keverets @keverets@librem.one

No matter what happens with the Canadian Federal election, one thing will be true — a significant % of Canadian voters & media will have been successfully manipulated to oppose a beneficial carbon pricing approach that was either revenue-neutral or financially beneficial to almost all Canadians…1/2

Privacy Badger is @Wirecutter's top choice for blocking trackers or ads. If you aren't already using EFF's free browser extension, here's one more reason to give it a try: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/our-favorite-ad-blockers-and-browser-extensions-to-protect-privacy/#ad-or-tracker-blocker-privacy-badger

The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information. Why do they hate it so much?

https://www.citationneeded.news/elon-musk-and-the-rights-war-on-wikipedia/

#Wikipedia #ElonMusk #USpolitics #USpol

Uhhh, I have a strange request. If you own a bread knife with a flat-sided handle in your kitchen, and calipers or something else that will measure to the nearest millimetre or so, and want something to do for 30 seconds, could you tell me how thick the handle is?

Yes, I'd like to collect some random samples of bread knife handle widths. Doesn't matter what brand, what it looks like, how long the blade is or where in the world you are.

I will explain later. Boosts appreciated.

#AskFedi

#maps #OpenStreetMap #Minecraft #VideoGames

"This open source project written in Rust generates any chosen location from the real world in Minecraft Java Edition with a high level of detail.

By leveraging geospatial data from OpenStreetMap and utilizing the powerful capabilities of Rust, Arnis provides an efficient and robust solution for creating complex and accurate Minecraft worlds that reflect real-world geography and architecture."

https://github.com/louis-e/arnis

Happy Birthday to everyone in infosec.

Wise words from Arlene Dickinson about Kevin O'Leary

#dragonsDen #cdnpoli

⚠️ 🚨 It’s time to stop using Blabber.im 🚨⚠️

The abandoned fork of #Conversations_im has a critical security issue: attackers can bypass STARTTLS negotiation, resulting in an unencrypted connection to a fake server. This vulnerability is similar to the STARTLS attack discovered in various email clients¹

✅ Fixed in Conversations 2.13.1 (Feb 2024)

📢 Please migrate to Conversations immediately! It's free on Google Play until the end of the year and always free on #fdroid

¹: https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2179--protocols-security-of-starttls-in-the-e-mail-context/

I don't think people realised how disgusting the change from maps.google.com to google.com/maps was for a privacy point of view. If you allow location access now for google maps, google.com now has access.

Organic Maps Turns 4 🎉

https://organicmaps.app/news/2024-12-20/organicmaps-turns-four/

- ~3M¹ users from all countries of the world
- ~15k ratings and reviews on AppStore and Google Play
- 4.8/4.6 average rating on AppStore/Google Play
- 10k+ stars on GitHub
- 10k (almost) issues + PRs on GitHub
- 1k (almost) forks on GitHub
- 7k+ git commits
- ~100 awesome contributors who made 5+ commits

Congratulations to all the users and contributors for your hard work and dedication! Thank you for being a part of this journey!

TIL about Crabeater seals, an animal that looks like every other seal out there, like the recipe was fifty percent chonk, fifty percent derp, moisten and add fippers, but then when it opens it's mouth you find out that it is secretly hiding the answer to the question, what if my teeth had teeth.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED BUT REPULSIVE", "WRONG BUT WROMANTIC", "FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD", "NOBODY BOTHERS WITH THIS BIT", "SHOULDN'T REALLY BUT WE WON'T JUDGE", "REQUIRED IN ORDER TO WORK AROUND EVERYONE ELSE'S BUGS", "YOU DO YOU", and "OBVIOUSLY ABSURD BUT VERY COMMON FOR SOME REASON" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

writing about the terminal is so funny because it's like "redirects are so useful! hooray!"

"okay and also `cmd file.txt > file.txt` will just permanently delete the contents of the `file.txt`”

lots of cool useful tools with the occasionally horrifying fact that you just need to keep seared into your memory

(please do not explain to me why this happens)

Important reminder, if you own a domain name and don't use it for sending email.

There is nothing to stop scammers from sending email claiming to be coming from your domain. And the older it gets, the more valuable it is for spoofing. It could eventually damage your domain's reputation and maybe get it blacklisted, unless you take the steps to notify email servers that any email received claiming to come from your domain should be trashed.

Just add these two TXT records to the DNS for your domain:
TXT v=spf1 -all
TXT v=DMARC1; p=reject;

The first says there is not a single SMTP server on earth authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. The second says that any email that says otherwise should be trashed.

If you do use your domain for sending email, be sure to add 3 records:
SPF record to indicate which SMTP server(s) are allowed to send your email.
DKIM records to add a digital signature to emails, allowing the receiving server to verify the sender and ensure message integrity.
DMARC record that tells the receiving email server how to handle email that fails either check.

You cannot stop scammers from sending email claiming to be from your domain, any more than you can prevent people from using your home address as a return address on a mailed letter. But, you can protect both your domain and intended scam victims by adding appropriate DNS records.

#cybersecurity #email #DomainSpoofing #EmailSecurity #phishing

"Working from home isn’t perfect, but it feels significantly less imperfect than returning full-time to the office. The fact that these great creative minds have still had no better ideas suggests that, rather than profit, these policies are all about power."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/dec/08/employees-are-being-marched-back-to-the-office-but-why

There’s No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike

The pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free. Only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them.

Carbon fiber is light. It’s strong. It can be used to build everything from frames to seat posts to handlebars to cranks. And it’s one of the worst things that’s happened to bikes.

Now, to be clear, carbon fiber makes perfect sense for professional racing. Because it’s basically a fabric, builders can mold it into all sorts of aerodynamic shapes. Moreover, they can tune ride quality and maintain strength while simultaneously keeping the weight to a minimum in a way that’s not really possible with metal tubing. It used to be that racers had to choose between a light bike and an aero bike; now they can have both, all thanks to the miraculous properties of carbon fiber. At this point, there’s no reason for elite competitors to use anything else. Gift Yourself More Adventure

But here’s the thing: you’re not them. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you’re almost certainly incapable of milking the handful of seconds a wind tunnel-sculpted pro-level carbon fiber race machine might theoretically net you in certain situations. Moreover, the pro racers who do need carbon fiber bikes get them for free; only the people who don’t need them actually pay for them. This means that, ipso facto, if you’ve purchased a carbon fiber bicycle, you’ve made a mistake.

“Okay, fine, I may not be Jonas Vingegaard,” you may be thinking. “Maybe I didn’t need a carbon bike. But how does that mean I’ve made a mistake?”

Simple: while you’re not able to extract carbon fiber’s small performance benefits, you are in an ideal position to experience its many drawbacks—and for normal people, carbon fiber bicycles have only drawbacks.

This is Bike Snob NYC writing for Outside Online, by the way.

@biketooter @cycling @mastobikes #cycling #bicycle #mastobikes #biketooter

#CANADA TO TRANSFER BANNED #FIREARMS TO #UKRAINE: Canada is negotiating with Ukraine to transfer some of the 324 firearms recently banned in the country. The Canadian government believes these weapons belong on the front lines rather than in the hands of hunters or sport shooters.

https://apnews.com/article/canada-firearms-ban-ukraine-81ccaa341badb74bb27d34fc4bb29b17

Over a year ago, I wrote ”A month using XMPP (using Snikket) for every call and chat”.

For something like 15 months now, Sandra and I have used XMPP via @snikket_im for probably 99.9% of our calls, messages, and video chats, running on an Intel NUC.

We both use the Snikket mobile app, and I also use @dino and @profanity in Linux.

Perhaps a fun holiday / weekend project, if you want family-friendly, self-hosted, #E2EE communications?

#XMPP #SelfHosting #FOSS #Linux