Given that the US government has recognized how unprotected technology (like unencrypted messaging) leaves its individual employees vulnerable to Chinese snoopers, I wonder if China is starting to realize just how vulnerable its pervasive unencrypted tech could leave it to US snooping.
Chinese fintech giant Alipay has for some years now had the “Smile to Pay” system: Alipay users can pay for something by just smiling into the camera in an Alipay “Smile to Pay” POS terminal. IIRC KFC was the first place to have it.
In China, many operators of public toilets seek to prevent theft of toilet paper (I shit you not 😉) by having some kind of rationed dispenser (a certain user can only receive a certain amount of paper in a certain amount of time) or a vending machine.
Public toilet + toilet paper vending machine + “Smile to Pay” = facial recognition in toilets.
In fact, I think a few wanted fugitives have been caught (out?) by the cameras on toilet paper vending machines.
That was something I liked about ZeroNet; in addition to it being incredibly easy to universally block a specific user, there were also block lists anyone could create or subscribe to.
(Although IIRC ZeroNet blocks would only mean you didn’t see blocked users; others could still see that person’s comments etc on your content.)
In 8 years, anyone not mainlining Truth Social through their compulsory Neuralink will captured and euthanized.
So… Zuck stans the guy who ended the Republic and turned it into a monarchy that pretended to still be a republic?
Well, that’s not concerning at all.
Yeah, me too. Never used it since.
So I was glad when Opera co-founder von Tetzchner announced Vivaldi, and I did use it for a couple of years. But I don’t want to become dependent on something not completely FLOSS, so lately using mainly Firefox mods like Floorp, Zen and Firedragon.
IIRC it was something to do with the difficulty of getting the browser to use hardware acceleration/GPU in the countless variations of Linux, to the point where they don’t even bother trying because of the infinitesimally small market share of each distro.
But I’m not 100% sure of that.
(Giving me flashbacks to the days of the Slyck forums!)
As first torrents, then cyberlockers, and then streaming came to dominate, the other P2P networks and programs did one of the following:
Every now and then, I try a Kad/ed2k client but soon return to torrents. E.g. a few months ago I tried out aMule on Linux… and got a LowID. 23 years after I first started using it, I still can’t dodge LowID 😂 It does have content, though.
Compared to previous times I revisited Kad/ed2k, some sites/services with ed2k links have now finally disappeared: MoTV (Ministry of Television), TV Underground, ShareTheFiles. I think VeryCD is still going though.
Shareaza is still a thing (at least, a fork of it is), still claiming to be the one P2P app to rule all the networks. One of only three clients left (according to Wikipedia) that still access the Gnutella network.
Just to see what’s up, I installed Gtk-Gnutella (last updated March 2024). I can find a few things in searches, but still waiting for them to begin to download. UPDATE: One just started downloading, although the speed is max 50 Kib/s, ETA is at least a few hours.
I might give a Soulseek client a try, as a hard drive full of music I got from Soulseek in 00s recently died (yes, it lasted 15 years!), and Soulseek seems to be the music P2P that never dies (and has a Linux client).
PS I don’t think Retroshare is a “new iteration”; it’s been going since 2006!
Back when I used to watch Netflix in a web browser, I had a browser extension that gave me lots of different capabilities, including all kinds of playback speeds.
I can’t remember the name of the extension I used then, but I see there are still plenty of extensions available. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?q=netflix
You’re welcome.
I don’t know about hosting costs. I do know that Firedragon is a side project of Garuda Linux, a volunteer-developed distro with a Donate page.
One thing: Turn off your phone’s WiFi and Bluetooth when travelling.
IIRC major streaming services like Netflix and Prime do not offer 1080p or 4k streams to Linux browsers, mainly for technical reasons. You have to use some tricks (special extensions or add-ons?) to get anything above 720p.
As someone who used Opera 2002-2013 (Presto era), I quibble with the “always”.
But I do not quibble with the “is”.
Firedragon (a Floorp-Firefox mod) has its own sync server by default. But “Share/Send to” from Android Firefox to PC Firedragon works out of the box.
Have you tried Firedragon? Floorp-based but with some eye candy and privacy enhancements. (Linux only at the moment)
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Friday that the department was looking into program to help “mitigate any economic catastrophes that could happen to some of our farmers.” Asked whether that would include direct payments, Rollins said, “We’re working that out right now.”
So they’re looking into a mitigation program, they’re working out a payment system… now? After annihilating government programs, starting a trade war with everyone and wrecking farmers’ prospective income?
Thank goodness the US Govt is now in the hands of such professional, forward-thinking people who care about ordinary Americans and businesses. Such a relief after those radical lunatics who used to run things into the ground!
A honey pot?
You know what… it is 😉