Notices by Marcus Adams (gerowen@mastodon.social), page 2

If you have to have a #Meta account, in some capacity, like many of us do, then there's some good information here on how to minimize the extent to which they can invade your #privacy.

Headline: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

Link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal-data

Now that #Signal is in the #GuardianProject #FDroid repo, I did a clean reinstall to switch to that version and noticed this while setting it up fresh for the first time in literal years. Some of the custom icon options are obviously aimed at obscuring the fact that you have Signal installed. Handy for those with abusive spouses, dissidents or travelers whose phones might get inspected, etc.

#Privacy

Random thought, but since #DivestOS has shut down, what happens to #Hypatia antivirus? Did it have other contributors outside of that project? Will they keep developing it? All the "donate" links on its GitHub go to the Divest page, but I'm not sure how independent Hypatia is or isn't. I use #CalyxOS and Hypatia is included or endorsed by them, so I'm sort of curious.

#Security

Headline: Cellebrite Unlocked This Journalist’s Phone. Cops Then Infected it With Malware

Subtitle: A new report from Amnesty International reveals multiple cases where Serbian authorities used #Cellebrite devices to access targets' mobile phones before loading them with spyware.

Source: https://www.404media.co/email/fd1f9d06-6eaa-4c51-95ff-4cd660b79689/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

#Security #CyberSecurity #Privacy

@Gargron I recently had to ask a friend of mine to just stop copying and pasting rebuttals from ChatGPT when we would have political debates. I just had to tell him that I wanted to talk to "him", not a glorified chatbot and forwarded him to a little opinion page on my personal website where I explain that AI is just a big scam that steals content from other people without attribution.

@Gargron I just got mine and I actually think it's pretty darn cool. I shared a screenshot of it on my timeline. Thanks for all the hard work you do in continually improving the platform, 🙂

So apparently Andrew Tate tried to join Bluesky and didn't last a day before getting himself banned, so maybe there's hope for the little blue butterfly after all, 😛

@GossiTheDog You have the Amazon app installed? Gross, lol. I just use their mobile web page.

@Gargron I'm on mastodon.social so I've seen a few of the new features as they were tested here. The notification grouping is really nice because it keeps me from being swamped by individual notifications. I also noticed the little popup for journalists who are on the fediverse a while back and it felt really nice to see Mastodon embracing credible journalists in this way.

Keep up the solid work. Mastodon is officially my only social media platform and I'm happy to watch it grow, 🙂

@Gargron I would open it and just tell people there may be a delay for us here in the US. No reason the others should have to wait for something that doesn't affect them and isn't their fault.

The #InternetArchive is an invaluable resource for all kinds of reasons and is available free of charge. It has even been used to catch companies silently changing their terms of service.

Headline: Internet Archive Breach Exposes 31 Million Users

Subtitle: The hack exposed the data of 31 million users as the embattled Wayback Machine maker scrambles to stay online and contain the fallout of digital—and legal—attacks.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-hacked/

#Security #Cybersecurity

This also lines up with our observation that Conversations is generally more reliable for calls in weak service areas or while driving. It seems generally more reliable and for a while was the only one that wouldn't say "ringing" unless it had actually made contact with the other person's device. If it just sat on "calling" but never switched to "ringing", you knew the call didn't go thru, for one reason or another. Signal did eventually add this, but it still feels generally less reliable.

I've noticed that, for me and my wife at least, #Signal isn't always reliable for time sensitive messages. Even after exempting it from the Android power saving and everything it's almost like it goes to sleep sometimes and notifications don't pop until we open it up. The #XMPP app Conversations.im however is very reliable. Running a packet capture on my phone shows that when switching networks #Conversations immediately reconnects, but Signal doesn't, sometimes for several minutes.

@GossiTheDog I don't know about every implementation but Apache, as it ships from Debian at least, disables directory traversal out of the web directory by default.

@GossiTheDog I wonder if AD supports importing data from an exported list. It's been years, but the last time I ran a Windows domain the AD mmc would let you export all sorts of data to a plain text tile. I actually used this in conjunction with a python script I wrote once to ping every computer object in our OU on a schedule so I could look for patterns over time and remove stale objects from the previous admins.

Anyway, I wonder if you could export and import user account stuff this way.

@killyourfm I've noticed the same thing. While many anticheat programs don't work on Linux; the compatibility with Windows games is actually better, on average at least, in Linux than it is in Windows. I remember having to mod the original Max Payne to get audio working on newer versions of Windows and everything, but a lot of things "just work" on SteamOS/Linux.

Anybody know how financially stable #LinuxMint is? I am considering recommending it to people like my mom as support for #Windows 10 winds down, but looking at their sponsors page looks like they only bring in between $3k and $4k per month. That's not a lot of money for several developers to maintain an entire operating system. What happens if they lose one of the 2-3 big sponsors they have? Does the whole project cave or just stop getting timely #security updates?

#Linux

Random thought. The older I get, the more sense #RichardStallman's absolutist stance on free software makes to me. If you can't inspect, or have someone inspect, the source of software you've paid for, then you own nothing. You have no idea what's going on under the hood. You wouldn't buy a car if the dealership told you they were the only ones allowed to perform maintenance or modifications, so why do we tolerate that behavior from proprietary software vendors?

#OpenSource #GNU #FreeSoftware

@GossiTheDog Some system of theirs get breached?

@Gargron I've often wondered when I see scenic vistas like this, are the shrubs just naturally that short? Around here in Kentucky if you don't mow and weed eat the areas of the hillside you care about before long it'll be a jungle with bushes taller than you are.