I am just curious and want to understand how things work which no one else does.

It depends on how interested you are in a subject. Everything is interesting, but you may not find everything equally interesting, nor do you have time to know everything there is to know about everything.

For instance, if I fly somewhere, I have a general idea of how wings create lift. But if you try to explain it to me in detail, I’ll tell you to piss off because all I really want to do is travel from A to B.

But I know plenty about other subjects that I’m really into, that I could bore you to tears with and you’d end up punching me in the face if I tried to explain them to you.

It’s not okay to not know anything about something. But it’s okay to know enough.

I’m really disappointed with Lemmy’s idea of federation: all it is is a bunch of servers mirroring one another, but the user accounts are server-bound. No jumping instance and taking your identity seamlessly with you.

The stock Fairphone runs the stock full-blown Google spyware stack. Privacy isn’t Fairphone’s selling point: it’s repairability.

You can install CalyxOS very easily on it however. That’s what I’m rocking on my Fairphone 4, and it’s great. I have no issues with it.

rm -r *

Also, if you have to type that, don’t use the numpad: / is only one key away from *. If you finger snags the / key on its way to * and you happen to be root, your root partition will go bye-bye.

I never thought of doing that in 40 years. It’s a great idea actually. Thanks!

Here’s a rule I learned the hard way a few decades ago:

• If you type “rm”, take you hands off the keyboard and take one deliberate breath before continuing your command.
• If you then type “-r”, do it again.
• If you then type “-f” do it again.
• In all cases, re-read what you wrote before hitting ENTER.

That’s the catch: you can’t not use Google at all if you’re online at all, because Google has managed to insert itself into every little corner of the internet.

And that’s how the surveillance trap has quietly snapped shut on all of us without most of us noticing anything.

George Orwell had it wrong: the surveillance isn’t conducted directly by a tyrannical dictatorship but subtly, indirectly by the private sector in cahoots with the government. And the date he predicted was 40 years off. Other than that, he was right: we live in a full-blown dystopia now.

People coming here to rant about Reddit isn’t activity.

Removed by mod

I use a calyxos device to share VPN, as of a few months ago.

Hotspot & Tethering

• Allow clients to use VPNs

Oh wow I totally missed that. It works great! Genius!

Thank you for that. Suddenly it makes repurposing one of my old cellphones a very simple and viable proposition.

(and I’m posting this from my laptop connected to the hotspot connected to the Calyx VPN 🙂)

get a older cell phone. Put lineage OS on it, or calyxos… share your VPN over hotspot, these are the only two ROMs that I’m aware of that allow you to do that

That’s what I thought too. So I tried it on my CalyxOS phone and… it doesn’t work: the hotspot doesn’t route through the VPN. And from what I read, it’s by design.

I have an old Nokia 4.2 running LineageOS. I might try that one.

end-to-end VPN

Incidentally, do you know if the GL.iNet devices can act as a VPN server too?

At this point, I think China is well known for infiltrating local businesses and forcing them to sell networking gear with trojans.

The US is better known for surveilling people indirectly by exploiting corporate surveillance data collected by big tech monopolies doing their bidding for them and by directly “tapping the line”. I don’t think US officials asking US companies to compromise their products and keep quiet about it would fly in the US. At least not yet. But I wouldn’t put it past them either.

To be honest, of all three, I’d rather purchase something made in Europe, even for a premium.

Hmm… Touché.

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet

Can you give me some pointers to non-Chinese equivalents of those GL.iNet routers? I’m quite ready to suck up the extra cost.

the TikTok of the fediverse

Gee just what the Fediverse needed…

What software do you use to forward the texts automatically?

Actually I kind of had the same idea but for the whole phone - i.e. leave a cellphone with phone features at home (so voice and texts are received on this static phone that never gets used for anything else) and forward calls and texts on another cellphone with data only. But I don’t think there’s anything to set that up easily.

Interesting thanks. I’ll dig into the privacy issue.

Using things like Signal and WhatsApp may reduce your footprint further.

I use Signal with most of my family and friends. The phone things is for random people or companies that need to call me, and the texts are mostly to get notification when I receive a parcel, or confirmations for appointments, that kind of things.

WhatsApp, being owned by Facebook, can fuck right off.

I was planning on using a VPN.

But anyway, even if I’m connected direct from a known fixed WiFi, it’s still less precise than cell triangulation.

EDIT: actually I just did a test with the VPN, and WiFi calling totally bypasses it. Damn 🙁