Does the “Buy European” community disregard software?

Nokia briefly had a couple devices with an apparently FOSS platform: Maemo, IIRC. Then they ditched that to align with Microsoft. And their recent smartphones are apparently based on Google’s Android. That’s not European.

If you must have an Android for some strange reason, then I suppose Nokia or Wiko would be as close as you can get to European. But fuck Android. It’s proprietary and designed for obsolescence.

I would not even announce centralized instances like piefed.ca. It’s part of the Cloudflare giant.

I have not tried much of anything yet. I just got a cheap laptop with a BD which came with Windows and VLC. I popped in a blu-ray disc from the library and it could not handle it… something about not having a aacs decoder or something like that. I didn’t spend any time on it yet but ultimately in principle I would install debian and try to liberate the drive to read BDs.

thanks!

Though I should mention my original motivation with makemkv was to rip blu-ray discs, which has complications that go beyond DVD. But the DVD guide will still be quite useful.

I’m so tired of overly busy qr codes.

I’m tired of having to search through text to get enough of an idea of what a QR code is before I go to the trouble of pulling out a scanner. Is it an URL? Wi-Fi creds? It’s not about being cute. It’s about being informative in as little space as possible. Do you scan a naked QR code without cause? Street wise users want an indication of what they are scanning in the very least.

It should also be noted that the QR code pixels will get smaller and smaller the more data you’re encoding.

You have control over that. If you want to hold the pixel size constant, the qr code’s geometry gets bigger. The qrcode LaTeX pkg includes a size parameter. Either way, up to 30% of the space could be wasted, depending on the use case.

QR codes have countless applications. Not all QR codes need to be scanned from the other side of a room. When a QR code appears on a document that someone is holding, as opposed to a sign, it only needs to function within 10cm. I’m working on 2-column bilingal legal documents citing laws from different countries. There is insufficient space for country indicators and 30% of the QR code is just wasted space in this context, which really adds up of you have many QR codes. In a corner case, flaws from multiple generations of photocopies could manifest but 30% redundancy is overkill. So putting the country indicator for the law being referenced inside the QR code makes the most efficient use of page real estate without resorting to poor aesthetics.

Also, QR codes are ugly. I’m happy to see creative people dress them up. Of course there is only room for clever artists in this space and easy for kids making qr codes to get carried away.

Fun suggestion… could be useful to have as a side hack if congestion becomes an issue but I doubt it would come to that. They have what seems to be a high-end switch with 20 or so ports and internal fans.

The event is ~2—3 hours or so. If someone needs the full Debian (80 gb!), I think over USB 2 it would not transfer in that timeframe. USB 2 sticks may be rare but at this event there are some ppl with old laptops that have no USB 3 sockets. A lot of people plug into ethernet. And the switch looks somewhat more serious than a 4-port SOHO… it has like 20+ ports with fans, so I don’t get the impression ethernet congestion would be an issue.

I think they could do the job. I’ve never admin’d an NFS so I’m figuring there’s a notable learning curve there. SAMBA, well, maybe. I’ve used it before. I’m leaning toward ProFTPd at the moment but if that gives me any friction I guess I’ll consider SAMBA. Perhaps I’ll go into overachiever mode and have both SAMBA and ProFTPd pointing to the same directory.

Two possible issues w/that w.r.t my use case:

• not in official Debian repos – not a show stopper but definately points against it for installation and maintenance burdons across migrations
• apparently read-only access for users. This is fine in simple cases where I would just be sharing with others, but a complete solution enables users to share with others on the same server by uploading. Otherwise everyone with a file to share must run rejetto hfs.

Nonetheless, I appreciate the suggestion. It could be handy in some situations.

oh, sorry. Indeed. I answered from the notifications page w/out context. Glad to know Filezilla will work for that!

I use filezilla but AFAIK it’s just a client not a server.

Indeed i noticed openssh-sftp-server was automatically installed with Debian 12. Guess I’ll look into that first. Might be interesting if ppl could choose between FTP or mounting with SSHFS.

(edit) found this guide

Thanks for mentioning it. It encouraged me to look closer at it and I believe it’s well suited for my needs.

What’s the point of spending a day compressing something that I only need to watch once?

If I pop into the public library and start a ripping process using Handbrake, the library will close for the day before the job is complete for a single title. I could check-out the media, but there are trade-offs:

• no one else can access the disc while you have it out
• some libraries charge a fee for media check-outs
• privacy (I avoid netflix & the like to prevent making a record in a DB of everything I do; checking out a movie still gets into a DB)
• libraries tend to have limits on the number of media discs you can have out at a given moment
• checking out a dozen DVDs will take a dozen days to transcode, which becomes a race condition with the due date
• probably a notable cost in electricity, at least on my old hardware

I’ll have a brief look but I doubt ffmpeg would know about DVD CSS encryption.

Your continued failure to grasp the fact that the Tor community does not need server-side support is the main reason you have failed to understand why your main thesis has been defeated. Not understanding how Tor works to at least the most basic extent has ensured you’ve based everything in your position on misinformation (which most certainly comes from poor assumptions). Then you wonder why you think you see repititon as you repeat defeated claims because you don’t understand the facts that make your claims indefensible. Until you learn enough about To to realise there is no need for server-side support, you have no hope of even understanding the silly absurdity of your thesis.

You’re just recycling defeated drivel. There are no new arguments here and unless you figure out how to attack the arguments that defeated yours, using sound logic, this drivel of personal attacks only exposes the weakness of your indefensible position further. Relying on rudimentary information sources like a general purpose dictionary is consistent with the lack of English nuance from which your misuse of terms and obtuse language manifests.

Your fixation on insults indicates no formal background in debate. You’ve used the most common logical fallacy (among others) while naming it to call out multiple situations where it did not apply. This shows you’ve picked up common buzz phrases without grasping them (implying ad hoc hot-headed cloud fights without basic formal debate training). In the very least you could benefit from studying logical fallacies and taking a debate class. But to be clear that will only improve the quality of your dialog, it won’t compensate for the infosec deficit. In any case, none of that is going to happen in time for you to dig yourself out of your embarrassing position in this thread.

I don’t think anyone is embarrassed to be not supporting tor, bud. … misunderstanding basic English

Your 1st statement would actually be reasonable enough if we disregard the meaning you are trying to convey and treat the words at face value. If you had a good grasp on English and weren’t misusing the phrase tor support to begin with, your literal words are fair enough in that phrase. This is because supporting Tor requires deploying an onion host. Yet no one here has brought up the lack of onion host. The embarrassment is indeed not about lack of Tor support. It’s that they cannot handle fully serving clearnet traffic.

The Tor network needs no support because it is self-supporting. The Tor community bent over backwards to maintain gateways on the clearnet to accommodate the clearnet server without requiring any server-side support whatsoever. The Tor community is generally content as long as services do not go out of their way to sabotage the Tor network.

It’s of course not an embarrassment that the IRS does not support Tor. The embarrassment arises from the lack of competency that led them to proactively block segments of clearnet based on the crude and reckless practice of relying on IP reputation; which led to disservicing the Tor community.

There is no moral obligation to support tor.

I realize that you have dropped the direct and accurate language (tor blocking) in favor of indirect, vague, weasel words of “tor support” because you believe this choice of words will somehow serve you by deceiving your audience. By intent, your comment is perversely naive. But it’s arguably sensible enough in the literal sense of the words because moral obligation to add an onion server is debatable. Although a case could be made for a government’s moral obligation to respect and embrace data minimization, and even to the extent of deploying onion services. But when the bar of digital rights is so low, it would be premature to have that discussion particularly when you’re not even in a position to accept the idea that a tax administration owes taxpayers any dignity or respect. Which, to be clear the lack thereof is demonstrated by this messaging:

There is not even enough respect to tell Tor users that service is refused as a consequence of their IP address. Nor do they extend enough dignity to explain to those users why they block the Tor community, or which oversight office the excluded taxpayers may complain to.

Not supporting tor does not indicate a security fault.

It’s a demonstration of incomptence and it’s embarrassing for the federal government.

The McDonald’s analogy doesn’t apply to the context of this discussion.

Wooosh – how could that go so far over your head? The analogy had similarities and differences both of which demonstrate how indefensive your stance is. The similarity exposes as clearly as possible how your claims about not “owing” quality service misses the thesis entirely. The difference in the analogy contrasts the lack of choice in the tax situation compared to the private market (where you can simply walk when the service is poor). Moral obligation arises out of the mandate.

There are other ways to handle your taxes, if you find them lousy or undignified, that’s a real bummer for you.

The moral obligation of treating taxpayers with dignity and respect is an equal obligation to all taxpayers. Undermining data minimization and forcing the needless disclosure of IP addresses of those contributing to the revenue service is indefensible and morally reprehensible. You’ve wholly failed in your effort to support the needless and intrusive practice of reckless forced disclosure of personal information irrelevant to the tax obligation.

Nobody owes you tor access. Nobody is obligated to allow tor access.

You continue with this useless claim. There are legal obligations. Then there are moral obligations. It’s an attempt at the equivocation fallacy to state a fact that is true of one meaning while the other is implied to the contrary. But more importantly, the arguement fails to counter the thesis. If someone says McDonald’s burgers are poor quality, and you come along and say “McDonald’s does not owe you good quality food”, it’s as if you are trying despirately and emotionally to defeat the critic with an argument using an claim that misses the thesis (that the burgers are poor quality). Citing incompetent security does not in itself inherently impose obligation. Obligation can be argued either way depending on which side of the meaning under the equivocation fallacy refers to. But the more important thesis remains: that service quality is poor due to a deficiency of competence.

You have options, you’re just refusing to use them

Unlike telling the burger consumer they have “options”, tax is not optional. Everyone is obligated one way or another to interact with the tax authority. So when service quality is poor, the option to walk is not there. It’s a mandate that you are trying to dress up as if taxpayers are given autonomy. Autonomy is compromised when forced to choose between lousy or undignified options therein.

Really recommend you go look at a dictionary, thesaurus, and some introductory material on security.

You absolutely should not be giving anyone infosec advice; most particularly given these rudimentary and arbitrary information sources, respectively.

You have to go out of your way to have your access reduced.

That would only be true of someone without a Tor setup to begin with. Some of us have Tor baked into our scripts and apps to the extent that using clearnet is going out of our way.

There are endless ways to achieve that and tor is just one of them.

They all have benefits and drawbacks, some cost money, some entail more effort, etc.

Besides the sigint opportunities on tor aren’t as minimal as you want them to be.

It serves the purpose for the case at hand.

Also, you’re connecting to the site and acting in behalf of yourself.

Only if you login, which is often not the case for irs.gov.

I’m at a loss why this should rank at all in the context of a tidal wave of measurable abuses.

Read the sidebar. It’s a service that is essential and intended for the whole pulblic. As the digital transformation forces people do perform transactions with public agencies, those agencies are progressively removing offline options. Exclusivity is trending as a consequence. Essential public services should be inclusive and open to all.