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phone security/privacy question, faraday bags 

@Ember yeah it's what I'm thinking, do I get cheap Chinese stuff that doesn't work, or tactical prepper brands that charge 50€ for a glorified plastic bag, or do I not even bother.

you can do a simple test and put the phone in a bag and call it, run a ping over wifi etc. but I guess the question is more: suppose you're doing a politically sensitive thing. no matter how much you secure a phone it's impossible to have a fully secure smartphone, however having a smartphone to be able to not just call contacts but use signal, transport apps etc. has saved my ass more than once, and I mean that literally as in "risk of life" situations.

ideally you would have an action group with a pool of community phones, each preloaded with contacts and practical survival apps, and anyone in the group can come, grab an action phone no questions asked, use it for a thing and return later. the cops can tell that one of you was in scene X on day Y but not which. but this would require 1) money (have you seen the minimum requirements for GrapheneOS) and 2) organisational commitment, i.e. it's a pipe dream.

so if you take your phone on the bag to a political thing, which in my view is a reasonable choice for threat modelling ("being ambushed by nazis today" being a more urgent threat than "being criminalised by the State later"). defense in depth principles mean it's still worth it to make your phone as secure as possible, put it on airplane or turn off, avoid using it for distraction/social media, having separate phones and/or android users etc. if you've been convicted of ecoterrorism or anything that won't save you, but if you're being casually detained, make their job as hard as possible and you increase the chance of the cops just moving on.

in that regard: is it worth it putting your phone turned off in a faraday bag in your backpack for emergencies, vs. just having your phone turned off.
I know that turned "off" phones can wake up and signal the towers so you're still tracked, and this is one reason it's so hard to remove the batteries these days, but is this a realistic threat model and is it worth investing 50 bucks to stop it (and will the 50 bucks *actually* stop it)

i have trust issues with:
- ctrl+c
- mentioned users only
- delete permanently

grumbling about environmental discussions 

If you bring up India or China right away in a conversation about the environment and sustainability, you are automatically disqualified from the conversation and get reassigned to janitorial duty

It's redistribution of wealth, it doesn't rely on the government being a good steward of the money (like it would if it were put into a government fund), and unlike wealth taxes any argument of "it makes it not worth it to invest into anything" is automatically and obviously bullshit (not that it wasn't already, but now it's harder to claim). What's not to love?

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Proposal: every million dollars in wealth gets you a ticket in the anti-lottery. Every month, there's a draw, and whoever's ticket is drawn has all of their wealth except 800k confiscated, and redistributed evenly across all citizens.

I'm so fed up with how game engines treat assets.

I'm so fed up with everything being made for one 1 specific flavor of PBR, with zero wiggle room or customizability.

I'm so sick of opaque formats and unsupported feature sets that hide export problems until the very end, when a tech artist or developer realizes something is wrong with the model.

3D game asset management is just ass.

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Garbage Danish journalism 

It seriously has to be illegal to be this complicit. Denmarks radio has a breaking story on the US attacks on Iran nuclear facilities and it doesn't mention any of the words "illegal", "international", or "law".

It was fucking illegal you can't just skip that part.

The Palestinian protest camp in #Witten-#NRW (Lutherpark) is currently under threat by Nazis. The camp is small so people are feeling intimidated. If you're in the area or can reach it, more people spending the night would help with collective security.

auf-witten.de/56-aufs-themen/w

#noNazisWit

@annmygdala people think I'm exaggerating or being sketchy when I talk about hyponatremia in heat waves but seriously everyone, eat salt in summer I'm serious

Lets be clear; changes to tax laws do not 'force' the wealthy to leave the country.

The wealthy are choosing not to increase their contribution to the country they are (currently at least) living in.

Sure that is a choice they are free to make, but its their choice; no-one is forcing them into anything.

They already have enough money, so refusing to pay higher taxes is a choice about what they wish to support in their (for now) home country!

They are not victims!

#taxes #politics

YouTube’s new anti-adblock measures

Over the past few months, YouTube has been trying another round of anti-adblock measures. Currently the anti-adblock stuff is being A/B tested, and one of my accounts is in the experimental group. I wrote a filter that partially avoids one of the anti-adblock measures, fake buffering, on uBlock Origin (and Brave browser, since it uses the same filter rules). (It’s

osnews.com/story/142624/youtub

#Google

@osnews lol I had this buffering thing and my first thought was "is YouTube doing a fake buffering thing to fuck with people with adblock" and now here we are with confirmation

a moment from a conversation i had 

- hey T, is everything gucci with you?
- my man, it's h&m at best

On the topic of diy hrt, & who’s often left out of the conversation :boost_requested: 

@kingdomcome i was lucky and privileged enough to manage getting on diy T without getting caught (glory to no customs within EU, so no one really caught on with the contents of the packages)
t's not entirely impossible if you are in similar circumstances, but it does fucking suck, doubly or even triply so for trans men especially in the Global South who barely can access hrt the "legal" way in the first place.

but it sucks we are always omitted in discussions of transness in general, so people don't know shit about us. hell, some people in 2025 still have no idea that it's possible to be a trans man (while being full well aware that trans women exist, and they aren't completely sheltered and isolated from accessing the internet and talking to people...)

ETA: not to mention that even if you, by a miracle, can access diy T, it's only injections that are somewhat affordable. gel is insanely expensive which leaves out majority of transmasc people interested in hrt.

On the topic of diy hrt, & who’s often left out of the conversation :boost_requested: 

Hi hi. This pride month, can there be actual convos about how fucked it is that people interested in testosterone replacement therapy, & other androgens, can’t obtain it without a prescription unless they wanna go to jail for a minimum of 4 years?

I know it’s bleak & grim. But it’s very important to discuss, imo, if we want actual trans rights. T should be descheduled. We should be saying this loudly, even if you personally don’t want it or have nothing to do with it. & this should be kept in mind when saying “just do diy hrt.” To be able to do such without majorly risking your entire livelihood is a privilege. A major one. Please try to think abt those who can’t risk it.

& in the meantime, TALK ABOUT IT!!! Inform people that T is a controlled substance, bc a shocking amount of folks don’t know this. Make a slogan, openly voice that ur in favor of people having bodily autonomy including when it comes to using anabolic steroids, tell someone you know who’s on a 5 year long waitlist with an endocrinologist just to avoid a prison sentence that u love them & wish the world was better to them.

( anyone arguing abt how risky other forms of hrt are to diy please fuck off. I’m well aware of this, & you’re not the center of this conversation. transmasc & intersex people get talked over & ignored entirely in far too many conversations for me to let my replies be another one of those instances. )

( fuck it, tags for visibility, this is an issue I care deeply abt. #diyhrt #hrt #trans #transmasc )

transition is so worth it

yup, also in such a crapsack world as ours

I’m just saying, giving it a shot might work for you too

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