Another reason to add to the pile in favor of citizen controlled media like the fediverse.

Gestures awkwardly toward the entire open-source software community 🫴

I consider odysee to be a longer term pump’n’dump scam for the reasons outlined here:

https://slrpnk.net/post/11302039/9749921

Personally I wouldn’t place much trust in them.

TheHatedOne did a video on the topic of Sim-less phones, though unfortunately I don’t think many will adopt such a method. I think a middle-ground may be using a faraday bag for your phone when you don’t need it.

Agreed. Now would probably be a good time to give attention to adopting good privacy habits and services where you can.

Some examples:

1. Big tech email services have the possibility to rat you out and allow agencies to build a case against you through your emails, find out who you associate with, etc. Consider switching to a privacy focused email service, like Tuta, Posteo, Mailbox, or Disroot. Don’t rely on them to be impervious, but by using it, you’d make it much harder for them.
2. If possible, consider switching to a privacy focused phone, such as a google pixel flashed with GrapheneOS (very easy to do, even for non-technical people)
3. Use encrypted communications wherever possible. XMPP is a great federated option, but if you have to use Element or Signal, that’s still a great improvement.
4. Making Linux your main OS will go a long way to making your desktop more private, and you can still dualboot Windows for essential apps if you need them. I’d recommend Linux Mint generally.
5. While not a silver bullet, a good VPN can help mask your general surfing from your ISP. I’d recommend Mullvad. However, for ANYTHING actually sensitive, use Tor!
6. Consider using an encrypted password manager, like Keepassxc for desktop, or keepassdx for mobile. Bitwarden is a more convenient option, but be aware it uses the cloud (though it is encrypted).
7. A bit more extreme, but consider using an older car without trackers to avoid your movements being recorded if you cannot find a way to disable the tracking device in your new car.
8. Boost the resiliency of your community’s decentralized and encrypted communications by expanding your local meshtastic nodes.
9. Use a hardened web browser, like the Mullvad browser or Librewolf on desktop. For android, try Fennec (F-droid) or Vanadium. Be sure to enable DNS over HTTPS with the Mullvad DNS.

Good point, title updated to reflect that.

It seems to work fine for me, but perhaps there’s something funky with their cloudflare? Lemmy can’t seem to parse the title or give a preview automatically. Here’s the article from Archive.org, which should bypass whatever is glitching out.

For more of a focus on affordable used mini PC homelabs, I’d recommend Hardware Haven’s content instead.

From what I’ve gathered recently, the Mullvad browser left unmodified and combined with a VPN is one of the most private browsers you can use, short of using Tor.

“Because capitalism” isn’t a convincing argument to people who aren’t already against capitalism, so I think things like this that go more in depth and show you how it’s effecting us directly is very useful. And again, it has some cool history in there too that’s interesting in its own right. :)

It goes over the history of how furniture became more and more cost reduced, and in particular how workers are screwed over by the quest for profit, since the channel is focused on Unions.

I’m coming around to this conclusion, and updated the post to reflect that. For something as important as a browser, it’s a little concerning the Librewolf dev team is so short staffed, but they do seem to be holding their own. I hope they’re able to stick around long term.

That’s a well reasoned take, honestly.

As I investigate other options to LW, all of which also require a certain level of trust and/or diligence, ultimately I’m finding LW seems difficult to replace, as it does walk that line between ‘good enough’ security/privacy and convenience. The Phoenix project seems promising, but so far is only convenient on a few distros, leaving Windows users with LW, or perhaps Zen.

To clarify, the only relevancy PrivacyGuides has here is that their forum is where I found the link to the Arkenfox github issue, and how their arguments against Librewolf appeared to have been potentially validated by said github issue.

The main concern is that github issue, where one of the main developers of Arkenfox, from which Librefox is derived, claims:

LW since fxbrit left/died/who-knows has gone to shit - I worked with him behind the scenes to make the right choices and while he would do his own analysis, we always agreed, and his voice influenced them. Now they don’t know what they are doing, and in fact have compromised security and make really stupid decisions. Same goes for all the other forks - really dubious shit going

And directly after which a Librewolf team member then voices agreement that Librewolf’s quality control has degraded since the departure of fxbrit.

Now it could be that the Arkenfox dev is exaggerating, and tbh he comes off as a bit of a prick later in that github issue, but overall, I’d say it merits at least some concern (though perhaps less than I originally thought)

Wouldn’t a side effect of that, if done en masse, be property values and rent ballooning out of control in the safer areas?

Another user here mentioned the Phoenix project, which may be a good solution for us, as I share the same goals.

I haven’t looked into Zen, I’ll do a dive on that now.

Cheers for mentioning that, I hadn’t heard of Phoenix, but looks like an excellent alternative.

Unfortunately, adding any addons to the Mullvad browser would defeat the purpose of using it somewhat, since it would defeat the anti-fingerprinting methods.

The Librewolf team member said they’re falling behind on keeping the arkenfox tweaks up to date even as they put out new releases. Perhaps they are able to keep up with Firefox security updates despite that, which I suppose would still make them a better option than vanilla Firefox, but it does give reason to keep a closer eye on them.

I agree on Brave, and I also avoid it so as not to solidify the chromium browser dominance any further.

However, from all I have read, Firefox Mobile based browsers truly are less secure from a technological standpoint. I think for most people, Firefox Mobile is secure enough for it not to be enough of a deciding factor to use a chromium browser, but objectively it is worse. Mull was making the best of that despite the downsides, so hopefully the IronFox fork succeeds on mobile.

And despite their recommending Brave, I think the arguments against LibreWolf do have some merit.

Star Wars: Andor is one I can highly recommend, and that’s coming from someone who found everything outside of the original trilogy to be extremely meh. Andor punches so hard above its weight and source material it’s absolutely crazy. It’s some of the finest sci-fi I’ve ever seen, and in themes is genuinely antifascist. Give it a shot even if you have star wars fatigue, it’s that good! I can’t wait for season two.

Another show that I’d recommend (though slightly less enthusiastically) would be Peaky Blinders, which is about British WWI vets who become gangsters after returning home. The acting is incredible, and it covers a surprising amount on working class struggles of that time, the persecution of socialists by the state, the rise of fascism in Britain with historical people, and is overall pro-socialist. The only reason I recommend it slightly less than Andor is it can feel a little repetitive if you binge it, so I recommend spacing out episodes a bit if you can to hopefully avoid that feeling. It is a great show despite that.

I’d also recommend Firefly if you haven’t seen it.

You may enjoy Turn, which is an older show about the spy network during the american revolutionary war, which has some great acting, and at least a good revolutionary spirit of resisting tyranny.

Lastly, and this one might be a tough sell, but I personally enjoyed Blake’s 7, which is an old low budget scifi from the BBC revolving around a small band of misfits as they essentially try to find ways to undermine a totalitarian empire with an advanced ship they find. It can be super cheesy and campy at times, but some of the actors kinda carry it (Paul Darrow), and it has a certain charm.