Linux-fueled Thoughts Unhinged

This is the video that made me realize that I start getting CIA sleeper agent murderous psychopathy (fit for Gamma NULL soldier candidacy in Katana Zero) of the highest order regarding people who don't know what they're talking about.

As Sam Esmail said on Twitter something among the lines of in response to how he created Mr. Robot: surround yourself with people who are more talented than you. This works best by uniting many such talented people orthogonal yet complimenting skills under one metaphorical roof for a small duration of spacetime — otherwise, you'll end up in too much elbow bumping and create a “too many cooks ruin the stew” situation if their stills have unit vector dot products that are too close to 1 (i.e. being parallel in the same direction), instead of closer to 0 (i.e., being orthogonal).

Random assortment of thoughts

• I guess by Kenny's lousy definition that Techlore is a sponsor charlatan and that Henry's a sell out — even though Henry does one of the few non-scummy VPN reviews out there. Yes, he's too “easy”, but the VPN market is hyped up with bullcrap anyways.
• You got ProtonMail wrong all wrong. I can tell with a “unofficial official” psych profiling glance that you're conservative, so you think your home is safe. You have also never seen a recent lockpicking video and realize that the majority of locks for regular homeowners are crap. (We're not talking about being resistant to breach techniques from SWAT teams here. You're gonna have to move to a building like Fort Knox if you want SWAT team proof.) You also know nothing about the CIA's capabilities. Also, you have never actually tried following under a sufficient diversity of use case scenarios for self-hosted e-mail: many services block self-hosted e-mail services. (Basically, you are no better at following your own advice you actually shill out than Henry of Techlore, dear charlatan.) (Of course, you are not using any real world services requiring e-mail if you are being an objectively depraved 4channer.) Lastly, you don't actually accept the fact that others have the right to make their own threat models and/or use cases, and that some threat models are better off accepting paid accounts for ProtonMail rather than hosting literally in their own homes (which implicitly assumes one has the money for server equipment, time to figure this out, and physical space at home to do this). Like I'll let the FBI destroy my home if it ever wanted my home server... at least FBI agents have to work a bit harder with a VPS (that I'll definitely self-encrypt the storage with ZFS swap, or something like that) for my less extreme threat model level. As long as I'm not running a botnet or darknet marketplace, I think I'll be (mostly) fine with a VPS provider that accepts Monero.
• For the ProtonMail situation with the French climate protester, Proton Tech couldn't do anything if you had used a VPN. Even Proton itself said that using ProtonVPN would've protected that protester from IP address logging — but if you really don't trust ProtonVPN, then use Mullvad or IVPN (as long as you're not a resident of Gibraltar, allegedly).
• You are also a charlatan. I wouldn't mind giving you a bit of Lee's “sleeping gas” from Utopia...
• ExpressVPN is “backdoored” because one of its recent additions to its C suite used to do nation state hacking for the UAE; also, it's Snowden disapproved™ (a much more rare distinction you never want awarded onto your online service or product).
• “Connect as few devices to the Internet as possible” also applies to printers. Sometimes, I even forget to unplug my printer when not in use! (Even though it hasn't been connected to any Wi-Fi network for almost 2 years now...)
• Brave Browser is ok (now, in 2022). Most of that stuff is in the past, like a more concentrated version of Ubuntu hooking up to Amazon search results.
• Oh gosh, please stop suggesting disabling all JavaScript. Real people need to do real work, so telling them to turn off JavaScript will emotionally cause them to throw their laptop against the nearest wall into at least 6 separate pieces when nearly 100% of the sites they're used to visiting suddenly break and/or become less than acceptably usable.
• Oh gosh no — IceCat is only for my autuer TV show, when my version of an Elliot Alderson clone is shown to be cracking with a clearnet browser onscreen for the first time and she chooses IceCat on desktop during the long-form series' climax. You can't even install a binary version of it “properly” on Arch Linux distros (so far)!
• Gosh, just use LibreWolf and call it a day, which nearly had 95% of all the suggested about:config settings to change from old Privacy Tools or Privacy Guides “back in the day” (before being overtaken by lowkey pro GrapheneOS Matrix room stanning Charlatans).
• I think the criticism of DuckDuckGo as... alright, because its results are becoming rather mediocre within the later half of the last 1 year.
• Nextcloud is good, but also techniques for local backups should've been mentioned — because this is the only way to “own” your files with full control (as long as you're not crossing geopolitical borders legally).
• Keep a Git synced list of any Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok (yes... even Tik Tok), and so on of any social media accounts you are about.
  • However, you need to keep the lists short, because you have to ensure they haven't changed their username handles by checking manually.
• Make your own Fediverse instance, with signups disabled.
• Use the god darned Ethernet (as much as possible), even on a smartphone!
  • Of course, you can't use a SIM card in a “wired” way, but you better use Ethernet, instead of Wi-Fi, whenever possible — it's Snowden approved™!
• Turn that Bluetooth crap off. (Unless you've already invested in quality Bluetooth speakers — then just keep those running as long as possible. Creating even more e-waste by being a weirdo like The Hated One isn't going to help the world.)
• Paid services will not protect you from all tracking — that advice is a rule of thumb. Just look at Apple's gilded walled garden prison ecosystem: you pay a premium to get surveilled for false positives of CSAM and then get pwned by Pegasus from the NSO Group or whatever Quadream dreamt up.
• This might be foolish for somewhat agreeing with Michael Bazzell on this, but I definitely don't trust my home ISP, so I'll be funnelling my Internet activity through a trustworthy VPN. My relatives though are fine in 2022 — since HTTPS Everywhere is set to sunset in 2022 for good, making Wi-Fi Pineapple-like attacks not as feasible anymore. It just originates from my distrust of my own OpenWrt router... because I do have to leave the poor thing home alone sometimes, so it's definitely not CIA burglary-proof.
• Kenny's knowledge on compiling dwm in C on a virtualized Gentoo doesn't matter for actual security: you've never actually considered that open source software or hardware cannot guarantee security by definition — otherwise they'd both be the same word! Gosh, go watch Andrew “bunnie” Huang's talk on this. This is the talk I should've been paying attention to, not Moxie Marlinspike's “The Ecosystem is Moving” talk on how you must become the 9am to 5pm corporate centralized service monster but E2EE to fight the adtech and non-E2EE 9am to 5pm corporate centralized service monster in Big Tech right now. (Moxie, we're not that stupid. We can “carpool” to self-host too, you know?)
  • Give Huang's blog post a read, will ya? (For my actual audience, not the objectively uneducated.)
• GrapheneOS on currently supported Google Pixels. It's not really a custom ROM, because it's a complete OS and not a ROM like a TI graphing calculator.
• Yes, digital minimalism. But it's also a red pill that needs to be swallowed by the programming language designers and fundamental dev op direction chiefs.
• Not true that not using Facebook or Amazon prevents Big Tech tracking — for example, Facebook specializes in tracking cookies that track people who never visit any Facebook page or never had a Facebook account across the entire web.
• Projects like Gramine, which Invisible Things Lab work on besides Qubes OS, and Wildland, which looks to be securing cloud servers and Qubes OS founder Joanna Rutkowska is now working on.
• IVPN has a page explaining why you should stop and think before getting a VPN.
• Mail isn't anonymous. In case you weren't actually a boomer, the US Post Office takes pictures of all of your mail and stores those photos in a database. Yes, apparently too many people have mailed anthrax, mail bombs, and other dangerous objects within the last 30 years. (As mail tracing was already possible, albeit manually, during Theodore Kacynski's time.) Due to this, any U.S. IC agency with more authority, such as the FBI, could easily tap into the U.S. Post Office's database via trivial paperwork (if there's even any semblance complying with warrants anymore in 2022) track the mail of anyone that catches its interest.
  • So, paying Mullvad or IVPN with cash is very private, but there is a record of that envelope somewhere. Hopefully, your envelope hasn't been opened... unless the U.S. IC agencies haven't hired the top scoring people who participate in the tamper-proof package circumvention competition in DEF CON... yet...
  • At least the U.S. Post Office won't have any outside pictures of envelopes if you paid in Monero (at least to IVPN — Mullvad still needs to add Monero as a payment method).
• Lastly, anyone who uses Odysee/LBRY is trying to cope with getting rather unfairly shadow banned by YouTube — not trying to actually solve the problem of centralized video platforms.
  • What Kenny should've said was to make your own PeerTube instance.
• And please, link the actual fricken article you're commentating on!
  • It's because of loudmouth charlatans like Kenny that make me can't stand people...
• The one feature that should've been promoted about self-hosting e-mail is that hypothetically you can back up your entire e-mail storage more easily — especially if you host it in person at home. But Kenny failed to mention this point. So, it was more all-American sentiment of “muh freedumbs!” more than anything else wortwhile on any technical level.

Conclusion: find relatable people in Linux

Linux Seb is pretty funny and actually relatable as a beginner Linux user.

Damn all these nebulously aligned right winged “”“Linux YouTuber”“” charlatans to Hell, such as (but not limited to other stupid aesthetically similar clones): Luke Smith, Mental Outlaw, Brodie Robertson, DistroTube, and RetroEdgeTech.

These people feed off of a constant number of “followers” who will always be more stupid than they are. It is not a healthy relationship. (Sure, it's all parasocial, but that doesn't excuse what is happening — even if most of it isn't intentional.) This para-relationship will completely disintegrate if the characteristic constant audience limit uniformly becomes smart as or smarter than these demagogues.

I mean, Chris Titus is actually at the absolute 0 bottom line in Hell for being a yes man/everyone's friend by making videos on Windows, MacOS, and Linux — Titus has absolutely no personal integrity and will do anything for that sweet YouTube ad revenue money. Titus is actually deserving of what The Hated One prescribed in his “blacklisted” video: being a fawning sycophant to appease everyone, instead of having a backbone to stand up for his own opinion. (Man, The Hated One really did target the wrong people to go after in his stupid video...)

However, my loosely defined proposal is to make relationships that won't disintegrate if you become equal or better than your current teacher/leader. If I ever do make my autuer TV show(/graphic novel) and happen to surpass Mr. Robot, then I don't think I'll ever look down upon Sam Esmail. That respect doesn't go away just because I surpassed Esmail. The same thing applies if I ever surpass Edward Snowden's opsec, Andrew “bunnie” Huang's knowledge on electronic engineering, or Richard Feynman in the Physics. (Yes, I wrote that the way I intended.) I guess that's the benefit of New Sincerity — you can get mercy, like in Bo Burnham's evolution of his comedy (back when Wisecrack was actually good).

But those stuck in postmodernist cynicism? Like the objectively waste of unrelatable people mentioned above, neither forgiveness nor respite are what you will ever deserve, just like for the GrapheneOS Matrix room Charlatans.

When anyone starts to grow his/her/their own figurative anarchist backbone, then you can't help but put down all those Linux people who think that they're secure just because they use dwm on systemd-free Artix or Gentoo when you discover the actual truth: Qubes OS with default Xfce doesn't give a crap about systemd in the Linux distros for its template VMs. Of course you will have a propensity to anticipate feeling good when you dunk on your prior Linux tyrants and overthrow them — to become the next and more improved tyrants. Just like the pigs at the end of Animal Farm by George Orwell (for that other Orwell novel that shouldn't be slept on!) or the GrapheneOS Matrix room Charlatans in the ranks of Privacy Guides.

Anyways, I might end up adding Linux Seb to Fluent Reader (which I don't check as often and don't care as much as my RSS feed in Newsboat).