matlag Actually yes. I did not know they released this. I still think my point stands: it’s a self imposed burden that is not relieved by spending loaned capital. That only has increased their burdens, because not only do they have to continuously pay for a large quantity of computer resources they have to repay debts and find a way of financing all of it sustainably.

I don’t know a lot about signal. My understanding was open-source clients existed, but the server’s software was proprietary. I’ve since read the Wikipedia page and Signal’s servers were once federated: “Signal’s server architecture was federated between December 2013 and February 2016.” That later date is when they ceased federation, claiming it held back the project.

I don’t like Signal. The people behind it are the benefactors of looters that reside in Silicon Valley. The project purports to be a non-profit, but burns capital that was accrued in and by Silicon Valley. It could not exist without surveillance-capitalism. Though that’s a critique of, perhaps, the entire software economy. Its members are too closely related to its major players though, being ex-employees.

For encrypted communications I would like to direct readers to GNUnet. The entire internet is incompatible with the ideals of privacy and security. You can mount applications on top of it, but the underlying framework is not appropriate.

A self-inflicted burden because they refuse to liberate the server side code. Besides, they can’t be burning through that reserve as they need to pay it back and how on earth are they going to do that?

Hang on… that’s not a gift. The hard work is making money from free software. You’ve indebted a foundation to the sum of $100,000,000.00 and you’re telling them:

A) pay it back

B) via commercializing free software

How the fuck do you do that? You can’t. What the fuck does a piece of software need that exorbitant amount for anyway? I guess that’s why Signal never really was libre software. There’s too much money to be made in spyware.

I urge users to become participants and contributors. As Kongar has written, we have access to sophisticated hardware, but we’re not deploying it. If mobile-computer operators contributed to a mesh-network we’d be in a position to discard subscriptions for telecommunications access. Before this can happen the expectations of users needs to shift from contributing capital (paying for a mobile plan for instance) to contributing resources: running voluntary software on their machines.

The requirements needed to participate in mesh-networks are not just technical knowledge. If a user deployed a program like Briar they’d notice something rather swiftly: participating in mesh-networks demands more resources than not participating. The most obvious effect of this is that the mobile-computer’s battery will drain faster. Carrying a spare battery seems to be common already and that’s without participating in a voluntary mesh-network. The users’ expectations would need to shift before they could adopt such software.

I’ll refrain from commentary on Apple’s iOS (though I expect it to be similar), but Google’s Android is hostile towards user-software that needs to run constantly in the background. It will terminate those programs, even if the user has granted it ‘permission’ to run in the background.

Desktop and laptops provide a much more fertile environment in comparison. It is the norm to have long running user-programs. Even commercial operating-systems do not find anything amiss because it is the norm here. For the user in such an environment I do not see any possible objection to running such programs other than an increase in data usage, but even then these programs often allow for deployments that have a fixed quota.

Why then do we not see mass adoption of software like i2p, hyphanet, GNUnet and so forth? I exclude tor because it reinforces the status quo that must be changed. It allows its users to exit the tor-network and access the web. It’s a good technical precaution against network surveillance, but the majority of that network’s userbase want to exit the network. To contribute to the tor-network is to run an exit-node and that is not financially feasible for the vast majority of internet users. It is not democratic, but exclusionary and elitist. User-contributed nodes that run on the hardware they have, with the data connections they have, will see their nodes deprioritized in routing if not outright dropped. The other projects I’ve listed do prioritize peer-to-peer communication whilst tor’s network has just become a way to access the web anonymously. I2p is technically superior to tor’s for in-network communication; it supports tcp and udp. You can torrent within i2p’s network. You can not torrent in tor’s: you lose udp.

In my eyes the major issue of the current ‘web’ is the rent-seeking economy that upholds it. Technically we all have the tools to self-host a blog, e-mail, lemmy instance or whatever it is you want to share. We have a glut of cpu-capacity, storage and bandwidth. The hindrance isn’t in the property we own, but in the capital expenditure demanded from a perpetual rent-seeking economy that’s evolved around the ‘web’. Users are behind cgnats and need to rent whitelisted servers. Users aren’t allocated a static ipv4 address and need to rent one. Users then need to rent domain names and before Let’s Encrypt they had to pay for a SSL certificate that had an expiration date–a perpetual expense. Completely arbitrary, artificial scarcity to create an economic system of rents. It’s all absurd.

Software like lemmy isn’t revolutionary either. It’s retroactive. It wants to shift conditions back to when web-masters had privileges. Privileges that were taken away by the new-style of business that superseded them. If you want to run lemmy you need to pay your dues to the domain registrars and whitelisted server admins. The revolutionary act is to run i2p or gnunet and do whatever the fuck you want, but once you realize Alice and Bob can communicate with one another without paying tolls to DNS registrars or whitelisted server-admins nor subjugate themselves to that third-line–the forum administrators–lemmy becomes superfluous.

Users shift responsibility to the server-admins that run the lemmy instances they interact with. In exchange they give them all their content. That content has value. Lemmy is still a value extraction mechanism because everything on the ‘web’ has devolved into economic rent-seeking. To exist on the web is to participate in that system. It is the ‘web’ that needs to be ditched. Of the alternatives GNUnet is the design that makes the most sense, though it is still juvenile.

It’s rather ironic that some commentators are just not listening, whilst claiming the other’s deafness to be detrimental. I’d like to raise awareness that the effectiveness of antidepressants is similar to placebo and exercise–none of them are effective for treating treating chronic depression. Claiming exercise is as effective as antidepressant-drugs isn’t the remarkable truth that it’s being framed as: they’re both terrible antidepressants. We don’t have effective treatments that are applicably uniform–people are fundamentally different–don’t be so asinine as to dispute this, nor obtuse enough as to state the normative behaviours of healthy populations as being the cure for diseased individuals. B-b-b-but it does help. Thank you; your contributions towards aetiology have been most illustrious.

Something something… free markets… capitalism–no! Not like that!

I’ve been interested in tracking my own sleep too. I wonder how useful these commercial products are in producing data that is correct. They come from technology companies who primarily want to collect data, as much data as possible. They’re not at all interested in providing their users with an honest interpretation of anything. A lot of them probably don’t even have the expertise to interpret whatever they’ve gathered.

I’ve been involved in sleep studies in the past and none of them involved using a smart-watch or other commercial wearable. They used electrodes (?) that were stuck to my body and fed into a computer. What data was being collected and how to properly interpret that data is beyond me.

Making a DIY device is probably feasible, but again, I wouldn’t have a clue on how to interpret the data gathered. I don’t think it’d be too complicated though.

Tools built specifically to monitor one signal are probably better than a generalized thing, such as a smartwatch, from a company that produces surveillance equipment for marketing purposes.

You glossed over the fact that it came from Israel’s intelligence-community. Its design is woeful–that’s the protocol, regardless of client or server implementation. The project reeks of a state-backed program to get ahead of the increasing desire for encryption in everyday communications. Yet encryption has always been an after thought within that program. All those bridges to funnel different protocols into the program.

I think the most optimal way of doing this would be a self-made shell script that expresses your preferences. You could then run it from whatever live-environment you choose and the result would be a familiar setup. The /home directory being on a separate partition from the rest is useful for preserving large-quantities of user-data.

I’ve been impressed with the capacity of microSD cards. The idea of mounting /home to a microSD card and having a materially-portable home has been a novelty I’ve so far resisted.

Even systemd-less distros need to implement ‘fake’ systemd components. It’s like a cancer. No one’s voluntarily using sub-components of systemd without systemd. It is a monolithic thing.

I was unaware of this. As far as I can understand this is a design for admins who manage fleets and virtual machines, so it’s not surprising it comes from Lennart and systemd. However, even openbsd has /etc/machine-id. Over in bsd land it seems to come from dbus. Is the file a systemd design or a dbus design? Is it something users should be concerned about… probably, but all of computing is a nightmare. Just another fire to add to the fire pit.

And they put people in house arrest, because… ? I just saw tanks being transported on public-roads today. So the reason couldn’t be to covertly move weapons: that goes on in public, in broad daylight and that transit sits alongside vans delivering ice-creams to convenience stores. So, the big cabal wanted to put people under house arrest… to do what?

Pick up a book. Pandemics aren’t new and neither is the orchestrated response to them by governing bodies. History can be a good reference.

Matrix’s origin is Israel’s intelligence community. One could argue the authors are rebels, being insiders themselves, who’ve begun to fight back against the surveillance state that they intimately know. That’s a naive and foolish thing to think. The project’s design is awful from a ‘privacy’ perspective, with the design specifically allowing third-parties to silently ‘intercept’ users’ data–all whilst still being ‘E2EE’. It’s a feature. That’s the amusing thing about its absolutely shit design, but regardless of design choices, encryption has always been a lagging component of the program.

The cynic might observe that the whole thing was proposed with foresight as to create a compromised leader ready to be adopted by organizations that felt they needed a higher degree of security. Matrix is a good solution, or so government bureaucrats are told.

Let Tel Aviv inside.

You’re right, but I doubt any of them are interested in contributing in any capacity. They just want to continue using Windows, Google and Netflix. Only now, in the year 2026, the absolute monstrosity that is the digital surveillance-apparatus, pokes its tentacles–every now and then–prominently into public-life and some get the willies. Never mind it’s been going on since the beginning of the computer-age. They don’t care. They never did. They enable it and they exacerbate it. They still don’t care.

Yes. I am just tired, comrade. Once can argue about the tone, but the reality is there needs to be a rectification on computer-education on a scale that only a government can enact. I can not do it. I can just rebuke.

Juvenile views do need to be rebuked. If you believe you can regain a portion of control back via payment to an entity, whilst still living in ignorance of the substrate you wish to increase control over you are a moron. You are merely paying for a belief.

I can not understand the user’s insistence on ignorance. All the users here are aware, to differing degrees, of the abuses that are inflicted on them due to this ignorance, yet there is a crowd who adamantly refuse to use their eyes; they wish merely to do the same things they were doing before, with no change in their own behaviors. They will continue to be abused.

I think the reality is they have no interest in the topic.

I think entertainment is a very low priority. Pushed to comment on the topic I would say it’s actually a great waste of time, regardless of political orientation.

It’s isolating and manipulative. It subverts the local culture and brainwashes the viewer into believing that what is seen often on the screen is a reflection of real life norms. It is not, but when the majority of a citizenry consume so much foreign media it does shift real cultural norms. This is the soft-power of cultural products created for export.

Turn America’s netflix off. Turn off whatever pornography you preference. Move your body. Get some sunshrine and play with your comrades.

I genuinely believe television was a mistake. I can not see anything of its legacy to feel warm towards; there is no good here.

A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).

No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.

inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.

You’re an incurious git that thinks you can pay for something contrary to what the market sells. I pay, therefore I believe the marketing material.

A centralized suit of tools sold by one capitalist-company does not make that company a comrade. They fight for their own capitalist-interests and the goal is a market-monopoly that enriches their owners. They are not open. They are not open to inter-network collaboration. They are capitalist and they hate user freedom.

From the drivel you’ve typed Google, Microsoft, et al will ‘meet 95%’ of your needs. “But I pay.” “The marketing material says they’re private.” Are you a child?

Proton: you can have privacy only if you pay us and use our proprietary tools exclusively. Press X to doubt.

You can have privacy now, for free. You’re too incurious to use those tools and liberate yourself though.

Try a thought experiment: Alice and Bob each have computers (super-computers in pocket-form); they also are subscribers that grant them access to the majority of the internet. They want to send each other ‘e-mails’. The market says you can only do that if you pay a third-party (or if you ‘consent’ to electronic-surveillance from a third-party that provides e-mail functionality for ‘free’). Are either option true? How could Alice, with her internet-connected super-computer, send Bob a message to Bob’s internet-connected super-computer. Both computers are functional 24/7/365. Hm… Nope, can’t be done. I need to pay Proton to use e-mail and for my pocket super-computer to have a calendar… oh look, the owner is filthy rich. Learning to use a computer is too hard. Let’s make him richer. Computer users are a joke.

This post is acrid; I’m venting. You’ll probably feel attacked.

I’d like a serious answer, but I’ll probably will only get replies from petulant adult-children though. That’s not a provocative jab; it’s a statement of disgust. The whole consumer side of tech is largely adult-children who fail to take any responsibility. This isn’t even new. From day dot commercial software vendors have been exploiting you.

the market only has two offerings: Google’s Android and Apple’s <whatever their mobile-computer O.S. is called>

Does no one see an issue with this? A duopoly? It’s not even one market in one country, it’s nearly a duopoly on a global scale.

get mad at increasing surveillance by surveillance companies (Google, Apple, et al.)

scream at internet, for the Nth time

Just don’t use them.

but my Discord my Bank apppppp~

You’re all willingly giving up your autonomy whilst crying about it. Why? Just why? The alternatives aren’t good enough for your pampered ass? Stick an external battery to the pinephone and suddenly it lasts for two days.

That’s too goofy; what would my friends think of me?

Install GrapheneOS on models that support it.

Too many buttons to click; it should all be done for me. Waaaaaa~

Too hard to escape the Google/Apple ecosystem

Are you all for real? Pressing buttons on your computer is too hard? Holy shit.

I’d argue it’s the government’s fault. In the computer-age government’s failed to educate their populations on what and how to use computers. They instead taught their students how to use X, Y and Z software. Ignorance here is the root of the problem. A symptom of ignorance could be stupidity I suppose… but users are lazy too. Governments also failed to regulate the nascent software-industries whilst pouring billions into that market. It’s too harsh to just criticize the individual.