Melody Fwygon

  • 2 Posts
  • 121 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoPrivacy@lemmy.mlWould you recommend NextDNS?
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    10 days ago

    Fwy would recommend it; if you feel you can afford what they charge for their paid usage plan(s).

    Fwy has used it for our own house; and it serves as the main DNS resolver for our PFSense box running in forwarding mode. Fwy is however transitioning to PFBlockerNG; and it’s own ability to block things via DNS locally; but will still be using NextDNS and probably Adguard’s DNS servers as backup/bootstrap resolvers once the plan Fwy has paid for is expired…assuming our house does not vote to keep NextDNS.

    Either way; it’s only like about $25 a year if I recall correctly. Fwy doesn’t hate using NextDNS and it is a very good resolver; with lots of useful controls and portability as well as offering proper encrypted DNS service; which is invaluable on weird networks you may encounter when using cellular service or on the go via WiFi.




  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlNew retirement plan just dropped
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    15 days ago

    @ #9; Whoa there. 100% is unreasonable. Still there’s room to start at a hard 90% at about 250 million and then incrementally scale until the tax is say, about 95-97% by about a billion.

    Unfortunately you cannot tax anyone 100%; that would ultimately be unfair and demotivating and only motivate corruption to avoid the tax




  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoPrivacy@lemmy.mlWhat is the most private phone?
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    1 month ago

    I actually don’t agree with this video; and firmly believe it is more than a little biased.

    For example, the Pixel, AOSP and Android are given several undeserved points due to lack of proper information or understanding of how certain features work. I imagine this is the case too for the iPhone; if a bit less so.

    The review apparently doesn’t deep dive into settings or attempt to maximize privacy by turning off unwanted ‘features’ when settings switches are available to the user; nor does it assume that you set up accounts in as private of a manner as reasonably possible or toggle off as many default-on consent switches as needed.

    While I would support scoring and dinging each case or instance for “Privacy Settings that don’t actually work”…this video really doesn’t do a lot of legwork and leans on the anecdotal evidence of scary news stories too much.

    Worse was the fact that the entire video felt like they were shilling for Graphene OS; which is known to have a slightly unfriendly maintainer and community surrounding him to say the least.

    No mention of Lineage or other privacy oriented Android ROMs were analyzed. AOSP too, was unfairly lumped in and dinged for specific points of the Default Pixel configuration…and yes there are major differences between AOSP and Pixel Android; even though Google tries to be less in-your-face invasive than the other OEMs. Not enough credit is given for the “On-Device” smart features implemented properly on the Pixels.

    Out of personal experience; I’d actually rate a proper Lineage OS install of 4 whole Android versions ago to be more private than stock. Not quite as private as Graphene; but not quite as invasive and much more enforcing of privacy. The debloating provided by a clean AOSP-like ROM, such as Lineage, as opposed to a “Stock Android” configuration from a major OEM is stark.

    Most importantly I personally feel that the privacy model chosen for the video is far too thickly detailed for an average person. Most of the privacy concerns listed on each card contained concern points that might only tangentally apply or don’t apply at all to mobile phones. The way that each card was scored and applied felt low effort. None of the points on any of the card(s) were weighted with average users in mind.

    I really hope someone goes into a much deeper dive; this video is basically clickbait that parrots the commonly parroted advice in the privacy community; which isn’t even good advice, it’s just ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ style advice which gives the user no room to make necessary ‘Privacy vs Convenience’ tradeoffs that they themselves could have made if they understood proper threat modelling.


  • Actually; (basically) SIP over (basically) IPSec sounds pretty correct. Wish the dense technical manuals I read had explained it that way; makes a lot more sense to me as a Net Admin type of IT person.

    I do remember reading that the protocol was basically encapsulated. Dunno about any encryption; probably there’s not any at the IPSec level. I do know that the SIMs themselves probably contain certs that have some value; I just don’t know if they handle any encryption or if they’re just lightweight little numbers for authentication only.


  • If I’m understanding how 'WiFi Calling" works; it’s still “identifying you” to the cell provider the same way; via your SIM. The only difference is they don’t get an exact location because you’re not using any cell towers typically.

    I do suspect SIMs and eSIMs are still doing all the heavy cryptographic signing done on a typical phone network though…they’re just not screaming your IMEI/IMSI all over open or even encrypted airwaves; nor is a WiFI signal triangulate-able typically due to it’s short range.






  • I mean; there’s nothing stopping you from using a car from an earlier era; and bodging in an Android Tablet into your dashboard as an infotainment system.

    The thing doesn’t need to be concerned with your climate controls or anything else on your CAN bus for security reasons anyways. So you can leave those controls as they are and just let the tablet replace your Radio effectively for 100% DRM free media enjoyment with your favorite fully rooted and flashed tablet running whatever FLOSS version of Android firmware you like.


  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.ml2 life pro tips in one meme!
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    3 months ago

    In general; I think even 2 billion is too much. Nobody needs that much money.

    At best; I think no one should be able to have more than about 500 Million. You get one house, and one car for each adult family member if you’re married with non-adult kids. Adult kids don’t add uncounted vehicles; they have their own limit. Anything that is seaworthy or airworthy counts as about as much “Wealth” as you initially spent on it minus a reasonable depreciation rate yearly as determined by the market, so no buying a thing and having it lose 30% of it’s value the moment you drive it off the lot after buying it.

    Additionally; to block too many shenanigans; wealth added by any property that is bought sticks; 3 years at minimum. This prevents people from storing too much excess in property and shell-gaming it. A company you own or have stake in cannot lend (in a long term) or gift you property in excess of 1% to 10% the wealth limit. (Depending on what the thing is). Companies may also not hold property or money in lieu of an individual personally; everything the company owns must have a global company function; and not personally benefit one or more people only. (Basically no executive-only or owner-only Jets; everyone from the tiniest manager on up should have access to it if there’s a business reason for it)


  • Now we wait for someone to build an absolutely wonderful chat app on top of this wonderful bit of PoC code…

    I genuinely hope someone does. Imagine what this could do if this was routed over Tor using Private Services.

    Run this over that; and you’d have a bullet-proof text chat. Wrap a nice GUI client around all of that and you have a proper secure, anonymous messenger with no problems. With a little more build-out; you could even implement the Matrix protocol over this wire-line and basically have full inter-federation and moderation over a secure wire protocol; allowing for complete privacy and client integration.

    TL;DR: Matrix over PQChat over Tor. Think about it. A Post-Quantum Dark-Matrix web.