Former lurkers (here or elsewhere online), what changed?
Libb @ Libb @jlai.lu Posts 1Comments 646Joined 2 yr. ago
Libb @ Libb @jlai.lu
Posts
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2 yr. ago
How can I effectively balance these privacy, security, and physical risks to ensure the long-term safety and integrity of the FAMILY’S PERSONAL MEMORIES?
Imho you can't and you can. Let me explain:
You need to consider the value of your data for a stranger to steal. I mean, to break encryption one would first need to want to get your specific files and then have the time and money to do that. Unless you're some kind of personality or a criminal of some sort it is unlikely they would be worth the effort.
But what if there is a back door or if encryption stops working tomorrow?
That's a good question, even more so for us Europeans seeing our representatives pushing the idea of putting back doors in encrypted message apps... What will be their next target? Requiring every EU citizen to give some central bureau a copy of passwords and encryption keys even for offline storage and hard drives at home—because, you know, think of all the children! We would be allowed to scan every single file in the country so we can spot any pervert and punish them!
I store all my files encrypted (cloud and local as well) because I worry about unauthorized access (thieves, mostly edit: and data breaches obviously). But I also know here in my country, France, I'm required by the law to give a judge my password if they ask for it. That's fine (a judge needs to ask for it, and then I would obey) and that does not render encryption useless for me... at least for now.
So,
- Encryption does work. That doesn't put anyone above the law but it still is a great protection layer we should all be using.
- If one day politicians make it illegal to use encryption, or install backdoors, or if quantum computing happens, or AI take over our computers, or if aliens arrive from Planet Zyrklump with tech that make our encryption as useful as a pair of sneakers to an oyster... Well, that day, my personal data will stop being digital. It's already one of the reasons I stopped reading ebooks. I want privacy when I read—something I instantly get when I read a printed book. Up until the day it becomes illegal to read in print, I will read in print ;)
how much time should I spend with a distro to actually get the gist of the distro? a month maybe?
Why change would I change distro to begin with? I mean, you do as you like, quite obviously, but I never considered my objective to switch distro and test them all. I would see that as a waste of my time, as I'd rather be doing stuff with that computer.
The distro I switched to (approx 3 years ago) I only switched because I could not solve an issue I had using the previous distro. A silly issue that simply was non-existent with that new one ;)
Buy a lot of toothpaste and toothbrushes.
And I would ask those hordes of zombie to brush their teeth before they try to bite me as I would not want to get sick and maybe contagious right before I'm eaten alive.
Had anyone ever come across a single place that holds this kind of info over a wide range of subjects? (Books specifically)
Without info on what you have already tried, it's a but difficult to suggest anything:
- Have you tried your public library? Edit: it's a great place to get info on almost any topic, and to find books (1).
- Look up whatever topic you're interested in on Wikipedia and borrow the references they mention? There are a lot of books referenced there and you can borrow them from your public library, buy them from a used book shop, from online...
- Ask people?
- Read an Introductory book and from that use the references they should provide to read further. Which also means books without references have close to no interest unless you're looking to learn more about their author's opinion on whatever the subject is more than about the subject itself ;)
I've quit university many, many decades ago what I tend to do is search for people knowing the topic and see what book they consider interesting. I will pick one, or two, read them and from there pick other books they reference.
I will also use references suggested by persons I admire. I just read that French writer (I'm French) saying good things about two other French authors on a topic I'm interested in, whose names I had never heard of. I noted their names and the title of their books and will find a copy of each of them.
1: as long as your public library is not censoring stuff, obviously.
Thx for sharing (and thx to the two that suggested other communities) :)
I don't know what you consider fun, but I like to read those daily:
Then there are more niche communities I'm interested in, but deciding if they're interesting to you really depends the type of content you're looking for.
We have not owned a TV since the 00s and have no intention of buying one any time soon, but I had a look at the FUTO website you linked and it's interesting read (even for the non-expert I'm).
Thx for sharing :)
I've not tasted many American beers so I could not tell if they all taste like crap, and I also do not drink at all anymore. But being French, I can say that our Belgian neighbors have some exceptionally good beers, as well as Germans do. I loved a few of those, back then. But then they may also be a tad too... tasty for an uninitiated palate ;)
I'm pretty confident there must some local breweries in a few US places that can make quality beer too, the issue would then mostly be to find enough customers willing to drink it because it's no use to make the best beer ever if most your customers prefer Budweiser or stuff like that.
Here in France it's probably the norm the moment it's some other person you vaguely know. Or if there is no 'power' or authority relation involved.
That said, things may be different for younger people (I'm in my 50s) as I've noticed they don't talk that much in person.
Edit: typos. Cooking at the same time I'm trying to post a comment is not the best idea ;)
Indeed. That's kind of what Tuta, Proton and others are trying to do alas without worrying much about being compatible with one another.
I don't, I rely an ready made sentences that require no effort on my part are that are not lies at all. Depending who's asking when someone is asking me how well I'm I will answer (it's in French)
- 'Je vais bien, pas le choix!' (I'm doing well, no choice!) or more often 'Je vais toujours bien, c'est défendu d'aller mal!' (I'm always well, It's forbidden to feel bad!'). Edit I will more often than not smile, saying that.
- 'Bien sur et toi?' (sure, and you?) and, yep, I purposefully do not answer the question.
I don't lie (I may even hint that I may not be doing that well, in the first type of answers) but I also shamelessly use the fact that most people don't give the slightest crap how well I really am when they're asking. That's small-talk 101. Like saying 'the weather is nice today, isn't it?'
The less interactions I have with the kind of persons who rely on small-talk, the happier I'm. So, it never bothers me to be 'polite' as I know how efficient it is to shorten the time and energy I waste with them.
I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It’s probably exaggerated,
Why do you think that would be exaggerated? Just curious to know.
Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it’s on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet,
Don't mix the Internet (which is the willingness to interconnect people through some communication means) and the technology by which it’s achieved.
I mean, if people on that planet can even think of 'an Internet' like ours they
- must at least have devised a way to build their own type of computers (and those needs power and some kind of wiring in order to work) and digital data storage.
- must have thought about connecting those computers together in order to do things faster/simpler or remotely and in a decentralized way (that’s how the Internet was created: to be decentralized, not in order to exchange cat pictures ;))
If they can’t imagine anything like our computers, then they probably can't imagine 'an Internet' anymore than say a pre-Bell human being could wish to use a smartphone with 5G connectivity. They may be dreaming of some sort of 'portable means of communication', sure, and many scifi writers did back then, but it would not be something as specific as the Internet and that would be, well, scifi.
So, considering they have some kind of computing machine already and that they can devise the idea of connecting them together, they should be able to develop their existing technologies (and the protocols to use them) to communicate farther and farther away (how long was the first ever phone line?).
If they don’t have that, they probably don’t need global means of communications yet.
Keep in mind it was not that long ago that most news people would read in their lifetime was local only—beside wars, major crisis news were local. There was no constant need to share cat pictures with people living on the other side of the planet either, or to cry out loud in front of one’s phone camera about whatever personal drama one's going through. Drama were already a thing back then, as well as sharing cat pictures (and porn, btw) but we did it with our friends or our family (maybe not porn) or at best within some community members who, back when traveling the world was not obvious nor cheap to do, were all local to us. So why would one need a planetary Internet to begin with?
What you call the Internet is very recent tech—first email ever sent is 1971 (54 years old), TikTok is around 2016 (9 years old), Facebook was created in 2004 (21 years old), Apple in 1976 (49 years old) and Google is 27 years old (1998), the first ‘smartphone’ (iPhone 1, is from 2007. There were mobile phones before that but it was the iPhone that changed the deal), and so on. I’m older than all of them and I had been communicating with people all over the world before they appeared. And I’m not even that old. In fact, our entire species have been communicating for a few thousands years already.
The desire to communicate, to create a network of connections between people has not changed much, the tools (and the cost of using them) changed dramatically, obviously.
As well as the type of content we consider worth exchanging (which would be an interesting discussion in itself).
I never sent much cat pictures through snail mail back in the days, nor talked much about my outrage regarding anything because snail mail was slow (and outrage never lasts much) and was costly when done overseas and so were phone calls (and so was taking film pictures, btw) and I’d rather focus that time and money on things I considered worth it—ie, useful/interesting to both my correspondent and I.
Thinking about it, maybe your hypothetical internet-less alien civilization is much happier (and healthier) than we are today with our constant dramas and low, low effort contents that make up the essential of our Internet? Just wondering, obviously.
edit: typos
It's a different app, made by the same company.
Which is why you you and your recipient (which makes it a lot more difficult) should learn to set up PGP
My spouse and I aren't married but we've been together for almost 30 years. No wedding ring for us but so far none of us has tried to kill the other ;)
That's a possibility, for sure.
I could/should have added 'books'—good old quality print books. They won't go anywhere, and no corporation will be able to delete them because of licensing issue and no one will be able to edit them in order to 'improve their content' by making it fit whatever trend/hysteria. And those books will stay unchanged no matter if less and less people are interested in reading or are even able to read.
My fountain pens (one was already inherited from my grand father).
Hi & welcome from a fellow Mint user.
It's a stable distribution that comes with a lot of things preinstalled (so less extra stuff to install, but also a lot of stuff you might not need)
- +1 for Encryption, both Luks for the system disk and whatever other internal drive and for USB stick or external storage. If someone was to steal my computer I would pissed off but OK, I can deal with it knowing they can't access my files. Use a good password (mine is 20-ish characters long all random and, yeah, I've memorized them but I have a decent working memory ;)
- for (automated) backups.
- +1 for automated updates
- +1 for not installing from any source. It's tempting but it should be the exception (for me, it means yt-dlp and Mullvad for the most, of there is also my RSS app of choice newsboat since it's not officially available anymore :/)
- I don't use antivirus on Linux (nor on my Mac). But I seldom download anything and don't open attachments I'm not expecting to receive ;)
- I would not play with services as a beginner as you risk deactivating something you need.
- The firewall as gui that's installed by default (on my Mint, at least ;): its Gufw on the command line and it's called Firewall Configuration in the main Mint menu. Open it, type your password, activate the 'Status' toggle. Done. Then you can start adding rules as you need them.
I would add to that:
- Don't rush to tweak everything at the same time. Try one at a time, it's easier to revert back.
- Backup your home folder regularly. Not only does it contain all your precious files but it also contains most of your settings and tweaks. So, if you ever need to reinstall you will get back all those settings/tweaks when copying back your home to the fresh install.
On that topic,I'm not much of a geek (a 50-something dude and a 35+ years Apple customer) but I did learn to use git to keep a backup of my config folder. So, when I screw up something (so far, Mint has not once screwed up anything by itself, the few issues I had to deal with were all me-related) , I know I can revert back to the previous version of whatever settings I've just damaged without difficulty. Learning the basic of Git is not hard, it's just...odd, and it works great. If it was compatible with LibreOffice files I would love to use if for that too...
We're so few I quickly realized we all better be post from time to time for the communities I was interested in to feel more alive ;)