Over the past few years, there has been a great increase in websites using geoblocking. Half the local news sites in the USA block traffic from the EU for example, likely because they want to inject 300 advertising trackers in a manner that would violate EU law. I’ve been using Mullvad for years, and I am happy with it.

Sometimes lemmy.world blocks me from posting from it, which I am not happy with. They were even critical of its strict privacy stance, which I found to be a weird take from a fediverse project.

Yes, but it requires root: AccA.

No. ClamAV can, for example scan Linux ELF executables and its database contains signatures for malware that could affect desktop Linux. The most common use case is servers that are distributing files, but it can be used to scan local files.

The local use case is fairly rare because malware targeting desktop Linux is rare. That’s partly because Linux users tend to have a better understanding of computers on average than Windows users, and partly because the sort of attack vectors that work well against Windows users don’t align with Linux workflows (e.g. if you want to execute a file sent as an email attachment, you’ll have to save it and set it executable first).

This Angelfish?

I put PostmarketOS on a spare device recently. PostmarketOS describes itself as currently being in a state suitable for Linux enthusiasts to try out, not for wider use. That seems about right to me.

On the fun side, it’s proper desktop-style Linux. I can SSH to it from my laptop. I can compile software on it. I can run programs that have no business running on a phone. On the not so fun side, the cameras barely work, data over USB doesn’t work at all, and battery life is not good. Desktop Firefox on a phone screen is pretty bad. Rumor has it there’s some support for Android apps, but I’ve been looking at Waydroid’s splash screen for a long time now with no progress.

Reddit has that, and the ability to follow a user and get notifications when they post. I’m not sure it’s widely used there, but I think it would be a decent feature to add to Lemmy.

Lemmy doesn’t have a concept of a post that isn’t attached to a community. It’s probably possible to post to Lemmy from Wafrn by tagging a community as it is with Mastodon.

You can follow Wafrn users from Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma, etc…

Early Reddit didn’t have those either, so I suppose it’s a proto-Reddit-like. Nookie does look better.

How? Is the mouse reliant on their servers to operate?

It’s not the first.

That’s true but not useful.

It’s probably better to describe both ideologies as extreme-authoritarian or totalitarian. They’re about equally undesirable; when someone has a boot on your throat, it doesn’t matter much whether it’s the right boot or the left boot.

That’s a deep and insightful analysis which clearly illustrates why a prospective user might not want to choose SimpleX over other options. Very helpful indeed. Please post more takes like this.

I played with it briefly. It looks like a good choice for a situation where security is paramount and the people involved are reasonably motivated. I don’t have those needs, and nobody I know has asked to connect with me using it.

Signal, on the other hand is a familiar experience for most people with no new concepts to learn, and popular enough that I think most people will find a number of contacts already using it.

It’s important to point out that security isn’t binary. Things aren’t simply “secure” or “insecure”. Rather, there are certain classes of vulnerabilities that are present in some systems and absent in others.

Typical PC operating systems don’t have the app sandboxing prism’s comment mentions at all, and do have a way for apps to prompt to ask for administrative access. A phone with root is somewhere between the two; apps are usually sandboxed, but if you give them root (or they get it with an exploit), then they’re not.

If a PC is secure enough for a certain use case, an Android phone with root probably is as well. Either one calls for a bit of caution with regard to the apps you install.

That’s true on modern Android even with root. The active OS partition can’t be modified while running, and updates install to the inactive slot. If the bootloader is unlocked, malware could theoretically act as an updater and install itself to the inactive slot, but I’m not sure that has been seen in the wild.

It’s theoretically possible to have a locked bootloader and root. That requires a device with a re-lockable bootloader like a Pixel, and a ROM that has root support built in to the signed image.

I use LineageOS on my Pixel 4A because official support ended. I continue to use a Pixel 4A because newer phones are bigger when I would prefer smaller, and because most newer phones don’t have headphone jacks, which I use.

I recently picked up a Microsoft Surface Go 2 and installed Linux on it. Ebay is flooded with them in the USA, and I paid $90 for the tablet with the keyboard cover. The irony of Linux on a Microsoft branded tablet amuses me.

Everything but the cameras just worked. There’s a kernel patch for the cameras, but I haven’t been motivated to patch and recompile.

Anyone shopping for the same should keep in mind that the 8100Y CPU is twice as fast as the Pentium, and the 64gb storage option is slow eMMC while 128gb and 256gb are faster NVME.

Aside from emphasizing the hat, that also seems like an opportunity to emphasize the importance of positively identifying one’s target and backstop. It’s reckless to shoot at something that might be a valid target.

Yes, but there’s no guarantee that remains true.

Several EU countries have constitutional prohibitions of mass surveillance of private communication.