Recently I used Google maps to search for the nearest DHL near me so I could return a package. DHL is not that popular near me and when I specifically typed for DHL, I would get only their competitors in the search results.

There was a DHL service center near me and I had to scroll a bunch to find it. Oh, and apparently big box stores (or anyone) can pay Google to come up in the search on maps, even if unrelated.

I don’t think they have skin the in shipping game but their algorithms are over optimized that they don’t even show what your searching for, but trying to infer why you’re searching for it. That or whoever pays them more. Certainly a search risk

wow 10 months flew by since this was posted and since then the United States had a surprise privacy bill that is bipartisan that sort of addresses the issues you and I mentioned. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/07/congress-privacy-deal-cantwell-rodgers/

This bill was proposed around the same time the TikTok ban was announced. I speculate that law makers had a difficult time framing the arguments against TikTok when “the data of citizens have no protections so there was no easy legal grounds to forbit the likes of TikTok to harvest it”

From what I’ve heard, this bill is pretty good. I need to educate myself more on it, however.

was it ever? I participate in interview rounds at my company (several tech screens a month) and I must say a candidate’s email was not something that drew attention

you’re able to unsubscribe from all those protomtions . . . that is in settings. Personally, a once-a-month newsletter of everything that is new is helpful bc I don’t need to put in the effort tlinto keeping up

For backup and sync I use Syncthing. I can specify which folder on which devices I want to sync to which folder on the server.

I use a folder based gallery on my phone so when I move stuff around on my phone (or on my server) it gets replicated on all my devices.

I also have a policy to sync specified folders (and subfolder) with my family’s devices. No more " hey can you send me all the pics from the XYZ trip"

We take a trip. Make a subolder for that trip in a shared folder dump all our pictures there, get home and open the folder on the computer and prune together.

Debian has the advantage of not using snapd like Ubuntu does. You have to not only remove snaps but also instruct the package manager not you pull in snaps as dependencies and not to favor snap packages.

I have fond memories of Ubuntu being my first distro many years ago but pushing snaps onto users to compete with flatpak is a nuisance.

You can still buy a lifetime licenses of office but you have to buy it from 3rd party sellers and then validate the license with M$. Example Deal..

I bought 2 of them and also saved the install binary to have office suite.

I use libreoffice personally but I have family members that get frustrated when they cannot find the same formatting options

newsblur

People like having choice, it was never about saving space in phones.

If you look at which company (apple) and the time of removal of headphone jack (around the time their wireless buds were announced), you’ll notice they removed choice so the consumer can only buy more expensive wireless buds, or many many dongles.

The “save space” is an absolute lie. The international (EU, Asia, etc) version of the iPhone has a dedicated SIM card tray. The US model? No tray, just a freakin placeholder where the international version has the SIM tray. Yes, there is a volume of space that can fit 2 headphone jacks on the US iPhone that is just empty.

Look at this iFixit video where they call apple out on it. The placeholder is huge. at ~1:17+

The statement is very informative. The bug happens under increased read/write operations to the same file causing a race condition.

I also found interesting:

Despite the bug being present in OpenZFS for many years, this issue has not been found to impact any TrueNAS systems. The bug fix is scheduled to be included in OpenZFS 2.2.2 within the next week

I’d really want to know what’s driving them

likely ego

The letter is a post on his own blog . Hard to distill into a summary so I recommend reading it get more context. But it seems to have boiled down to:

• How It Was:

  • Strong adherence to the “don’t be evil” ethos, focusing on societal good over profits.
  • Open, transparent communication and decision-making processes.
  • High morale, with a culture of learning from successes and failures.
  • Work focused on benefitting the web and users, rather than Google’s immediate interests.
  • Collaboration and lack of internal silos, encouraging innovation and autonomy.

• How It Is Now:

  • Shift from user-centric to Google-centric, and then to individual-centric decision making.
  • Eroded transparency and increase in organizational silos.
  • Decline in morale and a culture of distrust between employees and management.
  • Focus on short-term financial gains leading to layoffs and defensive employee behavior.
  • Lack of clear vision and leadership, resulting in confused and ineffective management.
  • Overall deterioration of Google’s unique, innovative culture and values.

Brave has superior fingerprint protection, they achieve this by randomizing the browsers fingerprint. Visit EFF’s cover your tracks to test your browser.

To achieve the same functionality that brave achieves out of the box with Firefox I need many extensions and then when I profile both browsers, Firefox is more resource intensive. Brave’s blocking is native to the browser. I will give Firefox the W because I’ve read that uBlock is technically more capable. But as a long time Firefox/uBlock user who switched to brave - this has not been noticable.

As for accessibility, I can configure brave to be really aggressive at ad blocking, tracking blocking, fingerprint blocking, and restricting JS even, and all those options I can set from one place instead of in different settings/extensions. When a website breaks, I click on the button next to the URL and immediately have options to granularly dial down the “protection” or add a website to my trusted list. In Firefox I was annoyed to having go through settings for the extension.

Brave plans to continue supporting Manifest V2 after Google kills it. For Ungoogled Chromium, however, it’s still undecided, likely depending on whether UG contributors are willing to maintain it.

Brave has superior fingerprint protection, they achieve this by randomizing the browsers fingerprint. Visit EFF’s cover your tracks to test your browser.

To achieve the same functionality that brave achieves out of the box with Firefox I need many extensions and then when I profile both browsers, Firefox is more resource intensive. Brave’s blocking is native to the browser. I will give Firefox the W because I’ve read that uBlock is technically more capable. But as a long time Firefox/uBlock user who switched to brave - this has not been noticable.

As for accessibility, I can configure brave to be really aggressive at ad blocking, tracking blocking, fingerprint blocking, and restricting JS even, and all those options I can set from one place instead of in different settings/extensions. When a website breaks, I click on the button next to the URL and immediately have options to granularly dial down the “protection” or add a website to my trusted list. In Firefox I was annoyed to having go through settings for the extension.

Brave plans to continue supporting Manifest V2 after Google kills it. For Ungoogled Chromium, however, it’s still undecided, likely depending on whether UG contributors are willing to maintain it.

This is the best suggestion for DIY, I can even get away without a printer and just write by hand. Perfect! Wish I could pin this comment.

nothing wrong with being self taught, you could follow these basics topics before poking holes in firewall.

1. VLANS: learn how to separate your LAN into networks with different security requirements. For wireless, try to make a “main” and “IoT” network so that IoT network that can’t talk to your “main” network but “main” can reach IoT devices. For wired, try to have a Management network, and a “Dirty network” etc.
2. Firewalls and Routing: You will need to be able to route between your VLANS and set firewall rules to allow certain traffic. Best practice is block everything and allow only what you need.
3. NMAP: learn how to do NMAP scans of your network to discover hosts and their open ports/services. This is a similar approach that “hackers” and script kiddies use on the public internet to find vulnerae and open services. Being able to probe your own network is crutial in understanding how others might approach in penetrating it.
4. Wireguard VPN: Learn to access your network remotely by setting up a wireguard VPN. Wireguard is preferred because it is “stealthy” and will not respond to unsolicited attempted to probe your network. Start small by using wireguard to access between VLANs so you don’t run the risk of using the internet.
5. NGINX and Reverse Proxy: If necessary, learn to expose your services or blog or website by only exposing nginx and proxying to your services. Many guides on securing NGINX exist. Try not to expose anything, but sometimes necessary if you want others to reach your website/blog/hosting etc.

That’s a rough outline that you can use to guide yourself and achieve milestones with hands on experience. In your pursuit you’ll run into certificates and domain name hosting and stuff. But all this is on the web so let your curiosity (and paranoia) drive! Have fun!!

The table of contents hints there is only one section relevant to security, Lab Firewall Config.

Anyone have experience with this book that could vouch for other chapters that explore best practices for security?

using the settings you described ( minus the VPN ) I was not able to cloak myself over the past several days

Yes, some guy was streaming live on YouTube talking about a subject that he does not otherwise have, and he showed that before talking about the subject, there were no ads for dog toys, and after talking about dogs, there were ads about dog toys. The video isn’t really that great because he goes and clicks on an ad about a dog toy and proceeds to get more of them, so he kind of tainted his results.

I wish I didn’t waste my time watching this video

7 visits with brave, 7 times identified as the same. I’m using the default options of a fresh brave install

how did you have such success?