Everything in Owner and a secondary phone for all proprietary work and communication apps. The secondary phone is powered off or at least disconnected once I leave work. Google stuff and banking through a computer browser whenever possible.

If I were forced to use only one phone, the secondary phone’s contents would be on a secondary profile. This used to be my setup but switching between profiles throughout the day wasn’t my thing.

I like knowing what my computer is doing and that was noticeably less and less the case as I went from Windows 98 to 10 and all the major versions in between. Before learning about Linux, simply going through the options in debloat scripts made me realize how invasive Microsoft was behind the scenes.

I know that he’s not necessarily the best resource, but Rob Braxman’s videos were first to bring mobile privacy concerns to my attention. Also, while his promotion of his custom phone didn’t lead to me buying one of them, it did lead to me learning about custom Android ROMs and eventually buying a Pixel for GrapheneOS.

No, they respect my goals and seem to have accepted that I’m sometimes just unreachable. The only thing they might be annoyed about is my GrapheneOS and Signal proselytism. If anything, it’s more apathy than antagonism. They’ll agree with me on privacy issues but rarely ever give up the conveniences of Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. in practice.

Enlighten me, I just want a bit of mindless entertainment while doing the dishes

A noble goal in mind and I’m glad that the output of ChatGPT works for you. I’m not against LLMs in principle, but anything freshly spat out by an LLM is for you and you only. If AI was only used as an aid but you understand the codebase, document it and make it clear. Otherwise, you leave the assumption of vibe-coding open.

HP also made laptops with a Blu-Ray drive built right into them. I got one for a few bucks and ended up swapping the BD drive into my old ThinkPad.

I’d look for an alternative. Failing that, I would try every trick to fake that selfie.

The cheap secondary phone is the approach I have gone with for work apps. Powered up only when needed and doesn’t connect to my main home network.

Great for my tablet which is too weak to run IronFox smoothly. One annoyance is that it’ll insist on a refresh if your internet connection is interrupted or changes in any way. The reason for it is not immediately obvious and neither is the option to turn it off (Settings > Homepage > Ask to restart on connection change)

Glove Prints

Problem: Thin gloves like surgical gloves can still leave fingerprints on surfaces.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glove_prints

Mitigation: Wear thick, textured gloves

Finally found an explanation for why my phone’s fingerprint sensor works through thin gloves.

Have a NAS, Jellyfin server, and LLM on my LAN so far. Next step is to make them available outside my home, but I’ve been procrastinating.

The firmware isn’t open source and I only chose it for the employee discount, but the blue Yubico security key has held up well over hundreds of uses and several years jingling around in my keychain.

It’s prevalent among pdfs downloaded from academic publishers (text listing the receiving IP address and/or institution running down the margins). I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also done with hidden white text or in the metadata.

What kind of CPU is in that laptop? The vast majority of x86 CPUs from the past 10 years include hardware acceleration for AES encryption so that the performance hit is negligible.

I want Hell’s Kitchen but for tech stuff - people’s phones, gaming setups, and server rooms

idk man, but I’d still much rather have encryption, even if I’m up against the alphabet boys:

• They’ll be up a creek if I escape, die, or vanish into the woods first
• If I hid a disk somewhere, I’d rather know they found it when they come to torture me, than have it inspected without hearing a word
• If all else fails, they’ll at least have to expend a modicum of effort and resources to fight me

What’s the point of life if crippling, paralyzing fear is all there is to it? I work on being a good steward of my privacy as much as it brings me joy and satisfaction, not so much that it consumes every waking hour.

Whatever it is, review your threat model. What’s done is done and there is little that can be done to redact any evidence you may have left on the internet. Are you able to stop doing whatever it is that is putting you at risk of legal trouble?

If it’s an drug or psychological problem, you need to seek professional medical attention. Many people die or suffer life-changing illness each year fearing that their doctors will rat them out for substance abuse. Don’t be one of them. Patient privacy laws, at least in the US, prevent your doctors, therapists, etc. will protect you if you go and seek help. The main thing that they would have to disclose is if you make direct, credible threats to other people.

If it’s a criminal operation or worse, lawyer up and good luck.

I’m ready to be called milquetoast, and while I see where this comes from, it comes off idealistic if we are to communicate with people in the present day in any practical way. Do not forget how much of an improvement it already is over the likes of proprietary messaging apps and how much effort it already is to move people to Signal. It is surprisingly difficult for common folk to grasp the concept of anything but a phone number when it comes to messaging apps.

I’m interested to see if anyone else has run into the same situation and found a good thought process for it. Problem is, if I need to pull anything from a pseudonym over to an identifiable portfolio, that pseudonym is no longer useful. But I can’t really justify getting a personal domain name if all it’s doing is hosting a glorified resume.

Using a bridge can sidestep telemetry that comes with official apps/clients. The services will also see a ping from your bridge server rather than, say, a direct ping from your mobile device. Make sure to self-host if you want to avoid introducing new parties to your communication stack.