Thanks for the heads up on the rm -rf ./*. It was so fucking cluttered.

It’s kind of a double edged sword, because while all the benefits are true, the majority of people around me still rely on social media and online dating. This just exacerbates my anxiety. It makes me feel that I’m being left behind and that I’m a weirdo. Of course, I know that this isn’t the case, but it’s how I feel sometimes. What a world we live in, where taking a stance against big tech and doomscrolling actually comes with the risk of isolation. :/

Edit: typo city

Plz seed I’m at 93% I want RAM plz /s

Please remind me because I seem to have forgotten… Has the existence of troll farms been proven? /s

Also, mark shit like this with NSFW tag.

Also, have you thought of a name for your doghter?

Noice! What made you take the first step?

I stopped using social media altogether about six years ago. I wanted to quit because I found people’s interactions fake, hollow and shallow. I needed to quit because it was making me sick all the time - constantly trying to compete with people in who was living the most glamorous life. This freed me from Meta.

At the same time - or shortly thereafter - I started to read up on online privacy, data brokers and mass surveillance. I don’t quite remember why, though. This freed me from Google. Went with Tutanota. This also freed me from YouTube and Spotify. Went with Newpipe and Tidal.

Now, people can reach me by calling me, sending me an SMS or joining me on Signal.

The way this affected me is that I’m not sick from competing mindlessly anymore. I live more in the present. My mental health has significantly improved. I have a sense of pride and security, thinking that my digital life is not being harvested and sold for profit anymore. I too listen to albums after having switched to Tidal. I never “listen to music” anymore. I listen to album X made by artist Y.

No kidding. In our case, their hands are even more tied, since we are required by law to outsource it to the cheapest possible provider. I’m just disappointed that my country and agency are so poorly informed on how much cheaper and self reliant using open source solutions such as WireGuard and Linux would be.

I just do the typical

sh -c "$(sudo find / -name 'mkdir' | grep -o 'mkdir' | head -n 1) '$(echo newDir)'"

but to each their own I guess.

And then the IT department announced that they are finally replacing our obscure, archaic “VPN solution”. I asked, “you are building the new solution on top off WireGuard, right? 😊”

IT: … … 😊

Me: … … 🥲

They ended up BUYING ANOTHER “VPN SOLUTION” INSTEAD 😭

https://libreboot.org/docs/install/t480.html

It’s a significant improvement to me that it’s open source and that - according to the above description - Intel ME is indeed removed.

Have you flashed Libreboot on a T480, then taken a dump of the chip and confirmed that Intel code is still on there?

I also don’t understand why I would need grub when I use systemd’s bootloader. I only want to replace the BIOS.

I have prepared the images to be flashed💾, an EEPROM programmer (Raspberry Pi Pico H)✏️ and configured my Lenovo Thinkpad T480’s BIOS settings to receive the flash💻. Now I’m just waiting for the test clip to arrive in the mail. ETA tomorrow. Libreboot, here we go.

Take one thing at a time and give it time. There is a lot to learn, depending on what level of understanding you want to achieve. How about starting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooting_(Android)

Rooting: making yourself the true owner of your device from a software perspective. You already paid a butload of money to buy the physical device, but the manufacturer doesn’t allow you to install and/or remove apps (packages), customize or otherwise tweak the phone to the extent that the underlying operating system would allow.

Unlocking the bootloader: to remove the restrictions that otherwise prevents you from altering (tweaking or replacing entirely) the operating system as implemeyyou?d by the manufacturer.

Custom “ROM”: I don’t really have an answer for you here, since I don’t understand - and haven’t yet looked up - why people call it that. Anyway, people use it to mean “custom operating system”, such as Graphene OS or Lineage OS.

Edit: “custom ROM”, as I suspected, is a colloquial term and not technically accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custom_ROM

Am I allowed to say, I’m rooting for you?

But can it be my waifu?

In addition to what @[email protected] said, as long as any third party is involved in the handling of PII, there should be no expectation of privacy whatsoever. For instance, I use Mullvad VPN, but that is as much a political/ideological statement to me as it is but one countermeasure against malicious actors in a very complex cyber environment. I could go on about how Mullvad has proven over and over - through third party audits and through actual incident response - that they have zero data to hand over to the authorities. But I won’t, because that’s not the point here. The point is: if I was involved in something that made me interesting to the authorities in any capacity, putting my trust, privacy, security and life in the hands of one company would not be the way to go about it. Not even in Mullvad, which I otherwise use.

Good OpSec is not about relying on technical solutions. It’s about real-world threat modeling, assessment, having three backup plans and careful execution.

Is it morally questionable for Proton to cooperate with the authorities going after activists? Yes. Should there be any expectation of privacy and/or security from the end user’s point of view? No.

Manage your expectations and scheme accordingly.

I can’t imagine a scenario in which your employer doesn’t lead with explaining why you are required to do anything, except for in the military or course. I mean, how does that affect the work environment, that the employees don’t know why they aren’t allowed to go home to their loved ones before doing anything else.

If you ask me, as long as you install GOS before sideloading is disabled, you will be fine, since your not going to need system updates from Google anyway. Your device will already have been made “unofficial” and unsupported in the eyes of Google, since you unlocked the bootloader in order to install GOS in the first place. And relocking it after GOS installation doesn’t change that fact.

The bigger problem will be increased monopoly for Google. Amazingly talented developers won’t be able to contribute to Android anymore because they don’t want to dox themselves.

💉

I’m not anxious about work. I should’ve been more clear. What’s unreasonably hard is the transition from a day off to a workday.

I work as a parole officer with the extra task of writing pre sentencing reports to courts in which I state my professional opinion on whether the defendant should be eligible for time served/probation.

Thanks! I added it to my post! :)

In addition to this, anything on One UI 8 and above does not allow the bootloader to be unlocked, regardless of region. Fortunately, I had already rooted my S23 and have stayed on One UI 7 ever since.

Yeah! Some of those communities require registration and the general climate can be quite hostile towards tech illiterate people. I’d love to see a forum and a wiki that’s inviting to all.