chirospasm

YES. YES TO ALL PARTS OF THIS.

PO TAY TO

I could hear this screenshot.

Although this has been heavily downvoted, the author has a point: what do private, safe AI experiences in a software mean for the common browser user? How does a company that was founded as an ‘alternative’ to a crummy default browser take the same approach? For those that do and will use the tech indiscriminately, what’s next for them?

Just as cookie/site separation became a default setting in FF eventually, or the ability to force a more secure private DNS, what could Mozilla consider on its own to prevent abuse, slop, LLM-syncophantism / deception, undesired user data training, tracking, and more? All that stuff we know is bad, but nobody seems to be addressing all too well. These big AI companies certainly don’t seem to be.

Rather than advocate for Not AI, how do we address it better for those who’ll simply hit up one of these big AI company websites like they would social media or Amazon?

Is it anonymous tokenization systems that prevent a big AI company knowing who a user is, a kind of ‘privacy pass?’ Is it text re-obsfucation at the browser level that jarbles user input so that patterns can’t emerge? Is it even a straightforward warning to users about data hygiene?

The above is silly, and speculative, and mostly for conversation. But: maybe there’s something here for your everyday browser user. And maybe we ought to consider how we help them.

Older 10th gen Intel NUCs go for cheap on eBay, with memory and storage – close in price to a Raspberry Pi 5, but more powerful, active cooling without having to buy a kit, and may have greater longevity. An alternative to a Pi if you’re looking for one.

This comment is underrated.

Make the internet ‘net’ again.

It’s only irradiated gold if it comes from the Radioactive Startup Part of San Fransisco.

Otherwise, it’s just sparkling rock.

Last I recall, friendica was the most solid alternative. It is a fairly feature-complete analogue of Facebook and a few other social platforms. Maybe give it a look!

What a fantastic shot!

GrapheneOS affords you the ability to have completely isolated and distinct phone profiles, where you can install all your required work apps. They are installed separate from your main profile, kind of like second or third phone. No need for a completely different device.

GrapheneOS instantiates an improved version of this feature that Android already offers. It’s a great way to keep things separate. I do the same. Who wants to stuff their pockets or bags with more phones?

You can read about that here.

1. Pixel, and immediately install GrapheneOS.
2. A Linux based phone, like the PinePhone or Purism 5, and run your Android apps (if desired) inside Waydroid.

If you are looking for a hardened phone, I would consider trying GrapheneOS for a bit, see if it does what you are looking for. Uses SELinux and a seccomp-bpf policy for app sandboxing, as well as runs a hardened kernel with a hardened memory alloc. Great isolation approach, too, so that you can run apps on a ‘completely different phone,’ so to speak – think of the isolation like a small version of the OS that can keep apps entirely separate. Finally, if desired (and needed for certain apps), you can sandbox all Google services so that they don’t have direct access. It’s is a different approach to, say, microG.

GrapheneOS is all about hardening. Security is solid.

VPN wise, Mullvad wireguard servers are also solid. You can do multihops, which help you obsfucate traffic to degree. They have also been playing around with packet shaping (if you use their app directly).

Sim cards can be swapped out if use a VoIP service like jmp.chat.

Chowda

Dig this tune

Thank you for posting this! I assumed some FF-based browsers, while claiming to remove telemetry, in fact still phoned home to a degree. This is good know!

Also, I was surprised by a few others on the list, like Mullvad, Kagi, and DuckDuckGo, being so straightforward – not that making fewer connections implies better privacy, as even a single connection can transmit any kind of data, but moreso that there some browsers that are designed to operate with less complexity.

Really surprised by Zen, which is a FF derivative claiming to be all about a ‘beautiful’ and ‘simple’ web browsing experience, having a ton of connections.

The short, easy answer: it typically takes a lifetime of service for the rest of the church to determine if they fit the bill to be Pope.

If you have a smart TV, you’re already at a disadvantage.

One solution to consider might be a black hole DNS on your local network, like Pi-Hole, that can target this device and prevent all Google requests.

Another, unfortunately, might be to get a dumb TV and use an HTPC as your streaming solution for the content you already watch.

And another might be to look into custom TV OS options out in the wild.

Hey, just tossing in a comment here, I think this post is a good post!

What’s your hypervisor manager? Or are you just bare metal?

For VMWare and Proxmox both, I would recommend the community edition of Veeam. It can handle up to 10 VMs for free.

If you’ve got the funds as a small-to-large business, Veeam’s first paid tier, on a yearly basis, is a solid option to backup even more.

Caveat emptor if you buy a license (or not): Veeam runs on Windows only. I have used, like, a single internal network Windows VM dedicated just to Veeam before. It has an easy to pick up UX after a little research, and the UI is clean.

Bacula is deprecated, unfortunately.

Jmp.chat