• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: March 19th, 2024

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  • I never made a MS account, so I no longer own Minecraft since they stopped accepting Mojang accounts. Sometimes I wish I had just bit the bullet and made one so I can still own Minecraft—I know I can pirate it, but it’s less convenient, and also I don’t know how well pirated Minecraft works with multiplayer. In any case I’ve just not played Minecraft in a long time, and not since Minecraft stopped accepting Mojang logins.

    I am surprised you can’t transfer your licence to another account though. Since when they were making the switch to Microsoft accounts, they let you just transfer your licence from Mojang onto any old MS account.

    Ultimately it’s up to you. I guess in your shoes I would be more erred towards deleting just because of all that personal information sitting around. Of course you can’t guarantee MS will “forget” it, but storage costs money, and they likely don’t want to keep around all your old data when most of it is not very profitable data to have. In my case, in hindsight, I’m now erring on the side of wishing I had just made an account, since there’d be no other data tied to that account and I wouldn’t have used it for anything other than Minecraft.



  • Self host email and nextcloud. Keepass for pw manager. I use davx5 and fossify calendar for mobile calendar. Nextcloud mobile just manages your files and doesn’t have the other Nextcloud apps.

    Idc about Proton either way though. Imo if proton was fine for you before then it’s fine for you now. I just prefer to have control over my own services.


  • Protonmail is a widely used and common email provider. There is no reason why an employer would be prejudiced against your application based on you having a Protonmail address. I think a far more common thing employers think about when seeing applicants’ email addresses are things like “haha, they’re still using their email address from when they were 8 of alexdaboss at gmail dot com”, but I highly doubt they care about what domain it’s on unless you’ve got like a pornhub.com address or something.




  • If it’s low privacy needs (ie you don’t have a state threat model), Signal is completely fine. I use it to talk to my friends. I also use Matrix, though federated Matrix isn’t the best for privacy either due to the amount of metadata that leaks through federation. But federated Matrix is also fine for the kinds of things you would use eg Discord or IRC for.

    If you do have a state threat model, I personally think SimpleX is ideal for that, but it doesn’t have as much of a userbase so you probably need people who care enough (eg people actively under threat) to switch to a new platform. Whereas most people I know are already on either Signal or Matrix, and I’m not having particularly sensitive conversations with them either so both work fine.


  • If no one’s on any kind of private messaging platform, SimpleX is good and fairly easy to use. But I mostly use Signal just because everyone’s on it.

    Also consider your threat model; Signal is appropriate for just casual personal conversations, but it is centralised and not self-hostable. The servers are run by the Signal org who are based in the US. If the potential of message metadata (which can be used to eg create networks of who’s messaging who) getting into the hands of the US state could create significant issues for you, you may want to at least find either a decentralised or self-hostable solution which is not so US-centric. I assume, though, since you’re talking to these people on non-private platforms, that these are not super sensitive discussions anyway.


  • SMS 2FA is not secure, and I don’t particularly care about the security of my bank account. I have a state threat model as a political organiser, a very real one given the arrests, raids, imprisonment, etc I and my comrades have faced, meanwhile I’m not aware of any rando civilians hellbent on stealing my money. And frankly I don’t have that much money to steal anyway. If you’re determined to get my sim card to log into my meagre bank account you probably need the money more than me.

    I guess if you’re that worried about SMS security you could get an esim and rely on device encryption to protect it. Wouldn’t be the most secure thing in the world but at least it provides some protection, and if you buy an esim anonymously (e.g. with https://silent.link/) an attacker can’t impersonate you to try get your sim card.


  • You would be surprised at the incompetence of the surveillance state. I’ve known people subject to terrorism investigations by world superpowers where the state couldn’t figure out the basic facts about that person’s life, let alone find anything that may be helpful to prosecution. This kind of fearmongering only encourages people to not be cautious. Not that the extent of surveillance isn’t terrifying, but at the other end of the table is just other human beings. All humans are fallible, including the ones who spy on us, and we can both outsmart and outmanoeuvre them if we’re serious about it.


  • The alternative is a discord server, which in privacy terms is questionable choice too.

    I use a Discord-Matrix bridge to communicate with some groups that are only on Discord. Of course it still all goes over Discord’s servers so the messaging itself isn’t private, but you at least don’t have to use Discord’s proprietary client, and the only data Discord will have is the data you send it from the Matrix bridge (plus identifying data on the Matrix server you’re using).

    What do you usually use and offer when people ask you for contact?

    Signal as a preference—not because I think it’s the best chat app (I dislike its centralised nature; not being able to self-host is a near-on dealbreaker if not for the fact that everyone I know is on Signal; and it requiring a phone number to sign up is also bad for privacy)—but because it’s the one the most people have. All my friends are on it luckily, by nature of my friends largely being communists or young queer people (or both). I also offer SMS and email. If someone asks a pretty open-ended “how can I contact you”, I might also mention Matrix and Simplex as options in case they have those.

    Do you use ba[n]king apps?

    No, and I really don’t understand why people do unless your bank requires it and there isn’t another appropriate bank that doesn’t require it. I’ve tried my bank’s app (which works fine on GOS luckily) and found it didn’t offer anything the web UI didn’t offer, other than the option to use the app as 2FA for banking stuff, but I just get SMS 2FA from my bank.

    What’s your way of transport after having few beers in pub? Do you use taxi via calling it directly or use that weird Telegram taxi addon?

    I don’t use taxis; I use public transport. But if I had to get a taxi, I would probably either use my GPlay profile on my GOS phone to install Uber, or I would probably just ring a taxi company over the phone.

    Is there a way to convert google map pins to open source solutions and vice versa?

    I’m not aware of a way. I’ve just told people to either give me an address or coordinates, because I don’t have google maps.

    What’s your recommended software for directions? What do you use for driving?

    Organic Maps has been my go-to for a while. It’s wonderful. Works well for driving too. I use RHVoice for text-to-speech, which iirc was recommended to me by a fellow lemming.

    I don’t track fitness activities, and I use GOS+Pixel.