To quote someone from HN:

There is nothing special about the Troubled Engineer’s setup. It’s mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube. On Android, there is also NewPipe that offers “free Youtube Premium” (play in the background and download).

It’s really just uBlock Origin, a DNS blocker, and a few other small tweaks for YT. I use NewPipe on Android and Invidious instances. At this point I only see ads when setting up a VM and open the browser for the first time and forget I need to install uBO.

Ages ago - they tried to make it all these flairs and sparkles and whatever. Maybe it’s back lately?

The day they got rid of reddit gold and started cash grabbing hard was the day the writing was on the wall.

Among the greatest heists in US history so far

I expect this was in the terms of service, though

While I expect the same, there’s also just a reasonablility standard. If Meta and Google updated their TOS to say that users agreed to become human chattle slaves to mine cobalt and forfeit their rights, no court (…right, SCOTUS?..right?) would uphold that. A TOS is a contract, but it’s mostly for the protection of companies from liability. Takign active steps to brick someone’s device over the device not connecting to it’s C2 server (the company had zero evidence this was done intentionally and a router firewall misconfiguration could just have easily done the same thing), is IMO something that should result in a lawsuit.

IMO “Smart” refers to the lawyers that got paid to write a 900-page TOS that lets a company do whatever they want.

The fact that this isn’t considered outright fraud is disturbing. This person OWNS the device, yes? They’re not leasing it.

FFS, this should be illegal.

Oh no.

…Anyway

I’m surprised HWMNBN has kept so many flunkies around for so long. He ran through senior staff goons faster than he runs through wives the first time around.

Please understand that browser extensions make you more easy to track. I used to be under the same assumption, but uBO is as far as you should go. fingerprints include your extensions.

It’s always kind of funny when the Technology folks wade into well-researched and well-worn Privacy territory.

Do you want to not wave a giant flag of your activity to Google, Meta, MS, and your ISP when you do literally anything online? Either use a VPN and Mullvad (or Librewolf, but YMMV) browser, OR a VPN and Tor OR Tor with an https bridge if paying for a VPN will make you a target (Tor bridges are not for casuals, save them for those in genuine need).

VPN locations need to be changed. Frequently. Router level VPN at home becomes your “This is me” location, then make use of VPNs on each device when you want an extra layer of obfuscation.

There’s not a lot of middle ground at this point, and it’s not difficult.

three times a year.

WTF is up with MS doing this rate limiting? I just learned that Win11 will lock you out of your own machine for 2 hours if you restart too many times, like if you have a dualboot and are doing something that requires restarts to resolve.

But…I came here just for the gloating fediverse content.

What else could there be?