“Hey I’m going to buy your location data tonight.”
“I like to know where you go on Thursdays”
This what Google, Facebook, X, your ISP, and the junk apps on your phone actually get from you, and everyone around you when you use their creepy apps.
Hit me up on Mastadon, use Tor, use DDG, we should have an restraining order against these creeps. Worse yet they don’t just want it for themselves they sell and share it with company, countries, anyone they like, and don’t tell you.
This is how I WANT to talk about because it’s how I feel. Their just strangers, I wouldn’t tell a stranger on the street any of this. I feel like this is such a fringe thought for people though.
From the article: “Even knowing that Kamkar’s silent, invisible, long-distance laser spy trick exists, how does anyone hide their secrets from it? He suggests that companies install double-paned or reflective glass. Some security device companies also sell protection devices that affix to windows and vibrate them to prevent laser microphone spying, and Kamkar concedes he hasn’t tested his attack against those. But he also suggests a safer countermeasure: “Don’t work on computers visible from a window,” he says. “Or just have dirty windows.””
As a citizen of the world its because they are slavers and fuck slavery. One of the biggest lobbiest against fighting slavery too.
Having been friends and family IT though its because they suck. They suck to work on. They suck to devolop for. They suck to run server stuff on. They suck to game on. And they cost an arm and leg for the privilege.
For sure, if you need paid support (which if you aren’t a tech giant, a fledgling startup, or a system with no need for uptime metrics, you probally do) the you have:
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (aka SLES and only still Libre option in this category unfortunately)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- Ubuntu are
if don’t need paid support then Debian, OpenSuse, Rocky, or Fedora are all good picks.
I meant more on the tools side of things like https://www.tensorflow.org/federated/tutorials/federated_learning_with_differential_privacy
With Gboard being user of federated learning to reduce data leakage.
Matrix is still in my “recommend” category for real time federation. With third room still being the coolest example of what that can mean so far. They build on the same libs that make Peertube work too for the video sharing aspect (not the video metadata sharing and socials that all ActivityPub).
I’m really excited to see dendrite make it to client devices for real p2p servers, maybe even as a micro service deployment. I do want to try out the Conduwuit too.
That said the metadata leakage is an issue to me and consider that a serious flaw depending on your threat model, and you want to extra steps to preserve your identity from an untrusted matrix network and/or stick to a private one you trust