Have strong opinions, but I welcome any civil fact-based discussion.

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BrikoX ,
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Consider what we used as currency before it was currency. You would have to barter before, which was inefficient. Common currency saves you and everyone involved time. Instead of having to barter for every item, which would also require you to do carry all of those items, you can just pay with currency now.

What email provider do you use for sign ups?

I used to use Protonmail, however the verification steps become tedious when creating unique emails for sign ups. I've switched to Tutanota despite it contravening their one account policy. What do you all use for one off emails (for sign ups etc )? Or do you prefer one of those 10 minute email sites?

BrikoX ,
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They offer integrated aliases via Proton Pass now.

Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims ( krebsonsecurity.com )

Virtual private networking (VPN) companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a target’s traffic off of the protection...

EXCLUSIVE: “You Have Been Warned”: Republican Senators Threaten the ICC Prosecutor over Possible Israel Arrest Warrants ( zeteo.com )

A group of influential Republican senators has sent a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan, warning him not to issue international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, and threatening him with “severe sanctions” if he does so....

BrikoX , (edited )
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Zeteo is new, created by Mehdi Hasan who was fired from CNBC MSNBC because of his critical coverage of Israel.

BrikoX ,
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US didn't "endorse" the ICC arrest warrant of Putin exactly for the same reason. They are not part of ICC, since half of their intelligence members and past presidents could be charged there for war crimes.

BrikoX ,
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No. Like any court, they only deal with people physically in front of them.

BrikoX ,
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What I meant was that if they were signatories to the Rome Statute at the time, actions they committed would quality for war crime charges.

As far as if it's worth it? I would say yes. It would legitimize US in the global community. Right now everyone knows US is the biggest hypocrite on the world stage.

BrikoX OP , (edited )
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You are absolutely right about metadata, but as far as protests, just having encryption is enough to prevent anyone from accessing the data. Extracting metadata from 3rd party companies or extracting a phone requires a lot more resources than cops can spare.

[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?

Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...

BrikoX ,
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From what I have seen, it more stems from the activism vegans are engaged in more than the actual veganism.

Archaeologists identify the birthplace of the mysterious Yamnaya ( www.economist.com )

Yet they and their descendants would go on to transform Europe and much of Asia genetically, culturally and linguistically. Among the many innovations that these steppe migrants ushered in, scientists believe, are the Indo-European languages that are dominant in Europe today, and which are spoken by nearly half of humanity....

BrikoX ,
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BrikoX ,
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The comment is not overwritten, just hidden in lemmy-ui frontend, different frontends have settings to still show removed content.

The Best Secure Email Providers in 2024 ( blog.thenewoil.org )

Like it or not, email is a critical part of our digital lives. It’s how we sign up for accounts, get notifications, and communicate with a wide range of entities online. Critics of email rightfully point out that email suffers from a significant number of flaws that make it less than ideal, but that doesn’t change the...

BrikoX OP ,
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No company executive will go to jail for you. Give any company a court signed order and they will comply. Hence, the companies that orient around privacy limit the data they retain so that when they get a court order, they have nothing to give. Email is flawed by design, so some metadata always has to be stored for it to be functional.

BrikoX OP ,
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You thinking it's a honeypot is a win for the government. All they need to do is spread some propaganda instead of actually bothering to run a service that is hard to keep alive. And if they were to run a honeypot, having it outside 14 eyes countries would be the most stupid decision the government could make.

BrikoX OP ,
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Good point, but I didn't think of it that way just because, I saw things and read stuff that made me suspect it...

There is "speculation" spread about every single "privacy" focused service for exactly that reason. If you don't trust them, you are not using them. I'm not saying don't be suspicious, but also look at facts that make it unlikely of it being a honeypot.

But they did, and it worked for them before, and it'll always work unless no one start using that service, so there's no point in keeping servers operational.. time for a rebrand. plus they're getting paid.

Right, but there are plenty of easier services to target that provide more sensitive information. If you are a honeypot, you have to be profitable and expand your services or people will move somewhere else. That all takes time and work. Buying other services like SimpleLogin or Standard Notes and integrating their staff into your scheme would be unnecessary complication.

having it outside 14 eyes countries would be the most stupid decision the government could make.

It's not a story. So called 5 eyes, 9 eyes and 14 eyes refers to country agreements to share intelligence and make cooperation instant instead of having to go through proper channels that take time. I'm sure there are many conspiracy theories about specific things that might not be true, but there is no dispute that these agreements exist.

Government run honeypots are usually facilitated by federal agencies, INTERPOL, or EUROPOL, and if they want to run something in a country where they are not welcome it has to be court approved. Hence, it being run in 14 eyes countries, make it easy. Switzerland on the other hand not only requires everything to be approved by their courts, but also require using their specific privacy laws when making determination, which are the strongest in the world.

You only need to look at previous known honeypots to see where they originate and what they target.

BrikoX ,
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It was always happening and at a large scale, it's just there are new reporting requirements now, which leads to more nonspecialized publications to cover it more often.

BrikoX OP ,
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Hi. Could you add a link to your Lemmy account to any other source? The website/GitHub/Mastodon/Liberapay doesn't mention this account.

BrikoX OP ,
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Some options are listed here https://www.oss.fund/categories/bounties/

BrikoX OP ,
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Updated.

BrikoX ,
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Blame gamers for embracing every single greedy move and asking for more. If you shout how fucked up this is and still open your wallet, you are the problem.

BrikoX ,
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Useless. Unless you are dumb enough to trust the result without verifying it yourself. And if you do verify it, at that point you spend more time than just doing a regular search.

Why is Matrix mentioned more often than XMPP in self hosted forums?

I'm looking into hosting one of these for the first time. From my limited research, XMPP seems to win in every way, which makes me think I must be missing something. Matrix is almost always mentioned as the de-facto standard, but I rarely saw arguments why it is better than XMPP?...

BrikoX ,
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Google killed XMPP momentum. And while Matrix has many issues it needs to figure out, especially the development being almost exclusively supported by a for-profit company, they seem to slowly (very slowly) work towards more independence.

Matrix did some things right. Going with JSON spec instead of XML, having Element as uniform cross-platform client, offering bridges as a way to stay connected with your family and friends without needing to convince them to move (XMPP offers transports, but they function entirely differently) and offering end-to-end encryption by default.

XMPP in true open source fashion doesn't have any uniformity from user perspective. Different ways to do the same thing on different clients, different clients on different platforms. That is a benefit for a savvy tech nerd, but it's a huge inconvenience for a non-techie family member or friend.

Safest way of using WeChat

I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn't the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I...

BrikoX ,
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That's an oxymoron. Apart from having a dedicated device, you can't really sandbox the app since it requires basic permissions to function that give access to core phone functions. See https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.tencent.mm/latest/
You can try to limit permissions of some features that you don't intend to use.

BrikoX ,
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If you actually bothered to read, you would know that it shows 0 trackers because Facebook doesn't embed their trackers in the SDK, and inject them later once you grant them the permissions to the device, exactly the same way WeChat does.

Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone ( lemmy.world )

I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they're on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can't be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?...

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

In 2020 Google claimed it was supposed to be limited to a single region in partnership with a single carrier. And was never meant to be put up on Play Store.

A spokesperson from Google reached out to clarify some details about the Device Lock Controller app. To start with, Google says they launched this app in collaboration with a Kenyan carrier called Safaricom.

Google has confirmed that the Device Lock Controller app should not be listed on the Google Play Store for users in the U.S., and they will work to take down the listing.

Source: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-device-lock-controller-banks-payments/

Of course, it was a lie since it's still on Play Store an of today and in use.

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

I only see userstyle linked. Is that what you meant by userscript?

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