sneak @sneak@sneak.berlin

one of the nicest things about usbc computers is that you can charge them from usbc cell phone chargers that don’t do PD if you aren’t in a hurry or don’t use them often. you can leave them on a $7 bodega charger for 12-24h and they’ll be full the next day.

humans get to the simple truths, it just takes a year and millions dead first for the overton window to catch up:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/world/asia/covid-cleaning.html

why are people so slow?

activity monitor in big sur is fucked up; it doesn't show handbrake (x86_64 via rosetta) using much cpu at all, even though it's encoding a video. cpu usage percentage graphs show usage, just not the app that's doing the usage...

crazy that:

* SNI is not encrypted

* encrypted wifi traffic doesn't have forward secrecy

* the "privacy" os will bypass your vpn

* the "freedom" os is way more susceptible to spyware and ransomware than the "privacy" os

* can't download the gui compiler for the "privacy" os without showing ID

it's a little upsetting that all the decent privacy tools (vpns, signal, etc) are all getting restricted, demanding RCE, doing increased phone-home...

there's a trend here and i don't like where this line is going.

ok so apparently it's trendy to hate apple and to want them to fail?

i'm not part of that. i just want my tools to work well. all tools suck, in different ways. all tools have trade-offs, and the downsides to those trade-offs must be mitigated no matter what tools you use.

i use apple tools because i'm intimately familiar with the tradeoffs of all major platforms and the upsides minus the time it takes to mitigate the downsides is greater there than other platforms.

Apple forbids the use of the VPN apis on macOS outside of App Store apps. This means that if you don't have an Apple ID, you can't use a VPN on a mac.

You have to identify yourself... to use privacy software.

This is... upsetting.

ha looks like my instance got un-defederated by m.t.

@ashfurrow@mastodon.technology was this your doing?

if you do not sign in to the mac app store or do not use an Apple ID, macOS will pester you with notifications of updates for apps that you are not allowed to download.

i wonder if apple could be persuaded to giving out enough info for a linux gpu driver to be made for m1 and subsequent chips.

of course, that's assuming there's some way to get the thing to boot linux in the first place...

crazy to me that wireguard provides direct download links to their windows gui installer from wireguard.com, but for the macOS installer they only link to the mac app store, where you can't download from if you don't identify yourself to apple (even free apps).

if you make free, open source privacy tools, don't force your users into identifying themselves to PRISM partners to get the free software, mmmkay?

anyone know how to crack MAS apps so they'll open on computers not logged in to MAS? i want to use free apps distributed in the MAS but i'm not ever logging in to anything that requires an apple id on a mac ever again, including MAS

i have a scanner radio sitting in my office, on and scanning 24/7. some EMTs were reading someone's full PII over the air unencrypted (id number, name, address, date of birth, et c) and my partner was astounded to hear it.

turns out that most normal people have absolutely no training whatsoever in the protection of PII.

the worst is that i'm trying to donate a five-figure sum to an open source project in cash before the tax year is up and i can't even find a fucking email address for them.

ugh why does nobody put their goddamned email address on their webpage any longer? i don't want to fucking @ you on twitter and be censored, i don't want to DM you on whatever-the-fuck. you have an email address, put it on your webpage.

i wonder how long i can get away with using catalina on these remaining intel machines