@shved@mastodon.social
@shved@mastodon.social avatar

shved

@shved@mastodon.social

Web developer, I like bouldering, books, and privacy. I post random tidbits.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

benroyce, to random
@benroyce@mastodon.social avatar

The Fermi Paradox says we should have contacted alien life by now

The Great Filter says we haven't because a civilization's capacity for self-destruction increases to certainty over time

I thought for us it would be an exotic technology or scientific discovery that instantly destroys on a large scale

Nope. Far more depressing and mundane

We simply watched ourselves destroy our climate and lacked the will to do anything about it because someone was making money off it

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair

shved,
@shved@mastodon.social avatar

@benroyce I found myself in a lot of doom-and-gloom recently due to climate change and how miserable global inaction makes me feel. Sought out a book that looks at our progress of reversing climate change in a more positive light while not denying the obvious crisis.
Did make me feel a lot less depressed, thoroughly recommend.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/04/not-the-end-of-the-world-by-hannah-ritchie-review-an-optimists-guide-to-the-climate-crisis

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

10 years ago today!

Google Glass was probably the last time I felt genuinely excited about a piece of consumer tech.

It was obviously a flawed beta, but showed so much promise. The right amount of "this is so crazy it might just work!"

Wherever I went, people wanted to try it on to see for themselves how it worked. They wanted to discuss ethical issues and it's vast potential.

Today, it is barely more than a punchline like Google+.

But, for a brief moment, it was the future.

shved,
@shved@mastodon.social avatar

@Edent This made me think of how much the perception of tech landscape has changed in 10 years.

As you say, this was exciting and discourse was healthy and future-driven.

Today has much better even more amazing tech, but the outlook on its implementation is as grim as it gets. Maybe its just me, but corporate abuse of its users, constant lack of care with privacy breaches, lack of accountability, aggressive data hoarding etc..

Damn shame this will be another avenue to violate its users((

dansup, to random
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @dansup Individuals can block threads entirely, that solves the majority of "dont federate" arguments in my mind.

    I think the key aspect are activitypub standards and preventing large players from having a single overwhelming say in them, like google/chrome with web standards.
    If activitypub stays free and democratic, the rest should fall into place well enough.

    scy, to random
    @scy@chaos.social avatar

    I don't want "regularly remind people that is a bunch of libertarians" to be my job, but as people are currently talking about them more than usual, and many seem to not know about it, let me link to my thread from January about it:

    https://chaos.social/@scy/111704636274463611

    In short, when asked to not collaborate with cryptocurrency-powered, homophobe-led company Brave, Kagi's CEO responded with things like "Politics finding its way into tech is one of the reason we do not have innovation any more."

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @scy Brave is a mess and should not be used for many many reasons.

    With Kagi this entirely depends on integration. Kagi anonymizes and aggregates search requests, which strip braves ability to leverage its crypto nonsense. Kagi also doesnt feed anything worthwhile back to Brave thus leaving brave ecosystem and search improvements to their already existing userbase.

    AFAIK

    Kagi got improved search, bringing it closer to google competition, and brave gets nothing of significance

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @scy No, Brave definitely gets something in return. I just hope Kagi integration sterilises queries so that Brave gets nothing besides some fraction of a penny.

    Kagi becoming more competitive in search engine game is more important than Brave getting some money to stay afloat.

    We desperately need competition to google, and if using Brave indexing to supplement Kagi gives it that edge and helps it go mainstream - I'm all for it, even if its not perfect.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @scy @jom I am not disagreeing with the question of morality. I am disagreeing with the extreme stance, I suppose. Some tradeoffs have to be made and some compromises reached, "democracy is when no one is happy" :D
    The only question is on where we stand in terms of that compromise. I think taking advantage of brave is acceptable, you do not, and both are fine.

    What I think we both agree on is that google is the greater evil here.

    nixCraft, (edited ) to random
    @nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

    Stack Overflow to charge LLM developers for access to its coding content. Any bot or VPN or data center IP ranges are now blocked using Cloudflare firewall. No more freebies. Google becomes first client of SO and signs up to improve Gemini's programming abilities. Read more here https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/01/stack_overflow_launches_api_to/ The web is now getting fully locked down thanks to AI/ML craze by OpenAI/Microsoft/Google and greedy corporations.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @nixCraft One of definite winners in this AI madness is cloudflare, it got its grubby hands on websites it never would have dreamed to touch before. its MITM shit is even more deeply ingrained into everyones infrastructure and daily use now.

    I genuinely think they are malicious agent and refuse to enable it, as consequence half the web is inaccessible to me.

    Are we giving too much power and control over the web to a single private entity?

    whitequark, to random
    @whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

    piracy is a moral imperative

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @whitequark @koteisaev
    @thepi

    I live together with a patent attorney, we have frequent discussions about the grey area of piracy. I am very much pro, they are very much against piracy. They are correct within confines of the law and it is very tough to argue against that.

    The best case you have for piracy is in case of physical media ownership. Yes it is skewed in favour of corpos and against users. But thats where we are...

    And it absolutely sucks balls.

    Gargron, to random
    @Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

    There is an ongoing spam attack on the fediverse for the last couple of days. It's more widespread than before, as attackers are targeting smaller servers to create accounts. Before, usually only mastodon.social was targeted and our team could take care of it. For server administrators out there: If you don't need open registrations, switch over to approval mode. If you do, blocking disposable e-mail providers is a massive stopgap to the problem. Mastodon also supports hCaptcha.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @Gargron Does duckduckgo email masking count as disposable email?

    anderspuck, to random
    @anderspuck@krigskunst.social avatar

    If the U.S. will play a smaller role in European security going forward, we need to have a conversation about nuclear weapons. The current UK and French arsenals are not sufficient to deter Russia, but the big question is if the solution is to grow their stockpiles, or if more countries need to join the nuclear club.

    (The fact that this is now a discussion just goes to show the shortsightedness of American isolationalism.)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/uk-europe-nuclear-shield-donald-trump-germany-nato-deterrent

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @anderspuck I genuinely dont believe more nukes is the solution.. If nukes do start flying, its already too late, regardless of how many you have - humanity will be doomed.
    Solution must be around making other nukes ineffective, so they are inconsequential to conflict.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @anderspuck @notsoloud
    To me this feels like bringing a gun to a knife fight - no one will arrive with a knife afterwards.
    One nuke sets precedent, risking knee-jerk reaction from other nations to nuke in retaliation to reduce the chance of other nukes flying in their direction...
    Obviously entirely hypothetical.

    In leu of other solutions, nuclear deterrent works. But it shouldnt be the only solution nor the final one.

    taylorlorenz, to random
    @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social avatar

    As we approach the new year, I humbly suggest you quit email (to the extent you can).

    “I suggest you let it all go. There is simply no way for anyone with a full-time job and multiple inboxes to keep up with the current email climate.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/case-inbox-infinity/579673/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @taylorlorenz On the other side of badly managed email are millions of companies and spam orgs all sending out megabytes of data to millions of email addresses every minute of every day.
    I die a little inside every time I think how much power is wasted on data transfer and storage.

    If anyone has any figures on this I would LOVE to see them.

    kde, (edited ) to windows
    @kde@floss.social avatar

    Why wait for Microsoft to catch up with what we've been doing for decades?

    Get Plasma, a modern, fully functional, clean, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive operating system now, regardless from where you live and ditch Windows for good.

    https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

    #windows #DMA

    @kde

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @kde @kde Never heard of Plasma, nor am I in linux ecosystem yet, but from brief googling Plasma telemetry and developer attitude towards it is concerning

    https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f2bg69/kde_plasma_518_comes_with_builtin_telemetry_optin/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @jex @kde @kde @radioactiveradio While its FOSS, the telemetry is a slippery slope, and a single module now is the sign of a direction they've chosen. The flippant attitude of a developer mentioned in that reddit thread is worrying to say the least.

    I'm aware its a single example about a project I know nothing about.

    dangoodin, to random

    Mastadonians wanting more security- and privacy-related content here: there are a bunch of journalists, researchers and engineers who are woefully underfollowed relative to the impact and importance of the work they do. Please follow and engage with them so they have a strong incentive to use this platform more.

    There are way too many to name all of them. In no particular order here are some (but sorry, not all; please look at the people I follow for more):

    @lhn
    @josephcox
    @jasonkoebler
    @malwarejake
    @sophieschmieg
    @howelloneill
    @selenalarson
    @philip
    @neilmadden
    @ryanc
    @Wednesday
    @yossarian
    @LukaszOlejnik
    @chenghlee
    @saraislet
    @Bryan

    Please boost for visibility

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @dangoodin @lhn @josephcox @jasonkoebler @malwarejake @sophieschmieg @howelloneill @selenalarson @philip @neilmadden @ryanc @Wednesday @yossarian @LukaszOlejnik @chenghlee @saraislet @Bryan Amazing! Will definitely rummage through and create a brand new infosec list for myself:D
    Meanwhile - if any privacy oriented journalist would do a piece on cloudflare and its insidious overtaking of the web, that'd be great :D

    williamgunn, to random
    @williamgunn@mastodon.social avatar

    I'm not generally a product shill, but if this means fewer useless cookie banners, I'm all for it.
    https://matomo.org/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @williamgunn I wish smaller companies and orgs were more willing to try lesser known products. Instead its very much org convenience vs user privacy. Onboarding staff to @Matomo costs time and effort, when pre-existing GA is already set up and works well.
    Tried to float the idea to move to more ethical tools and got immediately shut down =/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @williamgunn @Matomo I am sure I've seen this a few years ago in one product or another - a document written by them to present to managers/CTOs/devs and whoever its relevant for to help convince them about the switch:D
    I'd very much appreciate something like this:D

    campuscodi, to random
    @campuscodi@mastodon.social avatar

    Cloudflare has open-sourced a tool named HAR File Sanitizer that can remove authentication cookie files from HTTP Archive (HAR) files produced by browsers and typically used for tech support requests.

    The company created the tool after its own cookies were stolen from inside a HAR file it sent to identity provider Okta.

    https://har-sanitizer.pages.dev/

    https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-har-sanitizer-secure-har-sharing/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @campuscodi Does it sanitize completely removing auth cookies, or does it use some kind of filter it owns to leave some cookies it deems safe?

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @campuscodi Didnt run this but looking through code I dont see it contacting any external DBs, a good sign.
    Reliance on cloudflare webworkers is concerning to me, I would avoid or at least modify local version to remove their webworkers before using.

    shved, to Cybersecurity
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    Cloudflare. A service that "protects" you from bad actors, , and other online threats.
    What seemingly no one talks about is that 80% of market is owned by Cloudflare. They move more traffic than companies combined!
    They hold such obscene amount of power and control over the , its hard to describe.
    They are the gatekeepers, they are enforcers of whom to block, and what to allow to exist.
    Google holds no power when compared to Cloudflare.

    andrewstroehlein, to random
    @andrewstroehlein@mastodon.social avatar

    When I tell people children are being slaughtered, and they want to know which children before moving into outrage mode or justification mode - that mentality, that conditional humanity, is exactly the problem.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @andrewstroehlein I do not have enough capacity to feel sorrow and horror for every single tragedy going on today, I would go insane.
    So when asking for details, it is not because of callousness, but because of need to align to the context of incoming news.

    What is going on right now is nothing short of genocide, and the fact that there are so many public and political supporters is beyond insane.

    nblr, to random
    @nblr@chaos.social avatar

    So… People put stuff in their robots.txt to “prevent” malicious scraping of their data for machine learning purposes. I hope everybody understands that this is just a “please don’t take my data” sign on the front lawn. We should be creating heaps of adversarial data instead. Data suitable to taint those datasets.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @nblr If humans start adding crap data to the internet alongside AI to "thwart" said AI, wont we just end up entirely covered in crap?.. How do we distinguish which data is AI or meant to thwart AI when we use the web then?..

    Any significant change can only come from laws and regulations we should be pushing for. Not from vigilante pollution of already miserable web.

    briankrebs, to random

    Ukrainian hackers claim to have to have stolen passenger information on 664 million flights going back 16 years from a Russian travel booking system. The hackers aren't leaking the whole thing yet, and say they'll share access with verified journalists (I've asked and am still waiting).

    https://news.yahoo.com/hackers-break-russian-database-data-033358337.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADEoP-QEKybC2IMRBT0S1i5d5OWKip7pkw7UmoH7uGhfXj1d5AFK5hZrz3Ul2V_zZGfkNw_W849wV-lnVnHohjtmKuz6vlbOrdn6l9fo46PJfqZ0Et0k6WX-XP20KAv3RCZD1hxudSInWCpB6FDjRAqXnSyyhs6Sn7mgwCLIttoA&guccounter=2

    So far, coverage of this claim is almost nil, except for this story over at Yahoo News, which is actually sourced from Ukrainska Pravda. h/t to the Risky Business show this week, which also pointed to the Yahoo story.

    https://risky.biz/RB723/

    But if it turns out to be legit, this could be a very significant boon to investigations into cybercrime networks, money laundering, and even espionage and influence operations.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @briankrebs I am not too excited by the prospect of war and espionage being used as excuses to abuse privacy and yet again take advantage of people's private information.
    Similar narrative to "protect the children" and "fight terrorism" justification to enforce egregious privacy overreaches.

    This data should not have been available in the first place. Now that it is, it should not be abused, else it sets yet another precedent for future privacy abuse.

    campuscodi, to random
    @campuscodi@mastodon.social avatar

    Just a reminder to everyone to never use Chrome for anything than downloading another browser.

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @campuscodi Just like Chrome and Edge, FF also phones home to an excessive amount, with more than a 100 calls on browser launch alone. While its all metadata, I'm sure it can be used to ID.
    For privacy I'd always suggest an open source projects. Ungoogled Chromium + DDG is my daily driver <3

    chriscoyier, to random
    @chriscoyier@front-end.social avatar

    When you need to draw some gosh danged boxes that are connected to some other gosh darned boxes with arrows connecting them: https://chriscoyier.net/2023/09/19/when-you-need-to-draw-some-gosh-danged-boxes-that-are-connected-to-some-other-gosh-darned-boxes-with-arrows-connecting-them/

    shved,
    @shved@mastodon.social avatar

    @chriscoyier Are there any offerings that have a fallback styling if JS is turned off ?

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