Melody Fwygon

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.

They certainly make it easier to do so; by making it a switch you can toggle; which allows you to generate an identity; or choose not to and roll with the identity they’ve already seen.

Agreed.

Without concepts of privacy; things will soon fall into fascism.

(People can’t DM you)

This is false. However, you must generate an “identifier / group / channel” for them and share that link out-of-band to them." Basically it means nobody can slide into your DMs unless you yourself consent to it and forge a connection with them to do so. It does offer a way to invite other users to chat; but the other user must consent as well…which makes it far safer usually.

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.

Ah; I don’t use Chinese branded phones at all. Never have.

Phones in the US market do not usually have them, unless they’re Samsung branded, and since I don’t include Chinese made phones in that “group”, what I’m saying is true for the US.

Uh, No. Hell to the fucking no. Bring back SD expansion. Treat it like the data storage device it was.

Your beefs with Google are misplaced; because they were trying to mess with what folders were used; and with trying to protect user privacy because applications were misusing storage to violate their user’s privacy.

• Losing SD Expansion sucks; they should bring this back. Only reason they stopped this is greed.
• Yet another Nice-To-Have that is gone; but I’ve never seen any phones that weren’t Samsung with this. This one doesn’t really even affect waterproofing; or phone size so they have no excuse.
• I certainly miss this one; but the FM Radio was present back on my 2020 Moto G6 Power. It was present on my 2020 Moto Edge. This one got stolen from us because we lost the 3.5mm Jack too…they used the wire from your wired headphones as an FM Antenna lead.
• This is nice; but I ended up having to root my Nexus 6 to make this work properly and use all the colors the LED could perform. I don’t really miss it with Bezel-less phones.
• I hate that bootloaders are frequently locked; but it’s been less necessary to root Android as it’s improved over the years. There are still a few pain points; but not quite as many that require root.
• This is another case of greed. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have removable batteries for phones that aren’t IP67 or higher. If it ain’t waterproof; there’s no reason to seal the battery in…and replaceable batteries is a benefit when they accidentally ship units that become “spicy pillows” when the batteries swell due to bad batteries. It also simplifies disposal of phones; which don’t need disassembly if they’ve got a removable battery.

Can it? Maybe. It’s not impossible; but it isn’t practical and most ISPs limit their shenanigans to grabbing your unencrypted DNS requests.

Will it? Probably no; aside from the previously mentioned DNS redirections; they’re not interested in most people’s packets, only in how many they deliver.

Should you care? I won’t tell you not to take precaution, but I do urge you to consider your threat model carefully and consider the tradeoffs. When Security & Privacy goes up, Convenience and Functionality WILL go down. Balance your needs. Don’t put yourself in a state of Privacy fatigue.

Are there easy fixes? Maybe. I think a VPN or using Tor would solve your concerns here anyways; it’s not required that your modem be running OSS that you can control. If you can achieve it; that’s still good for you; but it’s not something to be sweating if your modem isn’t capable and your invasive ISP is the only effective option.

The rot is deep. Avoiding it often requires you to become a hermit.

You try convincing your tech unsavvy friends to change services, your boss to let you use linux, and all your favorite communities not to use Discord, Google and YouTube. Last of all; good luck finding that one obscure widget you need right now to make something work without using Amazon.

I promise all of the above are harder than they sound. It shouldn’t be harder; but it is.

In aggregate; 5 instances, less than 5 communities, and more than 69, nice, blocked users.

I don’t mess around. I don’t hesitate to block people who argue needlessly, make my experience less informational or less entertaining, troll, or disregard arguments made in foundational logic to push a point of view or ‘win the argument’. Similarly my instance ignores downvotes and does not display them; as with most platforms which behave similarly to reddit; they simply do not work outside of your personal, local account, local instance, user-sorting context.

This is Material You icons; and this is basically not something you can opt out of…that I know of. You may want to find a different Launcher that allows you to load icon packs or disable that Material You behavior. (If yours doesn’t)

Pardon; but I do happen to be a lady; thank you.

The homogenization of these icons has been a long source of consternation for me.

They’re barely functional as icons; you can scroll right by them and miss them; which makes finding the apps in a list of apps a bit annoying sometimes. Removing each icon’s unique color scheme and replacing it with the ‘company 4 colors’ was the stupidest fucking idea ever.

Even more infuriating is how they keep renaming the applications to unexpected things every so often; so they move around; and it’s dreadfully annoying to remember if they prefixed the name of the app with a G or something else completely different, which renders strict alphabetical sorting a bit moot.

This is why I use SearXNG; locally hosted on a container. It collates and sorts out the crap from all the engines at once. I get a useful list of results normally. My personal instance is configured to shotgun several engines at once and uses Wolfram Alpha or Wikipedia for informational boxes over other engines; if those services present a result.

My experience:

• Infobox (if applicable), Source is reliable; usually Wolfram Alpha or Wikipedia. May not always be immediately relevant but it’s usually a close enough match.
• Most relevant results (3 to 7 of them)
• Relevant results containing any terms (Many)
• Less relevant results (Usually on page 2 or 3 by this time)
• Nonsensical results; may be slightly relevant (Usually you’re 7 to 10 pages deep by then)

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Typically, using your own VPN should suffice. Depending on your situation you can do other things as well. If you are unable to download these tools on the school network in question; do not attempt to do so again. Use a public or other network connection elsewhere to obtain the tools you need to bypass their crap.

For example, NextDNS could be helpful. By running their client app; ( https://github.com/nextdns/nextdns/wiki/Windows ) you can make sure all your DNS requests are encrypted. Similarly you could simply set up a local DNS server that you point Windows at which can redirect those requests over DNS-Over-(HTTPS or TLS) to a DNS provider of your choosing.

As someone who owns a similar set; I can estimate you’re probably dealing with the upsampling issue due to an OS configuration issue. You should try listening to MP3s and FLACs at 44100hz sample rate for your comparison. Not 48000, not 96000.

In general I don’t believe you can tell any difference between MP3 and FLAC if you listen to the audio at the intended sample rate.

Meaning that @44100hz with 8 bit samples; you can’t tell.

Listening at higher sample rates with higher bits per sample; sure…there’s lots of room for unwanted and even audible error. Audio interpolation algorithms are not miracles, not smart, and not even close to being finely psychoacoustically tuned to your ears in most cases.

If you say you can hear a difference…you are lying or you are cheating by playing back the MP3 over an audio pipeline with a higher sample rate and bits per sample. Anyone could hear the difference when cheating like that. Human hearing can span all the way up to 128Khz; but oftentimes most people can’t notice a credible difference even at 96Khz.

But if you listen to a 44.1Khz signal via a 96Khz set of equipment; you’ll pick out exactly when the audio output shifts between being 96Khz and 44.1Khz.

This is how you can tell when audio is a recording at a lower sample rate. Most hardware is capable of outputting 96Khz so long as you don’t put older things in your audio chain (The pipeline from file to your ears, and yes this includes software and your operating system as well).

The problem usually arises when something is upsampled. Going from 44.1Khz to 96Khz is noticeable when you “Compress” the audio signal to boost apparent loudness. Most low-end equipment and unaware software will do this sort of operation automatically when upsampling your audio to make sure the process does not render your audio too quiet to hear. Your ears can hear frequencies being clipped or limited to a certain volume as well; which can also happen a lot to prevent certain issues. Because most people are unable to regulate this hidden software aspect of their playback chain; you can sometimes hear it.

Luckily if you spend some time with proper DSP software and/or hardware, you’ll be able to unmuddle/unmix these mistakes in your chain. It does take time and patience; and you’ll need a large blend of HQ audio (like FLACs or MQTTs) as well as your standard “downsampled” audio (like MP3s and other lossy tracks), and you’ll be able to tweak things so that everything sounds good.

Software packages like Viper4Windows or Viper4Android are good starting points and are often easy to figure out how to use and offer a very wide and diverse range of controls you can use to adjust the audio to your needs and liking.

Because everyone’s ears are different; there’s also plenty of tools that claim to adjust for your individual ears…and those can be helpful as well in chasing your perfect flat audio response curve and equalizing things to your preferences.