freedomPusher

freedomPusher, 2 days ago

Mobile apps for this sort of thing is quite alien to me – out of sight and out of mind because I cannot imagine using a small screen and tiny keyboard for forums when I am all day sitting at a PC with proper keyboard. Although speech to text probably makes small device input a little more tolerable.

The small nodes are not dead, so I wonder if the activity and accounts on the disproportionately small nodes can be attributed largely to mobile app users.

freedomPusher, 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

I cannot see the image because it’s posted in the walled garden of #Cloudflare, which excludes me. Would someone please repost the image on an open-access instance or website so everyone can view it?

freedomPusher, 4 days ago

thanks!

freedomPusher, 1 month ago

StreetComplete shows me no map, just quests on a blank canvas. OSMand shows my offline maps just fine, but apparently StreetComplete has no way to reach the offline maps. I suppose that’s down to Android security – each app has it’s own storage space secure from other apps.

In principle, we should be able to put the maps on shared SD card space and both apps should access it. But StreetComplete gives no way in the settings of specifying the map location. And apparently it fails to fetch an extra copy of the maps as well in my case.

freedomPusher, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I would also like to see Belgium take action against its own political parties who allow Cloudflare to block some demographics of voters from seeing election info. These political parties are running exclusive websites:

• PS/Vooruit (Socialist / Parti Socialiste [fr/nl])
• Défi (previously part of the MR, now more at the center [fr])
• CD & V (center / Christen Democratisch en Vlaams [nl])
• Groen (Green Party [nl])
• Open VLD (liberal [nl])

freedomPusher, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Cloudflare is not transparent about who they block. They essentially (and falsely) say they only block baddies, in so many words. A list of groups found to be marginalized can be found here:

…noblogs.org/…/cloudflare-has-created-the-largest…

A consequence of the non-transparency is that the list is inherently incomplete. Certainly if you use Ungoogled Chromium to reach the websites of those parties over the Tor network, you will be blocked hard and fast (not even a CAPTCHA offer).

For example:

https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/aac69062-1437-4864-a851-6c7370ccf971.webp

freedomPusher, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

These “demographics” are not being excluded, ATM they’re just being inconvenienced.

Have another look at that list. People using public libraries are not necessarily tech savvy; more likely the contrary. People whose ISP chose to implement CGNAT don’t necessarily even have any idea that they are sharing a WAN IP address. AOS ≤6 users are likely clueless; they will just blame their phone and buy another.

I’m not sure it’s fair to say all Tor users are hackers considering Tails is simply a matter of booting with a USB stick inserted. Many VPN users are avg Joes just trying to reach BBC or torrents. VPN services have had to lower the bar to be usable by low tech folks.

Not everyone is a tech wizard of the highest order, so I really can’t fault their web masters for using what’s easy and convenient.

I agree it’s much more likely a case of ignorance than malice. But nonetheless they have a professional duty to become informed about the consequences of their choices. Using CF is a proactive move¹. They are responsible for excluding people and should be held accountable until they get it right.

¹ OTOH, 4 of those parties have apparently outsourced to “Nationbuilder”, whereas Défi apparently did their own CF deployment. Whoever is behind Nationbuilder owns their incompetence. It’s reasonable to expect an outsourced contractor to know what they’re doing. The political parties should choose a different contractor who can do the job without excluding people.

update

Digital exclusion is a big problem in Belgium. Current politicians are dismantling analog infra and forcing people online for government transactions. And those gov resources are often broken and/or exclusive. People are often forced to disclose more info than necessary (in violation of the GDPR minimisation principle). So it is actually becoming quite important to elect people who oppose digital exclusion.

freedomPusher, 1 month ago

I’m on the edge of quitting protonmail. The issues:

• #CAPTCHA hell. At least for Tor users.
• no app in f-droid
• API shenanigans and/or CAPTCHA breaks hydroxide (the foss bridge)
• protonvpn: you can no longer fetch all the configs in one download. You have to click “download” >120 times now to get all the configs
• account locks if you do not login frequently enough (i think every 6 months)
• if you supply your login creds but get a CAPTCHA and say fuck this, and walk, it does not count as a full login needed to reset the expiration clock
• the CAPTCHAs are graphical which forces you to enable images in your browser; but when you do that you get images that junk up your screen and waste bandwidth
• no public keyring. Hushmail was better in this regard. An advanced user could upload their PGP public key to Hushtools and then encryption just worked for hushmail users contacting that person. After Hushmail started charging, I would tell the normies who need comms w/me to get a gratis Protonmail account. But then I have to send them my public key and they have to figure out how to attach it to my profile in their phonebook. It’s a show-stopper in many situations.

freedomPusher, 1 month ago

it’s worth noting that protonmail has an onion and their clearnet server also accepts tor connections. So users can control the leakage of their IP… but only if they’re willing to solve countless CAPTCHAs.

freedomPusher, 1 month ago

Protonmail failed to satisfy F-Droid’s inclusion criteria because it requires gms (playstore framework) and because it uses Firebase messaging.

Since I’ve disabled gms in my device I’m not sure how Protonmail would work for me. Someone tells me I might simply lose push notifications capability. But I am confused because Snikket pushes notifications just fine on my device.

freedomPusher, 2 months ago

They banned e-scooters in Paris? I’ve not heard that. Was it just the rentals or all e-scooters?

The article I referenced said Paris is banning noisy scooters, which would be motor scooters.

freedomPusher, 16 days ago

Law is driven by philosophy. When discussing high-level laws at the constitutional level and above (international/human rights), “law” loses effectiveness as such and becomes more of a philosophical guide. It’s not concrete when specific scenarios are not pinned down, and rarely enforced as a consequence. There is an abstract human right that we have freedom of religion, but national law can often contradict human rights.

There are no Amish communities in Europe (and AFAIk, no notable religions that oppose the digital transformation). So there would be not likely be national law that protects them. The question is hypothetical. Answering it requires understanding the meaning, purpose, and history of the freedom of religion, which itself would never be elaborated in law. The law is clean, hard and fast, without history and usually without rationale.

It’s an inherently philosophical question but with legal interplay. So it’s a 10,000 foot view question of how freedom of religion gets implemented. The philosophy cannot be neglected because it’s the driver.

Namely: Does Belgium law require agencies and companies to provide offline interfaces if a religion requires not using digital services/technology.

I would guess unlikely. The Amish would be in for a struggle. They would have to bring a complaint to court about digital transformation excluding them with no concrete law covering them, and try to cling to that rarely enforced body of human rights law. They might prevail, but what about someone who is not Amish, but who has the same moral objections? The Amish are Christians who morally object to lots of technology but strictly speaking the anti-tech is not really driven by Christianity. It’s more of a culture that is fused with their religion, which enables them to benefit from religious protections despite Christianity not being the driver. So a non-religious person who finds the forced use technology to be as unconscionable as an Amish practicioner would be equally oppressed, but would a court recognize this? It’s a question of philosophy, psychology, law, and history.

freedomPusher, 13 days ago

I can barely see the point to BIOS passwords. They are slightly useful if you don’t want guests using a machine for some reason. If you don’t have a bios pw, the OS login is good enough unless you need to stop them booting their own media. All desktops are rightfully easy to clear the bios. There are jumpers specifically for this purpose, apart from also just popping out the cr3202 battery or unseating the bios chip (old models). The bios pw does not (and should not) protect from data access at the hands of someone who can open box.

The only failure I see here is the fact that Lenovo tried to make the bios unclearable in the first place, thus increasing e-waste. That’s the real story. The security fail is nothing interesting… it’s the attempt of ecocide that should have the focus.