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kyub

@ kyub @discuss.tchncs.de

Posts
1
Comments
232
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • How did Google Play know my old device?

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  • Sure.

  • How did Google Play know my old device?

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  • Just for reference, this is what the Google Play services app transmits roughly every 20 minutes to Google if it has network access:

     
            Phone #
    SIM #
    IMEI (world-wide unique device ID)
    S/N of your device
    WIFI MAC address
    Android ID
    Mail Address of your logged in Google account
    IP address

    And that is when you have disabled ALL telemetry in ALL of the options, even the most hidden ones. So this is the minimum amount this app is always gathering from every Android user using the Google Play services app, no matter what you selected. Other Google apps (like the Play store app) could then contain additional telemetry on top, this is just the common base of all Google proprietary apps. Or the minimum amount of privacy violations you get when using proprietary Google apps on your phone, no matter what.

    If you use GrapheneOS, I'd recommend not installing/using ANY Google apps at all (not even Play store or Play services). To get apps, you should use (roughly in this order of priority): 1.) GrapheneOS's app store for the built-in apps 2.) Accrescent app store (has several good open source apps, is intended to be more secure than F-Droid) 3.) Obtainium (for getting open source apps directly from their source repos) or if you really can't get into Obtainium, use F-Droid instead 4.) Aurora Store (for getting apps from the Google Play store without sending too much data to Google. Only do this if there is no open source app available for doing the same thing).

    To fully mitigate the removal of the Play services app, you also should probably install/configure a UnifiedPush client like ntfy to get battery efficient push notifications and ideally use apps which also make use of that, e.g. the Molly fork instead of Signal. It's quite easy to do, just something to be aware of. Then you're also independent from Google's push notification infrastructure (which is called "Firebase Cloud Messaging" (FCM)). But you need a UnifiedPush server to go along with it, either self-hosted or use a public one. There are some privacy friendly ones public ones out there. If you don't use Google's FCM and also no alternative like UnifiedPush, then app notifications will most of the time still work but will put an additional strain on your battery.

  • ICE deports Venezuelan teen despite reportedly knowing he was not a target

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  • It's going to get a lot worse because now they know that they are able to deport/jail literally anyone without facing any resistance. If a case gets too big on the media, they can shift responsibility around in a circle, e.g. USA says it can't do anything, El Salvador has to do something. And El Salvador says sorry can't do anything. And so nothing is done, both USA and El Salvador get what they want and the justice system and the victims can't do anything.

    This will soon become routine because they will expand their list of "unwanted" persons constantly. First "gang members" and "criminals", then sexual and other non-criminal minorities, then non-criminal political opposition, then potentially everyone who's not super loyal to the fascist administration (aka cult).

    What worries me is how fast it descends into madness. Any innocent American citizen should probably sooner, rather than later, be prepared to fight for themselves and their loved ones against injustice, because there might be no one left in the system doing it for them when the system itself has become unjust and/or dysfunctional. I hope that you somehow manage to turn the wheel around but when looking at the speed of Project 2025 and the Trump administration becoming increasingly more vile, I don't think there's much time left. Fascism is growing at insane speed, fueled by disinformation/propaganda and fake news on the web and social media, and backed by obscenely rich oligarchs who never really liked the previous government and laws anyway.

    And this is all happening in a time when humanity should work together, rather than continue fighting among themselves. Instead, humanity chose the worst path forward possible, the path which accelerates the problems and has no solutions at all. So now we don't have anything against climate change and this will cause massive problems and completely new wars world-wide over land, food, water. And it's not far out. If you're young today, you'll probably live to experience it. It's probably the right time to prepare for the worst and adjust to a pre-apocalyptic mindset. Because we're definitely not solving this if we can't even solve fascism in Western democracies in 2025.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • A fascist-run country does not care about allies or friends. In doing so, it becomes vulnerable and disadvantaged.

  • AI isn’t ready to replace human coders for debugging, researchers say

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  • "AI" is good for pattern matching, generating boiler plate / template code and text, and generating images. Maybe also translation. That's about it. And it's of course often flawed/inaccurate so it needs human oversight. Everything else is like a sales scam. A very profitable one.

  • I am really considering moving from Arch to Fedora. What's your experience with this?

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  • Fedora gives you a secure and functional desktop distro out of the box while with Arch, you can get that as well but have to invest more configuration time, since you have to configure things like Secure Boot, SELinux, disk encryption, firewalls, AppArmor and other security stuff by yourself, it's not going to have all that jazz by default, since Arch is a minimalistic and modular DIY-like distro, so it's up to the user to configure this. Arch doesn't put obstacles in the way of the user but also doesn't just preconfigure this stuff. But it's all there if you need it. Arch also offers a linux-hardened kernel variant which uses various hardening patches of the GrapheneOS project for the kernel (not sure if Fedora offers this as well). Experienced Linux users tend to like Arch's approach because of more flexibility, modularity and minimalism while still offering everything necessary, but the less experienced of a user you are the more you probably will have problems with this approach, and the more you want more things to be pre-configured out of the box, so that you as the user have to configure less stuff. The more you view it that way, the less suitable Arch is for you.

    But both are excellent and modern distros. Fedora is generally for people who want to generally spend less time configuring their desktop distro. Arch is for people looking for either a more universal distro or something more modular, technically simple and customizable.

    The RedHat backing of Fedora can be a blessing (lots of great stuff came from RedHat so far) but also could become a curse soon due to IBM's influence (which bought RedHat some time ago, and IBM isn't such a great company, and this can negatively impact RedHat as well) and current US politics (it's a US-based company). Arch, on the other hand, is even more independent than Fedora is and it's a fully community-run distro, and from all community-run distros, it's of very high quality, similar to Debian. Both Debian and Arch are also quite democratic in nature. If IBM hadn't bought RedHat, and US wouldn't be like it is today, I'd maybe view this differently but as it is I'd rather use a community-run distro than a US-corporation backed one. Even if Fedora is still very independent as a project, or so it seems.

    If you're very well familiar with Arch there's really no need to switch to Fedora, but it can save you some time or configuration trouble overall in some cases, while it could also mean more potential trouble with major upgrades than with Arch with its frequent but lightweight updates all the time and never a big major version upgrade because Arch has no versions at all, it's purely rolling, whereas Fedora is a mixture of rolling and point release. That said, if you update your Arch very infrequently (e.g. only once every couple of weeks), you will also have a higher chance of update troubles (though these are often easy to solve for an experienced Arch user, but can be crippling for a newbie). To benefit from Arch's update mechanisms, you have to update frequently, as in every couple of days, at the very least once a week. And you really should set up a fallback mechanism, e.g. via filesystem snapshots, so you can revert an update which went wrong. Although so far, one of my Arch installations here is like 7 years old and there were only very minor update issues during that whole time, all of which were solvable via downgrading a specific package, waiting 1-3 days for the fix and then upgrading that package. So I'd say Arch is much more stable than its reputation, but still, even objectively small update issues can be devastating for you if you don't know how to solve them, so it again depends on the user.

    Another factor is probably going to be whether the AUR or Fedora's community repos have more of the additional packages that you need for your use cases, from the packages that aren't in the default repos.

    Which of the two distros makes more sense depends highly on the user, the user's familiarity with Linux basics, the user's available time, and general use cases. I'd say both choices are excellent for a desktop distro, and Fedora would immediately become my daily driver if I ever became unhappy with Arch. Which so far hasn't happened.

    Another option if you still can't decide between those two excellent distros would be an Arch derivative like EndeavourOS or CachyOS, which pre-configure more of Arch for an easier desktop use out of the box. So they are more like Arch of course (based on it) but trade away some of Arch's subjective "weaknesses" for Fedora's subjective "strengths". I say "subjective" because those weaknesses and strengths can be different for each user and use case. Sometimes this gets forgotten in discussions like this. It's not a clearly defined drawback if your distro doesn't preconfigure most stuff out of the box. Whether that is a drawback or not depends on the user. However I'd assume that most users probably prefer more pre-configuration. But still, one size doesn't fit all.

    Well this got longer than intended but I hope it helps for decision making.

  • Judge questions White House's refusal to turn around deportation flights

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  • If laws and the constitution are not or can not be enforced, they are mere "optional guidelines" for these people to ignore. Either you take action against blatantly illegal actions, or you might just as well welcome your next dictator with some presents, right now already actually, because it won't get any better when they already start ignoring laws/constitution right now. It's a pure downward spiral from there, and it sends a clear signal to the administration and all of its allies that laws are optional right now. Also, regular people would already be fined/jailed/shot for doing 0.000001% of the wrongdoings of this administration. If there is such a thing like an actual justice system and a system of checks and balances in the US, then wake it the fuck up or it dies in its sleep. Much sooner than later.

  • What peripheral do you think should make a comeback?

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  • BNC Feed-Through Adapters (with Terminators if needed)

    I'm kidding, I'm kidding!

    For anyone too young, this was how you made gaming LAN parties in the early 90s when there was Doom, Doom 2, Duke3D and Quake 1 to play. It's a switch- and hub-less network connection where every PC is literally connected to all others in one line which is fed through each PC. Making your connection extremely sh!tty if you were on one end or someone between you and the other guy had a terrible PC or had to reboot. Well, actually it was generally sh!tty. This problem went away completely when switches (even just hubs) became commonly available / cheap for consumers.

    I do miss LAN parties though. Online gaming is also great but it's just not the same.

  • Republicans push to make "Trump Derangement Syndrome" a mental illness

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  • It's the other way around.

    The mental illness is not "paranoia about Trump's doings", paranoia about Trump is normal when you're a decent human being who is thinking clearly and fact-based, because then you should absolutely be paranoid about an unhinged, mentally unstable, dangerous fascist taking power in the US. If that doesn't bother you, I'm sorry, but you're probably simply uneducated. See old Nazi Germany for "prior art" on this one.

    What could be considered a "mental illness" is what causes people to believe or support Trump, or the current Republicans, or the MAGA movement, or the current right-wing extremism in general. This is likely an issue of either low education, low intelligence or naive belief in various forms of internet propaganda. Or multiple of those issues combined. So it's not really "illness" but rather a misinformed and/or radicalized person. Similar to what cultists become in real cults. Fascism is very cult-like in general. There's usually a supreme leader and a doctrine (usually based on falsehoods) to live by, and everyone who doesn't do that is considered an "enemy" or at least inferior. What you read on the internet and especially social media or "alternative news sites" is already often weaponized and might be able to radicalize you or lead you away from the fact-based truth. There's TONS of disinformation, sometimes harmless, sometimes funny, but sometimes not. Sometimes it's dangerous, especially if you're not able to spot what's likely true or not. If you aren't able to filter out disinformation, propaganda, lies, half-truths, weird memes, i.e. if you are unable to stick to reputable sources, peer-reviewed science, and so on, then you WILL fall for at least some amounts of misinformation and you MIGHT even become part of a cult (e.g. MAGA movement, conspiracy believers, anti-vaxxers, QAnon, radical right-wing extremism, ...). And again, it's all weaponized and that is useful for various involved parties for various reasons. For example, Putin wants misinformation on social media because with it he can destabilize Western democracies, because common citizens fall for this stuff and lose faith in their own governments. The end result helps Russia, because Western democracies will then do less and be less united against Russian attacks. Billionaires like Musk or Zuckerberg want misinformation on social media because with it they can better control the narrative and extract more money from the users because polarizing and extreme content gives them more interactions and thus money. Billionaires also want less governmental regulation, which is why Musk already demolished several regulating bodies in the US. Autocratic fascists like Trump also want misinformation on social media because with it they can control the narrative better. What these involved parties all don't want is the actual truth, so they are usually anti-science, anti-education, anti independent journalism, and so on. It's better for them if the common people are uneducated and uninformed, and follow the newly created doctrine. It's easy to tell that they want to create their own fake version of the truth, and control the narrative in that way.

  • Trump administration ramps up rhetoric targeting the courts amid mounting legal setbacks

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  • The real test against fascism is whether or not the justice system and executive powers can stand firm against these fascist onslaughts (i.e., by effectively enforcing laws/constitution, which usually have safeguards against fascists written in them) or whether they can't and so the new autocratic leader is allowed to basically do what he wants.

  • Is Tuta a good alternative to gmail?

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  • Haven't read anything bad about Tuta so I guess it's fine. Other good ones are Proton, mailbox.org or posteo.de. Anything that's not by Google, Microsoft, and so on.

  • Top post of Reddit. We are gonna see large influx of users.

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  • Basically yes. The alternatives passively become better simply because of the mainstream option becoming worse over time. I think it's still going too slowly in general but I'm not complaining, better slow than not at all.

  • Which browser do you use and why?

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  • I use several, depending on use case:

    • Tor Browser for general and anonymous web browsing (e.g. reading news, looking up stuff, and so on)
    • Mullvad Browser as a clear web alternative for general use
    • Librewolf for generally logging into sites with personally identifiable accounts (e.g. to buy stuff)
    • Ungoogled Chromium for those few sites which only work with a Chromium-based browser, or other specific cases
    • On Android (GrapheneOS): Tor Browser and Vanadium

    All regular browsers have some hardening applied and uBlock Origin installed.

  • Suggestions to switch a daily laptop to linux.

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  • Since you only mentioned 25% gaming, I'd recommend against a gaming-centric distro like Bazzite. Instead, use a generalist desktop distro.

    Since you mentioned that you're rather new-ish, I'd recommend against Arch-based distros like CachyOS. Instead, check out e.g. Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE. (Probably in that order of priority)

    These aren't hard recommendations, so you can do whatever and probably be fine either way, but it still doesn't fit that well.

  • Which band blew your mind away live?

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  • There are lots of great live bands but maybe these were most memorable for various reasons: Magma (just hypnotic), Lazuli (very entertaining live band every single time), The Pineapple Thief (great prog rock with incredible drummer), The Musical Box (playing and re-acting old Genesis. Too young to see the originals but just in time to see the remakes), Le Silo (super high energy duo or trio, don't even remember, but man that was wild), Aranis (they don't exist anymore unfortunately)

  • What are your thoughts on Louis Rossmann?

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  • I don't view it as badly. He's probably overly defensive and paranoid and interprets some forms of criticism as attacks. But I do not see this as an argument against his competence or contributions to the project, or against using GrapheneOS altogether, at all. In fact, I even kind of like having someone paranoid as the head of a security-focused OS. Seems like a useful synergy to me. Also, AFAIK the GrapheneOS project now also has others posting about the project, not just him alone. I think this was also a result of his "miscommunication" in the past. Furthermore, the project is too important (there are almost zero high-security and high-privacy mobile OSes!) to escalate this into a problem. And furthermore again, there might also be parties involved who are ACTUALLY interested in attacking GrapheneOS and weakening its popularity, for their own gains. And so when your successful and also high-quality project is under regular attacks from various angles, you might get more paranoid and misinterpret some valid criticism as a result. Combine that with Rossman's over-dramatic nature and high reach, and someone paranoid like Daniel might take it the wrong way. And then communication spirals out of control into various escalations. At least that's how I interpret it.

  • what’s the longest you went without sleep?

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  • Around 2.5-3 days. On a LAN party in 2003 or so. 2 nights without sleep. Lots of caffeine. It was fun at first but really started feeling terrible after the 2nd night.

  • What are your thoughts on Louis Rossmann?

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  • He's mostly correct about lots of things, but not about everything (for example, he hated on everything GrapheneOS just because its lead dev is a bit socially awkward). Plus he's overly dramatic and verbose which can be annoying. Sometimes you must be to get abstract or complicated points across better, but I still feel he's too aggressive in that regard. I also like what he's trying to achieve with FUTO in general. Overall, he's a great and valuable activist who has almost all of his eggs in the right baskets.

  • Is the Trump administration's website censorship the internet age version of Nazi book burning?

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  • Basically yes. There is nothing really new or different from the modern right-wing extremist ideology to the old Nazi ideology. The fundamentals are the same, always. They always go after minorities (first demonizing them, then jailing, deporting or killing them), they always strive for authoritarian leadership, they always combat science and education because science/education (or rather the universally accepted truth/facts) is kind of fundamentally incompatible with right-wing extremist beliefs (which are based on fear, feeling, outdated traditionalist values, fundamentalist Christian religious values, and a big load of plain bullsh!t). And of course they're going after everything that's inclusive or social because all they know is fear, hate, division and destruction. It's basically a cult which eventually wages war on everyone who thinks differently. They will always start with the ones who can defend themselves the least well and then move on to bigger targets (e.g. first illegal immigrants, then all immigrants, then people of color, then religious minorities, then political minorities, and so on). Eventually, they will demonize everyone who doesn't think their exact way or is in the political opposition etc.., in an effort to divide people.

    It's like a cult and it needs to be stopped. Don't fall for the trap that it's somehow different today. The only thing different is that they now have the internet to rapidly spread propaganda and misinformation everywhere (and all lesser educated or young parts of the population are likely to at least partially fall for this stuff), and that Western countries have stronger constitutions which will not crumble as easily as e.g. the Weimar Republic before Nazi Germany happened, because that constitution had a big loophole to exploit. But they might still find exploits or fill enough key positions with loyal fascists that they might be able to effectively sidestep the constitution, in effect installing a fascist, authoritarian government that can do what it wants, hunt who it wants, and be immune to legal repercussions. Don't underestimate them, they are very good at manipulation, lies, division and in general causing mayhem. They thrive from chaos, because from chaos they can then also create a powerful executive force to "restore law and order". Also they do not care about what you think about them or their actions. They will move quickly and mercilessly to achieve their goals, and so any opposition to them must also be quick, decisive and resolute, and not hesitate.

    They also currently gather immense wealth behind them currently because super-rich people/companies like riding on that bandwagon because it will grant them even more power and influence in the short to medium term (this was also true in old Nazi Germany btw), because there are no pesky or costly regulations limiting them anymore, so they will gain short-term economic benefits from siding with the extremists, and as we all know, in capitalism, money is everything, and morals don't matter. Elon Musk in particular is particularly clever and ruthless because he essentially managed to buy parts of the government, meaning he will make the government favor his own companies and plans. It's kind of unprecedented corruption I think, but of course it's a dream for any super-rich commercial entity. No regulations, no fines, do what they want, even direct taxpayer money into their own pocket. As much as you can, stop using, buying from or otherwise supporting big companies who openly side with fascists. You can vote with your wallet. In capitalism, voting with your wallet (what you buy, where you buy from and most importantly what you don't buy and where you don't buy from) is a very effective secondary vote option. Also stop using Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, and so on. In those platforms, you are the product, and when you use them less, they can generate less money from your data, behavior and interactions.

    Long-term, Nazi ideology always leads to societal division, hate, crimes, bad living conditions, lots of deaths, and eventually wars. Because once they've taken control of the inner political systems, and jailed or killed enough minorities they think are "harmful", they will always look for the next minority, and then the next, and the next, and then they'll be after you. And there will be very few if any legal ways of stopping them. After that (or even before), they will turn on their neighboring countries and start wars with them. Because they always need a new common enemy to hunt, they live based on the belief that they're more superior than others and that kind of grants them the right to take what they want and oppress those they deem "inferior" (Nazi ideology in a nutshell). When they don't have any easy targets anymore, they will look at other countries to invade. Any neighboring country in particular needs to be constantly aware of that.

    Slightly longer term, if the USA fall to the right-wing extremism, it will lead to its weakening and downfall (allies will also turn away), and China will become the undisputed global super power in the world.

    Longer term still, climate change will cause massive mayhem planet-wide. Since fascists are anti-science and pro-economy, and economy is pro environmental exploitation, they are accelerating the problem even further. They will deny the problem exists until it hits everyone, including them, in the face. Hard.

    Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to save us from climate change regardless, unless the whole economic system drastically changes, which will probably not happen until the catastrophe is there, but we can absolutely fight fascism and extremism, and in doing so this will also delay climate change slightly, granting us a few more years of "quality" time on this planet, before it all goes to universal sh!t.