146 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 12h \ on: Market Research for deGoogled Pixel phones privacy
Much of the "cutting edge" features of these newer models won't even work once you flash graphene. Stuff like google's AI camera features, etc.
Turns out, older phones have improved performance and battery life when you remove all the bloat and "phone-home" anti-features.
Just get one in the $200-400 range. Use the remaining $600 from your phone budget to buy a server/nas to begin self-hosting your cloud data too.
The Telegram founder will sell you an NFT that you can use to sign up for telegram without a phone number
don't require a consensus change
This is why I'm bullish. eCash is actually happening right now.
Let's hurry up and build (or rule out) every non-consensus solution. Then, after building them all, let's also consider changing consensus.
We can try all solutions at once
Agree its possible. But there are tremendous advantages to having focus. Time is scarce and so are the number of people with skills, resources and desire to build.
Builders are free to try a dozen things that are centralized and learn one-by-one (the hard and long way) why Bitcoin has to remove central issuers and custodians to continue to operate outside state control.
Still waiting for everyone to run their own website and email server.
But most people/families/orgs/businesses are satisfied with their Facebook page and use one of the handful of email providers that can actually get mail delivered without going straight to the spam folder.
Only the medium-large actors have a website. And by virtue of being large, their website must comply with all applicable regulations.
But I'm sure hosting something as high-stakes as people's savings will be easier /s
But I agree, this is probably the most bullish/realistic take so far.
Maybe the mints/tokens become abstracted away from end users.
Just like how your Tor browser selects a handful of relays to route with, maybe a fedimint enabled wallet will auto-select a handful of mints to distribute user balances.
Instead of earning "yield" like a traditional savings account, you pay a "tax" whenever one of the mints that held some of your balance rugs or is shutdown.
It makes it easy to get people started with small amounts of Bitcoin that they can immediately use to purchase things.
This is only true if mints do not require KYC. Once mints are forced to act like the other custodians, they will also require KYC.
...the privacy benefits are a nice bonus as well
Yes, its great! I just wonder who is going to actually operate these (fedi) mints in practice.
Each mint has its own eCash token that is only redeemable at that particular mint. So for a mint's token to be useful in commerce, it needs to be very popular. (Or a market need to develop that makes it easy to exchange tokens for more sailable ones).
A very popular centralized privacy service is a prime target to be forcefully shutdown. Especially if the service is collecting substantial fee revenues.
Network security is a field that industry professionals typically study and practice for years before achieving competency. You are unlikely to find a single nugget of information that teaches you everything you seek.
Instead of worrying about what the world already knows about your internet usage, take some actionable steps towards making your router STFU (shut the f*** up).
People on the internet (and those running the internet) only know what your router tells them. They won't know very much if you make your router STFU.
Build your own router/firewall server or flash a store-bought one with open source firmware like OpenWRT or pfSense. This firmware will surface new configuration options that you can use to make your router STFU.
For example, you can make your router encrypt 100% of traffic and send it to an anonymous offshore no-KYC server with a Wiregaurd tunnel. The traffic is decrypted on the server and forwarded to the next hop. Even tor traffic will go this route, encrypted again so it no longer appears like tor traffic.
With a setup like this, go ahead and run dozens of services that are very chatty. Tor relays, bitcoin nodes, webservers, torrent seeders. Make it very noisy to distinguish patterns among the already encrypted data.
The offshore server knows very little about you because it was anonymous signup and paid with bitcoin. They just know your account number, and they know every request you make on clearnet. But the hope is that the offshore server doesn't have an obligation to share data with foreign government agencies.
Hopefully, only your ISP is forced to share data. And all they know is how many GBs of encrypted packets you send/receive to the offshore server.
You don't have to jump straight into this idealized setup. In fact, its probably impossible to set this up in a weekend unless you're already a professional.
Just try to make your router STFU a little bit more every week. Study the dark art of Network Security and practice building your own defensive networks at home.
Recommend this book: https://inteltechniques.com/book7d.html
Specifically the section on firewalls.
Most people will spend 80% of their time trying to earn 20% more income
However, the rich spend 10% of their time to save from spending 40% of income to taxes
Its never been easier to avoid tax (legally).
The information is freely available to anyone who wants to minimize (what is often) their largest single expense.
This was not the case when Jimmy Carter raised taxes (for example)
What are the downsides of each?
An anon has no identity. A nym has an identity that is distinct from one's government name.
Having a consistent nym and profile picture across many platforms is good for building reputation.
However, it makes your moves easier to track/corelate.
Using your government name as your nym is risky. Its pretty easy to become a victim of SWATTING, spam, targeted phishing attacks, or identity theft if you haven't taken extreme precautions to setup your assets in such a way that they aren't linked to your government name in the public record.
However, using your government name is basically mandatory if you are trying to be "the face" of an goverenment-recognized organization or company.
Maybe you can get away with a nym that "sounds like" it could be your government name: "John Smith", etc.
What if you had both an anonymous and a public persona?
Many do this. However, you must be extra careful never to link the two identities. It can be difficult if both identities are interacting with the same social circles.
I don't know that my music publishing services could be rendered satisfactorily under anonymity
Use the corporate veil. I interact with businesses all the time without knowing the government names of anyone who works there.
Instead of clients dealing with John Smith, they deal with Music Publisher, LLC and John just works there (they don't need to know that John is also the founder and CEO). You can even register your business in a state like Nevada or Wyoming that allows you to omit your government name from the public record of beneficial owners of the LLC.
It's been "the thing" tugging at me since I began posting on here.
Embrace your inner Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde! It helps if you have bipolar or multiple personality disorder lmao.
But for real, you aren't just your government name. We all choose how to present ourselves depending on the situation. Your co-workers know you as someone different than your drinking buddies, and your church group knows you as someone else too!
Why not craft an identity for every situation instead of trying to make one identity fit all situations?
The screens that surround us may be grey, but the pixels they display have made the world more colorful than ever.
Many of the 16M colors defined by RGB are really expensive or impossible to reproduce using dyes.
Also CSS gradients and color transition animations make it really easy to create new color experiences that don't exist in nature
100k sats isn't even enough to buy 1-week of groceries in the USA. If you get rugged that amount, its not game over.
I wouldn't even consider making a UTXO (sending onchain) until you have enough to cover at least 1-month of expenses (rent, food, travel, etc.) Today, that's like 5m-10m sats for average USA resident.
I don't see anything about this in the source.
There is a section where they attempt to correct for emissions from production of goods imported/exported.
But this chart doesn't attempt to correct for that...