#Techlore

[thirteens-earring]

every time a trans person installs an alexa an angel loses its wings

[bleedinknight]

Reading Age of War by Michael J Sullivan. (SPOILERS)

Already finished Riyria Revelations,midway through Chronicles.

Now, interesting aspect of Age of the first Empire series is that it's all the huge backdrop for Riyria. Events that happen atleast 3 millenia later, if Mauwinndule is to believe ( and I don't believe that asshole one bit).

Me personally, am only here for Persephone and Nyphron. And all the mayhem they initiated.

And my personal favourite part as a writer and an avid reader is that they are not at all what history made them out to be. Like noppity nope not at all. And that is perfectly fine.

Nyphron ain't the great leader who saw injustice and took up arms against overwhelming odds to fight the Elven Magic. Uhh-huh..

And Persephone, though smart and capable, is still just human enough to make mistakes and gamble with the lives of many.

The great romance that brought the Fhrey Empire to its knees is a lie. How wonderful..

And the abundance of unsung heroes. Techlor, Suri, Raithe, Brin, Roan, Grifford and Minna. Oh darling Minna. Who will all remain forgotten.

(there is some merit in writing the whole series before publishing, I guess)

Ps. Forgive the spelling of names. I listened to the books on audible and I am not sure of the spellings .

[deafeningcreationearthquake]

I would recommend Signal, Element (Matrix) and SimpleX for this.

Briar, Session, and Threema are also great, but have one or two issues which may be, well, issues.

Larger platforms, such as Discord, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Snapchat, and WeChat, should be considered to be backdoored. SMS and RCS are out of the question entirely. I do not know how secure iMessage is.

Also, use a secure and trustworthy VPN. My recommendations are Mullvad, Proton, Riseup, Windscribe, and IVPN.

Tor is also a good option, though many websites' DDoS protection will block you if you use this.

I would not recommend more popular VPNs, such as Nord, Surfshark, and that weird offbrand one you probably have somewhere. They are proprietary, and almost always log your activity.

The VPN should be coupled with a trustworthy browser, such as Firefox, Librewolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser, Brave, or some other open-source browser (like Konqueror or Epiphany or whatever).

Do not use Chrome, Opera, Yandex, or Maxthon, as they log your activity.

Likewise, do not use Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. Brave Search, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Whoogle, and SearXNG are infinitely more private, and tend to give better results anyway.

Finally, I would recommend not using Windows or Chrome OS, as the former often contains backdoors and both of them (you guessed it) log your activity. I would personally recommend using a Linux distribution (such as Linux Mint) and enabling disk encryption during installation. This one's a little more advanced, though.

Alternatively, create a Tails USB and use that for your secret activity.

Finally, I'd recommend checking out Techlore and Privacy Guides for further advice.

Hope you find this helpful!

Please reblog for visibility.

Anyway American trans friends, now's the time to put "be gay do crime" into practice and the first step is to get onto secure communication channels so you're not discussing details of what you're doing and how on the public internet.

[randomjunque]

Read Yendi

Read Yendi  Read Yendi by Steven Brust on Audible Aaron Bennett on YouTube - Celsius & Fahrenheit Disclosure Statement TechLore on YouTube - Thoughts on Proton's New Password Manager! (I'm Mixed...) The Exchange on Fountain/PocketCasts - Bidenomics, Powell’s warning, and IPOs on deck 6/28/23 Crash Course European History on CuriousityStream - Reformation and Consequences RMTransit on Nebula - Designing a Futureproof Transit System via Blogger https://ift.tt/8U2Kmvc June 29, 2023 at 12:02PM

[eternalmasonry]

Lets make August 2nd an annual social media detox day to reclaim the human connection.

get started: https://detox.earth

iamLucid support vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBFzO54z6u0

Techlore support vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUQqHYjl2Pk

[jonaharagon]

In Defense of Internet Anonymity

In Techlore Talks #4, Henry and I discussed freedom of speech, anonymity on the internet, and the content moderation policies of online platforms. Certainly these are hot topics in this day and age, precisely because there are no clear-cut answers. In the episode, Henry posed the idea of a theoretical platform on the internet with strict identity verification, an idea which I feel has some merit: Anonymity online is too often abused in the modern day by malicious actors to spread disinformation and hateful ideas while skirting any potential consequences. Free speech is not—and has never been—an unlimited protection to say whatever you want, and if you have ever dealt with a hoard of pathetic, Lord of the Flies-esque social media profiles anonymously throwing insults your way, it’s very easy to see the appeal in a community where ideas are verifiably backed by real people.

xkcd: Free Speech

However, anonymity is still a valuable tool. Its value to society is not derived from its protection of ideas, it’s derived from its protection of people. Social media is consistently used by marginalized groups and people living under oppressive regimes to organize things like protests, and governments are increasingly called out on the international stage by their own citizens organizing themselves and posting information online that their governments might not want shared.

While some hateful people abuse anonymity on the internet to avoid the scrutiny of their peers, countless others rely on it to avoid retribution from the powers that be. A proposal requiring ID verification for social media was actually considered by the United Kingdom in 2021, in which the government rightly found that:

[… R]estricting all users’ right to anonymity, by introducing compulsory user verification for social media, could disproportionately impact users who rely on anonymity to protect their identity. These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity, whistleblowers, journalists’ sources and victims of abuse. Introducing a new legal requirement, whereby only verified users can access social media, would force these users to disclose their identity and increase a risk of harm to their personal safety.

Identity verification online is just as much a privilege as anonymity. A system in which an ID is required to participate will create a two-class structure in which the only people able to participate in real online discourse are people whose ideas are acceptable to their state and to their immediate peers. Any dissenting opinions would be relegated to the anonymous outskirts of the internet, if such a place existed at all, further isolating them and their ideas until they eventually disappeared.

At the end of the day, identity verification is not the solution to our collective social media woes. The onus of internet moderation should not fall on people and governments policing each other by tracing each online interaction to its original posters. Rather, social media networks need to recognize the power they have in society, and begin investing in actual moderation efforts which can separate the hate and abuse from everything else while remaining respectful of the privacy of their own users. Without anonymity, the way we use and view the internet would be unrecognizably different, and not for the better. It would be a less inclusive system operating under complete authoritarian control, and a place where content platforms like Facebook and Twitter further monetize your personal data under the guise of fighting abuse.

This post was originally posted on Techlore Dispatch on October 30, 2022.

[omicronneon]

5 Channels I am Subscribed (#19)

5 Channels I am Subscribed (#19)

Today’s next 5 YouTube channels are:

TechLead

TechLinked

Techlore

Techquickie

Tested

There are a lot of “Tech” somethings this time around. Let’s get started…

TechLead. A man with a unique sense of humor. A man, who is theTechLead. Joking aside, what we have here is a man who has strong experience in the programming world include time spent working for Google. Videos go over tech and related…

[thirteens-earring]

since that reddit link with degoogling recs in my last rb hasn’t been updated in 2 years and that’s ancient in tech time, here are my main (actively updated!) sources for infosec recs & education:

Techlore (homepage) (service recs masterlist)

The New Oil (x)

Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons (x)

I’ve linked to the main website for each of these, but each one also has a podcast! I didn’t link to those bc everyone gets their podcasts from different places, but you can find a link to each pod on its respective website.

[cactusradical]

I would highly recommend watching techlore on youtube if you want to find out about online privacy - they have a whole free video course on making yourself more private online. it has been eye-opening to see just how invasive these companies are and I've made huge changes as a result.

DELETE CHROME

Update in my ongoing “you need to protect yourself” research:

In June 2020, Google was hit with a $5 billion class action lawsuit (source: Rueters June 2020) accusing them of “illegally invading the privacy of millions of users by pervasively tracking their internet use through browsers set in “private” mode.”  That number isn’t arbitrary, either, it’s calculated by charging $5,000 of “damages per user for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws.” Google just settled the case in October 2020. Sort of. (source: Business Insider Oct 2020).

Here is a list of how to find and delete all the data (source: CNET, June 2020) that Chrome grabs from you. Important note: Google owns that data, and yes, they absolutely do attach it to a name and an address, as of 2016 when they quietly slipped that change in. (source: Propublica, Oct 2016). Oh, and in 2019 Chrome made some changes to its permission system (source: the literal Chrome coding team’s blog, Feb 2019), which remove the brower’s ability to block a request before it’s loaded. “For end users, this effectively cripples all non-compliant ad-blocker extensions on Chrome.” (source: Lifehacker, March 2020).

Once you’ve deleted your harvested personal data from everywhere that you can, I personally recommend you then delete Chrome, and any chrome-coded browser such as Vivaldi, Brave, or Microsoft Edge (list of chromium-based browsers, source: ZDNet, Jan 2019).

Yes, yes, there’s a whole argument that just because a browser is chromium-based doesn’t mean it reports directly to Google, but look, Google has made it a high priority to wipe out every non-chromium-based browser coding on the internet (source: Wall Street Journal, 2019) while never making a single peep about all these supposed ‘rivals’ that are just Chrome at the core. Draw your own conclusions.

Further useful links:

Easy way to compare browsers (such as Chromium v TOR) Allows you to pick 2 browsers and see their base code, their owners, some features, settings, etc. Source: Slant.com

How to move from Chrome to another browser. Source: The Verge, Jun 2019.

Here is a truly horrifying list of apps that make it incredibly easy to look up your name, phone number, address, work place, and so on, just by typing in your name. Fortunately, it also tells you how to “opt out” of these “helpful” apps. Did you know the white pages were still around, but in searchable digital form available to anyone with an internet connection? Source: Poynter (website for journalists), Oct 2020

You think this doesn’t matter? This doesn’t apply to you, a nice quiet citizen of whatever country who always obeys the law? May I ask: have you ever searched, read, liked, reblogged, commented on, or otherwise interacted with a post/article/tweet critiquing a current government? Google knows. They know, they have attached that information to your profile, and they can sell it to…well, you don’t know.

Remember:

[jellhound]

if you can turn on 2fa please do! and just double check that no extra sessions are logged into your account still :>

you don't need to use your phone number - in some ways this can have its own risks - you can use a TOTP app like raivo or aegis! the channel techlore has a good video explaining TOTP if you've never used it before

good call! I'll turn it on.

I feel like I should be ok using my phone number? I don't really wanna bother with apps n stuff ;;

i appreciate it though

[magz]

Preface:

Old news to start the conversation off. The ProtonMail I.P. logging incident from last year happened partly because these things were considered “serious/extreme/dangerous crimes” by the governments involved: -Skipping school to attend a climate change club protest (“Youth For Climate”), as truancy. -Children non-violent protesting gentrification and rising real estate prices by occupying spaces, as “squatting” a.k.a. not paying rent as tenant / occupier for a landlord of an otherwise unoccupied and unused space. These “crimes” were considered bad enough for the French government to request the Swiss government, through International Police, to acquire ProtonMail’s available metadata of a student, to arrest them. Foreign governments will generally do requests towards the government of jurisdiction of a service they want data from, if they feel it necessary enough to request something like that in the first place, and while Protonmail didn’t send the encrypted email contents, the kids’ un-obfuscated IP address was enough of something to confirm identification and arguably contribute to arrest. Data requests by governments shown in ProtonMail’s transparency report, have also increased over time. This is not to say that ProtonMail itself is particularly “bad”, it is still actually much better than the popular gmail and yahoo-mail when it comes to ethical practices and your rights, and they have shown to shut down several instances of data requests as well as rectifying their website’s previously misleading blurb about privacy, this is just to show the bigger issue at hand with something familiar.

With that in mind, this is your reminder that you don’t have to be particularly high profile or to have done anything “that wrong” to take your privacy seriously - whether that’s learning when and if to use Tor, a VPN, new services, different mail servers, messaging apps, and whatever else according to your privacy needs. What was considered “serious crimes” in that instance is exaggerative, and the law can be used against anyone. It usually won’t be enough to do just 1 thing that is “privacy conscious”, for it to do what was intended. In the case of the Protonmail I.P. logging example, it is often pointed out that using a VPN or TOR alongside ProtonMail might have prevented part of the issue, in the instance the government can’t obtain anything else, it would necessitate “more than 1 thing” to remain even somewhat “anonymous” enough to matter.

Especially with how so much technology and the norms of today go against ethics and privacy as a right, and there’s often something new being reported about it. To the point that, it was recently reported the extent that help lines like crisis text line can share your conversation for a commercial chat app, and The Trevor project share your data for advertisers, and expect you to read walls of text of their terms of service and privacy policy while in emotional and situational crisis.

And while that’s it’s own monstrosity of an ethical concern, it’s still generally important to have some digital privacy literacy and know what options there are, if and when there are, what things you will prioritize in your privacy, and what can be done for the things that can realistically be managed. Especially since breaching basic ethical rights have become so ubiquitous as a widespread and common issue.

But knowing where to start and what can be done, or how to even understand all of this stuff, can be daunting.

To start:

Here’s a guide for different levels of anonymity and privacy by TechLore, and their youtube channel with more general information for “privacy and security for the masses”.

Here’s a youtube video for “How to read privacy policies like a lawyer” (this is by The Verge).

Here’s an article for “Nine important tips to protect your online privacy and security” (from Forbes) that can serve as a quick overview of general advice to come back to.

Here’s a Youtube playlist for Overall Digital Literacy & Navigating Digital Information (Yes… it’s from the Crash Course channel. Light flashing warning at 1:06 to 1:16 in the first video). Going back to the basics of how to handle digital media information is a significant part of understanding digital privacy, do not assume to be above this nor from being swayed by false or misleading information.

Here’s hackblossom’s “DIY guide to Feminist Cybersecurity” (A bit outdated as the guide is older, but generally true and more ‘beginner’ friendly. However, app recommendations can change in appropriateness, as cyberghost VPN -plus others not listed like Private Internet Access, ExpressVPN, and Zenmate VPN- was later bought by Kape Technologies and is not trustworthy.)

Here’s “No Complexity” Website’s page on “Simplify Security”, the “Open Security” part is particularly useful. It breaks down and simplifies Cyber Security, which is part of all this.

Here’s a website for switching from popular services and software, listing their more “ethical” mostly open source / libre alternatives, and another website for general “ethical” alternatives, if you’re interested in that.

Here’s the privacy tools webpage for more suggestions and contexts (though I would advise against using crypto-currency even if it’s on this list as a private currency option. Even “investment”-minded people could see crypto-currency as having major problems, back in 2020 before China even banned it. And crypto-currencies are basically a modern “ponzi scheme”.) And here is the newer privacy guides webpage.

Here’s resources by Library Freedom Project (though centered around printable infographics and guides for libraries and the layman)

Here’s a youtube video on The Basics of Torrenting, another for Torrenting F.A.Q.s, and a youtube playlist for general “online privacy” (The youtuber is a crypto-bro and I don’t agree with his politics, so that is a warning and a heads-up). Also, a webapp with general information for piracy, including best practices in the blog tab. If you’re going to pirate, at least know what you’re doing.

Here’s the scam busters website, for general scams to avoid, how to spot them, and tips for better internet practices.

Useful questions:

What are “threat models” and how can I use them?

What is a VPN?

What are the 5-eyes, 9-eyes, and 14-eyes? but also, how does this affect which VPNs you should choose?

What is TOR? And, What things shouldn’t be done while using TOR Browser?

Take the VPN recommendations from most places, including some of the links provided, with a grain of salt and keep in mind the context before deciding on one yourself for your own circumstances and priorities. If you don’t know which to choose, as of writing this, an easy “not as bad nor commercialized” option is ProtonVPN that’s paired with ProtonMail - as long as it’s not mostly or exclusively used for piracy, as it doesn’t function as well for it. I would advise not to “choose NordVPN or ExpressVPN” just because you see it advertised everywhere, including most youtubers and VPN recommendation pages and reviews, it being so commercialized is a red flag. (video) NordVPN is scummy in it’s practices and as previously stated ExpressVPN is now owned by the company with a bad history, Kape Technologies, and the VPN’s -recently former- executive was an ex-intelligence spy that aided in war crimes. Generally, search if specific VPNs have issues, but do realize that if you just search “VPN review” you often won’t get fully truthful and well-informed reviews with popular VPNs from big companies. Other pertinent things to search is what features they have, the information of it, and what they are best suited for example: if it’s good for video streaming, if it is effective at geo-unlocking services such as Netflix or country-wide site censorship, if it has fast speed capability, if it has strong encryption, if it has a kill-switch for when it disconnects, if it has many servers and locations, if no-logging or how much logging, unlimited data usage, and especially if it’s based in - ordered from “worst” to “least worst, but not super good”- a 5-eyes / 9-eyes / 14-eyes location.

In conclusion:

The point is not to be 100% perfect, but to be digital privacy literate. To know the why and how, and develop your own general digital media literacy to research about these topics, and to be aware of major changes to security and privacy - as some services can majorly change or be misleading. To have agency and awareness in the parts you are able to, even when there are things you won’t. To be able to keep at least part of your rights to privacy. So this is just a “jumping off” point.

[This post was made on January 31, 2022.]

[Possible aditional edits will be noted here: None as of yet.]

[swipestream]

Dark Legion Comics New Release: Gun Ghoul #1

Dark Legion Comics announces GUN GHOUL #1: Raising the Dead by Will Caligan.

Someone – or something – is taking out the crime lords of Chicago.

Agent Justice of the FBI is on the case. She is a Meta Prime, with the ability to see into the past. But not even her ability to see what happened allows her to explain the impossible. And the FBI is not the only agency that is interested in learning more about the new player in town.

Will Caligan is the military veteran who was deplatformed by SJWs at his publisher earlier this year. He is now publishing with Dark Legion Comics, which will be releasing his Gun Ghoul and Techlore comics this fall as well as working with him on his new projects.

Dark Legion Comics New Release: Gun Ghoul #1 published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[pponle]

Featuring YOU: The Techlore Community https://youtu.be/2AKMZfL7Tvc

[onlinemoola-blog]

Tai Lopez - 💵 4 Ways To Make Money With! ...has been published on: http://po.st/q99Wtk

-- Visit for more: https://onlinemoola.com/money-channel/youtube/tai-lopez-%f0%9f%92%b5-4-ways-to-make-money-with/ -- #BrainStuffHowStuffWorks, #Btckyle, #BuzzFeedNews, #CharismaOnCommand, #CNBC, #Cryptonick, #CuriousInventor, #GillianPerkins, #GrantCardone, #JeffRose, #MarcoGuerrero, #ShamelessMaya, #TaiLopez, #Techlore, #4WaysToMakeMoneyWithBITCOIN

[thirteens-earring]

plugging techlore again. my good friend henry techlore

didn’t want to put this directly on lrb and derail it but I think when people reject the general idea of The Cloud there’s an underlying anxiety about privacy & security that’s like, totally fair. google classroom assignment generation etc. the good news is there are privacy-respecting storage options!! the bad news is that they are rarely free or foolproof. the more-good-news is that the learning curve is pretty doable with a couple days of youtube university and you can at least do like, some level of damage control with the free tiers lol