Happy Halloween! Tails released a small update, but it's nice to see that the software in Tails is getting updated more frequently!

Here are the major changes:

• Update Tor Browser to 14.0.1.
• Update the Tor client to 0.4.8.13.
• Update Thunderbird to 115.16.0.
• Fix automatic upgrades aborting with the error message "The upgrade could not be downloaded" even after a successful download. (#20593)

Alternative link: https://tails.net/news/version_6.9/

Introduction

Many years ago, when I was first getting into privacy and security, I wanted to see how long passwords should be in order to be secure from brute forcing. There are plenty of password strength testers already, but I wasn't sure if they accounted for the increase of cracking speeds over time. Then, the idea came to me: What is the maximum speed for a password cracker?

The Planck Cruncher

The Planck Cruncher is a theoretical supercomputer, designed to crack passwords as fast as the laws of physics will allow. Here is how it is constructed:

Imagine a little computer that can fit in the smallest possible space in the universe: a cubic Planck length. This little computer is able to test one password every Planck time, the shortest possible unit of time. Now, fill every cubic Planck length in the observable universe with these little computers, all testing passwords at the same time, and you have constructed the Planck Cruncher!

I should note here: of course this is impossible to create. This is just a fun idea I had, to test the theoretical security of passwords. Don't take it too seriously.

How fast is it?

First, you need to calculate how many of those little computers can fit inside the observable universe.

The diameter of the observable universe is estimated to be 8.8×10^26 meters in diameter. To calculate the cubic volume of the observable universe, you can use the equation for the volume of a sphere: 4/3*πr^3

A sphere 8.8×10^26 meters in diameter has a radius of 4.4×10^26 meters. Substitute that into the equation to get 4/3*π*(4.4×10^26)^3 which equals 3.6×10^80 cubic meters in volume.

A Planck length is approximately equal to 1.616255×10^(-35) meters. That means a cubic Planck length would have an area of 4.222111×10^(-105) cubic meters.

Divide the volume of the observable universe by the area of a cubic Planck length, and you get how many little computers make up the Planck cruncher: (3.6×10^80)/(4.222111×10^(-105)) which is approximately 8.52654×10^184 little computers. This is the exact number (rounded up):

85265403964983393378336097748259105456962168924502458604238495861430455049618543899011655543873668882698725826961915496774007125819288029139925501721769039231796606010595173836026575332

Next, you have to find out how many Planck times are in a second.

A Planck time is approximately equal to 5.391247×10^(−44) seconds. To find how many Planck times are in a second, you simply take the inverse of that to get: 1/(5.391247×10^(−44)) which is approximately equal to 1.854858×10^43 Planck times in a second.

If you multiply the number of little computers in the Planck Cruncher by the number of Planck times in a second, you find out how many passwords the Planck Cruncher can test every second: (8.52654×10^184)*(1.854858×10^43) is approximately 1.581553×10^228 passwords tested every second. The exact number is below (rounded up):

1581552541832778082294061053931661922686201706664570527082852925518538754570483301896790400140703419500140242637035837845567215262429787192831741927642510892782256238873773986538301349050212882962091805863577761872814550820473182

The complete equation is this:

How secure are passwords against it?

Since you know how many passwords the Planck Cruncher can test in a second, you can calculate how secure a password must be to fend it off for, say, 100 years.

There are 95 printable characters on a standard QWERTY keyboard. If you make each character of your password a randomly selected character from the 95 printable characters, you can calculate the number of possible combinations for your password using the equation 95^length where length is the length of your password. I will refer to this as the "complexity" of the password.

With that, you can calculate the bits of entropy of the password by using the equation log2(combinations) where combinations is number of possible combinations for your password. For simplicity, I will be referring to the strength of passwords by their bits of entropy. The unit used to represent entropy is the shannon unit, denoted as "Sh".

To calculate how many seconds it would take to crack a password, you divide the password complexity by the speed of the Planck cruncher. For example:

An 8 character password has a complexity of 95^8, or approximately 6.6342×10^15. That password has an entropy of log2(6.6342×10^15), or approximately 52.56 Sh. To crack the password, assuming it was the very last password tested, the Planck cruncher would take 4.1947×10^(-213) seconds. That is orders of magnitude shorter than a Planck time itself.

So, how many bits of entropy is secure against the Planck Cruncher? If you wanted a password that is strong enough to keep the Planck Cruncher at bay for 100 years, the password would need an entropy of approximately 789.66 Sh. The password would be 121 characters in length (rounded up).

A passphrase with the same entropy (assuming 7,776 words are in the wordlist, from the EFF Large Wordlist for Passphrases) would have 62 words (rounded up).

Conclusion

Obviously if the the universe is (literally) against you, you have bigger problems than a password protecting your sensitive data. This was just a fun thought experiment to see what the upper limit of password cracking is. It's interesting to see how a 1024 bit key would be resistant against even the fastest theoretical supercomputer for over a vigintillion years (assuming it has no other weaknesses). I hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it. Be sure to use strong passwords, and use a password manager.

Two weeks ago, I made this post. The goal was simple: I wanted to dig into the details of Chromium and Firefox to see if the claims that Chromium is more secure than Firefox are true or not. You'll notice I also started turning that post into an update log, but only one update got released. There is a reason for that. Life suddenly got extremely busy for me, I could barely make time to continue researching. However, during that time, I spent a lot of time thinking about the issue. I tried breaking down the problem in a million different ways to find a way to simplify it and start from the ground up.

I came to a conclusion today, a realization. I have no way to put this gently: I cannot conclusively determine which one is more secure. This will upset many of you, and it upsets me too considering I maintain my own list of software that relies on only providing the most secure and private versions of some software. I need to explain why there cannot be a solid conclusion.

I managed to collect many sources to be used for the research. A lot of the information is parroting this article which, despite having many sources, fails to provide sources for some of the most crucial claims made there ("Fission in its current state is not as mature as Chromium's site isolation" has no source, for example). My favorite source is this Stanford paper which I think does a great job at tackling the problem. The problem I noticed is that a lot of privacy advice is given from an echo chamber.

Think about what privacy advice you like to give, and think about where you heard that. A YouTube video? Reddit? Lemmy? Naomi Brockwell gives a lot of advice that stems directly from Michael Bazzell's Extreme Privacy book, as I found out after reading it. Her videos about convincing people to use Signal are paraphrased passages from the book itself, which has a whole section about it. People touting Chromium as more secure than Firefox, or that the Play Store is a more secure option than F-Droid or Aurora Store, often get their information from GrapheneOS. I've never seen anyone research those in depth.

The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of privacy advice is circular reporting. I'm certain that if Michael Bazzell and GrapheneOS were to provide sources as to where they got their information (they rarely do, I checked) it would come to light that it boils down to a few real sources. GrapheneOS, no doubt, likely has inspected at least some part of the Firefox codebase, but Firefox is rapidly changing, so any sources that used to be true may not be true today.

FUTO Keyboard and GrayJay get recommended often because of Louis Rossmann, but HeliBoard and FreeTube (or NewPipe) were options long before those pieces of software. The reason the former became so recommended over the latter is simply because people used a popular figure, Louis Rossmann, as a primary source. It then became an echo chamber of recommendations and best practices.

That doesn't mean the claims of Chromium being more secure are false, but as a researcher it is very hard to credit something that doesn't provide any primary sources. In the eyes of a researcher, GrapheneOS's word holds just as much weight as a random internet user, without any proof. I see it play out like this: A source like GrapheneOS or Extreme Privacy makes a claim, secondary sources such as GrapheneOS users or Naomi Brockwell present this information without providing the sources, the general privacy community sees both, and begin giving the same recommendations on Reddit or Lemmy (sometimes with sources), and eventually the privacy community as a whole starts presenting that information, without any primary sources. Even if GrapheneOS, Extreme Privacy, or Louis Rossmann provided no research or direct comparisons, their word is taken without question and becomes the overarching recommendations in the privacy community. They each gained credibility in their own ways, but there should always be scrutiny when making a claim, no matter how credible.

The main reason why I cannot give a concrete conclusion is this: the focus on the article was to compare Chromium's Site Isolation to Firefox's implementation, however there are too many variables at play. Chromium may be more secure on one Linux distro than another. Debian is an example. Firefox supposedly has worse site isolation on Linux, but then how does Tails deal with that? It's based on Debian, so does that make it insecure for both browsers? Tor is based on Firefox ESR, which is an extended support release with less security, but Tor is also deemed a better option than Chromium browsers for anonymity. Isolating iframes doesn't really affect daily use, so is it really necessary to shame Firefox for that? Some variants of Firefox harden the browser for security, but some variants of Chromium (such as Brave Browser) try to enhance privacy. No matter what limits I set, how many operating systems or browser variants I set, there is no way to quantify which one is more secure.

"Is Chromium more secure? Yes, under XYZ conditions, with ABC variants, on IJK operating systems. Chromium variants XYZ are good for privacy, but ABC Firefox variants are better at privacy..." The article would be a mess. The idea for the article came because I was truly sick of the lack of true in-depth sources about the matter, and so I wanted to create that. I now realize it was a goal that is far too ambitious for me, or even a small group of people. Tor and Brave give different approaches to fingerprinting protection (blending in vs. randomizing), and there's no way to directly compare the two. The same goes for the security of each. There is no "Tails" for Chromium, but there is no "Vanadium" for Firefox. There's no one to one comparison for the code, because some of it is outside of the browser itself.

I regret making that initial post, because it set unrealistic expectations. It focused on a problem that can't tell the whole picture, and then promised to tell that whole picture. At a point, it comes down to threat model. Do you really need to squeeze out that extra privacy or security? Is someone going to go through that much effort? You know how to spot dark patterns, you know not to use privacy invasive platforms. Take a reality check. Both Chromium and Firefox are better than any proprietary alternatives, that's a fact. Don't bother trying to find the "perfect" Linux distro or browser for privacy and security, because you already don't use Windows. Privacy is a spectrum, and as long as you at least take some steps towards that, you've already done plenty.

Be careful next time you hear a software recommendation or a best practice. Be careful next time you recommend software or a best practice. Always think about where you heard that, and do your own research. There are some problems that are impossible or infeasible to solve, so just pick what you feel is best. I really am sorry that I wasn't able to provide what I promised, so instead I will leave a few of the sources I found helpful, just in case another ambitious person or group decides to research the matter. Not all of these sources are good, but it's a place to start:

GrapheneOS responded to my requests for a comment after this post was made, here: https://lemmy.ml/post/22142738

https://www.cvedetails.com/version-list/0/3264/1/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_isolation

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38588557

https://seclab.stanford.edu/websec/chromium/chromium-security-architecture.pdf

https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/17vy1v5/reasons_firefox_is_more_secure_than_chrome/

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/security-chromium-versus-firefox.450867/

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/why-im-switching-from-firefox-to-ungoogled-chromium.87878/

Edit: Here is the verdict: https://lemmy.ml/post/21887275

I am currently doing a deep dive into whether or not Chromium is more secure than Firefox, and I will make a very long and comprehensive Lemmy post outlining my findings with specific sources. I expected this to take a few days, maybe a week, but after finding out many of the claims for both sides give no real sources, I expect this to take a month or longer. I will be reaching out to multiple first-party sources (Mozilla, GrapheneOS, etc.) to get their detailed statements on the matter. I want to provide something that actually covers the full picture of the issue with up to date sources, to hopefully put this to rest for anyone who doesn't want to do the research.

I'm making this post in case anyone wants to provide any extra resources they have about the issue. Do not fight about this issue in the comments, save that until after I am able to release my work. I'm tired of the constant back and forth about this with little to no direct sources. This means that my other project, Open Source Everything, will be put on pause. The FAQ section of that very project is what sparked this, because I realized the issue was far more complex than I outlined in there. (Don't trust the information in the FAQ just yet: it is still in the works.)

As always, don't just give blind support to this just because I am making promises, but if you feel your support is needed then by all means go for it.

If any of you want me to turn this post into an update log, let me know and I will.

DISCLAIMER: These update logs are NOT meant to be taken as a source. I am generalizing a lot of things here for simplicity and brevity, so do not try to pick it apart. Anything I say here is likely a summary of something that will be talked about in fine detail in the article, and so it may contain mistakes.

Update 1

I need to stop posting before bed, since I end up not being able to respond to drama quickly and it grows out of proportion. Anyways, I want to answer a few questions that keep popping up (maybe I'm obsessed with writing FAQs, I don't know) and then talk about my research process.

Google Chrome is NOT the same as Chromium

This is something I already have a draft to write about in my article, because a lot of people mess up the distinction. Google Chrome is Google's proprietary "en-Googled" browser. That browser obviously has numerous privacy issues. What I am referring to in the article is what Google Chrome was built off of: Chromium. Chromium is open source (or source available, or something like that. Please stop trying to remind me of the difference, "open source" gets the point across). Many browsers such as Brave were built on top of Chromium. Many users in the privacy community use Chromium-based browsers. Chromium is mainly maintained by Google, but I will not be focusing on that since I am taking a look at the actual software and not any future problems that may arise.

I'm summarizing things here, but I will go in depth in a section of my article about this, since a lot of people are still stuck on the mindset that Google is always evil. It is true that Google is bad with privacy, but they are good when it comes to security. They have to be, given that Chromium-based browsers and Android are the most used in their respective fields. Any privacy issues can be nullified with some projects like ungoogled-chromium or GrapheneOS which remove any privacy invasive Google components. Anything Google tries to sneak in doesn't get past those projects, like a safety net, because they take very close inspection of the code.

Security vs. Privacy

Security and privacy are two distinct topics with some overlap. As I mentioned above, any privacy issues can be dealt with by using some variants of the software. Because of this, my article will focus primarily on how secure these browsers are. I do understand that security and privacy can go hand in hand: Without security there is little privacy, and without privacy there is little security. However, that is all out of the scope of what I am researching here. The reason a lot of projects such as GrapheneOS recommend against Firefox browsers (especially on Android) is because they claim Firefox has weak site isolation. That is the main point of research for my article. If I can prove that those claims are true, I can demonstrate why it is such an issue. If I can prove that those claims are false, I can try to see if Firefox is more private than Chromium, and is therefor a better option. There will be other related ideas that will crop up that will be covered in the article, that I will research about. The broad hypothesis is "Chromium is more secure than Firefox" and it is my job to find out why people say that and investigate it.

Also, many users talked about ad blocking and the recent removal of Manifest V2, which killed a lot of Chromium ad blockers. This is not the focus of the article, but let me remind you that using a browser such as Brave lets you block ads entirely. Brave is the only other browser recommended by the GrapheneOS project for its security, besides Vanadium. Yes, Brave has some bloat that can infringe on privacy, but those can be disabled. Don't forget that Brave is open source, so you are free to make a fork of it and remove whatever you'd like. The point is this: Both Chromium and Firefox both still have ad blocking, so this is a non-issue.

Who am I?

@dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml

https://lemmy.ml/post/21367269/14283651

first off, I have serious doubts that any one dude - or even a group of those for that matter - can ascertain the security of such a complex system; a browser is essentially an operating system, with all the layers and complexities that entails.

even if you're somewhat successful in such an endeavor, I don't really care if it potentially is. chromium comes from those shitmakers and I'm not willingly using anything they had their nasty fingers in. they threw one shovel of shit too many on the heap and they are now forever on my ignore list. if that means that I don't get to access certain domains, sites, and/or apps - so be it, I'll make do without.

@echolalia@lemmy.ml

https://lemmy.ml/post/21367269/14283932

Are you a single person or a group of people? Do you have any credentials that you'd like to share that might give some context to your research?

Where is the quote in your bio from?

I could leave some cryptic retrospective answer here, and I would love to, but as fun as that would be it may cause more harm than good. I am an independent, singular person. If I were in your shoes, I too would doubt that any one person could research the intricacies of the matter. However, I don't need to look over every piece of code to make a conclusion. The main focus of the article, as I said, is site isolation. This is what most people reference when they talk about Chromium being "more secure" than Firefox. I already addressed the other argument about Chromium being "evil," as there are other projects that aim to remove some of the damage that has been done. Readers of my article will need to let down their precedent of Chromium being as bad as Google, and realize that Google is bad for privacy but good for security.

If by "credentials" you mean actual identification, no. Even if I told you exactly who I was, you still would have no idea who I am. However, I can give you some of my background: I am advanced in the privacy field, proof of this can be seen with my other project. I used to work as a penetration tester for a low ranking government branch, focusing on network and website security. I am fluent in Python and C++, so I can understand a lot of the code that has been written. I hope that gives you context into who I am and what I do. I guess I could also mention I like to keep high standards, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want the article to be nothing short of extremely thorough and comprehensive.

The quote in my bio “Unjust laws only burden the just, as the lawless will not heed them.” is my own (hence why I put "- 8232" there). I have other quotes, but that one is my favorite.

How is the research going?

I didn't quite know where to start, but eventually I settled for this: I have three notes. One is for questions I have (e.g. "What is site isolation?") that I put answers under as I find them. This means I will never be trying to fill in the gaps without sources in the article. I'll have a well informed knowledge of everything. The next note is for all the sources about the issue, categorized into "Primary," "Secondary," and "Unverified" (when there is no source listed for the claim). The last notebook is people. This one contains people and groups who know about the issue that I may get statements or help from for the article. That is all I have right now, because I needed some sleep. I plan to add a "To-Do" note, some various drafts, and a list of documents about the issue. I'll keep this updated.

TL;DR: I accidentally deleted the old repository with 107 stars, and have moved the project to GitLab because GitHub requires a paid account to recover deleted repositories. I take full responsibility for this, it was an extremely stupid mistake on my part. I deeply apologize for the inconvenience. I understand if this damages the trust in the project.

I appreciate all the support you all have given towards the project, it truly means a lot to me! For those of you who bookmarked the repo, please update it to the new GitLab page which will now be actively maintained.

If you don't know what Open Source Everything is, see my original post. It's my own curated list of open source software.

Update: GitHub was able to restore the repository! Special thanks to Seve from GitHub Support for bending the rules a bit. GitLab will still be the primary place where the repository is hosted.

It's pretty easy to spot dark patterns when you look out for them, but I found a pretty obvious example of this.

Stoofie is a brand that sells water fountains for your pet (I don't know what the problem with a water bowl is, but I digress). WayBack Machine

Plastered at the top of their website is "33% OFF Ends Today- Free Shipping" with no way to dismiss it. There is a scrolling text under the main image "FAST AND FREE SHIPPING 60-DAY FREE RETURNS"

If you scroll down, you're immediately introduced with a product with the option to buy two preselected. The rest of this section explains itself:

Other things are sprinkled in the main page, but it really is the prime example of dark patterns. I am personally sick of finding them, but would love to see more examples of what others have found. Please, share your favorite examples of dark patterns. Don't forget to archive them first so they can never be lived down.

For those who are unaware: GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile operating system built on Android.

https://grapheneos.org/

Yes, the phone in the picture is running GrapheneOS.

I made this post a few weeks ago, and I've finally been using GrapheneOS for one month. I'd like to point out things that changed, and my experiences with some of the GrapheneOS communities.

The changes

I stressed far too much about which methods to use for installing apps. In the end, it's up to you and your preference. Sure some are considered less secure than others, but it's your phone. I'll explain more about why I'm saying that later. Anyways. I get as many apps as I can via Obtainium, and install a few apps via Aurora Store.

I'd like to clarify the reason I have ProtonVPN installed via Aurora Store. App developers often develop different versions of the app depending on how you install it. Play Store versions of it might rely on Google services, whereas direct apk files may not. ProtonVPN allows you to use it as a guest, but only when you install the Play Store version. No other version of the app (e.g. installed via Obtainium) allows you to use it as a guest. Please stop commenting about this, I explained it to way too many people.

My game selection has remained the same, however Antimine is a bit of a weird one. It is still actively maintained, but the GitHub releases page is versions behind the F-Droid version, and the F-Droid version is versions behind the Play Store version. I tried installing the Play Store version, but it required Google Play Services to work (even though the app could actually run without it, it just thinks it needs it). So, unfortunately, I'll just use the outdated F-Droid version.

2048 by SecUSo actually got dark mode! Good for them for keeping things nice on the user end. Audire has been abandoned, and so I tried out Audile and it works fine.

As many users pointed out, AndBible is not abandoned. It also recently got updated. The UX is still sub par. Fossify projects are also, as many pointed out, not abandoned. Development is just slow. I'm eager to see what updates will come.

HeliBoard still has some weird autocorrect suggestions, but I made a few bug reports about it. KeePassDX no longer has the weird biometrics bug.

For eBooks, I tried out a lot of the top proprietary eBook readers:

• Amazon Kindle was authwalled (required logging in)
• FBReader was netwalled (required a network connection)
• Google Play Books was playwalled (required Google Play Services)

Then, I tried Moon+ Reader. I am so sorry, but this app is honestly fantastic. I will reiterate: it is proprietary, but it has support for Apple Book's page turning animation as well as other stuff. The open source eBook readers peril in comparison. The app is perfect, I just wish it was open source.

My music player has changed to VLC Media Player, which is honestly so much better than the desktop version. It has incredible support for use as a music manager. The only annoying bug is that it will sometimes lag for a few seconds before resuming, and there's no clear "queue" section.

I got too upset with Vanadium's lack of anti-fingerprinting and privacy features, that I switched to Brave. Honestly, I'm happy with it. It's not perfect, but I can get behind it.

The new stuff

Alright, now let me mention the new things I got to try. I wanted to try out an RSS reader, so I got Feeder. It's honestly what you expect from an RSS reader. I will say: I wish there was more distinction between read and unread articles. Currently the only difference is whether or not the title is in bold. I also wish the "Show read articles" could be changed for each feed, and not globally, or have an "Unread articles" section.

I have the I2P DEBUG app in case I ever want to access I2P pages. I'm learning about what I2P is. From what I gather, it's like Tor but... not Tor.

I tried out Image Toolbox for editing images. It's very feature rich, but very unintuitive to use.

This is the biggest change: I tried out Lawnchair and Lawnicons. It is honestly so great. I wish the default launcher had that level of customization. You can customize it in 100 different ways until your heart gives out, it's honestly fantastic. There are inconsistent minor bugs and annoyances, but the benefits far outweigh those. I'm a sucker for the iOS look, and I was very pleased I was able to achieve something in between Android and iOS. I just wish they would bring dock colors back! One of my favorite features is being able to customize any icon and name for any app on the home screen. I could make a dating app look like a graphing calculator, for example...

I tried out the proprietary Pydroid 3 app as a Python IDE. I give the developers a solid pat on the back. It's a great app. It works super well, and just has the occasional "upgrade to premium" popup to remove the "ads" that it can't load because it can't touch the internet. Good job guys.

I added Shadowsocks to my censorship circumvention toolkit. I can't find any free servers, but hey it's there in a pinch.

The community

I got some time to experience the Matrix/Discord/Telegram (they're all bridged) community as well as the issue tracker for GitHub. The issue tracker closes a lot of issues that I personally think should remain open. One I made was changing one of the default pings for an (obscure) menu from Google to GrapheneOS, a very simple fix. They closed it, which I'm upset about. I get it though, they can't fix everything.

The Matrix/Discord/Telegram community is... interesting. There's 3 people: The ones who understand almost nothing and need a lot of help, the general users who are super friendly and have wholesome interactions, and the ones who know (and/or think they know) everything. That third group is quite prevalent. They will constantly push their own threat model on you as if it's the only correct answer, and will (quite often) refuse to answer questions if it goes against their threat model (e.g. questions about Aurora Store when "Play Store is the only correct answer").

It's annoying to say the least. I try to mention as much as possible that everyone has their own threat model and it's your phone so you get to choose your own preferences at the end of the day, but that never goes over well. GrapheneOS isn't always known for taking kindly to some lesser threat models, which is a double edged sword. It's good that they have such high standards, but they need to know when to relax and let other people help. It's not bad by any means, you'll get the help you need, but it's not a good look at the end of the day.

Conclusion

That's my experiences after one month. It's been nothing short of fantastic, even with some problems. I am a strong advocator for open source software, but for a couple things the proprietary alternatives are simply the best. That's the unfortunate truth for some things. This will be my last post about my experiences with GrapheneOS, but coming from iOS, it is a super fun transition.

I'd also like to mention quickly for anyone wondering: Backups for me are currently under 5GB (not including music), and in a month with all the app downloads and music transfers over LocalSend, I used about 70GB of internet. Tubular used the most internet (about 22GB in a month). For all you curious, this can give you a nice baseline.

Thanks for reading!

My threat model is against mass surveillance. This is one of the hardest threat models to defend against and to justify, because (at least here in the US), mass surveillance has become normalized. I've heard people directly tell me that "privacy is weird." I'm not here to shoot down the Nothing to hide argument literally labelled on Wikipedia as "a logical fallacy," instead, I want to take my own approach to show just how unnatural mass surveillance is.

Picture this: Your best friend tells you that he heard rumors that someone put cameras in your house and was actively spying on you. That is super creepy, but you brush it off and say that nobody would do that, because who would care that much about you? However, when you get home, you look around and find multiple dozen hidden cameras everywhere. Think about how you're feeling right now, knowing that you're being watched. Even though you know that you're being watched, but have no idea who has been watching you, what they have seen, or how long they've been watching you, it's disillusioning and creepy to find out that what your friend said was true.

Then, you do some digging online and find out that everyone in your neighborhood is also being watched. Oh, it's fine then, right? Suddenly it's much better that you're not alone. No! More surveillance is not a good thing. People fall into the false belief that as long as it's not targeted surveillance or a personal attack that it's suddenly fine, that you will just blend in with the noise. Your data is valuable, and spying in any capacity is NOT normal. Remember: The situation never changed, you are still being watched, you just found out that not only you, but everyone around you is also being spied on.

You still have no idea who is watching you, and it's even worse to find out that it might not just be one person, that anyone can buy this data for cheap. Data like this can be used to stalk you, drain your bank account, read intimate personal texts, rig elections, manipulate you into buying things you never intended to buy, and so much more. This is the state of mass surveillance and it needs to stop. It's not a conspiracy, the dystopia is today.

Mass surveillance is not normal. Privacy also isn't normal: it's a right, instead.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20306561

Hi everyone! For... I guess over a year now? I've been observing and trying out lots of software recommended by the privacy community and internet as a whole. With that time, I've been able to slowly put together a list of all the software I personally believe to be the best for their own various reasons. I finally have enough to be able to share it with all of you!

I'm also looking for feedback. I haven't tried all the software on that list, and I'm sure there's software I've never heard of that needs added. I'm looking for your feedback on what you think should be added, removed, or changed. That includes the list itself, if you think there are any design improvements.

Do note: Any software marked with a ⭐️ I am not looking for feedback on. This is software that I firmly believe is the best of the best in its category, and likely will not be changed. However, if there is a major issue with the software that you can provide direct proof of, then there is a chance it will be changed in the next release. There are no grantees.

The sections marked with ℹ️ are lacking, and can use your help! Some software there may not be the best one, or may have many software or sections missing. I am absolutely looking for help and feedback here, and would love your help!

My goal with this project is to help people find the best software from many standpoints, and to prove that there really are good open source alternatives for almost anything! I hope this helps someone, and I look forward to your feedback!

Thank you all for reading and taking the time to look through my list!

Edit: This project has moved to GitLab!

Hi everyone! For... I guess over a year now? I've been observing and trying out lots of software recommended by the privacy community and internet as a whole. With that time, I've been able to slowly put together a list of all the software I personally believe to be the best for their own various reasons. I finally have enough to be able to share it with all of you!

I'm also looking for feedback. I haven't tried all the software on that list, and I'm sure there's software I've never heard of that needs added. I'm looking for your feedback on what you think should be added, removed, or changed. That includes the list itself, if you think there are any design improvements.

Do note: Any software marked with a ⭐️ I am not looking for feedback on. This is software that I firmly believe is the best of the best in its category, and likely will not be changed. However, if there is a major issue with the software that you can provide direct proof of, then there is a chance it will be changed in the next release. There are no grantees.

The sections marked with ℹ️ are lacking, and can use your help! Some software there may not be the best one, or may have many software or sections missing. I am absolutely looking for help and feedback here, and would love your help!

My goal with this project is to help people find the best software from many standpoints, and to prove that there really are good open source alternatives for almost anything! I hope this helps someone, and I look forward to your feedback!

Thank you all for reading and taking the time to look through my list!

Edit: This project has moved to GitLab!

I didn't want to make two separate posts for these, so I am combining them into one. The two hardest apps to find for Android were a music player capable of playing local files, and an ebook reader with a nice design. With some help from the community, I was able to find nice apps for both of those. All apps here are available to install via Obtainium. My goal here is to raise awareness for some unknown but high quality apps that I have found.

Music player: VLC

Credit: @HanShan@lemmy.nowhere.moe, @thayerw@lemmy.ca, @Corngood@lemmy.ml

I have tried plenty of music players, and most of them are either copies of each other, are lacking in features, or are just plain buggy. Despite what I expected, VLC is actually the best choice in this category.

Besides being a must-have in general, VLC actually has fantastic support for music management. It has plenty of customization, however I found that the Black theme did not work. Besides that, it has support for folders, creating playlists, playback history, albums, artists, genres, shuffling, queue management, equalizers, sleep timers, playback speed, A-B repeat, and so much more. It is honestly exactly what I was looking for, with a sleek UI and very feature packed. It's nothing like the desktop app.

eBook reader: Book's Story

It was a struggle to find an eBook reader with nice usability. I managed to find two that are very promising. One such reader is Book's Story.

Book's Story offers a completely offline experience to managing and reading eBooks. It's what I would want if I were to code an eBook reader, with a nice Material design and a minimalistic layout. However, there are things I don't like about it. For starters, it doesn't correctly read my eBooks. That's honestly disappointing, since that means the app is currently dysfunctional, but I am including it in this list because I have high hopes for it. There is also no page turning view, which isn't bad, but it's a feature I look forward to. Overall, I don't currently recommend using this, but in the future I can easily see it becoming one of the best eBook readers out there.

eBook reader: Myne

Unlike Book's Story, Myne is able to read all of my eBooks just fine. Myne is an even more polished eBook reader, also with support for downloading eBooks from the internet in the app.

It too lacks in a page turning view, and doesn't allow you to customize which screen is your default. The second one is slightly annoying because if you are offline and open the app the first thing you see is a 404 page. You can still view your offline ebooks, of course, but it would be nice to select which page is the default. Furthermore, while it was able to read my eBooks well enough, there are still a few minor HTML artifacts visible in the book. If I was able to merge the layout of Book's Story with the design and functionality of Myne, it would become the perfect eBook reader.

I'd love to see where both of these projects go, and even in their current state they beat some of the most popular eBook readers in my opinion, such as Librera and KOReader.