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hersh

@ hersh @literature.cafe

Posts
1
Comments
120
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer

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  • That's a good rule of thumb, but as a direct point of comparison, it's not that bad with iPhones. Apple's MDM protocol is very particular about what admins are allowed to control even on company-owned devices. For example, admins can't see the Apple ID used on the phone and can't grant apps screen sharing permission without user approval.

    And we certainly can't access iMessage.

  • Orion Browser for Linux (Webkit-based) Alpha available by end of year "if all goes well"

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  • PSA syncthing-fork has changed owners

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  • I get that they don’t want to deal with Google Play

    Was that the reason? Shame they didn't just leave it on F-Droid and GitHub then. Nobody needs to use Google Play (at least not yet...)

  • I am learning that people simply do not care

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  • This reminds me of a line from the novel Popco by Scarlet Thomas: "Do what can, then stop."

    I repeat this to myself when I feel overwhelmed with the scope of a task, or when I start to let "perfect" become enemy of "good".

    For example, if you feel like you should stop eating meat but find that difficult for whatever reason, don't throw your hands up. Do what you can, then stop. Maybe that means eating meat a few times a week instead of every day.

    It applies to politics as well. I know plenty of people who refuse to engage at all because they don't feel like it's possible to do "enough". Do what you can, then stop. Maybe that means spending fifteen minutes before voting day to find the least odious candidate you can vote for. Maybe it means phone banking or joining a campaign. Maybe it means running for office. Or maybe it just means talking to some friends about issues that matter to them.

    Or maybe you're trying to lose weight. I think we've all seen people try and fail because there seems to be no middle ground between giving up and letting it dictate your entire life. Do what you can, then stop. Maybe that just means drinking more water and less of anything else.

    Don't beat yourself up just because you can't fix the whole world.

  • What's a good Google Drive replacement for syncing my Keepass database?

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  • I used to use Filen for this, but it never worked very well. The file provider path it returned to Keepass2android was only temporary, so it would break periodically. Did Filen change how that works?

    I eventually started using Syncthing instead. I connect to my home wi-fi often enough that it's never too far out of sync with my home PC. And since it's a local file, there's no issue with using absolute paths.

  • Has anyone else noticed that non Google search engines just stopped working with the tracker part of url removed?

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  • You should probably report that to the browser developer. Sounds like their tracker filter has a bug causing false positives.

  • TIL there is a law called Marchetti's Constant. Humans only tolerate commutes of less than ~1 hour. Housing outside that limit will fail.

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  • I was thinking that it sounded about right, until I read beyond the headline:

    Its value is approximately one hour, or half an hour for a one-way trip.

    WHAT. I thought he meant one hour each way!

    Are there any cities where that is the norm??? I've had sub-30 commutes in my life, and it felt like the height of luxury.

    I had a 1.5 hour (one way) commute for a while, and I was burned the fuck out after a year of that. It takes a toll on your health.

  • I want the "Android" / GrapheneOS sandbox experience on Linux, is it achieveable?

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  • To elaborate on this a little, you can use Flatseal to specify which directories a Flatpak app can have access to directly. For example, in a music player that stores the path of your music library, you'd want to use Flatseal to be sure it has direct access to that folder. This is similar to GrapheneOS's storage scopes.

    Aside from that, apps can also call on a file picker that lets you choose any file/folder on your system, and flatpak then creates a virtual path to bridge to that file/folder without exposing the entire rest of the filesystem. This is nice for one-time open/save commands, but doesn't work for apps that need persistent access to a specific directory like in the music player example. This is similar to Android's file provider API.

    I don't recall off the top of my head what flatpak apps have access to by default. Some subset of the home folder, I think?

  • The Fairphone 5 price has been dropped to €499. The phone is designed to be the most advanced environmentally friendly smartphone.

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  • Thanks for the info. I have not really tested Seedvault myself so this is all good to know.

    Ironically, one of the main reasons I switched to GrapheneOS was because Google's backups were so frustrating and I was hoping Seedvault would be more comprehensive.

  • The Fairphone 5 price has been dropped to €499. The phone is designed to be the most advanced environmentally friendly smartphone.

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  • What's wrong with Seedvault?

  • Any opinions about Filen?

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  • I jumped on a lifetime deal they had a few years back. I mostly use it via the web UI and Android app, so I cannot comment on desktop or CLI client functionality.

    The Android app is "okay", but not great. Background photo sync doesn't work consistently; I need to manually launch the app periodically to jog it. I know Android is kind of aggressive about background services, but other apps do this better so I think this is on Filen. Perhaps they should run a permanent notification to stay alive 24/7, like Syncthing does?

    As with pretty much every other cloud storage app, it does not let me sync arbitrary folders/files, only photos and videos. sigh

    It uses Android's file provider API, so you can open and save files in most apps directly from/to Filen. However, this only seems to work for one-time use, not for apps that need to regularly open/save the same file. For example, when using Keepass2Android, you can have it store your password database on a cloud storage service. This works pretty well with Google Drive, but with Filen it loses the connection frequently because the pseudopaths the API returns are not stable over time (which makes sense, I guess, and is one more reason I want arbitrary local file sync instead). Personally, I went back to storing my Keepass database locally and then periodically backing it up rather than keeping it on live cloud storage.

    It's one of the cheapest E2EE cloud storage services I've seen (definitely the cheapest for me with the lifetime promo I got), and the core functionality of uploading and downloading files (and folders) works. That's good enough for me to give it the thumbs-up.

  • Anthropic has developed an AI 'brain scanner' to understand how LLMs work and it turns out the reason why chatbots are terrible at simple math and hallucinate is weirder than you thought

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  • But here’s the really funky bit. If you ask Claude how it got the correct answer of 95, it will apparently tell you, “I added the ones (6+9=15), carried the 1, then added the 10s (3+5+1=9), resulting in 95.” But that actually only reflects common answers in its training data as to how the sum might be completed, as opposed to what it actually did.

    This is not surprising. LLMs are not designed to have any introspection capabilities.

    Introspection could probably be tacked onto existing architectures in a few different ways, but as far as I know nobody's done it yet. It will be interesting to see how that might change LLM behavior.

  • isInHell = 'true'

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  • How it feels to use xkill

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  • I'm not sure what the exact model is, but it's probably from the Performa or Power Mac 5000 or 6000 series. It's low-res so it's hard to read, but the text next to the floppy drive says "PowerPC", referring to the CPU family used in Macs in that era.

    The screen looks like Mac OS 8. It's so low-rest that it's kind of hard to tell, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is clearly from Mac OS. Could be 7.5, but I'm guessing 8 since that's what's shown in the web browser.

    I think the left screen is showing Windows. Again, super low-res, but those look like Windows 95/98's blue window title bars and gray task bar at the bottom.

  • How it feels to use xkill

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  • Same.

    That was probably the intention. X-Files was at its height of popularity around this time (assuming 1997 by the Mac model and OS 8).

  • Arguments for Signal over Whatsapp, Messenger, and SnapChat

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  • Snapchat does not use end-to-end encryption for messages, so it doesn't even belong in the conversation.

    WhatsApp and FB Messenger are somewhat defensible choices since they at least use E2EE by default (Messenger did not until recently). However, there are a few good reasons to favor Signal:

    1. It is open source. Interested parties can actually verify that Signal's encryption claims are true. Interested parties can also audit new versions as they released.
    2. Facebook/Meta, as a company, has a long history of tracking users, leaking user data, and even conducting psychological experiments on users without consent and in secret.
    3. WhatsApp and Messenger only allow 6-digit PINs to secure your messages. With that PIN, you can decrypt those messages. Signal allows for longer alphanumeric passcodes.
    4. Facebook makes no promises not to track your usage of Messenger or WhatsApp, only that the messages themselves are encrypted.

  • Questions about the Boox Palma/Boox Palma 2

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  • I don't have a Palma, but I have a Book Go 6, which looks like it has similar display tech. So I think I can answer some of your questions.

    The backlight can go all the way off, to the point where it is invisible in a dark room. You can also adjust the backlight color temperature.

    Typing is bad, but I've never spent time optimizing it. I would guess that the responsiveness on the Palma might be higher. I also never tried it in high-speed mode, which is much more responsive but has worse ghosting and generally worse image quality. For my use case (99% just reading) I don't mind the slow response time.

    It's possible to access the normal Android settings, though I just picked up my Boox Go and I can't actually figure out how. I know I've done it before somehow. The Boox settings app has a VPN section, but I don't see DNS options. Pretty sure you can do this though.

    One thing I want to point out is that the Palma is not technically a phone. It's a wi-fi device, so it will not make calls or send SMS. You would be limited to internet-based messaging apps like Signal or Telegram. I can't speak to how smoothly those run.

    There are also a couple proper phones (with SIM cards) with similar display tech coming out this year. See:

    https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24335983/tcl-60-xe-nxtpaper-e-ink-specs-ces

    https://liliputing.com/the-minimal-phone-is-now-shipping-e-ink-phone-with-a-qwerty-keyboard/

  • Everyone knows your location

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  • Additionally, you can set Android to use an ad-blocking DNS server without apps. In Settings > Network & Internet > DNS, select "Private DNS" and set the hostname to a custom server, like base.dns.mullvad.net (Mullvad's DNS server is free to the public, does not require a VPN subscription).

    The per-app controls sound neat! I might give that a try. Google killed the ability to restrict apps' network access years ago, specifically so ads would always work. I've never tried a local VPN as a workaround.

  • The Minimal Phone is now shipping (E Ink phone with a QWERTY keyboard) - Liliputing

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  • Linux @lemmy.ml
    hersh @literature.cafe

    How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?