That's still a ridiculous dark pattern, in my opinion no better than tabbing over to the command line. Nice to know that you can though, next time I need windows 11 for anything.

Signal allows you to speak confidentially, therefore it is private. It is not, by default, anonymous. Yes, this plus the centralized server mean that potentially dangerous metadata, like relationship maps, can be collected. All indications are this isn't the case, but that's not something you can count on.

If you need anonymity, which you probably do at least a bit, use simplex. And yes, having more people using anonymous services like simplex is a good thing for the community as a whole. That said, I'm not going to try to convince all of my friends to use simplex. It's just too far from the mainstream, missing too many features. Signal is a sufficient compromise for most people, and it's sufficient for me for most purposes.

Interesting that this happens in Ireland, which is known for capitulating to big tech (because they're a tax haven). Almost like this is not actually about restricting the ability of big tech to cause damage.

First off, I would be careful around browser-based VPNs, especially free ones. If it's in the browser it's often just a proxy (as opposed to wireguard or openvpn), which is potentially bad for normal functionality or privacy. Also, if it's a free service then it almost certainly collects your data itself, and won't necessarily be allowed by sites either.

That being said, there are two ways to layer the two type of tunnels:

Connecting to the VPN first is relatively common. This means that your ISP can't see you connecting to Tor. Furthermore, VPNs are designed to tunnel your entire system, while Tor generally is not. Thus, you can have some traffic that is merely VPN protected and some that runs through the Tor network as well. In this situation my ISP knows which VPN provider I use, my VPN provider knows (1) my identity and (2) my network activity outside of Tor, and sites that I visit can only see that I use Tor.

The other direction is to connect first to Tor, and tunnel the VPN connection through there. This is very much not intended: Tor only tunnels TCP, while most VPN protocols use UDP (only, or more efficiently). The reason is that it's actually quite difficult to hide your identity from your VPN provider. If the VPN is the innermost tunnel, then that means that it has access to all your network traffic. I'll assume that all of it is encrypted with TLS (but be careful because a single error is bad). Then, the VPN only knows which domains you visit, how long, how much data, and at what times. This is still quite significant. Then there's the issue of payment. If you choose a free service, it almost certainly means it's selling your data. I will say that this is better than most other uses for free VPNs, but it's still pretty sketchy. If you're paying, then you need one which accepts payments in monero (or zcash or another private cryptocurrency) or cash by mail.

Overall, Tor over VPN is relatively normal. I use this configuration regularly. VPN over Tor is highly unusual, and you should consider if you need it. If you need a recommendation for a VPN though, Mullvad supports both monero and cash by mail (sweden), and is generally a good all around VPN (as long as you don't need port forwarding). One final thing to note: If for some reason you want to use a VPN on both sides, do not use the same VPN, even with separate accounts. Probably, they won't check, but at that point you might as well just use straight Mullvad VPN.

I think that the (only) relevant factor is whether everyone else knows and wants it. Suppose your mod affected only yourself (so other players wouldn't know about it) and you played in a way that was mostly reasonable, but providing a little bit more covering fire than should be possible. Your teammates might still have fun while they're playing, though only if you don't overdo it; but even then, they probably wouldn't be too happy to discover your cheating once they'd already finished the map. If you give everyone infinite ammo, and tell them about it then that's fine, but because they know about it, not because they benefit from it.

For that matter, cheating in a competitive server set up for that purpose can be fun (though it can also be wildly unbalanced, especially if the game is asymmetrical)

For as long as they let you. Watch, soon they'll be required to connect to the network at least every 30 days to function.

For the sake of accuracy: Incoming emails from external services are initially not encrypted. It's only truly zero knowledge for either emails sent by another tuta user, or for emails that have already been received.

That being said, they don't record this information unless specifically required by a court order, which to my knowledge has never happened. I understand that they make the decision of whether your account is spam within 48 hours, and after that it is in the clear. I created my account over Tor, didn't use it much at all for the first few days, and have been using it fine since. That's only one data point of course.

One thing that's worth keeping in mind: physical retailers may have cameras, but they (in general) rotate their recordings and don't provide an API for law enforcement. By contrast, any data that an online service gets is probably stored forever, possibly across multiple companies. If you do pick up the online package at a physical store, then you're losing most of the benefits, so you also need to provide an address.

That being said, much of China and some of the US have significant outdoor surveillance camera networks. These usually do provide law enforcement with real time, AI search, and may keep recordings for a very long

For me, as a Canadian, I'd consider physical stores more private, maybe putting on generic clothing and a mask if it's really important. If your city has its own surveillance system, that might be different for you. Though really, in that case, you should be more concerned about pushing for the cameras to be removed, or failing that looking into moving elsewhere: it is not sufficient to have privacy only online, only from major storefronts.

It is an option, but not a particularly good one seeing as it's run by amazon. I personally use Signal just because it's popular, but Wire seems equally good, and I'm glad they exist to provide competition.

It would certainly be preferable to use two devices in this context, but first verify that the apps in question actually use the Play Integrity API, and that you can't replace them with websites. For myself, I use a Pixel with a custom ROM, and I've never had any problems. Of course, it could get worse over time, it depends on the policies of the developers.

Taking your requirements at face value though, iPhone is definitely the correct choice. For the longest time, it was google wants your data but doesn't care about control, while apple wants control over what you do (to force you to buy their other products) but doesn't care about your privacy one way or the other. Of course, in the past few years, they've both taken some of each other's worst attributes, but I still think iPhone is marginally better on privacy in stock configuration.

There are definitely ways in which apple is worse: they track your location while your device is powered off, not merely whenever it's connected to a cell tower or wifi network, and I think they still scan photos uploaded to icloud (but that last point could be out of date, somebody correct me if so). But all that can be worked around if necessary, and in any case it's not as bad as stock android.

Finally, consider how much has to be tied to your phone at all. Maybe your government apps need to be on the phone, but maybe social media and wikipedia can be primarily used on your laptop, loosening the requirements somewhat. Maybe email can go to your x86 boxes only, even if facebook messenger doesn't. It depends on your situation.

That's still a licensing issue: you're not allowed to license from the HDMI consortium and then freely sublicense to all your users, which is what open source requires. Hopefully this eventually concludes in the end of relevance for HDMI and we can have a freer, and just better ecosystem in general.

The thing is, trusted computing as a security feature isn't useless. For the particular case of phones, people generally use relatively low entropy passwords, because it's impractical to do otherwise. The Titan chip uses trusted computing technologies to ensure that an attacker with physical access cannot bruteforce the password, which it does by forcing a timeout between successive attempts. It might do other things too, this isn't my area of expertise, but (I believe) it isn't needed for the general functioning of the device, as opposed to e.g. the intel ME.

Of course, a security chip that you have the power to control would be better, and no less secure, but that doesn't exist. However, neither the OS itself not the apps directly depend on trusted computing. Otherwise GrapheneOS couldn't exist in the first place.

Note that this problem doesn't exist on desktops or laptops: it is entirely possible to memorize a passphrase around 96 bits of entropy, which is high enough that it can't practically be bruteforced, especially if the algorithm to check if it is correct is computationally slow.

So, you lost a bit of sovereignty for your phone in the interest of security, but phones aren't private to begin with: the actual modem also uses trusted computing. The devs behind GrapheneOS considered this the best solution to the problem, after weighing the pros and cons. Personally, I'd be happy to have a flip phone which has no password, and then do everything of significance (possibly including call and SMS) on my laptop. That is to say, I'd rather I didn't have to use GrapheneOS, but it's compromises align well with my own for now.

All of these supposed advantages are solved by USB-C though. Even the length is higher (5m, I believe). I'd be fine if the DisplayPort connector is gone, but the actual standard is just better for most purposes.

I'm not so sure, I'd rather have a prepopulated blocklist that I can further configure myself, as opposed to instance level blocks that I can't reverse.

While this is true, it's also worth noting that the original is permissively licensed. You can change it if you want, it's just that most people don't bother. Presumably changing the image would be as simple as replacing the three files in /web/static/img, but maybe that would look weird for some reason.

This exists in Canada, and it's called jmp.chat. They use jabber, rather than simpleX, but they will optionally provide a server, which you could then bridge to your own server without needing port forwarding or anything like that.

They do take payments in monero, but for some reason you can't create an account with only monero unless you contact support first…and they don't do support by email, only phone/sms and jabber. There are public jabber servers, so it should be entirely possible, just inconvenient. They also take payment by mail, which I think includes cash.

I'm not sure the logistics of using jmp.chat outside of Canada, but I know it is somewhat possible to do in the US. Of course, there's nothing forcing you to actually be in the same area as the service, but people who live in the same area as you might question the +1 phone number, and might get charged more by their provider.

By default, yes. It is possible to create a so-called secret chat, which is standard for signal and similar, but that's something you have to manually do. Furthermore, it's not even possible to make secret chats for groups. When it was initially released, I was cautiously optimistic that it could turn into a good, secure application, but knowing it's been this long and it hasn't, I wouldn't consider that likely.

This is so cool, yet another great advantage of the Netherlands.

Does it count as 5 squares away if its 4 in one direction and 3 perpendicular to that?

I believe that even if it were GPL licensed you could do that, since you're only running it on your server, not publishing it. Of course, for this very reason, most copylefted server software uses the AGPL, which does require source code of a network service to be made available.