of "common Linux myths").
1/4?

Unscientific poll: On a desktop/laptop keyboard (so not mobile) how many words per minute do you type?

I wonder what the privacy implications of Brave Rewards (Brave Ads) are. Not what they claim, but I mean what they actually are. I mean I think its impossible to know for sure unless you work for Brave but I'd certainly be curious. I'll try them out, but I wonder what they do with the data.

For a browser that markets itself as sort of "the out of the box, everyman's browser for privacy", they sure do have a pretty blatant disregard for user privacy out of the box. Look no further than the settings to see all of the anti-privacy features that not only do they bundle in but they enable by default. Hate that I even have to use it for anything.

Happy New Year!!

even if you click to not collect the data, its collected just "not stored." Certainly seems suspicious to me. If all of this isn't enough to make you get off of Discord then I don't know what is. This also isn't just some random guy ranting about Discord, I used their platform for years and years, met some of my best friends on there, etc, all before I knew about the things that they were doing. I switched to Matrix about 9 months ago and never looked back.

3/3

, It contains a process logger that logs all of your open programs and browser tabs, they force many users to give their phone numbers, they have received and complied with government requests from this data, so its very plausible that all of this data is also shared to the government along with their investors and other data brokers, discord uses all of this data for advertising and sale, it doesn't respect user choice on their data

2/3

If you're still using Discord, you should stop right now and move to a platform that is encrypted and respects privacy (like Matrix). Discord signed large deals with venture capital firms that include Tencent and many other large anti-privacy, pro-invasiveness companies, they use vague language in their privacy such as "including but not limited to", Discord is closed source and refuse to release any part of their source code, they encourage users to use and link other " spyware" platforms

1/3

I'm all for privacy, security, federation, etc. I love mastodon, use matrix every day, hell I self host nextcloud - but if you think that any of these platforms will EVER be as big as their counterparts (matrix -> discord, masto -> twitter, etc) then you're just delusional. Again, hate big tech, tracking companies, etc, but by having so much data they have the power to propel themselves to the top and stay there, if you're a service that respects privacy and don't collect data, you're fucked.

Update:

Ubuntu Touch is still broken, janky, unstable, and lacking in apps and features.

GrapheneOS is still fast, secure, works flawlessly, has crazy long battery, and never crashes.