Terminal stage of console

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Telegram’s servers are located in US, Singapore, Netherlands (and maybe some other countries) from what I’ve gathered. And all chats that are not E2EE’ed are stored there, encrypted at rest at best with keys in the same database, or somewhere else that can still be accessed in automated way. Maybe it is not even encrypted at rest.

    The point is, all those countries are either in 5 eyes or have information sharing agreements with 5 eyes countries. So as far as I’m concerned, TLAs can still have their fingers in those pies, in addition to Telegram’s overall shadiness and Russian ties. So maybe you get KGB strongman keeping a watch over your chats too.

    This is not something I’d have much confidence in to be honest.




  • Even taking this claim at face value, we would have to solve plant based diet issues, such as insufficiencies in some vitamins (e.g. B12), complexity of getting sufficient amount of essential amino acids (esp. omega-3) and omega-3, slow but steady reduction in an overall amount of nutrients present in both vegetables and fruits etc.

    And if we say that the answer is to “engineer” foods: fortify grains with vitamins, come up with “equivalent on paper” diary replacements (e.g. oat “milk”) etc, then we need to ask ourselves whether this is actually the answer? Can we effectively reduce foods to a small number of “key ingredients” and add them everywhere? Is this sustainable? What about the environmental impact of running all those factories that “engineer” plant-based alternatives to the foods our ancestors ate for generations?

    I do not know the answer, I’m no scientist, nor proponent of any specific way forward. I just read stuff. The only thing that I do believe is that there is no silver bullet.

    Books I find very interesting:

    UPDATE: Corrected that Omega-3 is indeed not an amino acid









  • Mullvad is trusted. They are pretty open with their policies, exist for a long time already, not involved in any privacy scandals (to my best knowledge), charge flat and fair fee without 60% sales and other dubious marketing practices. It is one of the better VPN providers, not in 5/9 eyes (they are in 14 eyes though), you can buy a subscription with crypto, which (assuming crypto was acquired anonymously too) is a good start for some privacy guarantees.

    Pretty much every cyber security professional I know uses Mullvad in one way or another, usually as part of a more complex solution.

    But all in all, please bear in mind that VPN is not some magic silver bullet to preserve your privacy and anonymity. With VPNs you basically shift your trust from your ISP to the VPN provider. That trust you put into the provider, it is still a requirement. Not to mention that a good chunk of tracking is happening on a lower level nowadays, so if you use Mullvad on Windows / any Apple device etc. do not expect to become untraceable :)




    • Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Region
    • Settings -> YOUR NAME -> Media & Purchases -> Account Settings -> Country/Region

    Both must be changed to a different region to fully switch. Requires a valid payment method from that region (e.g. a debit card from that region). There are consequences to changing regions too, so be careful.

    From my experience, sometimes you also need to contact Apple support to finish the change process. Otherwise it may just revert back.

    Overall, Amazon surely knows where you are now and it will be set in your Amazon account, I suspect there is nothing you can do.

    The best way to achieve what you want is to boot something like TailsOS and create a new account while under the VPN in that region. With a payment method from that region.

    VPNs are not magic. Most big companies nowadays have means of detecting actual user locations, which is pretty trivial if you use an app or an operating system that leaks data when under the VPN.