chirospasm

Read this entire thing, and it breaks my heart open + enrages me.

I have been doing my damnedest not to let anger be any more of a motivator than morality or principle. I want to retain some sense of rationality. I want to navigate this all well enough.

Today, after this article, anger is a major motivation. I am pissed.

FRONT TOWARD ENEMY

Dig it!

If you are looking for a hardened phone, I would consider trying GrapheneOS for a bit, see if it does what you are looking for. Uses SELinux and a seccomp-bpf policy for app sandboxing, as well as runs a hardened kernel with a hardened memory alloc. Great isolation approach, too, so that you can run apps on a ‘completely different phone,’ so to speak – think of the isolation like a small version of the OS that can keep apps entirely separate. Finally, if desired (and needed for certain apps), you can sandbox all Google services so that they don’t have direct access. It’s is a different approach to, say, microG.

GrapheneOS is all about hardening. Security is solid.

VPN wise, Mullvad wireguard servers are also solid. You can do multihops, which help you obsfucate traffic to degree. They have also been playing around with packet shaping (if you use their app directly).

Sim cards can be swapped out if use a VoIP service like jmp.chat.

Transparent PNG tattoo

Chowda

I remember reading somewhere that drivers beyond 550* may have some issues with linux right now. I might consider rolling them back to a version that was already working.

*Citation needed, but it was a lower version than what is currently the latest available

Polenta’s such a nice comfort food

Oof, this one goes for the jugular

Dig this tune

So how do we bake the cake? What are some resources we can look at in support this conversation?

There will always be MITM attacks for radio networks, whether at initialization, a de-auth, jamming, etc. Cell site simulators (CSS) are still threats.

While the original 3G-based IMSI attacks are not as useful (because few devices, if at all, use 3G anymore), the approach is still a known tactic for street-level surveillance.

Groups like the EFF wouldn’t put out projects like Rayhunter if these kinds attacks weren’t considered relevant. And, especially now, they are relevant.

What intrigues me most about ‘vibe coding’ is also what intrigues me about 3D printing – it’s a tool that can’t and won’t natively produce at a high level of quality, like more robust manufacturing setups run by professionals can, but it does help the layperson solve problems they would otherwise be unable to solve themselves, often at an adequate level of quality. And I think most folks who use ‘vibe coding’, akin to those who 3D print, are aware of this. It’s all experiment, discovery, trial-and-error.

I believe, if we consider ‘vibe coding’ as a more accessible approach to development for the less technical hobbyist, perhaps we can also consider it a conversation starter with the folks who would use it to talk more about the nuances of software engineering as a whole. I think there’s something there.

Nothing is a panacea for specialization, to be clear. Folks who are skilled will always be SMEs. If they choose to engage with AI, they will understand that AI is just a tool to support them under the banner of those skills they know they possess. The skilled can guide thrse tools. The unskilled can only follow what the tool has been guided to produce for them. Major difference in quality.

But: that’s where the conversation part of this comes into play. How do skilled folks talk to unskilled folks about the importance of the skill without it sounding so abstract?

Maybe ‘vibe coding’ is just another place from which to teach.

I love these!

The paper this repo references: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18096

Diogenes would be proud here

I get it. There are ways to gave privacy and dignity without having to have your own room, though, like finding a free or salvaged desk and set of bins to hold all your things in one spot.

Sharing a small studio with multiple people – roommates or family – works best when everyone kind of agrees that ‘their’ space is ‘theirs,’ and certain spaces have, say, the furniture arranged in a way that boundary off / designate those areas.

It’s not always fun, but it works! Take it from somebody with experience. You can figure something out to make some areas feel more like ‘yours.’

Thank you for posting this! I assumed some FF-based browsers, while claiming to remove telemetry, in fact still phoned home to a degree. This is good know!

Also, I was surprised by a few others on the list, like Mullvad, Kagi, and DuckDuckGo, being so straightforward – not that making fewer connections implies better privacy, as even a single connection can transmit any kind of data, but moreso that there some browsers that are designed to operate with less complexity.

Really surprised by Zen, which is a FF derivative claiming to be all about a ‘beautiful’ and ‘simple’ web browsing experience, having a ton of connections.

Ooooooooh noooooooooooooooooooo

Metal AF