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Cake day: Mar 23, 2024

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Tell me more about these cow orks.

The correct term is cow-orker (n. sing. masc.). See also, http://www.fact-index.com/c/co/cow_orker.html


I recommend my python script, Tonto2.

What does Tonto2 do?

It keeps lists.

You can use lists to keep in touch with family, friends, and cow-orkers.

Tonto2 keeps four kinds of lists:

  • You can use an address list to keep track of contacts’ phone numbers, mailing addresses, and eMail addresses.

  • You can use a calendar to remind you about events and appointments including date, time, and duration. You can add notes about finding the location and other prerequisites to attendance.

  • You can keep separate passwords in a password list for every website you visit and every piece of gear you own.

  • You can keep links to favorite websites in a bookmark list.

Additionally you can make a list of bibliographic entries for writing research papers and for saving well-formatted footnotes for Web sites, but this is an arcane topic that will probably not be of general interest.

The information in these lists is at your fingertips.

You own it, and you can keep it. You can share it piecemeal with other people and computers without having to trust anyone or any thing with the whole enchilada. This is the idea of Tonto2.




I’m not aware of any service that [goes fully peer-to-peer] while being practical for most people, yet.

Retroshare is almost ready for prime time after remaining in development for over 20 years. Each “friend” runs it’s own service for the decentralized network of “friends” and hands off message fragments from immediate “friends” for swapping files, store-and-forward messages, chats, etc., to other more distant network participants.

The swindle is that your friends know you by your IP address. If Big Government, Big Media, or Big Crime knocks over one of them, they’ve got you, too. But — not to worry — you can actually — so I’m told — run an RS instance behind a TOR hidden service.

I much prefer the article from 22 Mar 2019 about “TOR Onion Services” preserved at the Wayback Machine instead of the current article.


I have a little python script that (among other things) will maintain an address list in a *.csv file on a Windows or Linux PC. It’s a Qt app. The documentation does some handwaving about importing/exporting to Android. See: https://lacusveris.com/Tonto2/Docs/en/index.shtml


You’re required to provide full personal details to be hired to an employer with dubious security.

I don’t know, but I’ve been told…

You MAY THINK you’re submitting an application directly to an employer’s Personnel Office on that employer’s Web site, but you’re actually submitting your application to that employer’s contracted head hunter — hence the junk mail because that head hunter has other clients to recruit for. It’s the lack of transparency that gripes me.

… so the head hunter has to use restrictive filters on applications they relay to all their clients because they can’t rely on the applicant to vet employers they’d be interested in beforehand. These restrictive filters reject applicants for silly reasons like not having experience with every single piece of software on an arbitrary list of brand names.

There is no sunset date to an application made through a third party. The head hunter and his clients will continue to bug you in perpetuity.

They will continue to bug you about nonexistent openings. Just as they can sometimes find positions for people who are not actually looking for employment, they can sometimes place people with employers who have no open positions. It seems worth their while to try. After all, you MAY STILL BE in the market … sort of.

Employers and their head hunters continue to recruit for positions that have already been filled. This is the old “open requisition” problem. They aim to cover the risk that their new hires won’t pan out.

The more positions you apply for, the more head hunter databases you appear in. All their job-application software is incompatible, so you have to reapply and reapply and reapply, but it all seeks the same information: Are you currently employed? If not, they don’t know you.




Tor Browser on both Linux/Gnome and Android. I believe I get not only the benefits of ad-blocking and anti-tracking measures but also IP-obfuscation through the Tor network. Sure, there are sites that won’t serve content to the Tor network, but screw them!


Continue following best practices to mitigate surveillance.

The slimy part of FISA has always been that the data it collects about overseas communications never sunsets. Moreover, Federal law enforcement officials used to be able to troll through the data without a lot of oversight. In 2020 and 2021, there were 270 thousand questionable uses of the data by the FBI looking for dirt — not on foreigners (who are fair game apparently) — but on citizens. The furor over that is what fueled the failed opposition to re-authorization, which succeeded primarily because the FBI insists that the data provides early-warning of terrorists plots and that [the FBI] promises to play fair in the future by digging for dirt only on terrorists here and abroad.


I can kind of understand VPN and TOR blocking when those are often used by people wanting to post illegal content or engage in illegal activity that could also be harmful to the service that ends up blocking them.

I can’t understand that at all. If they are able to identify a real threat, they understand more about their users than their IP address. Blocking IPs is a brutal and lazy way to deal with an imaginary threat. I they are truly that paranoid, they should do what Reddit does: Ban everybody.