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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • It’s hard to overstate what a nothing-burger this article really is! Let me break it down:

    • Signal got $3 million from the Open Technology Fund at some point in its development
    • Some anonymous source alleges that the OTF’s ultimate goal is to promote US foreign interests
    • The current chairman of the board Katherine Maher worked at the National Democratic Institute and Wikipedia before
    • The same anonymous source says she was recruited because of connections to the OTF
    • She has at some point voiced the opinion that a completely free internet without regulation just reproduces existing power structures, and that balancing regulation and 1st amendment rights is a tough problem
    • Signal doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS (it absolutely does on Android btw)
    • Some people feel like Signal chats come up more often than they should in court cases and media reports

    That’s it, that’s the whole story. That’s the reason why the Telegram guy of all people thinks you should be careful, and better use his chat service instead, and the Twitter guy agrees.

    I mean, reproducible builds on iOS would be nice, but that platform has much bigger problems from a privacy/security/sovereignty/freedom standpoint anyway. And the rest is just nothing turned up to 11.



  • There are a few variations in German:

    • (hin)zugießen/dazugießen (pour one liquid into another)
    • (hin)zuschütten/dazuschütten (also including rubble/powder/…)
    • (hin)zugeben/dazugeben/hineingeben/beimischen/hineinmischen (also including solids, basically add+mix)
    • (hin)einrühren (also stir the mixture)
    • zusammengießen (pour liquids into each other)
    • zusammenschütten (also including rubble/powder/…)
    • zusammenmischen (also including solids, basically combine+mix)
    • zusammenrühren (also stir the mixture)

    Ofc all of them are combinations of existing words: (hin)zu/dazu≈added to that, bei≈with, (hin)ein=into, gießen/schütten=pour, schutt=rubble, geben=give, rühren=stir, mischen=mix, zusammen=together. You could probably build many more, but those are the ones I think are fairly common, and also found entries in German online dictionaries for.

    German is really just an elaborate word construction project.




  • From what I understand the GDPR says you have to give users a real choice about the usage of their data, without any unreasonable negative repercussions. Having to pay money (at least as much as they are asking for) is such an unacceptable repercussion, no matter how FB might phrase it.

    They are allowed to take money or show ads for access, but they can’t couple that decision with the one about the user’s data usage.



  • I’m no expert on the topic, but I’ve also never heard of a case where a seedbox user was sued because of torrenting. As far as I can tell the seedbox providers only ever get takedown requests, they never have to hand over user data or logs. I believe that’s mostly because of the jurisdictions they operate in, but some also have restrictions like blocking public trackers.

    There are probably a bunch of things that contribute to this. Seedbox providers fighting against information requests, their logs not being as valuable in court, law firms not knowing whether the IP they’d get would even lead to an address (as opposed to IPs of providers they know to be cooperative), the fact that you only downloaded from the seedbox and never uploaded anything yourself, and so on. Torrenting lawsuits are already pretty weak, and adding all this uncertainty probably makes it not worth the effort.



  • The juristiction where the provider operates, and the logging/disclosure requirements are very important! ISPs are often required to keep logs, VPN/Seedbox/Hosting providers usually are not. I’m not a lawyer and so on, but I could also imagine that logs from some VPN showing your IP was used to download/upload something are not as good as evidence as a mandatory (and probably somehow checked/verified) logs of an ISP are.

    Another thing are provider incentives. If you’re running a general purpose hosting business you probably don’t want any shady stuff on your servers, and so you’re pretty happy to comply with any reasonable information request in that direction. As a VPN/Seedbox provider your business depends on people feeling safe and private on your servers, so you’ll do everything in your power to fight these requests, and there is a lot that can be done to fight them. And ofc if they do as they say and don’t keep logs then they don’t even have the requested information.

    You operate it behind a VPN and the seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine

    I don’t think you need Seedbox + VPN. You can do that of course, but just one is usually enough. The important bit is that other torrent clients don’t see your personal home IP address, and the provider that does know your IP doesn’t have the obligation or incentive to disclose it. But if you want the extra protection you could search for VPN/Seedbox providers that accept crypto as payment, and chain multile VPNs or VPNs and a Seedbox, so none of them have the full picture. I think that’s pretty overkill though, and probably hell to set up and maintain. At that point you should probably go with Tor or I2P instead, because that’s basically how they operate (onion/garlic routing).

    seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine

    They usually have very beefy connections, far better than what you get for your home internet, especially when it comes to uploads (asymmetric subscriber lines etc.).





  • If you don’t want to pay for an account anywhere (VPN/Usenet/Debrid/…), then you might want to try out Torrent + I2P. I haven’t used it myself, but from what I know it’s a slower but completely provider-less alternative to VPNs for anonymization, and Torrents are free ofc.

    That being said, you’ll have a much easier time if you pay for a seedbox for example. It’s just a small server in a datacenter somewhere, that happens to be better connected and more private than your typical home internet connection, and that you can use however you like.


  • The video is probably factually correct, but very disingenuous with its interpretations and conclusions imo.

    Of course Mozilla and Firefox have their own share of problems and bad decisions, and they are pretty well known and talked about from what I’ve seen, but equating it to Google and Chrome is just pure cynicism. Mozilla having to earn money somehow (1% donations!) and Google trying to maximize profits at all costs is not the same thing, even if it might look similar sometimes.




  • I think the ban was a little too harsh, but removing that comment was the right decision.

    I also see a few problems with your “your highness” comparison:

    1. “Your highness” is an official title, not a personal designation. Its proper usage depends heavily on the context, e.g. the perceived social rank and status, how well people know each other, if it’s a formal or informal conversation, and so on. Pronouns have none of that, you just use the one people identify as and that’s it.

    2. It implies that people just pick whatever term they can come up with to mess with others or to mock them. People don’t choose a pronoun lightly, they usually think about it a lot and it’s an important personal decision. They also usually pick one of the common pronouns, so it’s really not hard to just use it.

    Making quick logical comparisons regarding social norms is a very tricky thing in my experience. There are many things going on that we aren’t fully aware of all of the time, and getting it wrong can hurt people badly.