• 0 Posts
  • 81 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 28th, 2023

help-circle


  • Device-wise, have you considered separating your project and personal computer? You could coreboot a small light Chromebook as a personal, ultraportable device, and get a hefty laptop or even a desktop for the hard stuff.

    Chatwise, there’s Matrix, XMPP and SimpleX at least. And Briar and Session. But Signal with its phone number registration is the easiest for others to jump to.

    And yes, it’s a constant balancing act between privacy and convenience… and the IA of the security triad, and open source principles. Just like with most things, there’s no perfect solution, you just learn to live with the least bad ones.







  • Eh, users can still learn a little, and fiddle with their personal stuff. My little “corebooted Chromebook running Q4OS Linux looking like Windows XP, with background from Apple and the start menu labeled as Finder” brings me joy every time I use it. It was and is pure fun.

    And the great thing about enthusiastic devs is that they tend to be happy to spread the joy of their own personal projects and help, unless they get overwhelmed by help requests.



    1. “Easy and painless” depends on your point of view, and we here tend to be biased. For example, just a couple of months ago I had to explain to “a normal person” how to make backup copies of a folder to a pen drive. She did not want additional backup software (and I still don’t know if W10 would have had the functionality out-of-the-box). Copypasting files was too difficult. In the end she decided to go with “save as”, which sounded like a horrible idea to me, since she’couldn’t remember how to open anything in Word that wasn’t in the recently used list when starting the software, and she is going to lose track of which file is which at some point. I doubt it would be “easy and painless” for people like her, who are very common outside our little bubble.

    2. Making someone change their opinion is not a sprint, but a marathon. State your opinion openly when relevant, don’t get into an argument, let it brew, mention it again when it comes up, live as you “preach”. That person I mentioned? Happily using Signal with me. Eager(!) to try Linux once W10 support runs out. I’ve told her I’ll install Mint DE on my laptop and loan it to her for unhurried testing and learning this summer while having her familiar backup to lean on if it gets difficult, and to install the same on her own computer when the support runs out, if she still wants me to.




  • Depends on what kind of relationship you have, which I think in turn tends to depend on the age and the sex of the children, among other things.

    A 14-year-old boy, yeah, rather gross, especially if he is uncomfortable or sucks at expressing their affection any other way on other days.

    Me, a 40+ year old woman who has a warm relationship with my mom, now with an additional layer of “two old ladies”, and a history of dirty jokes: Nah, I hope she got a chuckle out of the pic (I visited a week early, didn’t think of making something like this).






  • Ehhh.

    As much as the traditition of yearly votes on some version of Chat Control sucks, it’s just two mentions (The Register missed the reference to COM (2022) 209 under “Fighting serious crimes/child sexual abuse”, because of course it’d be there) in a document with way juicier tidbits. Like

    • actual enforcement of the DSA (finally some consequences for social media giants gleefully profiting from manipulation, or an affront to freedom of speech, depending on your opinion)
    • overhauling Europol’s mandate to make it “a truly operational police agency”, whereas the current mandate doesn’t cover such things as “sabotage, hybrid threats or information manipulation” (cool or creepy)
    • “strengthening border security”, “countering weaponised migration”, “security considerations in EU visa policy”, and “revision of the Visa Suspension Mechanism” are all probably necessary steps, but taken together paint a picture of something that shouldn’t be allowed to go too far

    The DSA enforcement is something strongly opposed by social media giants, so I’d expect more denigration of the document as a whole in the future.


  • As someone with shit income but a nice savings buffer, holy shit it makes things so easy, compared. “Cool dress, I’ll get that for next summer - cool coat, I’ll get that for next winter”, no problem. Just got my cat’s meds for the next 4 months at a sale, and the next sale should be in that time. Also could get her thyroid radiotherapy, that’s already paid for itself (compared to permanent expensive meds, of course not compared to no treatment). Appliance starting to make a noise or performance dropping, time to add that to my second hand watch list and keep an eye on sales of quality brands, rather than being forced to risk it failing and then getting something in a hurry, possibly on some payment scheme with a high interest rate. Pantry items on sale and/or in bulk. And of course the kind of main shoes that have held up for 5+ years, just could use a resoling soon.

    I can’t even imagine the constant stress living without it would be. Ow. :/