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I have been using Ungoogled Chromium as my main (and mostly sole) browser for years. The Chromium codebase is more modern and secure than the alternatives. Ungoogled Chromium does not just rip Google out of the browser, it has some neat patches integrated that benefit security and privacy. Three of them expose flags that, when enabled, help to frustrate fingerprinting. Those flags are disabled by…
OpenSSH is the de-facto SSH implementation. It allows easy and secure management of remote systems. Seasoned SysOps (like yours truly) are suckers for a SSH config file - it can save an incredible amount of time and effort. Why you should use a config file Shorter commands: Imagine being able to run ssh exq-masto rather than ssh -p 2222 -i ~/.ssh/exquisite h3artbl33d@exquisite.social . Per-host…
As some of you might reckon, I ran a number of privacy-friendly services, front-ends for big tech platforms: the already defunct Nitter for Twitter/X, Jouwbuis for Youtube, Redlib for Reddit and Koekel/Searx for search engines. But no more. It has become way too much of a constant cat and mouse game and the instances had more issues than they were actually available for use. This will free both…
Today, we live in an increasingly interconnected world. People and their devices are continuously in communication with one another. This enables us to reach out to beloved ones in mere seconds - something that was unthinkable a century before. Rather than writing a letter, sending it by snailmail and waiting weeks for its arrival, we are now able to grab our cellphone from our pocket, talk or…
A couple of months ago, I scored a pretty good deal on a server rental (hexa-core Xeon-D, 32G DDR4, two 250GB SSDs) for 22 pops each month. Ideal for tinkering and hacking with geographical redundancy, as this server is located in Paris. There were some challenges to overcome first and foremost. Jailbreaking After the provider has kicked the server online, the user is supposed to select the…
I feel a bit ashamed to admit that, despite using OpenBSD on a daily basis for nearly twenty years, I have never attended EuroBSDcon. Fortunately, there is a first time for everything - I went to EuroBSDcon 2022 in Vienna. Because of environmental reasons (and the airport being nothing short of a complete clusterfuck), we took the Nightjet to Vienna. Scheduled to board it wednesday evening, we (me…
Despite being an older piece, I'd like to recommend this longread on Brian Acton and how he, as a former WhatsApp founder, gave the middle finger to Facebook. Thank you so much, Brian, for making the better choice and to protect the human rights of others!
EDIT: this is actually a repost of a blogpiece I've published years back but got lost over time I love open source. Opposed to proprietary software, open source software is extendable, auditable and customizeable. Often, it is the result of hard labor and effort by hundreds or thousand of enthusiastic, passionate developers collaborating on an idea or shared goal. Together, they make the world a…
The evil empire known as Google is experimenting with yet another clusterfuck of a technology, known as FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) - which is basically a technique to track visitors on the web, without the requirement of cookies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains pretty well why it is terrible . In the current implementation, Chrome users can disable partaking in the experiment…
Albeit having a strong preference for Jitsi Meet, I had to get Skype working on OpenBSD to meet online with a client. Due to some strange, borderline-psychotic logic, Skype Web doesn't support audio or video calls out of the box on 'unsupported systems'. After some online searching, multiple sources recommend changing the user-agent to mimic Chrome on Windows, which unfortunately wasn't the fix.…