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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2021

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  • A billion people tricked into using malware is still a billion people using malware. Telegram is a Russian spyware and misinformation machine. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/2024/08/27/7472194/

    Putin’s Mouthpiece Demands Release of Durov (a likely fsb agent himself)

    Pavel Durov has secretly traveled to Russia more than 60 times between 2014 to 2022

    Durov concealed that he crossed the border more than 50 times from 2015 to 2022

    • Despite the story that “the FSB took Vkontakte away from Pavel in 2014”, his relationship with the Russian authorities 2015-present was good enough > that he was not afraid of being detained while entering, reentry& long stays & operations in Russia.

    • In response to the publication about his possible ties to Russia, Durov deliberately deceived Ukrainians and the general public, claiming that he > was an exile in Russia and that Telegram had “no ties” to Russia.

    • As proof of his lack of ties to Russia, Pavel claimed that he was no longer a Russian entrepreneur, had dual citizenship in France & the UAE.

    • After his arrest in France and the statements of the Russian authorities, we know that he has a valid Russian passport.

    • Russian authorities are demanding his release.

    Pavel Durov, telegrams owner, repeatedly crossed the border and concealed these 60+ trips into mother russia. For those familiar with Durov’s official position that he has become an exile and cannot return to his country, this fact alone should be interesting, as it probably means that Durov was not telling the truth about his conflict with the Russian authorities.

    But go ahead, keep using Telegram, товарищ.




  • The fact that Signal has not run into legal trouble when Telegram has.

    Because Signal cooperates as much as they can with law enforcement. Signal happily gives all the data they have and thankfully, for its users, the only data they have is the date/time the account was created and the date (not time) a client last pinged their servers; both in unix timestamp format, they don’t even convert it to a proper date.

    Additionally, Signal has no “public groups” like Telegram. Everything’s private, end-to-end encrypted by default.

    Also Signal has some really shady practices, such as rejecting and killing all third party clients.

    Yeah, so that’s outdated misinformation:

    Three of these have existed for multiple years and have not been asked to stop development. The gurk-rs dev even commented (on reddit, unfortunately I can’t find the source) that it reports to Signal’s server as a non-official client and that if the Signal devs wanted to block it, they could easily do so.





  • greed incentivizing unethical contraptions.

    Crypto is a tool, just like anything else. Is the internet a greed incentivizing unethical contraption? Because the internet spawned Google, Instagram, Facebook, 4Chan, and various other shady and illicit sites and services. Should we hate the internet because of this?

    Crypto isn’t inherently bad. It’s the people trying to take advantage and duplicate the “success” of Bitcoin that make crypto bad. I’m telling you this as a person who used to believe in “crypto” and was an early adopter.


  • There’s no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated

    NOFX wrote about the rise of ignorance in America and the song “The Idiots Are Taking Over” is more appropriate now than ever before.

    full lyrics below. link to song for anyone not familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sNWDfryyMk


    It's not the right time to be sober
    Now the idiots have taken over
    Spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?
    Mensa membership conceding
    Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
    Watson, it's really elementary
    The industrial revolution
    Has flipped the *removed* on evolution
    The benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer
    The world keeps getting dumber
    Insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason
    Darwin's rolling over in his coffin
    The fittest are surviving much less often
    Now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
    Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
    Now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
    And I'm starting to feel a lot like Charlton Heston
    Stranded on a primate planet
    Apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
    With generals and the armies that obeyed them
    Followers following fables
    Philosophies that enable them to rule without regard
    There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
    Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
    Majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
    Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions
    What are we left with?
    A nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
    Who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
    Pass on traditions
    How to get ahead religions
    And prosperity via simpleton culture
    The idiots are taking over
    



  • Call me when there’s a serious OneNote…

    OneNote works on the web, but there’s also Notenook if someone is looking for similar features with an app for offline access + End-to-end encryption and open source alternative. I’ve got it syncing to my Android, Windows, Linux and Mac clients without issue.

    …or even more importantly, Excel competitor.

    There’s OnlyOffice which has a spreadsheet. Yeah it’s not Excel which has existed for a million years, but it should work for the vast majority of users’ basic needs. It may not work for your specific use case, but it is a viable alternative that exists today. If you want more online collaborative features (like the o365 version has) you can use CryptPad, which provides an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite, including the web version of OnlyOffice Spreadsheets.

    Or even a standard shell on Linux…

    What does this even mean? Nearly every major Linux distro sets bash as the default shell, and if not the default, is probably already installed and called if needed. Not sure I understand the problem here.

    …or the same set of tools built in

    Stick to a single OS and you get the same set of tools built in? This is a strange statement to be making against a system that not only thrives on diversity but has lots of niche systems that require a myriad of default tools.


    I do completely agree about not using any browser’s built-in password manager.


  • I’m having a similar issue lately with an AndroidTV beta (Nvidia Shield) and a Chromecast device. I wonder if its related? I unfortunately haven’t had time to look into it and just use VLC as an external player. I’ve noticed that some videos will play back with the built-in player but others will not.

    EDIT: I noticed “Cinema mode” was enabled which is supposed to “Play available intros and previews before starting a movie”, but I don’t have any intros or previews. I disabled the setting and my videos are working again! Not sure why it got enabled. But if you have this on, maybe try toggling it.

    EDIT2: Just saw you fixed your issue below - I’ll leave mine up in case anyone else runs into a similar problem.



  • Signal, originally known as TextSecure, worked entirely over text messages when it first came out. It was borne from a different era and and securing communication data was the only immediate goal because at the time everything was basically viewable by anyone with enough admin rights on basically every platform. Signal helped popularize end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and dragged everyone else with them. Very few services at the time even advertised E2EE, private metadata or social graph privacy.

    As they’ve improved the platform they continue to make incremental changes to enhance security. This is not a flaw, this is how progress is made.