whyagain1885's comments

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

Sadly, too often data protection authorities just ban stuff before providing viable alternatives? I do understand there are issues with privacy shield or gpdr.

For all those people suggesting OSS alternatives, it is difficult. Finding talent (yes, the govt jobs do not pay like private) to install, run, maintain suite of office-based is close to impossible. They tried at our school - as the board tried to ban Teams while they chat in WhatsApp or zoom meetings. We tried SoGo (OSS) calendar - it just sucks. Sync does not happen. The solution always is to restart phone or try later.

These may work for individuals. Not for organisations unless huge number of talent moves to OSS type organisations (tutanota or etc).

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

From Reddit:

> Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)

> Other apps you have installed (I've even seen some I've deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)

> Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)

> Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken

> Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC

> They set up a local proxy server on your device for "transcoding media", but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication

Wait a minute - Why was Android or iPhone - built by West allows everything... Or if tiktok are the topdog in writing apps and FB missed out on writing these? Sour grapes?

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

> elected an African American president twice

This is a bit of a fallacy. The institutions/administration from top-to-bottom is important. For example, Scandinavia never had a black/brown head of state but still the police would not treat you badly like it happens in US. Yes, I have lived there.

Another example, India had head of state from all different religions but does not mean all is fine and clean.

The institutions are important - not the person.

PS: In principle, you as US citizen want your country to top dog. All fine. At the end if every country thinks they themselves want to unilaterally be top - conflicts happen.

At some point one needs to think universally - and establish a level.

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

I always get annoyed how these programmers can have a good sleep at night given what they have done. Note that blaming it on the marketing VP is not fair. If even 50 % employees have a thought this tracking can be stopped.

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: My Poor Experience With Azure (or why I'm sticking with AWS)

unfortunately, most of the useful interesting free tier items are available only in North America region.

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: GrapheneOS: The private and secure mobile OS

https://shop.nitrokey.com/shop

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: Our ProtonMail Adventure – A Five Act Drama

> Who sends sensitive information by email?

Too many people. Example apply for job. Even in Europe, so many employers ask for PDF of all your certificates by email.

BTW, not everyone works in SV or FAANG that uses top encrypted databases from some top recruitment agency. Sure there are 10 jobs in government sector that will ask you to print 100 page of application - hand fill and send it. Everyone else not.

BTW, at my local copier place in Berlin, people come with file in cellphone. They just email or WhatsApp the PDF - can be CV, passport or anything - to the common copier fellow's email/WhatsApp - then print.

Even at most covid testing centres at airports - you need to give your passport number + address etc. You think they use encrypted laptops or GPG emails. The test result is returned by PDF email.

Sadly, proton mail is like iPhone. Sure it is secure, but once you install facebook or tiktok - nothing can be done.

While some whistle blower can use protonmail to send email to some journalist - for the normal citizen it is just useless.

whyagain1885 | 3 years ago | on: How Google got to rolling Linux releases for Desktops

> But if my employer gave me a choice in the matter, I'd pick a macOS machine

Provided the convenience is the same. If one is used to certain way of working with linux (may be scripts, desktop environment, or workflow - Keyboard shortcuts etc. ) then just picking a machine for "fancier option" is worthless or even annoying. Also wait to migrate scripts from bash to zsh. Again not all macs allow for baremetal install of Debian.