coffeeClean

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Why are you even in the library to begin with if you’re so opposed to how they manage their network?

How does one know how they manage their network before entering the library? The libraries that have ethernet /never/ advertise it. Only wi-fi is ever advertised. I have never seen a library elaborate on their wifi preconditions (which periodically change). This info is also not in OSMand, so if you are on the move and look for the closest library on the map, the map won’t be much help apart from a possible boolean for wifi. Some libraries have a captive portal and some do not. Among those with captive portals, some require a mobile phone with SMS verification and some do not. But for all of them, the brochure only shows the wifi symbol. You might say “call and ask”, but there are two problems with that: you need a phone with credit loaded. But even if you have that, it’s useful to know whether ethernet is available and the receptionist is unlikely to reliably have that info. Much easier to walk in and see the situation. Then when you ask what will be blocked after you get connected, that’s another futile effort that wastes time on the phone. It really is easier and faster to pop in and scope out the situation. Your device will give more reliable answers than the staff. But I have to wonder, what is your objection to entering a library to reliably discover how it’s managed in person?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Stop lying.

I said “wait five or ten minutes”. I’m seeing a 9m1s span. I don’t really feel compelled to be more accommodating than that. Maybe you can write to Jerry and ask to configure it so edits are blocked after 1 minute if it really bothers you. Otherwise if you don’t like the policy of the node, you are free to leave.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

My client says it was created at 21:24:02 GMT and modified at 21:25:12. Instead of using a stopwatch which you somehow screwed up, just mouse over the time. The popup will show you a span of 1 minute and 10 seconds.

(edit) ~~strange; after I refresh the screen the /create/ timestamp changed. Surely that’s a bug in Lemmy. The creation timestamp should never change.~~ nvm.. just realized I was looking at the wrong msg.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

Calm down. It’s a new comment that just came in so of course I’m going to edit it a few times in the span of the first minute or two as I compose my answer. If you wait five or ten minutes you’ll get a more finished answer.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (12 children)

The proof is in the money trail. If the library’s funding traces to a tax-funded government, it is a public service that encompasses all services offered by that institution. It’s also in state or national law that legislates for libraries to exist, which differs from one state to another.

If you want to find a clause that says “only people with wifi hardware may access the internet, and only if they have a mobile phone”, I suspect you’ll have a hard time finding that. At best, I could imagine you might find a sloppily written law that says “libraries shall offer wifi” without specifying the exclusion of others. But if you could hypothetically find that, it would merely be an indication of a national or state law that contradicts that country’s signature on the UDHR. So it’s really a pointless exercise.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah I’ve done the same in one case. Librarian green lit me plugging into the rj45 but it turned out to be a dead port. I might have been able to get permission to hijack an occupied port to an unoccupied machine but just opted to bounce instead.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The wifi is for public use. The Ethernet isn’t. How is that so hard to understand?

How is it hard to understand that those two undisputed facts are actually a crucial part of my thesis? Of course I understand it because it’s the cause for the problems I described and my premise. It’s why this thread exists.

If that weren’t the case, the only notable problem would be with the mobile phone precondition on captive portals.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Time to wake up to reality. Everyone has access, the method of access isn’t discriminating, nor do you have any say in it.

That’s not reality. The reality is everyone has partial access (Firefox on a shared Windows PC only), while some people have full access via both public resources.

If you want to gain anything from this conversation, try to at least come to terms with the idea that Firefox is not the internet. The internet is so much more than that. Your experience and information is being limited by your perception that everything that happens in a browser encompasses the internet.

In other words, it’s public, free for all, and the way they set it up.

It’s not free. We paid tax to finance this. The moment you call it free you accept maladministration that you actually paid for.

If you don’t like the free service, don’t use it. It not being how you like it isn’t wrong in any way, that’s your problem.

You’re confusing the private sector with the public sector. In the private sector, indeed you simply don’t use the service and that’s a fair enough remedy. Financing public service is not optional. You still seem to not grasp how human rights works, who it protects, despite the simplicity of the language of Article 21.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Could I be in the wrong? No, it must be literally everyone else in this entire thread / national library network.

Is your position so weak that you need to resort to a bandwagon fallacy?

Grow up.

and an ad hominem?

You demonstrate being a grown up by avoiding ad hominems in favor of logically sound reasoning.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Their terms require a phone so yes, on their terms.

I keep a copy of everything I sign. The ToS I signed on one library do not require a mobile phone. It’s an ad hoc implementation that was certainly not thought out to the extent of mirroring the demand for a mobile phone number into the agreement. And since it’s not in the agreement, this unwritten policy likely evaded the lawyer’s eyes (who likely drafted or reviewed the ToS).

Why would they make an exception for anyone?

Because their charter is not: “to provide internet service exclusively for residents who have mobile phones”.

And why would they want to deal with paper agreements for WiFi?

Paper agreements:

  • do not discriminate (you cannot be a party to a captive portal agreement that you cannot reach)
  • are more likely to actually be read (almost no one reads a tickbox agreement)
  • inherently (or at least easily) give the non-drafting party a copy of the agreement for their records. A large volume of text on a tiny screen is unlikely to even be opened and even less likely to save it. Not having a personal copy reduces the chance of adherence to the terms.
  • provide a higher standard of evidence whenever the agreement is litigated over

You don’t have to be a member to use WiFi, someone else could have given you the password if there even is one

That’s not how it works. The captive portal demands a phone number. After supplying it, an SMS verification code is sent. It’s bizarre that you would suggest asking a stranger in a library for their login info. In the case at hand, someone would have to share their mobile number, and then worry that something naughty would be done under their phone number, and possibly also put that other person at risk for helping someone circumvent the authentication (which also could be easily detected when the same phone number is used for two parallel sessions).

If someone is doing something illegal it’s gonna involve the library if you get caught (that’s why the phone number but maybe they are just being shitty with it). Not worth the risk.

Exactly what makes it awkward to ask someone else to use their phone.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You have, throughout your comments, repeatedly spoken down toward librarians and libraries.

Again, you’re not quoting. You’ve already been told it’s not the case. You need to quote. You replied to the wrong message.

but you’re certainly not painting them as “trying their best”

There are many librarians with varying degrees of motivation. I spoke to one yesterday that genuinely made an effort to the best of their ability. I cannot say the same for all librarians. When I describe a problem of being unable to connect, some librarians cannot be bothered to reach out to tech support, or even so much as report upstream that someone was unable to connect.

“worth having an adult conversation with instead of misrepresenting my situation intentionally”

This is a matter of being able to read people. I don’t just bluntly blurt out a request. I start the conversation with baby steps (borderline small talk) describing the issue to assess from their words, mood, and body language the degree to which they are likely to be accommodating whatever request I am building up to. Different people get a different conversation depending on the vibe I get from them. Even the day of week is a factor. People tend to be in their best mood on Fridays and far from that on Mondays.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

You’ll have to quote me on that because I do not recall calling them baddies. I have spotlighted an irresponsible policy and flawed implementation. It’s more likely a competency issue and unlikely a case of malice (as it’s unclear whether the administration is even aware that they are excluding people).

If they are knowingly and willfully discriminating against people without mobile phones, then it could be malice. But we don’t know that so they of course have the benefit of any doubt. They likely operate on the erroneous assumption that every single patron has a mobile phone and functional wifi.

 

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/8864206

I bought a Silicondust HD Homerun back before they put their website on Cloudflare. I love the design of having a tuner with a cat5 port, so the tuner can work with laptops and is not dependent on being installed into a PC.

But now that Silicondust is part of Cloudflare, I will no longer buy their products. I do not patronize Cloudflare patrons.

I would love to have a satellite tuner in a separate external box that:

  • tunes into free-to-air content
  • has a cat5 connection
  • is MythTV compatible

Any hardware suggestions other than #Silicondust?

 

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/8864206

I bought a Silicondust HD Homerun back before they put their website on Cloudflare. I love the design of having a tuner with a cat5 port, so the tuner can work with laptops and is not dependent on being installed into a PC.

But now that Silicondust is part of Cloudflare, I will no longer buy their products. I do not patronize Cloudflare patrons.

I would love to have a satellite tuner in a separate external box that:

  • tunes into free-to-air content
  • has a cat5 connection
  • is MythTV compatible

Any hardware suggestions other than #Silicondust?

 

Images do not get mirrored from one Lemmy instance to another. Understandably so. But there is a harmful side effect: if SourceNode is behind an access-restricted walled-garden and an image from that node is cross-posted to a DestinationNode that is not inside the same access-restricted walled-garden, then some readers on DestinationNode see posts where the image is inaccessible.

All variants of walled gardens are can trigger this problem but the most common is Cloudflare. So posts that contain images coming from instances like sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world are exclusive and do not include all people who infosec.pub includes.

How can this be fixed?

  1. infosec.pub could defederate from all Cloudflare nodes. This would prevent CF pawns from pushing exclusive content onto infosec.pub, but infosec.pub users could probably still post links to the exclusive venues.
  2. infosec.pub could block just cross-posts from CF nodes that contain images.
  3. infosec.pub could mirror images when the image is in a known exclusive walled garden.
  4. infosec.pub could accept posts that contain images in walled gardens and then immediately hide those posts. Perhaps a bot could populate a community designated for exclusive walled gardens with links to hidden posts so users not excluded by the walled garden can still reach the content.

Some of those options might require changes to lemmy code.

4
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/9382315

I have had no problem using VOIP over #protonVPN until recently. Connections happen but there is no audio. Anyone notice this?

I wondered if maybe they decided to make VOIP a non-free feature, but their premium plans do not list VOIP as an extra feature.

 

This may be an instance-specific problem because I’ve had no problem editing posts on other instances. When I try to exit the title and body of this post, I click save (or whatever) and without error it behaves as if my change was accepted.

Most instances take a minute or two to re-render the screen to show my updates. If the wait is long, I sometimes do a hard refresh to make sure the change got accepted (and if I don’t do that and I do another update, the old content populates the form and causes the recent edit to be lost).

Anyway, with infosec.pub my edits on the above-mentioned post just take no effect, confirmed by a hard-refresh showing no change.

 

What happens if an app uses UDP instead of TCP (or both UDP and TCP), and you use the torsocks wrapper script? Would the UDP connections all leak without the Tor user knowing?

 

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/9048075

I simply make a GDPR request. Write to a Tor-hostile data controller making an Article 15 request for a copy of all your data. Also ask for a list of all entities your data is shared with.

The idea is that if a website blocks Tor (or worse, uses Cloudflare to also share all traffic with a privacy offender), then they don’t give a shit about privacy. So you punish them with some busy work and that busy work might lead to interesting discoveries about data abuses.

Of course this only works in the EU and also only works with entities that have collected your personal data non-anonymously. After getting your data it generally makes sense to also file an Article 17 request to erase it and boycott that company.

 

I simply make a GDPR request. Write to a Tor-hostile data controller making an Article 15 request for a copy of all your data. Also ask for a list of all entities your data is shared with.

The idea is that if a website blocks Tor (or worse, uses Cloudflare to also share all traffic with a privacy offender), then they don’t give a shit about privacy. So you punish them with some busy work and that busy work might lead to interesting discoveries about data abuses.

Of course this only works in the EU and also only works with entities that have collected your personal data non-anonymously.

 

Language is important. The corporate propagandists are winning the language branding battle. In fact there is no battle because the pushover public just accepts their terms. We need to organize and define their garbage with our terms. E.g.

  • (smart → dependent) Homes and appliances dependent on a corporation and contract are perversely called smart. So we should refer to them as “contract-dependent” or simply “dependent”. It’s not a smart dryer or doorbell, it’s a dependent dryer or doorbell. Probably makes no progress to mess with “smartphone”, but anything that has an avoidable and needless dependency needs renaming. (smartphone is debatable.. maybe a degoogled or Postmarket OS phone is a smartphone while a stock Android is a dependent phone, but let’s not get too carried away). Initially it’s not effective to just start saying “dependent washer” because readers won’t understand. Say “‘smart’ (read: dependent) washer”. Credit for this terminology goes to @[email protected] for this post, which gives a bit more detail.

  • (Meta→Facebook) Meta hi-jacks a common English word to benefit a surveillance advertiser. We can’t allow this. IMO Facebook is understood and clear enough, but note that it’s not technically accurate because Meta is a parent company which has Facebook and Threads as subsidiaries IIUC (just like Alphabet owns Google).

  • (Threads→fbThreads™/®?) Since Threads is the original name of Facebook’s forum, there is no unambiguous past name to cling to. We must invent something here. Fuck those egocentric self-centered asshole fucks for hi-jacking a generic common word to describe their service. There are already confusing conversations where it’s unclear from context if someone means FB’s Threads or a generic forum (threads). It’s not just a confusion problem.. when you refer to a thread in the generic sense and it is understood, there is still a subconcious tie to that shitty company.. their brand benefits from conversation that does not even involve their brand.

  • (X→Twitter) This is an easy one. Just keep with the old term.

  • (Cloudflare→CF walled garden) I’ve not encountered a replacement term for Cloudflare that’s not overly hyperbolic. But we can often incorporate “walled garden” and “centralized” to stress the issues. Instead of just saying “it’s a Cloudflare site”, say some variant of “the site is jailed in Cloudflare’s exclusive centralized access-restricted discriminatory walled garden contrary to netneutrality principles of access equality”.

It’s worth nothing that hyperbole doesn’t help. E.g. we might want:

  • Meta/Facebook→Fakebook
  • Microsoft Windows→Microsnot Winblows

The problem is these terms are only accepted by fully committed digital rights folks. That’s not the crowd that needs to be swayed. Hyperbole does not catch on with moderates - the masses where it’s most important for rebranding to take hold. Good rebranding doesn’t deviate too much from neutrality.

  • (user→pawn) Exceptionally, I refer to “users” of surveillance capitalists as “pawns”. It’s probably too edgy to catch on, but it is what it is. Users is neutral and understood so it can’t easily be rebranded anyway. I will just say pawns to stress the point: who is using who?

Anyway, this is just the start of a crowd-sourcing effort. Please contribute more rebrandings in this thread as well as improved alternatives to my effort above.

5
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Suppose you’re fed up with being video surveilled in public and you object to your neighbor placing your home under 24/7 video surveillance which is fed to a surveillance advertiser (#Amazon). Or you want to kill the video surveillance in vending machines.

laser


Is it practical and affordable to buy laser that can reach across the street and still have enough focus and power to burn a CCD? Can it be done from different angles without the CCD capturing the source before the damage manifests? There is some chatter here on power levels.

Of course it must be precisely controllable as well; obviously no one wants to inadvertently hit an eyeball and blind someone. Which I suppose implies that the laser either needs a well calibrated scope or it needs to be in the visible spectrum so you can see where it lands.

I would really love it if someone would rig up a drone to do this, which could then go down the street and knock out many Amazon Rings.

cyber attack


(Amazon Ring only) A simple cyber attack: if you can find out (social engineer?) the username of the Ring pawn¹, you can deliberately submit wrong passwords until the acct locks. When an Amazon account is suspended, the doorbell no longer functions. Funnily enough. So people with smart homes must constantly obey Amazon’s wishes if they want their home to continue to function. Would love to see that backfire. But it’s unclear if an account locked due to failed passwords goes into the same state of suspension that breaks the doorbell. I just recall a story where someone’s Amazon account was suspended due to some dispute or misunderstanding with Amazon which then broke their doorbell and probably other “smart” (read: dependent) appliances to go out of service.

  1. I don’t say “user” because they are being used by Amazon. That means they are a “pawn”.
 

I bought a Silicondust HD Homerun back before they put their website on Cloudflare. I love the design of having a tuner with a cat5 port, so the tuner can work with laptops and is not dependent on being installed into a PC.

But now that Silicondust is part of Cloudflare, I will no longer buy their products. I do not patronize Cloudflare patrons.

I would love to have a satellite tuner in a separate external box that:

  • tunes into free-to-air content
  • has a cat5 connection
  • is MythTV compatible

Any hardware suggestions other than #Silicondust?

#AskFedi

 

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/8863199

This post was composed with a link to a Wired article:

https://lemmy.ohaa.xyz/post/1939209

Then in a separate step, the article was edited and an image was uploaded. The URL of the local image unexpectedly replaced the URL of the article. Luckily I noticed the problem before losing track of the article URL.

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