tosdr.org says MEGA tracks you and stuff. I use the DuckDuckGo tracker blocker things, but my space is getting smaller and I'll soon need to pay for a bigger plan. But I'm really wondering if they won't steal my bank data if I pay for the bigger plan....
No. It was seized by the New Zealand government. Don't think that NZ is some great democracy, our govt is turning into an authoritarian nightmare the same as everywhere else. Mega can't be trusted anymore
Over the ditch here, New Zealand isn't much better and like many countries only getting worse.
The insane amount of personal information that essential companies (e.g. electricity, property managers, etc) is getting out of control and our digital privacy laws are still in the dark ages.
Solved: Thanks to all who commented, especially those who took the time to respond to my follow-up questions. Your responses were enough to convince me of the value of buying a custom domain in order to keep one's true email address private w/ the added benefit of working on websites that block known domains of temp/forwarding...
I use a custom domain with a personal email address that I only use for communicating with actual human beings. e.g. [email protected] Then I have a generic email address that I use with a + for different services e.g. [email protected] or [email protected]
I use Bitwarden as my password manager and that can automatically generate a + email using random characters but I sometimes use the latter + form if I want a human readable email.
This way I can see exactly what website/service has been breeched/sold my data if I get spam emails.
Its just less setup for me. My personal domain is shared with other people so I can't set a domain level catch all.
That and its less setup for me. I have no automated way of easily creating new emails (and my email settings would get very cluttered with hundreds of different emails). With a generic email address that I use with a +, its just one email and whatever comes after the + will go to that email. Then I have more options for what to do with those emails in mail clients. In my case, I have different mail filters to send them to different mailbox folders. But I can also tag them, auto delete, auto forward, etc. Whatever your mail client filters can handle.
A savvy spammer can do that anyway by brute forcing whatever is before the @ for any email address at all.
I'm less concerned about spammers (which are annoyingly inevitable after a while) and more concerned with data breaches. Thus if I can see where my leaked email address came from, I know who to blame and its also a lot easier yo change my account logins.
And yes, some sites annoyingly disallow them but in that case I can create another email address for those since they are few and far between.
This is the first time I've had this much slop come up in one video. The search I used was "Actual budget vs Firefly III": https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=actual+budget+vs+firefly+iii.
I mostly watch Linux tech related videos, some gaming stuff, DIY, bit of comedy here and there, philosophy and some socio-anarchist stuff (ya know, like protecting your privacy lol). No idea why I would get so much slop from one search other than the enshittification of YouTube is accelerating :/
Multiple videos that have the same style of thumbnail (AI generated face excepted). Multiple videos with a very similar thumbnail and exact same wording. They're all within the past year, mostly within the past 6 months (this software has existed for many years, why all of a sudden do multiple channels want to do vs or review videos of them). They're all short videos and its just not possible to give a proper breakdown of feature or a review of budgeting software in that amount of time. The few videos I tested used AI voices and all had a similar start (I didn't waste my time watching the whole video). The faces on the videos look AI generated or modified....
Have you had to deal with refunds yet? I see that as a criticism and I would have to agree that the official doc's way of handling them is not ideal for our situation or the way refunds are handled in my country. Interested in knowing if anyone has come up with more creative solutions.
This is one of the things I don't get about any of this shit - if we were talking about physical items, letters, a hard landline, physical art, written medical information, etc. this would require a warrant, court order or whatever. Why the fuck is digital anything viewed as a free-for-all by govts, AI techbros, data brokers et al. How do they not understand that just because something is 'digital' it doesn't deserve the same protections as before?!
I recently asked the /c/Android community what information Google has access to on stock Android, assuming the user is not using any Google apps, and was told Google has full "unstoppable" access to the entire device, including Signal messages, the microphone, duckduckgo search history and anything displayed on the screen at all...
I'm currently looking to buy a new TV. While I do use Jellyfin to watch movies and shows stored locally in my network, I still want to allow the TV to go on the internet, because I (and my girlfriend) like to watch YouTube, Netflix and such on the TV as well....
Aside: Have a look at SmartTube instead of NewPipe. It's made for TVs and the devs are excellent at keeping it working despite Google constantly trying to block alternate front ends.
Preface: I personally don't care if it's legal or not, I'm gonna do it anyway. But, I wanted to pose the question here to people who are smarter than me to get your opinions. Plus, my partner is completely anti-piracy so I can only enjoy it by myself and it makes me kind of sad to do so. So it'd be nice to give them a reason to...
The arguments around piracy are less about legality (in most places its copyright infringement which is NOT "stealing" but is illegal). Its more the moral and ethical arguments. Is it moral for a service to remove something that you've paid for? Is it ethical for people, through no fault of their own, to not be able to afford entertainment. Is it moral for large corporations to price gouge and continuously Make Line Go Up while offering a continuously worse product? Is it moral to copy software not available in your country? Is it ethical for companies to force people into subscriptions for the sole purpose of making more money when they already have loads? Is it ethical to pirate when companies refuse to support the operating system you have? Is it moral to copy software when the company that makes it is not just unethical but has been found to be taking part in things like genocide? Is it ethical for huge corporations to manipulate democracy and laws to serve their profits at the expense of everyone else? Is capitalism itself ethical?
Most people I know who are anti-pirate just lack an understanding of why people engage in copyright infringement. Calling people "scum" and "thieves" without understanding the very big moral and ethical considerations behind what drives people to piracy is reductionist, ignorant and Othering for the sake of self-superiority.
Not saying that your partner thinks that way, just that its a very common example of thinking that misses the important points and that its not just about what's legal and what's not (because there are many things that are or have been illegal that are completely unethical.)
I was already able to remove the edit password with qpdf --decrypt. Most of the PDF editors I used, changed the PDF too much (e.g. added margins/padding) which ruined the very specific layout needed for the patterns to work. There has to be no changes to the PDFs apart from removing the 'footer' text :/
I tried doing print to PDF but it flattened the resultant PDF so the layers were lost. Almost all of the software I used to try converting altered the PDF layout in some way and patterns must not change at all, otherwise they get messed up :/
Clearview AI built a massive facial recognition database by scraping 30 billion photos from Facebook and other social media platforms without users' permission, which law enforcement has accessed nearly a million times since 2017[^1]....
Not entirely sure I understand what you mean but in addition to the suggestion of WordPress, all the plugins must be licensed as GPL as well. So all the paid for plugins can be obtained and legally used without paying. You will however have to forgo support and automatic updates on most.
I'm sorry but it's true. Graphene OS sucks the big one.... It's absolutely janky when it comes to its Android app support, it's UI is absolutely atrocious, and all around. It's simply a wonky operating system....
Tell me you don't understand GrapheneOS without telling me you don't understand GrapheneOS.
This typed from a GrapheneOS phone that works just great, including the UI (breath of fresh simple air, no clutter, no crap, no AI).
And I'm happily using my phone knowing that not a single thing is spying on me or data mining and everything on my phone is there by my choice. And even happier that there's not a damn thing Google can do about it.
I'm ditching streaming services and just going with local music. However all my CDs are converted to either flac or 320kbps mp3 files on my PC and thus far too large for the limited storage I have on my phone....
I don't want to be reliant on an internet connection to play music. Hence, why I prefer everything to be local on my phone. I also don't want to open our home server up to the outside world.
You are correct and I don't normally like to listen to anything less than 320kbps. BUT, my phone does not have expandable memory so it's hard limited. And where I listen to most of my music while travelling is in the car using the car's speakers which aren't going to make much difference listening to 128vs 320. Even when streaming music, I'm not going to get 320. I may go up to 192kbps instead of 128 but I doubt it will make much audible difference with shitty car speakers.
I was considering doing that sort of thing if I couldn't find anything automatic. It's just annoying as I buy new music and have to convert along the way, especially as I have memory impairment and can forget to clean up afterwards.
Basically what it says in the title. Too many sites make you jump through all these hoops to have your account deleted, and sometimes even then don't do it....
I recently switched from Enpass to Bitwarden and as a result decided that, while I was at it, I would delete accounts I don't use anymore. Oh boy, some were incredibly difficult to delete. Some would only anonymise data and remove login access. And one outright refused to delete my account. Unfortunately New Zealand privacy law only covers accessing and changing personal information so I'm shit out of luck with threatening anything legal to force that company to remove my account. One company (Klarna) has taken months to respond and since stopped replying to my request to delete and I haven't been able to find a way to escalate my request :/
Likely from now on I will check account deletion policies before making an account and it will be a hard pass if they don't allow account deletion.
Technically its illegal in New Zealand (after the great John Key and The Hobbit saga) but the ISPs don't give a shit. Never used a VPN and only got one letter just after the law took effect. Nothing since. So many people here do it it's unenforceable.
I know that my blatant request for this might get me in trouble, but please help me, I'm in a third world country and i just won that iPhone in a contest, I got depressed after knowing the price of the game(which is literally a quarter of my dad's wage, he might go nuts if i told him to buy the game 😂)anyway, i don't want to...
As a long time poor person myself, please don't give this sort advice. It doesn't help. When your poor, getting something like OPs competition win can make life feel not so glum. What you're saying is to sell happiness for slightly more security that will only last so long. Once the extra runs out, you're back where you were with zero ability to buy that 'luxury' back.
Having something nice when your poor can make a big difference to mental health.
Also please don't assume that poor people don't know how to budget and that they need unsolicited financial advice from strangers who don't have any idea what their day to day circumstances and finances are.
Searching gives me the impression there's a million ways to solve the same problem on Linux, and I find myself profiling answers into about four categories at a glance:...
Drives me nuts computer illiterate family members praising me for fixing the most basic, basic shit for them. They think its because I have lots of experience. But no, its because I learned the absolute basics of computer literacy and the experience I now have is grounded in that. I don't want praise for "working magic", I want people to fucking spend a small amount of their time learning the most BASIC of IT skills so I don't have to waste my time fixing shit you should know.
Sorry, my frustration might be showing just a little.
My spouse is a tech and tells me he has all the patience for stupidity because he gets paid for it. Once upon a time, I was going to go into IT but turns out that no amount of money was worth it for me because my tolerance for stupidity and willful ignorance is next to zero.
TBF, I still smile and tell family members it's all good, no problem to fix and then vent my inward seething later on to my spouse 😅
And not many consider the environmental impact of this either. Sure storage might be cheap (not in my country but I digress) but more space still requires more storage and across thousands of computers and then millions of computers that's not an insignificant increase. We should be increasing technological efficiency not what were doing at the moment which seems to be just throwing more power and resources at the problems.
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Psylo, which bills itself as a new kind of private web browser, debuted last Tuesday in Apple’s App Store, one day ahead of a report warning about the widespread use of browser fingerprinting for ad tracking and targeting....
I'm typing this via GrapheneOS and I don't at all feel like I'm living 10 years in the past lol.
Even if I was, at least the internet would be a less shitty place than it is now, there would be almost no LLM/AI crap, I wouldn't constantly have to be as vigilant against big corps datamining my privacy as much as I am now.... Actually, 2015 was a pretty decent time compared to now. Got a time machine?
Is MEGA really secure?
tosdr.org says MEGA tracks you and stuff. I use the DuckDuckGo tracker blocker things, but my space is getting smaller and I'll soon need to pay for a bigger plan. But I'm really wondering if they won't steal my bank data if I pay for the bigger plan....
India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding ( www.heise.de )
cross-posted from:...
Netflix kills casting from phones ( www.theverge.com )
What dystopian surveillance things from your country you can't escape?
Or have to go through great lengths to escape....
How to skirt websites that block known domains of email forwarding services? [SOLVED]
Solved: Thanks to all who commented, especially those who took the time to respond to my follow-up questions. Your responses were enough to convince me of the value of buying a custom domain in order to keep one's true email address private w/ the added benefit of working on websites that block known domains of temp/forwarding...
I just wanted to compare FOSS Linux budgeting software
Instead YouTube gives me literally nothing but AI spam. :/...
I just wanted to compare FOSS Linux budgeting software
Instead YouTube gives me literally nothing but AI spam. :/...
Chat Control isn’t dead, Denmark has a new proposal − here’s all we know ( www.techradar.com )
cross-posted from:...
Can Google read my Signal messages on stock Android?
I recently asked the /c/Android community what information Google has access to on stock Android, assuming the user is not using any Google apps, and was told Google has full "unstoppable" access to the entire device, including Signal messages, the microphone, duckduckgo search history and anything displayed on the screen at all...
Flock Safety and Texas Sheriff Claimed License Plate Search Was for a Missing Person. It Was an Abortion Investigation. ( www.eff.org )
So, what to do about Smart TVs?
I'm currently looking to buy a new TV. While I do use Jellyfin to watch movies and shows stored locally in my network, I still want to allow the TV to go on the internet, because I (and my girlfriend) like to watch YouTube, Netflix and such on the TV as well....
The "lagality" of Stremio + RD + Torrentio
Preface: I personally don't care if it's legal or not, I'm gonna do it anyway. But, I wanted to pose the question here to people who are smarter than me to get your opinions. Plus, my partner is completely anti-piracy so I can only enjoy it by myself and it makes me kind of sad to do so. So it'd be nice to give them a reason to...
How to remove 'anti-piracy' footers from complex PDFs?
I have some sewing patterns that I would like to share (and hopefully swap) but all of the PDFs have a...
Clearview AI scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a 'perpetual police line-up' ( www.businessinsider.com )
Clearview AI built a massive facial recognition database by scraping 30 billion photos from Facebook and other social media platforms without users' permission, which law enforcement has accessed nearly a million times since 2017[^1]....
I am web developer where can I get white label websites and other resources since I am solo
What the title basically says
Let's be honest.... GrapheneOS sucks the big one
I'm sorry but it's true. Graphene OS sucks the big one.... It's absolutely janky when it comes to its Android app support, it's UI is absolutely atrocious, and all around. It's simply a wonky operating system....
Brain implants that read minds: a medical miracle raises new ethical questions ( www.france24.com )
App for downsizing MP3s automatically when copying to a phone?
I'm ditching streaming services and just going with local music. However all my CDs are converted to either flac or 320kbps mp3 files on my PC and thus far too large for the limited storage I have on my phone....
I wish there was a "Right to have your account deleted"
Basically what it says in the title. Too many sites make you jump through all these hoops to have your account deleted, and sometimes even then don't do it....
Arrrrr! Welcome Aboard The Good Ship Matey 🏴☠️
How to get minecraft on iPhone 13 without jailbreak or voiding the warranty
I know that my blatant request for this might get me in trouble, but please help me, I'm in a third world country and i just won that iPhone in a contest, I got depressed after knowing the price of the game(which is literally a quarter of my dad's wage, he might go nuts if i told him to buy the game 😂)anyway, i don't want to...
Anyone else able to "sense" whether a solution on a forum will work before fully reading it through? Especially the long-winded ones.
Searching gives me the impression there's a million ways to solve the same problem on Linux, and I find myself profiling answers into about four categories at a glance:...
Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]
AI to make us more private?
Just listened to Naomi Brockwell talk about how AI is basically the perfect surveillance tool now....
Psylo iOS browser takes aim at digital fingerprinting ( www.theregister.com )
Psylo, which bills itself as a new kind of private web browser, debuted last Tuesday in Apple’s App Store, one day ahead of a report warning about the widespread use of browser fingerprinting for ad tracking and targeting....