diyrebel

The metadata in the headers can be avoided using Memoryhole and similar protocols which embed the headers inside the encrypted payload. The problem is again barrier to entry. Low-tech users generally can’t even handle app installs on desktops.

When you say “worry”, that’s not the right word for it. My boycott against Google is not fear-driven. I will not feed Google anything it can profit from as an ethical stance. Even if an expert linux tor user were on Google, I’m not sure we could exchange email in a way that ensures Google gets no profitable data. If we use PGP coupled with Memoryhole to strip out the headers, I’m not sure Google would accept a msg with a missing or bogus From: header. But if so, Google still possibly learns the user’s timezone. Though that may be useless if Google learns nothing else about that user. But we’re talking obscure corner cases at this point. Such an expert user would have no Google dependency anyway.

MS/google-dependent friends are generally extremely low-tech. They don’t know the difference between Firefox and the Internet. They don’t know the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet. Linux -- what’s linux? They would say. At best, they just think of it as a mysterious nerd tool to be avoided. So what can I do wholly on my end to reach them via gmail without Google getting a shred of profitable data? Nothing really. So I just don’t connect directly with a large segment of friends and family. Some of them are probably no longer reachable. Some are in touch with people who connect to me via XMPP, so sometimes info/msgs get proxied through the few XMPP users. It’s still a shitshow because Google still gets fed through that proxied inner circle of friends and family. In the past when someone needed to reach me directly, they would create a Hushmail or Protonmail mail account for that temporary purpose (like coordinating a trip somewhere). But that option is mostly dead.

I just had to reach out to plumbers for quotes. All of them are gmail-served. All I could do is refuse to share my email address and push them to use analog mechanisms. They are not hungry enough for business to alter their online workflow or create protonmail accounts.

That’s exactly what I did with hushmail. I would tell low-tech folks to get a hushmail account then I would use hushtools.com to do all the key management, putting my key on the keyring and grabbing their key. So the other person did not need to know anything or take any special steps. That was best option of my time. But last time I checked hushmail was still entirely non-gratis.

Protonmail emerged when HM became non-gratis and messed with hushtools. But PM requires every one of their own users to do key management which creates a barrier to entry. I would have to walk a PM user through adding my key to my record in their address book and walk them through sending me their key. That effort is a show stopper for many. I might as well walk them through setting up a PGP-capable MUA. But then if they keep their gmail or MS acct the metadata still feeds those corps.

This simple answer is no doubt the most overlooked; probably as a consequence of the tyranny of convenience.. people too lazy to go to the library.

I give out my XMPP address and offer Snikket accounts. Some go along with it and some do not. I lost touch with some friends. Some people are in contact via phone but that’s not ideal some connections are lost as phone numbers change.

I used to push some people toward Hushmail until they dropped the gratis plans. Then for a while I pressured people onto Protonmail but then distanced myself from PM when the brought in Google reCAPTCHAs and killed off Hydroxide. Tuta is a non-starter because Tuta’s variety of e2ee is incompatible with open standards, thus forcing me to periodically login to a web UI (also due to them sabotaging their Android app by way of forced obsolescence pushed in the most incompetent way).

So it’s a shitty state of affairs. 2024 and simply sending a msg to someone has become a total shitshow.

I refuse to fund my oppressors

Bingo. I live by this philosophy.

Although more precisely: I refuse to ~~fund~~ feed my oppressors. The reason for s/fund/feed/ swap is that our oppressors profit from our data too. So e.g. I won’t even email a gmail user because my data would then feed Google (an oppressor because of how they dictate e-mail terms among other oppressions).

The others are right. Trying to stream from a torrent seems wasteful and complex.

But if you must for some strange reason, perhaps it would work to use webtor.io to produce an http-reachable audio file which could be curl/wget-fetched and piped to an audio decoder/player. I doubt you could make webtor fetch pieces linearly from the beginning. You would likely have to wait until the last piece is fetched to start streaming.

I’ve not fetched subtitles in a while but back when I did, I recall all the websites hosting them were extremely protectionist… more so than any other category of content on the web.

Of course the fix is to have torrents for the subtitle collections, perhaps by language.

Hopefully he asks you to audit a tool you might enjoy using or contributing to.

Sounds good.. will be interesting to see if @scratchandgame@lemmy.ml takes you up on the offer!

lemmy.ml (formerly dev.lemmy.ml) was centralized by Cloudflare (after the renaming iirc). It was an embarrassment that the flagship instance was so antithetical to Fedi philosophy. Perhaps due to that well-placed criticism, lemmy.ml eventually dropped CF. But lemmy.ml is still today centralized by disproportionate size. There is also copious political baggage with those admins which has helped drive people off (thus beneficial shrinkage) but which ultimately enabled/led lemmy.world to become the biggest most centralized instance (which is centralized by both factors: Cloudflare and disproportionate size).

In the big scheme of things, AFAICT beehaw is federated and reachable from other Fedi-principles-respecting instances. I can reach it from other non-walled-garden instances I listed. Grouping beehaw with the walled garden instances is a weird place to draw a line. I’ve only heard about beehaw defederating from instances that are antithetical to the fediverse spirit. But I only know w.r.t the big instances.. feel free to point out counter examples. There probably wouldn’t be much chatter about defederation from small instances.

The biggest problem is self-contradiction. These two statements are incompatible:

• “This [auditing] is NOT the most important benefit.”
• “‘open source’ is good, firstly, because it permits auditing the source code”

@loudWaterHombre@lemmy.dbzer0.com or @loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com can audit for you.

Seriously, that’s what you’re missing. Bob the non-coder can trust Microsoft not to plant spyware in MS products, or Bob can trust some portion of the public (limited to ~8 billion people) to audit the code. It’s easier to trust the public than it is to trust a corporation. It’s not just about quantity of eyes, but having eyes that are more aligned with your interests.