For those who are still on Win 7: Firefox (and so Tor Browser) will stop supporting Win 7 soon. Seriously, you better plan to migrate to Linux. Not-so-good privacy issues aside, everyone knows Windows is not very secure/safe/convenient anyway.

Tor Browser is planning to remove Google from the search engine options a user can choose: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41835

There some say brave onion + no JS is good: https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/

Mullvad team seems to be considering 4 possible options:

• Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/
• Mojeek: https://www.mojeek.com/
• Brave Search: https://search.brave.com/
• Metager: https://metager.org/

PS: Not disgussing ddg / ddg onion too much, basically because ddg is the long-time default search engine of TB. Most TB users assume ddg is a decent, standard, generic option, esp. its non-JS version.

If you mean this article on Wired itself, it’s not pay walled, though annoying. Click the V (chevron) to hide the Subscribe Now thing.

Or if it’s indeed pay-walled in your area, open it via Germany by search this -> https://metager.org/meta/meta.ger3?eingabe=A Controversial US Surveillance Program May Get Slipped Into a ‘Must-Pass’ Defense Bill
find the article, and use the “OPEN ANONYMOUSLY” link. Many annoying things will be filtered too.

about time 😊 that’s not the goal; one of the first basic steps!

EDIT Sorry I should not have said it like this. Even though that was my honest feelings, said as free speech without any meany connotations, this should have been treated as good news, like someone finally ditched Windows.

One of the next steps might be to figure out how not to load GA.js GTM.js Google Fonts etc.

There is a long way to go to de-Google oneself, and unfortunately it’s not easy nor trivial. One subtle example: Google is a broker of Tor Snowflake, which could cause a difficult dilemma.

See also:

Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records

• https://lemmy.world/post/8536384
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/9605238
• https://monero.town/post/1165443 etc.

The French National Police is unlawfully using an Israeli facial recognition software [installed massively and secretly. The Minister ordered an investigation]

• https://monero.town/post/1200440

Some of possible solutions include:

• always use Tor 24/7, Tails or not, when possible, even when browsing normal websites, or using IRC etc.
• use bridges

Just fyi: recently EFF is creating Privacy Badger browser add-on and GNU also has LibreJS. They’re technically not ad-blockers, though; apparently a tracker-blocker and a non-free-script-blocker, respectively.

I’ve found two possible solutions:

• If you use some kind of Lemmy reader instead of using a browser, it may have a filtering function, like “hide post including this word” like using regex.
• “After complaining yesterday about seeing too much Linux content in the Fediverse” — this Lemmy user seemed to have experienced a similar problem, and finally found a fundamental (albeit rather unexpected) solution. Read more: https://lemmy.world/post/8107430

Thunderbird doesn’t passphrase-protect your PGP key. Though you can set a general password… For something less important, its OpenPGP may be convenient, given that if you send/receive email normally, there is metadata problem anyway. But if you need to play it safe, you may want to use gpg offline and paste ascii.

Increasingly more and more “phoning home” is not exactly comfortable, either: thunderbird-settings.thunderbird(.)net location.services.mozilla(.)com addons.thunderbird(.)net versioncheck.addons.thunderbird(.)net services.addons.thunderbird(.)net, etc. Perhaps people today, both users and developers, feel something like this is normal, because things were already more or less like this when they were born.

Re: Micro$oft - It might be that after raped by Google, the society has been desensitized and stopped feeling anything about “minor details.” Why worrying now? You use a Windows 10 passport account (what is it called?) just to log on to “your own” computer and also a Gmail account anyway, right? So bad news is, your privacy is almost zero already.

https://monero.town/post/894750 So you did f2f… Glad it works, though. But how to buy it is irrelevant to the OP and is off-topic, so we shouldn’t be talking about that here.

Basically I’d never recommend anyone to buy a significant amount of crypto hoping that you can get rich quick with that. Yes, it might go up, but it may go down. Encouraging such sketchy gambling would be crazy and irresponsible, and more importantly that’s not the original purpose of this technology. Yet you already even know localmonero, so yeah, you’re simply one of us. If you’d like to you can join monero.town or subscribe it from your instance :)

It doesn’t need to be today. You don’t need to ditch it completely, but if you’d like to, you can use two machines side by side. It’s about freedom. No one should force you to do anything. Good luck!

Originally Bitcoin had nothing to do with “get rich quick”. It felt vaguely like Freenet. It was experimental, philosophical, mathematical, cypherpunk… Almost no one had imagined that investors were going to be interested in it and something like that fad would happen.

Unfortunately it’s not easy to get Monero. In several countries, CEXes don’t support it (delisted). Besides, getting Monero from CEX is not ideal privacy-wise. So, a typical Monero user gets it no-KYC, without using CEX. Which is legal, but rather complicated. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend Monero to regular people.

As you said, Monero is such a great way for payment in a practical sense. Very low fees (~1 cent, no matter how much you send), private (only you can authorize transaction, no need to get a permission from someone else). The community is relatively small (monero.town on Lemmy), but generally nice and cozy. We seldom, if ever, talk about investment… It’s so different from what people think when they hear “crypto”. It’s understandable that some people assume it’s just one of those alt sh*tcoins.

That should be easy if you do some script-fu, etc. Perhaps not so easy on Windows, though.

I understand that you may feel depressed, or even annoyed, for example when told, “Solving the problem foo is trivial if you use bar” when bar is not trivial nor realistic for you (or so you believe). For example, 2¹⁴⁹−1 is easy to factor if you use elliptic curves, but studying elliptic curves may feel daunting (though it’s not so hard as you might think).

I do understand how you may feel in such a situation. I may be sometimes in a similar situation too.

Obviously, though, not trying to read about the solution bar wouldn’t solve the original problem foo. Not learning ECM doesn’t enable you to factor 2¹⁴⁹−1 for example. Not trying to listen to about the L-word wouldn’t fix the annoyance of Windows. Annoyance itself may be harmless but everyone knows Windows is privacy-invasive and vulnerable to malware, viruses, keyloggers, etc. So staying too long there, refusing to learn some solution, something really bad might happen to you eventually. Honestly, something like that did happen to ourselves recently. Our community lost a lot of money, apparently stolen by attacker(s)—exactly what happened is still unknown, but the victimized wallet was on Ubuntu connected to Windows 10 via SSH.

You don’t need to ditch Windows. I respect your freedom to use non-free software. In fact, many L-word systems do include non-free blobs too!

That being said, may I suggest that you try different OS(es) just for 10 minutes, booted from a USB stick, when you have time, to see what it’s like. You might be surprised because it just works, actually more intuitive, you can use it easily, not to mention you’re not forced to see ads. Or no invasive telemetry. Feel free to ignore this suggestion if you really love Windows, thinking it’s the best OS ever. I respect freedom of thought!

The same URL now: Microsoft gives in and lets you close OneDrive on Windows without explaining yourself

Update November 10th, 4:45AM ET: Microsoft has removed the dialog forcing users to fill out a survey when quitting OneDrive, and reverted to the original prompt. In a statement sent to The Verge, Microsoft says:

Between Nov. 1 and 8, a small subset of consumer OneDrive users were presented with a dialog box when closing the OneDrive sync client, asking for feedback on the reason they chose to close the application. This type of user feedback helps inform our ongoing efforts to enhance the quality of our products.

The story below is unchanged.

If what you’re talking about is something OS-level, chances are that you can trivially do the same thing. But if it’s application-level (a tool for Windows): while there’s a way to run a Windows application, apparently it’s not always perfect. If you really need to use a program that only runs on Windows, that’s a valid reason for you to keep using Windows. I hope you can find a libre alternative. You’re free to code your own tool (which behaves exactly the way you like), but admittedly that option is not always realistic.

Nevertheless, at least when doing something generic like browsing web pages or writing email, you don’t need to do that on a privacy-invasive OS. If more and more users start noticing that, Micro$soft might realize that annoying paying customers is a bad idea in the long run.

It’s preposterous to pay (buy an expensive license) to be abused!

Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about GNU/Linux? 🙃

When I got my senior mom a computer she had never used Windows. Instead of having her learn that I installed Debian with Xfce and Firefox. Now that’s all she knows, I laugh at people who tell me Linux is too hard when my mom without any tech knowledge uses it as her daily computer. If I had to switch her to Windows or a Chrome browser she’ll make a fuss about it.

How about a live OS as a free trial? Not only free as in free beer, but free as in freedom, and always will be free. You own your OS, not vice versa.

Become a Linux user today, while keeping your precious Windows 11 or whatever. I raise you Tails if you do this at all.

• Get an unused USB stick, download Tails and make a bootable USB. Typically this will take less than an hour.
• Restart and boot your computer into Tails.
• Congratulations! You’re a Debian user now, even on Tor. Meaning your real IP is hidden. Privacy strikes back!
• Start Tor Browser and enjoy Lemmy. Libre world is usually Tor-friendly (though lemmy.world may be behind CF).

I’m not saying you should ditch Windows today, but you might want to do some experiments? There are other OSes too, if you think yours is (becoming more and more) annoying!

[PS: lemmy.world is indeed behind Cloudflare (CF). You may not be able to use it directly via Tor. I’m okay because writing/reading this from a different, privacy-friendly instance. Though CF is MitM, some people believe it’s necessary. Be careful, though: everything you send, including your password, may be visible to this MitM as plaintext.]

The linked article is inaccurate and misleading. Your wild guess is based on that.

Currently the best blockchain analytics publicly available about the incident is this by Moonstone, and even though it seems that the victim shared the secret key with them, nothing much is known due to the nature of the privacy coin. No way other analytics providers could tell more.

Check the original source and some of the comments there before making an irresponsible accusation like the attackers must be North Korean (or Russian, Muslim, Romany, …). A knee-jerk suggestion like that does not only promote unfair racism/stereotypes, but it helps cover up the real mastermind. Although, it’s not your fault that the article is misleading, and we can’t rule out any possibility including what you suggested. The real problem here is this confusing, poorly-written article…

Sorry if I sounded unpleasant. I’m not holding Monero, I actually use it (just like one may use Paypal), is all. Still, as you can see I’m from Monero.town, so obviously I’m a fan. Guilty as charged!

I’ve actually been “preaching” about privacy to my friends, but they’re typically like “Google is fine. I have nothing to hide.” Or about PGP (in vain). But I wouldn’t preach about (recommend) the privacy coin to regular people. Like you pointed out, it’s controversial and risky. As a long time user, I know too well about both sides of this.

I do agree most cryptocurrencies are scammy, or traded speculatively. It’s a free country, so one can do whatever they want to with their own money, but I personally think they’re like greedy gamblers.

I’m a Monero user, not a trader, not an investor. I have Monero because I use it. I support it because I’m a privacy advocate. I’ve never even once used a CEX, totally unrelated to investment. Your points may be valid for those investor people, though.

Exactly, except not “the entire”, but “almost entire”?

Monero has been largely detached from CEXes, no companies, no middle men… Many users still have that idealism, a cypherpunk philosophy, that which Bitcoin tried to achieve originally. It’s community-based and crowd-funded… Some of that fund was stolen, so we’ve got to admit that the Monero community was not so smart after all… Yeah, a bit embarrassing tbh. To err is human, I guess.

For example, we do have a zero-fee donation site kuno.anne.media and recently help some girl buy a laptop or doing things like that. Some of Monero users are idealists by nature, maybe silly dreamers or naive philosophers, but definitely not greedy HODLERs. Weird people, either way, haha 😅