Mikina

My home camera was exactly what prompt me to learn how to reflash IoT devices, and set up a Home Assistant network that's entierly self-hosted. It's way easier than I though.

They’d essentially have to by hand arrest every single node that participated to the source

I may be wrong on this, but I think that's exactly the risk associated with hosting TOR Exit nodes.

If they bust a darknet server, for example one hosting child pornography, they sometimes end up with logs of every IP that was accessing the said node. IP of every exit node that someone used to route their traffic. And they do investigate, and it will affect your life, even if you are not doing anything illegal - and even that line is pretty blurry in some of the countries.

If that IP is yours, you will get a visit from police. Being accused of anything in regards to child pornography is not a laughing matter. From what I've heard, they may take all of your electronics, you will get interogated and you have to prove beyond doubt that you did not know that someone is using your computer - the exit node - for such activites. In some countries, merely enabling someone to distribute or access child porn - which is exactly what an exit node is doing - is illegal. And while TOR has been in the public knowledge for pretty long time, you may get a judge who has never heard about TOR and has to research it for your case. And in addition to that, you are now literally investigated of distributing child porn. If someone finds that out, it will ruin your reputation and history has shown that being accused of something is enough for many people, no matter the result. Good luck explaining to your grandmother how does TOR work, or to HR at your company why you are being investigated for child porn distribution or why they confiscated your company laptop.

That's why there is so many warnings on never using your home IP for exit nodes - and that's exactly what would happen in Veilid.

In general, running an exit node from your home Internet connection is not recommended, unless you are prepared for increased attention to your home. In the USA, there have been no equipment seizures due to Tor exits, but there have been phone calls and visits. In other countries, people have had all their home computing equipment seized for running an exit from their home internet connection.

So, it esentially boils down to who is handling the investigation of your case. The police can either accept that it's an exit node and a waste of time and leave you alone, or they can make your life a living hell if they choose to.

I think it's time to stop and think whether we really need all of those services? We've been slowly trapped into social networks and various unecessary services through dark patterns, and now we somehow can't imagine being without them, even though they actively make everything worse.

What was the last time you watched a Youtube video that actually was worth the time, and wasn't just a shallow content about something vaguely interesting, but something you'll probably could live without? Do we really need to agregate news and articles from the whole internet, while there probably are good local newspaper/news sites that will get you up to speed, without giving you clickbait articles? For example, we have a pretty great news company that is independent and funded entierly by users, and it's enough for keeping up to speed on world events without having to scroll through a lot of bullshit.

The more enshitificated the internet gets, the more I'm starting to realize that I really don't need almost any of it. Sure, some things are pretty usefull, like cloud storage, but almost anything I needed so far was solved by just getting a NAS with Nextcloud. The only thing I really need the internet for is messaging and email. And if I want to stay up to date, we have amazing smaller local sites for both gaming news and for world news, and those two are enough.

The more that I think about my internet usage, the more I'm realizing that I don't really mind its enshitification - because ever since it started happening, I've been just removing addictions from my life and replacing it with more niche or smaller sites that are updated less frequently, don't stalk me, and I've slowly started to realize that thanks to that I can do a lot more done and don't get trapped by scrolling through clickbaity dopamine rush made to keep me glued to a screen.

I recommend reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism . I've already read it several times, and never managed to get into fully implementing it. I did stop using Facebook, and reduced my Reddit usage drastically during those years, but this enshitification is only making it easier to just not using anything I really don't need. I'm looking forward to WEI and other "You can't do this" stuff that will come with it, because it's exactly the trigger that will make me stop and think "Do I really need to do this? Or are there better ways how to solve this.". And the answer is almost always "Nope".

What's the consensus on https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ and https://www.privacytools.io/ ? I was always just using privacytools' recommendations, but then discovered that the original people behind it somehow split into privacyguides, and both sites have almost entirely different recommendations.

So, which one to believe?

So, if I get it right, it's basically a TOR network where every user is both an entry node, exit node and middle nodes, so the more users you get, the more private it is.

However, wouldn't this also mean that just by using any of the apps, you are basically running an exit node - and now have to deal with everything that makes running a TOR exit node really dangerous and can get you into serious trouble, swatted or even ending up in jail?

From a quick google search, jail sentences for people operating TOR exit nodes are not as common as I though, but it still can mean that you will have to explain at a court why was your computer trasmitting highly illegal data to someone they caught. And courts are expensive, they will take all of your electronics and it's generally a really risky endeavor.

I really don't like WFH, it's not working for me personally, and I'm really glad that we have an office I can go to.

When did the ad-blocker block happen? Is it something recent? My adblocker still seems to work, but I am running PiHole in addition to LibreFox with https://adnauseam.io/.

This is such a cool idea, I definitely have to try it sometime. I hope the game is not dead, it sounds like something you'd need an active playerbase for. The reviews on Steam sound amazing.

I guarantee you will never find a game like the Return of the Obra Dinn. Never.

Have you heard about The Case of the Golden Idol? I haven§t played it yet, but from what I§ve heard it's really good (it was most innovative game of last year on Independent Games Festival IIRC), and should be really similar to Return to Obra Dinn.

Thank you! That is an amazing list, most of the games you are recommending I haven't heard about, and it sounds awesome. I will add it to my backlog for sure!

Melody’s Escape, Beat Hazard (1/2/3), Symphony

Rythm/music-based games are my favourite! If you haven't already, I recommend giving Sayonara Wild Hearts a try - while it doesn't use your own music, it's still more of an interactive music album than a video game. From your list I haven't played Melody's Escape, so I will check it out. Also games like Metal: Hellsinger or BPM: Bullets Per Minute.

I still didn't have time to check Soundfall, but it also sounds like a game that can be fun. It doesn't look like it can use your own music, but I think that's not that much of a problem - I preffer hand-crafted experiences as far as rythm games go.

Outer Wilds is definitely in my top 3 games of all time. I'm currently waiting for a few years to forget as much of the game as I can, so I can replay it with the DLC and in VR.