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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • A good example to “play” with could be https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ which does highlight the idea of “bits of identifying information” namely :

    “A “bit” is a basic unit of information for computers. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values, often represented as “1” or “0”, for example. In your results from Cover Your Tracks, some metrics may be listed as “1” or “0”, or “true” or “false”, indicating whether a setting is enabled or disabled. While each individual metric’s details may seem like a small amount of information, when combined with your browser’s other metrics, they can uniquely identify your browser. Your results are measured in “bits of identifying information,” which is a combined summary of all these metrics.”

    Point being, not all behaviors, conscious or not, explicit or not, lead to the same amount of bits. Some are VERY valuable, others are basically pointless. Knowing the difference means not spending a lot of energy fighting without making a difference.






  • You do not have to care. I’m only highlighting that according to this community your post is precisely not “informing” much.

    Also while checking your history https://lemmy.ml/post/19526546 it seems to be a pattern of misunderstanding then blaming it on others.

    I guess that’s what not arguing over petty details like “technical definitions” might result in.

    Please do not use Proton if you do not think it’s appropriate for your usage. Please do inform others about problems you do encounter. Please do note though that when you are misrepresenting the situation, e.g. with titles that are shortcuts and thus incorrect, you are NOT helping.


  • Because you wouldn’t be actually switching so that’s not lock-in, that’s just you expecting free stuff forever.

    Anyway, I understand your point. I also want free stuff and I also want all my free stuff to be exactly what I need. My criticism is more than you selecting a provider, not paying for it, know what the problem is then complain it’s not what you need despite knowing it in advance. What also was problematic for me is that your title is not correct.

    Finally, maybe you are technically right (which I do not believe) but you can see from the total number of downvotes to your post and the upvotes on my comments that, at least in this community, your interpretation is being quite criticized.

    To end on a pragmatic note : please PLEASE do get funding (it does not have to be your own money) for Proton to provide forwarding for free for all email addresses. I’m sure nobody on this community would complain about that, I surely won’t!

    PS: if you are into lock-in and tech, consider reading “Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy” by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian - ISBN 087584863X - Harvard Business Press 1998 and if it’s a bit too much here are my notes on it https://fabien.benetou.fr/ReadingNotes/InformationRules written 15 years ago.


  • No, Proton email addresses do not. I have ProtonMail addresses using my domain. If tomorrow I point to another email provider, Proton can do nothing about it.

    Being paid feature vs free is not vendor lock-in.

    You are spreading misinformation, either by misrepresenting the situation or by not understanding what “vendor” (an arguable term since apparently you are focusing on the free version) is lock-in means.



  • enforce their privacy while using the web.

    Welcome, so I can recommend

    • actually using the Web, not apps, namely Meta control the content sure but not the browser and browser vendors are trying their best to make the experience safe
    • not using a browser made by a vendor that is in fact an ad company
    • using a browser with privacy measures, e.g Enhanced Tracking Protection
    • use 3rd party extensions, e.g. uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus, DeArrow, Ghostery, JS Shelter
    • use containers or private mode when browsing doubtful content

  • can’t access any GitHub repositories without having to sign in. This is becoming frustrating.

    Yes… also can’t search.

    This is supposed to be OPEN source yet, enshittification by Microsoft here goes down its inexorable path. It started nicely then slowly but surely popular features are blocked behind restrictions, unpopular features are shoved down people through, more marketing is used to try to convince users are actually wrong, etc.

    Please, do leave the platform and help others to do so.






  • dns0.eu is a French non‑profit organization founded in 2022 by Romain Cointepas and Olivier Poitrey — co-founders of NextDNS.”

    whereas

    “Supported by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), the European Union’s DNS4EU secure-infrastructure project”

    so AFAICT the 1st is by (EU) citizens with the technical expertise and selling a related product whereas the 2nd is by the public EU administration.


  • I wouldn’t say blindly, rather my heuristic is, the most long term and popular a project is, the less I’ll bother.

    If I do though get a random script from a random repository, rather than from say Debian official package manager from main contrib sources, then I will check.

    If it’s another repository, say Firefox from Mozilla or Blender then I won’t check but I’ll make sure it genuinely comes from there, maybe not a mirror or that the mirror does have a checksum that gets validated.

    So… investment on verifying trust us is roughly proportional to how little I expect others to check.





  • Been using it for few months now a CMF Phone 1 by Nothing https://cmf.tech/en-be/pages/phone-1 thanks to Murena, specifically https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-cmf-phone-1/

    I could have probably set that up myself but I wanted

    • not to be bothered, i.e. buy a phone, put my SIM card on, move on
    • financially contribute to the support of deGoogling

    and this felt like the most pragmatic compromise.

    So far it’s been doing exactly what I wanted, namely :

    • make phone calls (duh, it IS a phone after all)
    • integrate seamlessly with my Linux setup thanks to KDE Connect (including sending/receiving SMS from my desktop)
    • be stable (crashes maybe once a week at most, usually due to specific apps)
    • be able to install apps without having any account, neither Google nor Murena
    • be able to install apps from F-Droid

    so IMHO it’s a great alternative to either iOS (and thus be stuck with US Big Tech with heavy lock down for developer and constant lock-in attempts) or Googled Android (clear no for me) or deGoogled but requiring quite a bit of tinkering.

    All in all I spent more time explaining why I liked in online and offline than setting anything up so I’d argue it was well worth the extra 100 EUR to have it installed on hardware that was known to support it well.

    PS: few more notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Android#MurenaCMFPhone1