My own list of software, Open Source Everything, has taken a few suggestions from there. It’s a good list.

Are you one of its maintainers?

What does their router do that any router with openrouter doesn’t lol

It financially supports OpenWrt, for one :)

Well, switching to GrapheneOS shows that you don’t care what those companies do, and that you’re willing to fight. It means those companies lose one more customer. The more people that use GrapheneOS, the more companies will be forced to support it.

This is very bad news, because this means any app that wants your data could do the same.

Ideally, you would have zero iOS or Android devices in your household

*besides custom Android distributions that respect privacy ;)

That’s a good idea! I’ll be sure to include that in my post, thank you!

I know Proton VPN offers NetShield to its paid users. I forgot about DNS filtering because GrapheneOS doesn’t recommend using it over a VPN and the filters can make you stand out, but that’s just me. Good gift idea!

Good one!

This is meant to help you with ideas, not a strict guideline. You’ll notice I mentioned the following for the Google Pixel phones, for example, since I knew not everyone would be happy with it:

Other phones exist for this category, but the Google Pixel is a good baseline.

These gift ideas may not be for you, but plenty of other people would be happy with them.

I would add to the conversation with the questions;

I love fostering discussions, and I’m glad to see you do too!

Should all information be known?

Obviously nothing good can come if we all turn into the Borg. However, the question becomes more interesting when you consider different people. Should all of your information be known? No, obviously not. Should all of the CIA’s information (besides the personal information of others) be known?

Is all information equal in value?

My previous counter question assumes that no, not all information is of equal value. However, even if the value of information differs, your ability to control if that information is shared should not be diminished.

I had a boss that would remember everything you told to them, and would make incomplete assumptions about it. If you told them you liked dogs, they would assume dogs are your favorite animal. If you told them you got scratched by a cat, they would assume you absolutely hate cats. In this context, “mundane” information such as my personal preferences (favorite animal, etc.) is not something I would want to share with my boss, since nothing good comes from it. Even though the information has “less value,” the value of it was raised depending on who I told.

Your social security number is high value to say, your neighbor, but not necessarily the DMV. CIA documents may be high value against other countries, but it might be worth making it available to national citizens. So, information itself does not have a set value above any other piece of information, but it does have differing value depending on who you share it with.

The issue that arises from this approach, as I’ve found, is that people have something to hide from you, but not the government/large corporations. When they feel as if they are in a pool, they feel less important compared to being singled out by you.

You could instead do something similar: “Why does the FBI need to know what color of underwear you wear?” etc. to help them realize that surveillance goes much deeper than they realize, and not everything is relevant information.

seems to advocate for what’s conventionally called Security Through Obscurity

I was trying to avoid making it sound like iOS was more secure in that because it’s proprietary. The claim I was trying to make is that open source software isn’t necessarily more secure than proprietary software and being open source can make it easier to craft an attack compared to if it were proprietary. I also mentioned that there are, of course, more variables at play, such as sideloading.

In my eyes, security via obscurity is a deterrent, not a solution. It can help prevent attacks or make attacks harder, but it doesn’t fix the underlying issues.

Also, iOS has public kernel source code.

I actually didn’t know this! Thank you, I learned something new today :)

So… they only warn people about how insecure texting is after someone else exploits it…

rewrites never end well.

NewPipe seems to acknowledge this: “Anyone who’s been in the FOSS community for long has come across at least one or two failed rewrites or refactors, and we don’t want to repeat such tragic history.”

It’s been a year and a half since they made their post. I’m fairly certain they plan to take as long as they need in order to make sure not to repeat other’s mistakes. Plenty of rewrites do end well. Once NewPipe finishes their rewrite, I have no doubt that it will be a bit bumpy for a while. It’s a drastic change, so issues are bound to crop up. I have faith in them.

LibreTube uses Piped instead of Invidious. I tried LibreTube, but some subscription videos don’t show up because of an upstream bug with Piped. I am continuing to use Tubular (a fork of NewPipe that adds SponsorBlock) until either the Piped bug gets fixed or until NewPipe finishes rewriting their code.

Thank you for referencing my list! In case anyone wants some extra info: The frontends for Audire and Audile are open source. Audire uses the proprietary Shazam API, but Audile uses the open source APIs AudD and ACRCloud.

but that “logical proof” is one of the worst I’ve read.

😅 I’m not very experienced in proofs like these yet, as you can tell. Thank you for submitting your own proof, I greatly appreciate it!

Are there other Wikipedia pages that claim things to be logical fallacies that could be used to see what the burden of proof is for this claim?

I’m not sure, but I found something interesting:

One of Wikipedia’s examples of an affirmative conclusion from a negative premise (a formal syllogistic fallacy) is as follows: We don’t read that trash. People who read that trash don’t appreciate real literature. Therefore, we appreciate real literature.

The “Nothing to hide” argument can be written in a similar way: “I have nothing to hide. People who have something to hide are concerned about surveillance. Therefor, I should not be concerned about surveillance.”

I made my own curated list of open source software. Most of the software on there is stuff I use.

These are very valid points, thank you! I have some thoughts of my own, as well:

The IP address a VPN assigns is no more random than the IP address your ISP assigns

I probably should have clarified this. Free versions of VPNs change your IP with nearly every time you disconnect and reconnect, often finding the fastest one. Paid versions may allow you to select one yourself, or choose truly randomly.

Last I knew ISPs still charged for static IP address, so most would be dynamic.

I heard the opposite. If you find out any information about this, please let me know!

I don’t know if the denial of service attacks of old are still relevant.

Technically yes, but not from just spamming the ping command.

Thanks!