People who recommend NOT connecting to a VPN before connecting to Tor: why?
#Tor #VPN #privacy #privacyMatters #infosec
My friendica <-> Bluesky config yesterday had something wrong but today it appears to be functional. I think I've learned something for the reference on configuring this integration.
My hope is that this posts to Bluesky this time.
like this
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Sweary self compassion reminders...
For me today, self compassion looks like Futurama, rest, letting myself cry, and trying to be OK with being exhausted, "useless", and emotional.
It's hard. Fucking hard. But slowly getting easier.
#SwearingHeals #SelfCompassionIsNOTSelfIndulgence
Little Hearts
Little Hearts - Jadyn Rylee
In 2019, Jadyn released her first album at the age of 13. Recorded out of Clarksville TN with Curt Ryle (George Jones/Taylor Swift). Since that time Jadyn h...YouTube
To Be A Man
Dax - "To Be A Man" Remix (Feat. Darius Rucker) [Official Video]
[LYRICS BELOW] "To Be a Man" is making an IMPACT. I truly believe there are millions more to touch with this song. I travelled to Nashville to complete this ...YouTube
Do we have any BBC Micro programmers here? I have a stack of BBC Micro programming books that I want to give away! Collect from north Bristol (UK)
UPDATE: the books have now gone to a new home! Thanks to all who boosted and replied
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Cardiovascular health risks continue to grow within Black communities, action needed
DALLAS, Feb. 7, 2025 โ The American Heart Association's 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistical Update reports that while progress has been made in reducing cardiovascular and cerebral health disparities, Black communities in the United States ...American Heart Association
The U.S. Is Not Ready for Bird Flu in Humans
Bird flu is infecting more people than we think. We need to stop it now before a new pandemic begins
Right after President Donald Trump took office, amid the flurry of executive orders and agency upheavals, the administration told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to release any reports or communications until one of Trumpโs people could take a look at them. Among the many reports not released that week was a study on how many veterinarians had gotten bird flu.
And it's getting LESS ready by the day. Over 1,200 CDC epidemic-focused staff, researchers and post-docs, have been laid off now. Because, reasons...
statnews.com/2025/02/14/federaโฆ
Edit: Source.
Federal employee layoffs reach into HHS health agencies | STAT
Day after RFK Jr. becomes health secretary, layoffs roil HHS agencies, including the CDC, global leader in disease control, and NIH, top research funder.Matthew Herper (STAT)
@PeterLG Trump is just tired of other countries getting credit for the really big pandmics. "Spanish flu"? "Chinese virus'? What ever happened to good old American know-how?!
We should name the imminent bird flu pandemic after him. Well, maybe not directly. We could call it the Orange Shitgibbon Flu or something.
JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europeโs leaders
US vice-president questions whether European values are worth defending as he rails against โthreat from withinโPatrick Wintour (The Guardian)
Ken Gahagan likes this.
You canโt tell me these people are doing this for free. Bullshit, they are getting paid. By who?
Elonโs trollsโฆ The full list as of nowโฆ
projects.propublica.org/elon-mโฆ
Elon Muskโs Demolition Crew
Elon Musk, the worldโs richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. ProPublica is attempting to document who is working with him and what they are doing.ProPublica
Ken Gahagan reshared this.
Bringing this highly requested feature to #Mastodon and the fediverse is not as trivial as some might think, but quote posts are coming. Here is our latest write-up about our progress:
blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/โฆ
Bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon
Sharing our thinking and progress on bringing Quote Posts to Mastodon, with a goal to create a safe and respectful space for everyone.Mastodon Blog
I'd rather we have something like the ability to share a post but with a pointer to a reply. So it looks like a QP but only to your followers. To everyone else, it is a reply. And this means it stays attached but subservient to the OP.
I'd also like to see all replies rankable ala reddit. This would give us something like Community Notes, where the top responses are show up right under the OP. And the worst stuff for popular posts would be easily ignored.
I assume you'd still be able to link to a post, it just wouldn't show up like a QP. You'd still be able to do what you do now when QPs don't exist on mastodon.
I made this my dating site profile.
โThis could be us.โ
Me: *puts up curtains so the dogs don't loiter by the all-glass balcony door, barking at everything that moves*
The dogs:
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φ likes this.
φ likes this.
@๐ธ lily ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ ฮธฮ โ & โ @ฯ @win Thank you, I am well aware of that. I am a developer. What I was trying to explain to you is that as @ฯ @win mentioned they could see the changes that the schemes caused to the tags, and you could not. So they are obviously using a client that uses a webview. So the css propagates. You are likely not using a client that uses a webview, or the webview in your client supplies its own css.
This is not uncommon at all.
Now, as I mentioned, of course the transport does not use css. That is not were the view is established or maintained.
Now anything that I view from other sources on my view will only be rendered against my theme. Though this obviously was not the case for the akkoma client being used by the person that asked me why the tags looked like that. The only thing that makes the tags look like that is the css files in the scheme I added.
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@x@whatever instead of being converted into href.)Unus Nemo likes this.
curl -X GET -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://kitsunes.club/notes/a1fcn3gzv6 | jq{
"content": "<p>dododo</p>",
"_misskey_content": "dododo",
"source": {
"content": "dododo",
"mediaType": "text/x.misskeymarkdown"
}
}Akatsuki Levi likes this.
text/x.misskeymarkdown thing2. how can you run that? don't you need authorised fetch?
i think we're just misunderstanding each other. i thought we were talking about css files on your server that style the posts.
On the other hand you could use a gtkview, or the Qt equivalent, that would parse the html and css
you wouldn't need to. there's no point loading the entire frontend just to parse a post when you can use the api
The other thing that gets me is that if it was a friendica the gtkview idea could make sense though why would a akkoma client be using the friendica api?
it's not, it's using its own api. it could be that akkoma's html sanitiser just left the html that your server federated pretty much as is, whereas misskey's did something more drastic to it (i haven't seen you use post formatting, i'm not sure what it would do in that case)
Unus Nemo likes this.
@๐ธ lily ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ ฮธฮ โ & โ @ฯ @win Well over my weekend (which is Saturday to next Tuesday) I will be looking more at the code base and api. If I find anything interesting I will bounce it off you ;).
Take Care!
@๐ธ lily ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ ฮธฮ โ & โ @ฯ @win I just got off a 12 hour shift that I have a 1 hour (one way) commute to. So forgive me if I am doing a horrible job of explaining what I mean. I am exhausted, so I am going to get some rack.
Take Care!
๐ธ lily ๐ณ๏ธโง๏ธ θΔ โ & ∞ likes this.
Every time I log into Fedi, I see another post with a guide called something like "Activist's Guide to Smartphones" or "Phone Security Guide for Protesters," and every single one of these assumes that the threat model is the kind of police force that exists under liberal democracy where the law will afford significant protections to protesters. The world is changing, and these guides not only fail to address the threat of an actively hostile fascistic anti-democratic occupying force (I refer here to the police), but such guides generally are limited to "what" and "how" but miss the more critical "why."
If you believe that you are facing fascism (or even something close to it), can I please please please convince you to read something written by anarchists who have faced serious repression and are trying to convey just how much phones can lead to the imprisonment of you and your friends for even things that are allegedly "legal."
opsec.riotmedicine.net/downloaโฆ
G. Gibson reshared this.
Happy Valentines Day to everyone on Fedi. I want you to know that I love you all in a deeply weird and sexy way. Let's get married and run away together and live on an island and feed each other coconuts. Or hide in an abandoned library and read long lost moss-covered books to one another. I hope you are better than TERRIFIC today and am beaming you all the very best. You can't avoid it I'm afraid. It'll find you and it's going to get you. Hurrah!
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Hahaha. Shelly you know it's meant figuratively and always gives me a little laugh to say stuff like that. But I am full of love and light for everyone here and I would whisk you all (AND JONATHAN) away to live in paradise if I could. Given the wealth of some of those guys we hear so much about I would create a real actual Fediverse. An archipelago - perhaps the Hawaiian Archipelago - of 137 'instances', with a complex series of bridges built between them depending on who they choose to federate with. And we'd all live happily ever after, free from the shackles of capitalism and the horrors of humanity. Hooray!
my solution to every problem is to just switch to linux
computer too slow? switch to linux
networking not working? switch to linux
unable to find driver for HP deskjet printer? switch to linux
bleeding? switch to linux
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MUTUAL AID REQUEST
We haven't quite covered Jan bills but it's time to start fundraising for Feb rent + survival. Y'all have pledged $279/mo which is a fantastic start! A monthly gift, one-time donation, or boost can help our lil family + support my activism/advocacy work.
2404/5000
venmo/cashapp:
nullagent
#mutualaid #mutualaidrequest #blackmastodon #blackmutualaid #queermutualaid #disabledmutualaid #blackcrowdfund #helpfolkslive2025
Support nullagent on Ko-fi! โค๏ธ. ko-fi.com/nullagent
Support nullagent's work with a donationKo-fi
URGENT #MUTUALAID
THREE DAYS LEFT to reach Feb goal! $200 credit card bill due tomorrow and about to get pummeled by March bills.
3170/5000
cashapp/venmo: nullagent
#blackmutualaid #mutualaidrequest #blackmastodon #helpfolkslive2025 #queermutualaid #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #helppeoplelive2025 #crowdfund #crowdfunding #blackcreator #blackbusiness #blacklivesmatter #blm #solidarity #anarchism #anarchy #anarchist
Support nullagent on Ko-fi! โค๏ธ. ko-fi.com/nullagent
Support nullagent's work with a donationKo-fi
URGENT #MUTUALAID
TWO DAYS left of Feb and we need almost $2k to reach our goal.
๐ต $200 credit card bill due today
๐ป $100 for internet setup ASAP
After 8 months in our apartment, we finally have an opportunity for affordable, reliable internet at home. It's been a nightmare relying on phone hotspots! But after paying March rent we're completely broke.
Tysm!!
3470/5000
cashapp/venmo: nullagent
#blackmutualaid #mutualaidrequest #blackmastodon #helpfolkslive2025
Support nullagent on Ko-fi! โค๏ธ. ko-fi.com/nullagent
Support nullagent's work with a donationKo-fi
Hello Everyone
Hi,
My name is Ken Gahagan. I'm #newhere.
I am retired and extremely frustrated at the current state of political affairs in the #USA. I know there are many currently motivated to leave commercial social media and as part of my #resistance I have set up this #friendica site as a place for FB expats to call home. (I'm still configuring the friendica site so it isn't quite ready for new users yet - check back soon)
I am #gay, #married, and I love my two dogs.
You can find out more about me by following my two Substacks -
Thoughts From the Edge and Ken Talks Tech.
If you have needs or questions related to this site you can email me at ken@unicorns.social or admin@unicorns.social
Unus Nemo likes this.
This is very welcome news in the face of Trumpist depredations of US public data.
lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/โฆ
"In recent months the Harvard Law School [@harvard_law] Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil] has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. To begin, we have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal #Github repositories, and #PubMed...."
#DataGov #Libraries #OpenData #Preservation #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Update. Kudos to the Northwestern University Libraries for training people to take part in the #DataRescueProject. Other #libraries should follow suit.
dailynorthwestern.com/2025/04/โฆ
#DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
NU hosts training to preserve disappearing federal data
To the average person, โdata recoveryโ might sound like something best left to hackers in basements or thriller movies.campus (The Daily Northwestern)
reshared this
Update. "Because of #Trump: [The German] Central Library of #Medicine builds alternative to US database."
heise.de/news/Wegen-Trump-Zentโฆ
From Google's English: "The German National Library of Medicine (#ZBMed) has announced its intention to create an "open, reliable, and sustainable alternative" to the #PubMed database, one of the most important and comprehensive resources for biomedical literature worldwide. The meta-database, with references to relevant articles and over 38 million citations, is operated by the National Library of Medicine (#NLM), a division of the National Institutes of Health (#NIH) in the United States. ZB Med is responding to concerns that the US administration under Donald Trump is cutting funding for the NIH. There are also fears that political influences could compromise PubMed's scientific integrity."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Germany #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
Wegen Trump: Zentralbibliothek Medizin baut Alternative zu US-Datenbank auf
Ein deutsches Informationszentrum will eine Alternative zur PubMed-Datenbank in den USA entwickeln, um die Informationsversorgung in der Biomedizin zu sichern.Stefan Krempl (heise online)
theonion.com/report-average-maโฆ
Report: Average Male 4,000% Less Effective In Fights Than They Imagine
WASHINGTONโContradicting the long-held belief that they would just go off and destroy anyone who tried to mess with them, a Department of Health and Human Services report published Thursday revealed that U.S.The Onion Staff (The Onion)
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I am the author of more than 85 books and I swear I will never buy another DRM-protected ebook again. If I can't OWN what I buy, I don't want to buy it.
I am sick and tired of books I buy being tied up in an app that requires me to run the gauntlet of ads for other books before I am able to open the book I paid for and want to read. And worries about books being deleted or updated or otherwise altered AFTER I HAVE PAID FOR THEM. They are MINE. I should be able to open them wherever I want to.
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@Maria Langer | ๐ ๐ฌ โ๏ธ๐ฅ๏ธ I feel your pain. Though theft put OReilly's DRM Free program out of business. Which is unfortunate. I can see the issues from both sides.
I am not bombarded by ads when I use Web Based Kindle or my phone/ tablet version. I am wondering what client you are using that bombards you with ads?
note: My OS is Gnu/Linux so there is not a native Kindle client.
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Instance is Setup and Tuned
Okay, Rogue Project Friendica is setup and tuned as well as I can with no user base. At this point I will just wait to see if I get some users and see how the server behaves.
libpng has been throwing some warnings though that is typical with a library that handles so many files created from other resources, that are not 100% compliant to the standard. So far it has not caused an issue. I will be keeping an eye on it. ๐
Day Use X Mockin' Uh
Unknown parent • • •@pockets
I don't think there's really any correction to be made there; that makes sense, and ironically, it kind of highlights a common misunderstanding about what a VPN is actually doing in this context.
You hear a lot of people refer to a VPN in front of Tor as a "fourth hop," which is incorrect. Your VPN, with one exception that I know of (which I'll explain below) is never creating any layer of encryption used by your Tor circuit, which is what would be necessary in order for it to literally act as another hop in that regard.
What your VPN connection is actually doing in that case, is exactly what a VPN is designed to do in any case, which is in effect to take the place of your ISP and do what they would be doing otherwise. This is the main reason I always use a VPN. Sadly, it is true that the majority of them are shady, but not all of them are, and your ISP is 100% guaranteed to log everything at all times no matter what, and they won't even lie about that. Just as
... show more@pockets
I don't think there's really any correction to be made there; that makes sense, and ironically, it kind of highlights a common misunderstanding about what a VPN is actually doing in this context.
You hear a lot of people refer to a VPN in front of Tor as a "fourth hop," which is incorrect. Your VPN, with one exception that I know of (which I'll explain below) is never creating any layer of encryption used by your Tor circuit, which is what would be necessary in order for it to literally act as another hop in that regard.
What your VPN connection is actually doing in that case, is exactly what a VPN is designed to do in any case, which is in effect to take the place of your ISP and do what they would be doing otherwise. This is the main reason I always use a VPN. Sadly, it is true that the majority of them are shady, but not all of them are, and your ISP is 100% guaranteed to log everything at all times no matter what, and they won't even lie about that. Just ask them; they'll tell you. This is not only a concern if you're doing something illegal: all of the information your ISP has about you is available legally to anyone who wants it as long as the price is right. Cops and lawyers are the only potential adversaries, of any threat model no matter how absurd, who require a subpoena even in theory; anyone else simply requires money.
Now, the exception I mentioned above is that some VPN companies offer specific, designated Tor servers, that act as both your VPN server and as your entry node for Tor. If only on principle, I don't trust those things because I refuse to, personally. Regardless: if, for argument's sake, you were to connect your VPN to one of those servers, and then connect to Tor againโit would be functionally worthless, first offโand you would also be doing what is referred to as Tor-over-Tor, which is exactly what the name would suggest, and is highly advised against by people who are either more or less paranoid than I am, and me.
Unus Nemo
in reply to Day Use X Mockin' Uh • •@Chris Wolff @pockets
There is no reason to connect a Tor Connection through a VPN. It just adds more latency for no benefit. If you really do not want your ISP to know you are using Tor for some reason then just use a Tor Bridge.
If you are a investigative reporter, under the control of an oppressive government, etc then juts using Tor from an insecure OS (or secure) is not good enough. You should be using Tails, Whonix, or Qubes as well. All the for mentioned OSes do a good job of explaining why you might want to use them in their documentation.
Check your laws in your demographic. VPN are required to log a certain number of things by law just like an ISP, which is not true of Tor. If you have a reason to care then you should take this into consideration. I personally have no reason to care.
When I am shopping and telemetry benefits
... show more@Chris Wolff @pockets
There is no reason to connect a Tor Connection through a VPN. It just adds more latency for no benefit. If you really do not want your ISP to know you are using Tor for some reason then just use a Tor Bridge.
If you are a investigative reporter, under the control of an oppressive government, etc then juts using Tor from an insecure OS (or secure) is not good enough. You should be using Tails, Whonix, or Qubes as well. All the for mentioned OSes do a good job of explaining why you might want to use them in their documentation.
Check your laws in your demographic. VPN are required to log a certain number of things by law just like an ISP, which is not true of Tor. If you have a reason to care then you should take this into consideration. I personally have no reason to care.
When I am shopping and telemetry benefits me I use a standard browser. When I do not want the telemetry I use Tor. I have no reason to waste precious resources on a VPN.
Tor does not use DNS so this does not apply to that service. Though if you would like to speed up your internet connection and limit some of the information your ISP or VPN can collect then setup BIND9 (named) and do your own DNS. Though if you have a laptop or mobile devices do not forget to change their DNS servers to dynamic when you leave home.