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Cake day: May 7th, 2026

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  • I am basing my statement on leaks from companies that sell phone hacking equipment to law enforcement, military, intelligence and government contractors.

    It’s worth looking into those leaks because they give you insight into what can and cannot be trusted without placing the burden of understanding how on your shoulders.

    Avoiding the necessity of deep understanding of hardware and software security details is important because the simpler and more straightforward security is, the more likely to achieve consistent process compliance you are.

    If you would like to understand, there’s a ton of resources out there. One recommendation to preserve mental health: never go down the arm derivative design process rabbit hole.

    I believe that the mit license is trash and only gpl and other viral licenses are worthwhile, but in case of safety or security the type of software or license isn’t the most important thing.




  • I saw you asking about backup cameras. The way to go with those is to spend 1-200$ on a dashcam system that has a rear camera and permanently wire it in such that it kicks into “backup camera mode” when you put the car in reverse.

    You have a screen, yes, but it’s not tied to anything and it’s not infotainment. All of em do gps tracking and speed monitoring now too so when you get pulled over you have the docs for court.

    Permanent installation also lets the dashcam work as an always on anti theft system. This may require some consideration to avoid running down your battery over two months of letting the car set. Most people use a battery tender when they’re not driving a car for a long time though.




  • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlNew Car Question
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    3 days ago

    Xv 20,30, and the first half of 40 Camrys were made in a plant in Alabama instead of Japan and have factory body coating that helps them resist the salt.

    The corollas are good too, but you lose headroom and a lot of other comfort features.

    The domestic production is a huge plus because jdm vehicles are basically all built for the big ten year inspection that country requires by law; which is designed to fail cars and get them off the road to juice consumption. Export vehicles built in the same places as jdm tend to have “it wasn’t meant to be around that long” problems. Nissans are famous for this. Perfect beautiful car for exactly 12 years.

    You probably don’t need a 4wd/awd. If you live down a dirt road (below the highway, as in you travel downhill on a dirt road to get home) or literally don’t know how to drive then you may need that feature.

    Another fantastic option, classic car guy recommendation, first or second gen Honda fit. Roomy, reliable, performant. More spartan than a Camry, but they’re all hatchbacks. They’re getting expensiver now that people have caught on.

    Small trucks: mid 90s to about 2012 tacomas and manual transmission 4cyl rangers unless you’re willing to put the work in to really know exactly which v6 you have because ford sold one that was basically perfect alongside one from the 70s that had three timing chains.

    Full size pickups or suvs: gmt-800 up through the cateyes. The dodges are all falling apart from abuse and that time period was fords wandering in the wilderness years when it comes to the f150. You can’t afford the Toyotas.

    Since you don’t drive much, make sure to tell your mechanic and actually get your oil changed at that 6 month mark instead of waiting the whole year.

    E: Camrys come out of Kentucky, not Alabama.


  • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlNew Car Question
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    3 days ago

    I have disabled all kinds of telemetry and radio on many different kinds of cars.

    You cannot buy a new car without it.

    Your best bet if you’re concerned is to buy an 0s model. Contrary to popular belief, this all became inescapable a little over ten years ago. 0s models with systems like onstar are still acceptable because the 2g cell networks they use to operate simply don’t exist and the system itself was relatively easy to disable and we’ll documented in cases where it’s not easy.

    Reply with your needs and habits and I’ll point you at the right model.







  • Bless Bruce but if I were able to write one sentence and call it a blog entry some things would be different around here!

    You’re talking about the French kid. As it turns out, operating an email service requires knowing a users ip and the government can implement ip monitoring if they want to. Protons response was to use tor or a vpn like theirs which everyone got mad at them about but was later upheld in court as the correct solution (email provider isn’t a telecommunications provider judgement).

    How to be paranoid but not schizophrenic guide. Avoiding mental illness in the modern age %100 no cap real strats the pros use now you’re playing with power!


  • Gotta excercise the ol creative muscles somehow. Thanks for putting up with it!

    I think what you just said is our breakdown. Neither cryptocurrency, cryptography (in its d-h or one time code permutation) or any other technology removes the requirement that you trust the other party both to perform their side of the process and to not betray you.

    It’s important to not go down that route because if you can’t ever trust then you can’t believe you can ever have privacy or anonymity except when you completely retreat from all communication or interaction both electronically and physically.

    Remember that the problem cryptocurrency solves is the credit card clearing problem, not the problem of trusting your counterpart.

    Also your proton example might be the one where some ding dong used their out of the box (no adp) icloud email as the recovery for proton and the cops got the icloud through a logged in device and recovered the proton account using it as opposed to forced ip logging but I might be mistaken.


  • I still dont think you’re comparing apples to apples here.

    A physical payment for the thing you linked (I dont use posteo but they seem to use the same cash+nonce system everyone else does) consists of a sealed addressed envelope with the bills and a number used once (nonce) at the recipient in order to associate receipt with account. The nonce is not saved or recorded.

    So a surveilling party could possibly perform in depth inspection of every letter going to the service they’re trying to surveil, record all the payments and nonces, cross reference the mailing location of the individual letters (idk of any post service that bins them according to location of origin but I’ll go with your description!) with public camera footage and make a positive id for all the people who mailed the letters and they still don’t have the ability to associate payment/person/letter/nonce with a particular account because the nonce isn’t retained.

    They’d just know you sent a letter containing money and a code to a service.

    Again, what I described is a type of investigation that is extremely expensive and requires exacting precision at every step in order to not make an error that would make the evidence inadmissible.

    They’d have to have infiltrated the recipient at the time and place of associating account with nonce and if that’s the case it doesn’t matter if you’re using the monero jetpack/ninja climb or the physical letter walk across the gymnastics mat t-posing method because the other end of the mat is jail.

    But let’s look at it from the other direction, they’re not trying to remove privacy and anonymity in general, they’re specifically trying to get you:

    You are observed through your open window from the cleaning service van across the street. When you leave to mail your letter, which contains unique microscopic markings and fiber identifiers cross referenced to the s/n of envelope boxes you were recorded on cctv purchasing at the drug store last week, the van radios a follow car around the corner that appears to be a bunch of hoodlums who slow to a crawl and yell out their car window, berating and denigrating you. You don’t respond, though their yelling distracts you from the pebble in your shoe and the traffic cameras get a good id on you through gait recognition.

    The follow car bumps into a fire hydrant and you round the corner and enter the restaurant, where the server seems to be looking at you and texting constantly. Your grilled cheese has melted chocolate in it with the unique mushroomy taste of senna. You catch the host and bartender running your change back to the office and hear the sound of a scanner and notice the shifting white light coming from behind the open door.

    You put part of your change in the envelope with the nonce you wrote using your non dominant hand and lick it to seal the flap, activating dozens of moisture sensitive polymer capsules to absorb and preserve the trace genetic material left behind for later analysis. Outside the restaurant, you drop the letter in the mailbox and head home. The restaurants host radios when you round the corner and a flower seller with dark sunglasses, an earpiece and a conservative suit on under their apron rolls their cart down to the mailbox, unlocks it and picks out your letter.

    They know that you sent a letter with money and a code to some address. If they allow it to continue on its way then they can’t associate it with a particular account because the code isn’t retained after use.