This is fundamentally not how Signal works, but you are generally correct in that a phone number has been shown to provide a lot of context for a person (or a device, at least). But Signal (the app) only uses a phone number for initial verification of an account. You have a lot of options to break that association with you - use a landline and get a call verification code, use a VoIP number (assuming you trust the provider), use a burner SIM, etc.

Once you have an account, you can choose to identify yourself on the network solely via username so the registration number is not presented to other users. The Signal protocol itself is well-audited and generally secure.

If your issue is with Signal the American company, use an open source fork like Molly with your own UnifiedPush instance. Then you’re only trusting them with transport of your encrypted messages, which again have shown to be secure at least in public audits.

In the US, I largely agree with you. Or use a website from a mobile browser. Different story in different countries where a smartphone might be the only compute the average person has, or where state services are tied to a mobile ID or bank app.

Not saying that should be the case, but if the choice is between running niche FOSS apps and removing yourself from societal benefits structures, I know what most people will pick. That’s the real danger of allowing one company to own an entire ecosystem and have enough power that they have conversations directly with governments about their people instead of with their people.

I’ve been thinking of switching from my usual French press method to a V60, seems simpler for one cup.

Have you looked into reusable filters at all or do you use the good ole paper cone?

LLMs specifically are great for intermediate use cases. You had a campaign in mind, but needed help with visuals. I was designing a piece of jewelry and had a series of reference images. Fed all those into a VLM and got something closer to my imagination, but still worked with a jeweler to realize the final product.

These tools are best when you have a foundation of knowledge and need a little extra guidance, but fall off when you get to deep expertise. I’ve used them to troubleshoot my server but I already had a basic understanding of how a config should look. I also wouldn’t trust an LLM to properly configure something like crypto for it.

To me, the biggest ethical concerns surround the training and creation of LLMs - stealing artists’ work to train them, energy usage, etc. I suppose in using the models I’m creating ongoing demand for them, so I’m not sure the answer. The best I’ve seen so far is what Anthropic used to espouse, no new frontier models until we can guarantee safety. And I’d throw in “utility”. Train new models when people are actually using them and clamoring for new use cases, not because a bunch of private equity shows line go up.

Some VPNs can block trackers in a very narrow sense. If they are set up to prevent DNS leaks and provide an internal DNS service, that can blackhole ads and trackers just like PiHole, Adguard Home, et al.

There’s still a bunch of other ways to fingerprint people online, but I wouldn’t say using a VPN at home offers no benefits.

Well I’ll be got-damned, looks like Search Party is a feature native to the Ring Neighbors platform and separate from the whole Flock partnership. https://www.cnet.com/home/security/what-does-rings-search-party-ai-pet-tracking-do-to-your-privacy-i-got-the-details/

Specifically, this feature appears opt-out, so if someone does have a Ring camera, good idea to take a spin through the settings. Or, the easiest remediation was my original suggestion, chuck it in the bin (or responsibly dispose of it, if you can).

FWIW, Ring announced they were canceling their partnership with Flock a few days ago following the Superbowl ad where they were universally dragged. https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-and-flock-cancel-partnership/

Do I think Ring is still running some sort of analytics on video feeds? Probably. Should you put anything from Amazon directly in the trash? Absolutely.

Silver lining I guess is that public pressure still works at least a little when companies try to go straight dystopian.

He seemed to play fast and loose with sexual consent, seems like plenty to warrant “kind of a piece of shit” if not more.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/last-tango-in-paris-butter-scene-b2270513.html

Could set up a key escrow with the issuing agency so there is a recovery mechanism if they can prove their identity through other means. That’s at least as secure as the current model in terms of issuance.

Ideally we would move towards self-sovereign identities, but that’s a whole other effort.

Anthropic was founded with the supposed goal of creating ethical or safe AI. Now one could argue that working with a body that conducts warfare is already unethical, but it is refreshing to see someone take a stand at least.

Did you muck with Logseq at all? That’s my preferred note taking app and it checks a lot of your boxes, the biggest miss probably being the Electron app part. That said, I’ve never noticed any slow downs.

But this is great to have options and a larger ecosystem. I’ll have to check it out.

What about cases where the move is only temporary? Should people sell every time and hope there is a place to live when they return?

In the private lender case, do you see that as different from someone who starts their own company and manages the property themselves while the renter pays them directly?

The earning equity piece isn’t necessarily incorrect, what the owner is losing is potentially the opportunity to move at all. This assumes they can afford a mortgage + whatever it costs to live somewhere else.

The economists’ answer is that renting exists for the people in this situation. You may be moving to another country for a year or two. Are you going to buy a new house every time you move? Renting gives flexibility in that regard.

Likewise for refugees, putting them up in a rental is a more efficient solution than building new housing for each family.

That said, the model provides an inherently exploitative market and needs some kind of overlay to function efficiently, which in most US cities it doesn’t at all.

100% it’s always a question of your resources vs theirs, but you’re dead on to make it harder.

I’ll just add to also turn it off, pull the SIM, and show in a Faraday bag on your way back too. If the recent reporting about ICE buying location data from ad networks shows anything, it’s that they are interested in a capability of following people to and from protests. Graphene should obviate this by disabling Google Play services by default anyway.

You should leave your regular phone at home, go to another place, power on your other device, speak your part in public, then travel another location and power off. This provides no consistent start or end location to work with for a particular device.

Alright, I already “umm, ackshually’d” someone in this thread but this post in particular hit a nerve with me. The Tor security model is based on 3 hops but does not guarantee 3 different jurisdictions. Their circuit building only takes into account “jurisdiction” in the way we’re using it here if you use guard nodes or specific cases when you cannot access the network directly or look like you’re exiting from a Tor node.

That said, it’s still a very strong project and security model. And everything you said about spreading out your providers without a single point of failure (or pressure) applies.

I know this was in jest but seems on topic with the post - please switch from pattern to PIN (or better still, password). Pattern is orders of magnitude easier to crack than PIN.

Sorry, I wasn’t as clear in my original post.

At the bottom of the settings page you can generate a “bookmarklet” that includes the config options in your URL. So https://duckduckgo.com/ becomes https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=t if I want the Terminal color scheme. And this works without cookies. And this applies for all possible settings.

Interestingly I set my home page to a string that should disable all the AI features and I still got summaries sometimes so not sure if that’s a bug, user error, or hostile UI. In either case, something like you suggest with https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?kae=t&etc=… should give you the best of both worlds.

You can plus this up into a vodka cream sauce fairly easily. Throw some garlic in with that onion once it’s starting to look translucent. Cook the tomato paste for a bit until it starts taking on some color then add like 1.5 tbl of vodka and let it cook a bit to lose some of the alcohol flavor.

Throw in some butter and Parmesan cheese at the end if you have it. Also can incorporate different meats if they’re cheap that week and scales up real well.

Look up Brian Lagerstrom vodka pasta on YouTube or Piped for the recipe I’m referring to. He also gives options for shelf stable replacements so you can stock up.

Can you explain the difference between “agender” and “gender non-binary”? Is the latter just more restrictive in recognition of only two genders while the former is more inclusive?

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