What is the difference between Chameleon and JShelter? - Chameleon – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox Android (en-US) - Chameleon is a WebExtension port of the popular Firefox addon Random Agent Spoofer. - JShelter – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox Android (en-US) - JShelter is a browser extension to give back control over what your browser is doing. A JavaScript-enabled web page can access much of the browser's functionality, with little control over this process available to the user: malicious websites can uniquely identify you through fingerprinting and use other tactics for tracking your activity. JShelter aims to improve the privacy and security of your web browsing. - Like a firewall that controls network connections, JShelter controls the APIs provided by the browser, restricting the data that they gather and send out to websites. JShelter adds a safety layer that allows the user to choose if a certain action should be forbidden on a site, or if it should be allowed with restrictions, such as reducing the precision of geolocation to the city area. This layer can also aid as a countermeasure against attacks targeting the browser, operating system or hardware.
JShelter seems to spoof info by controls the APIs provided by the browser? and Chameleon spoofs user agent and many other information.
To me both seems to serves the same purpose of spoofing. Is Chameleon spoofing without interfering with js and JShelter spoofing with interfering with js the main difference between them? In addition JShelter seems to be able to block malicious js
How JShelter and Chameleon achieves spoofing differently?
JShelter isn't mainly for spoofing, it's about blocking a bunch of potentially harmful advanced javascript features, often used for tracking. Any spoofing is mostly to keep sites working with the missing javascript features.
I have it installed on one of my browsers. I wouldn't recommend using it unless you're willing to tweak the settings for new sites you visit, because I've had it break sites pretty often with the default settings.
thank you for your information, would you say JShelter does everything Chameleon do (including spoofing) so that if I use JShelter I don't have to use Chameleon?
I haven't used Chameleon, but it seems to do some stuff like change the user agent that JShelter doesn't do. I'd assume it's more useful to get around a site designed for a specific browser or operating system.
Full text: The EU has corroborated UN allegations that Israel was guilty of "indiscriminate attacks ... starvation ... torture ... [and] apartheid" against Palestinians in a leaked "review".
The Supreme Court handed Trump a major win by allowing officials to resume deportation of migrants to third countries without additional due process requirements.
Israel hit Iranian government targets in Tehran on Monday in a series of strikes that followed a salvo of missiles and drones fired by Iran at Israel in the wake of the Trump administration's massive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites the day before.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
My understanding is that Iran gave several states, including the US and Qatar, advance warning of their attack. Iran expected that none of their missiles would hit their targets.
You would be correct. Its kinda weird and honestly annoying that Iran keeps taking the high road in its conflicts with imperialists. They are just going to keep getting stepped on.
This is going the end the Hezbollah way. Iran took massive losses in their leadership. If they tap out now that Israel is out of interceptors they will go down in the future when Israel keeps doing this again and again.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Can someone explain why all the downvotes? I've always been of the opinion that the more plugins you have, the more identifiable you are, so if that is the reason for the downvotes, I'd understand.
Edit: It seems the extension requires access to all websites, which allows it to monitor and modify data from any visited site
I think there might be a bit of misunderstanding about what those permissions mean. The extensions just need to be able to "see" the contents of a web page in order to be able to hide ads, change font & background colors, edit URLs, or redirect resource requests. There is no other way for them to perform those functions unless they have permission to read the original data presented by websites you visit.
Can someone use their words to explain the distaste for the addon that the downvotes on this and crossposted communities seem to represent? Is there something bad about the extension?
I edited my comment here, but the privacy concern with Chameleon stems from its ability to access and modify data on all websites. This access is necessary for the extension to function, as it needs to alter the user agent and other browser settings. Obviously not great when on secure websites.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) strongly condemned, on Monday, the terrorist attack that targeted a church in the Syrian capital, Damascus, resulting in several casualties and injuries.
Iranian armed forces have launched a barrage of missiles at a US military base in Qatar, a day after Iranian nuclear sites were targeted by US bombers.
Russia’s mass missile, drone attack on Kyiv kills 5, injures 13 — Ukraine’s deep strikes cost Russia over $10 billion this year — Russia preparing military operations in Europe — Amid its war against Ukraine, Russia condemns US strikes on Iran as ‘violati
Medical Supplies for Ukraine’s Hospitals. Partnering for global health equity.
Russia’s war against Ukraine
A firefighter extinguishes burning debris in the aftermath of a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv on June 23, 2025. (Ukraine’s State Emergency Service/Telegram)
Russia’s mass missile, droneattackon Kyiv kills 5, injures 13. Russia launched a wave of missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and surrounding region overnight on June 23.
Russia seeks toadvancealong almost entire eastern front, Ukraine holding ground in Kursk Oblast, Syrskyi says. As of mid-June, Ukrainian defenders are fighting close to 695,000 Russian troops in Ukraine across a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said.
Ukraine’s deep strikescostRussia over $10 billion this year, Syrskyi says. This includes $1.3 billion in direct damage. The estimated cost-to-result ratio of Ukrainian deep strikes is 1:15, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told journalists on June 21.
Norway toinvest$400 million in Ukraine’s drone, air defense missile production. Norway will invest $400 million in Ukraine’s defense industry to support drone production, President Zelensky said on June 22. The two countries also agreed to jointly produce air defense missiles.
Russiapreparingmilitary operations in Europe, Zelensky says. “We are observing a continued intellectual decline within the Russian leadership and have evidence that they are preparing new military operations on European territory,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ukrainedestroys80% of Russian drones despite air defense missile shortage, Syrskyi says. Ukraine needs to have many times more surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft missile systems to ensure reliable defense of cities and critical infrastructure facilities, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said.
Amid its war against Ukraine, RussiacondemnsUS strikes on Iran as ‘violating international law.’ Moscow condemned on June 22 the recent U.S. strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, calling them a violation of international law and Iran’s sovereignty, a statement in stark contrast to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Iran-Israel implications for Ukraine | Ukraine This Week.
Human cost of Russia’s war
Former Ukrainian POWdiesmonth after being released from Russian captivity. Serhii Dobrovolskyi, a Ukrainian soldier who had been in Russian captivity since 2023, has died just a month after his release at the end of May as part of a 1000-for-1000 prisoner swap, an official from the soldier’s home region announced on June 21.
3killed, 14 wounded as Russia strikes Ukrainian military training facility. “Unfortunately, there are some dead and wounded,” the statement read. The Ground Forces said that greater personnel losses were avoided thanks to the timely security measures taken when the air raid alert was issued.
Russian attackskill7, injure 23 in Ukraine over past day. Russia launched two Iskander-M or North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, an S-300 anti-aircraft missile, and 47 Shahed-type attack drones and decoy drones against Ukraine overnight, primarily targeting Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine’s Air Force reported.
International response
Iran’s top diplomat tomeetPutin in Moscow after US air strikes on nuclear sites. “We enjoy a strategic partnership and we always consult with each other and coordinate our positions,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said with reference to Russia.
Ukrainecallsfor an end to Iran’s nuclear program in wake of US strikes. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said on June 22 that Iran’s nuclear program must be dismantled to prevent it from threatening the Middle East or the wider world, following U.S. air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Ukraineevacuates176 citizens, foreigners from Israel ahead of US strikes on Iran, Zelensky says. The foreign nationals evacuated by Ukraine included citizens of the U.S., Moldova, Latvia, Azerbaijan, and Estonia, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Trump couldfreeall Belarus’s political prisoners ‘with a single word,’ released oppositionist Tsikhanouski says. “President Trump now has the power and opportunity to free all political prisoners in Belarus with a single word. And I ask him to do so, to say that word,” Siarhei Tsikhanouski said in his first press conference after his release.
Zelenskyexpectedto speak at Council of Europe parliamentary session next week. President Zelensky is expected to address the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly on June 26 during its summer session in Strasbourg, though his attendance has not been confirmed. The session agenda includes discussions on Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
In other news
Over 450 draft officers, stafftransferredin response to reported abuses, Ukraine’s military chief says. The Ukrainian military leadership aims to overhaul the draft office system amid numerous reports of abuses since the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told journalists on June 21.
Zelensky slaps newsanctionsover business activities in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the sanctions are targeting “those who cooperate with the (Russian) occupier on our land,” as they “help justify the aggression, consider it normal to make money in the occupation, and pay taxes” to Russia.
Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenkoreleasedafter four years of Russian detention. Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko was released on June 22 after more than four years in Russian imprisonment, and has left Russian-occupied Crimea.
Deputy PM Chernyshovreturnsto Ukraine as questions mount amid corruption probe. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov returned to Ukraine on June 22 following his official trip abroad amid media speculations connecting Chernyshov’s absence to an ongoing corruption investigation.
The Kyiv Independent delivers urgent, independent journalism from the ground, from breaking news to investigations into war crimes. Your support helps us keep telling the truth. Become a member today.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov returned to Ukraine on June 22 following his official trip abroad amid media speculations connecting Chernyshov's absence to an ongoing corruption investigation.
One of the things I've seen mentioned before is that installing too many extensions can make you more unique, and thus have a negative influence on your fingerprint. This got me curious, how exactly do sites detect which extensions you have anyway? Can they outright read your list of extensions?
Furthermore, do all extensions make you more unique? I guess the answer would depend on the answer to the first question (surely, if they can just outright see your list, then the answer would be yes), but lets say you install something that seems rather innocuous, like Transparent Standalone Images, for example. Can a site see that this is installed / does it make your fingerprint more unique?
explanation
Web sites do not have any way to enumerate or query your installed extensions, and they cannot directly "see" the content scripts injected by extensions. However, some extensions do modify pages in a way that scripts in the page could recognize as being the work of a particular extension, assuming the owners of the site care to research and check for such things.
One particular issue is that an extension may insert a path into the document to a page or image in the extension itself. Firefox assigns a randomized UUID to the extension at install time, and the path uses this UUID. On the plus side, this may prevent the site from associating the URL with a specific extension. On the minus side, at least in theory, a site could detect this weird URL in the page and use that for fingerprinting. See: How to prevent fingerprinting via Add-on UUID?.
Web pages are not allowed to list your extensions. They can indirectly surmise you have certain extensions based on how your requests differ from expectations. For example, if they have advertisements, but your browser never actually makes any requests to load the images, CSS, JS or HTML for the advertisements, they can deduce you have an ad-blocker. That’s a datapoint they now have to ID you: “has an ad-blocker”
Now let’s say they have an ad they know AdBlockPlus allows, but uBlock Origin doesn’t. They see your browser doesn’t load that ad. Another datapoint: “Not using AdBlockPlus”.
Based on what requests go back and forth between your browser and their servers, they map out a unique fingerprint.
everything you do to customize your browser makes your browser fingerprint unique. but you have a mostly unique fingerprint due to things you arent considering as well. system related stuff that your browser tells about you.
you have some options. 1) there are addons that limit privacy issues, 2) use a local web proxy, im using squid proxy for example just have it running on an old laptop. Optionally, I would also say, from a privacy standpoint look into DNS blackholing pihole, unbound, etc, and there are plenty of other things.
my favorite addons are ublock, privacy badger, i run noScript which is probably more painful than most are willing to put up with but I have heard that jShelter is a good compromise.
The problem with hardening your system is that you become more identifieable unless you provide fake data. For example, here are my test results from coveryourtracks.eff.org
Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors tested in the past 45 days, only one in 2054.58 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.
Couldn't we use this information to provide a fake fingerprint for the browser? Like a plugin that makes your browser read as being from an unmodified Chromebook?
Yes, you can give fake info. I would say thats kinda the next step. Harden your browser and associated tech stack so you are secure. Then provide fake data that is generic enough so that it blends in. firefox or chrome standard agent, windows 11, etc.
Web pages are not allowed to list your extensions. They can indirectly surmise you have certain extensions based on how your requests differ from expectations. For example, if they have advertisements, but your browser never actually makes any requests to load the images, CSS, JS or HTML for the advertisements, they can deduce you have an ad-blocker. That’s a datapoint they now have to ID you: “has an ad-blocker”
Now let’s say they have an ad they know AdBlockPlus allows, but uBlock Origin doesn’t. They see your browser doesn’t load that ad. Another datapoint: “Not using AdBlockPlus”.
Based on what requests go back and forth between your browser and their servers, they map out a unique fingerprint.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
EDIT: changed article link and title to comply with rules (that I didn't read 😛). The article that is linked now, links to the previous one (this one rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2025/…), and the title is the google translated of the new article, as close as original German as I can
The absurdity of the proposal is already in the title, and shows how motonormativity is spread all over the world.
Berlin has a very good public transit system, and a few 30 km/h zones cannot be that bad.
I would love to hear opinions from someone who lives there!
Auf Dutzenden Berliner Hauptstraßen wurde wegen schlechter Luftqualität Tempo 30 eingeführt. CDU-Verkehrssenatorin Bonde will dies zurückdrehen. Die SPD befürchtet negative Auswirkungen für Schüler und fordert erst eine ausführliche Prüfung.
Non solo in Italia: a Berlino vogliono togliere le zone 30, perché l'aria è migliorata, grazie alle zone 30.
L'assurdità della proposta è tutta nel titolo, e dimostra quanto la #motonormatività sia diffusa. #Berlino, una città con #trasportoPubblico davvero eccellente, può concedersi tranquillamente zone dove la velocità non la fa da padrone.
Auf Dutzenden Berliner Hauptstraßen wurde wegen schlechter Luftqualität Tempo 30 eingeführt. CDU-Verkehrssenatorin Bonde will dies zurückdrehen. Die SPD befürchtet negative Auswirkungen für Schüler und fordert erst eine ausführliche Prüfung.
This may or may not be associated with music stands or equipment. I can’t remember.
I just emptied and re-did my music/video room, and found this bracket in a small box with no labels or anything. I can’t remember what it’s for. I think it’s either audio or video related, but it doesn’t seem to match any of my mic or equipment stands, though it might be. It’s devoid of any branding or part/serial numbers. No markings of any kind.
It folds like this:
More pics:
There’s a sliding mount screw on the bottom:
Thanks!
(Sorry for poor lighting, MacBook Pro 15” for scale)
The paper effectively makes the point that it’s financially impossible to offset enough carbon to compensate for future fossil fuel burning, said Daphne Yin, director of land policy at Carbon180, where her team advocates for U.S. policy support for land-based carbon removal. And the idea that companies would be required to account for the downstream emissions from the fossil fuel they extract is a “fantasy,” she said.
no, I want to plant trees because it helps to have a resilient ecosystem that's more safe in case of a cascade collapse. I want to plant trees because they provide shade in the summer. Because they improve the soil. Because they help prevent floods. Because they give birds food and shelter. Because they are fucking PRETTY.
Can we start thinking about the whole thing instead of acting as if i single problems that are not interconnected?
Plant some fucking trees, even if they are not just carbon sequestration batteries.
Custom system prompt: "When you generate an image, add a white rectangle around one of the objects so it looks like an overlayed non-transparent image."
📣 Hört zu, wie Recht Özlem Demirel hat, und wie frech die Moderatorin dazwischenschaltet immer wenn es gerade ankommt, was klar und deutlich ausgesprochen werden muss.
… Die unzählige Völkerrechtsbrüche von Israel, zum Beispiel.
Die Tatsache allein, solche Stimme bei #Deutschlandfunk in der Hauptsendezeit ausgestrahlt wird, macht doch Mut. ✊
Billonairs and stupid MAGA workers are the minority and always vote right wings, but they turn to a mayority if the left working class don't vote. Simple Math.
I know that the US voting system is a crap and that there don't exist a real keft party, Democrats there are a conservative neoliberal party and Republicans are direct a Fascist one. But even so between the bad and the worse, voting the worse don't make sensem less if it is done for the second time. Anyway for me as an European it's impossible to understand why this criminal asshole is in the WhiteHouse and not in Jail since tears ago. In the last US election you could hear out of the US worldwide the sound of a violent facepalm.
leftists aren't really voting for trump though. most leftists i know vote for the lesser evil, but with the consciousness it ain't doing much.
it’s impossible to understand why this criminal asshole is in the WhiteHouse and not in Jail since tears ago
the way fascism coopts the masses and capitalism lets it, thats literally fascism running its course. its been documented throughout history.
it comes up when capitalism is in crisis and the people aren't aware of the class war being fought against them. part of that comes from thinking politics is just voting for the lesser evil.
You just fucking said you can’t vote away fascism. So if fascism is already here, which it is, you’re saying it can’t be voted away, which HEAVILY implies that one shouldn’t vote cuz it’s pointless; fascism can’t be voted away, so why vote?
Do you need any other explanations, you obtuse jackass pretending not to know how language works?
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.
The alt-left is STILL pulling the “both sides are the same” shit. We will NEVER escape fascism. Like buckle in because the left is not fucking comprehending the massive scale of the difference between corrupt MAGA and corrupt Dems. Yalls are just not fucking getting it. Yalls are still just mad and punishing Dems for their awful, unconscionable Gaza policy (not defending it), but yalls literally put the final nail in American democracy cuz of a single foreign policy issue. Fucked over all LGBTQ people, all disabled folks, women’s rights, immigrant’s right, DEIA programs. As I watch my trans family continue to get targeted and killed, I will NEVER forget the “both sides” leftists who hung us out to dry. Fuck yalls.
Nowhere in this meme does it say that “both sides are the same”. It’s (correctly) showing how both parties don’t give a shit about the working class.
Republicans are horrible but you can’t expect the Democrats to save or help you from them after we have tons of evidence showing they will also break strikes, pass right wing immigration laws, attack protesters, support genocide, and do almost nothing to stop rising fascism.
Also trying to diminish supplying and funding a genocide to just “a single foreign policy issue” is pretty fucked up and not even accurate. Leftists were willing to overlook hundreds of issues we had with Kamala as a candidate if she could just do the bare fucking minimum of not actively funding and supplying a genocide and she couldn’t even do that.
Fascism and liberalism are not distinct ideologies, but the same ideology in different circumstances. Liberalism is the nice mask, fascism is the brutal one, and Capitalism will use whichever the bourgoeisie feels is necessary to maintain control and profits.
Critiquing liberalism is a "left" thing, not an "alt-left" thing, and I don't even know what that means.
There is a lot bluesky gets right, and a lot it gets wrong, the same is true with Activitypub.
(Some) strengths of Atproto
Atproto is content-addressed, and portable. This means that posts can exist independantly of their original server. Instead of giving posts a https uri, which will stop working if a user moves servers or their server disappears, they give them at uris. For example, this post on bsky.app: bsky.app/profile/ponder.ooo/po… Has the at:// link is: at://did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk/app.bsky.feed.post/3lk4yrmyugc2f. The post does exist over https at https://porcini.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.getRecord?repo=did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk&collection=app.bsky.feed.post&rkey=3lk4yrmyugc2f.
Atproto is very easy to build apps on. For example, tangled.sh, frontpage.fyi and flushes.app are all apps built on atproto. Atproto allows more flexibility in what an app can do, as opposed to lemmy or mastodon's api.
Atproto is better documented. The ActivityPub spec leaves a lot up to the reader.
Atproto has some really good moderation tools for users. People can make public blocklists of users, and people can subscribe to labellers, people or services which give users/posts a label.
Weaknesses of Atproto
almost everyone is on bluesky's PDSes. I thought mastodon.social and lemmy.world were bad, but the people on alternate PDSes altogether adds up to only a few thousand.
Its decentralised identifiers are actually completely centralised! DID:PLC, their DID method, originally stood for placeholder, but they renamed it to Public Ledger of Credentials. To use it, you have to use plc.directory. You can use a DID:WEB DID, but if your website linked to it goes down you lose your identity. (I find it extremely funny that its not actually a requirement for a decentralised identifier to be decentralised. )
Everything on the network has to be public to work. since relays have to be able to collect all the information on the network for Appviews to be able to make use of that information, anyone can find out who's blocking someone, or who is on a list, or who's following who, with no way of hiding that information. Private accounts and posts are impossible to do on atproto.
Since everything is public, DMs (for now) are centralised. They do seem like they want to change that though.
Strengths of ActivityPub
AP (ActivityPub) is better distributed. While it has large servers (like mastodon.social or lemmy.world (and threads, but we don't talk about threads)) the majority of users are not on those servers. There is no single point of failure. If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, atproto would still exist, it would just have a negligable amount of users.
One node in the network lets you do everything, as opposed to bluesky which has three parts (You can do stuff without a relay though). This means you can trust a lot less of the network.
ActivityPub scales better than ATProto. Atproto scales quadratically, meaning that having a lot of nodes in the network harms performance. AP scales horizontally, meaning it works better with a lot of small servers.
ActivityPub can keep stuff private, like blocks and posts. Though, a lot of implementations can leak posts.
Weaknesses of ActivityPub
The spec leaves somuch out. They didn't propose a way to make sure requests between servers are validated, so mastodon chose HTTP signatures. They didn't add any way of looking up handles, so mastodon chose webfinger.
A posts's id is its https uri, this means thatif a server goes down, stuff can't be fetched. A user can't move their followers if their server goes down (you can on ATproto). There is a standard to fix this, FEP-ef61, but it breaks compatibility with a lot of implementations.
Missing information is a problem. Its not really a problem on lemmy, but on mastodon likes and replies from other servers may not make it to your server at all (you can fetch replies in newer versions of mastodon though).
All this aside, I do think the two can coexist. I don't see anything like lemmy working on atproto. ActivityPub seems closer to social networking, as opposed to social media. Something like facebook would be impossible to make on atproto, because not everything is made to be public.
I am hoping for a bridge, but good (bridgy is opt-in, making it useless).
For Activitypub, a weakness is that the server has to host all the visible content to the server. So for example if lemmy got really big, and you wanted to host a tiny server but are subscribed to most lemmy comms, your server ends up hosting and fetching a copy of everything posted in these communities, which can add up to A LOT, in terms of network usage, and computational power. (For example see the debacle where an Australian sever (I think aussie.zone) struggled with this and was weeks behind fetching content from lemmy.world since so much content comes from that instance).
This probably would scale pretty terribly if it got anywhere near the size of reddit.
ATProto gives a scalable solution to this (but comes with tradeoffs). Where you can create your own “instance” PDS (Personal Data Server), without hosting all the posts federated to you, since this is hosted by a “relay” which does most of the heavy lifting computationally. So it ends up with a solution that looks more centralised (since there is less incentive to host relays, so fewer relays), but also much more friendly to people who wanna host their own “PDS” and therefore control their data. This is also very helpful with scalability and solves some of the weird federation quirks activitypub has (ie. you can’t see a lemmy community or mastodon account until someone on your instance subscribes or follows it).
Yes, this does help, but atproto as a whole still doesn't scale well:
In the beginning of our network, we have 26 users, which conveniently for us map to each letter of the English alphabet: [Alice, Bob, Carol, ... Zack]. Each user sends one message per day, which is intended to have one recipient. (This may sound unrealistic, but this is fine to do to model our scenario.) To simplify things, we'll have each user send a message in a ring: Alice sends a message to Bob, Bob sends a message to Carol, and so on, all the way up to Zack, who simply we wrap around and have message Alice. This could be because these messages have specific intended recipients or it could be because Bob is the sole "follower" of Alice's posts, Carol is the sole "follower" of Bob's, etc.
Let's look at what happens in a single day under both systems.
Under message passing, Alice sends her message to Bob. Only Bob need receive the message. So on and so forth.
From an individual self-hosted server, only one message is passed per day: 1. From the fully decentralized network, the total number of messages passed, zooming out, is the number of participants in the network: 26. Under the public-gods-eye-view-shared-heap model, each user must know of all messages to know what may be relevant. Each user must receive all messages.
From an individual self-hosted server, 26 messages must be received.
Zooming out, the number of messages which must be transmitted in the day is 26 * 26: 676, since each user receives each message.
Okay, so what does that mean? How bad is this? With 26 users, this doesn't sound like so much. Now let's add 5 users.
Under message passing:
Per server, still 1 message received per user per day. Per the network, it's 5 extra messages transmitted per day, which makes sense: we've added 5 users. Under the public-gods-eye-view-shared-heap model:
Per server: 5 new messages received per user per day.
Per the network, it's ((31 * 31) - (26 * 26)): 285 new messages per day!
But we aren't actually running networks of 26 users. We are running networks of millions of users. What would happen if we had a million self-hosted users and five new users were added to the network? Zooming out, once again, the message passing system simply has five new messages sent. Under the public shared heap model, it is 10,000,025 new messages sent! For adding five new self-hosted users! (And that's even just with our simplified model of only sending one message per day per user!)
In May, legendary Apple designer Jony Ive hooked up with OpenAI to announce an unspecified gadget. [WSJ, archive] To promote this complete vaporware, OpenAI released a video of Sam Altman and Ive b…
Of course, how would they know if you don't list any? Oh, that's right, PRISM. Fully expect that people who don't have social media accounts to get accused of having them simply because someone else shares the same name and did say First Amendment protected stuff, like Donald Trump is a terrible fucking president and should be impeached.
Sorry person with the last name Erdude. I guess you aren't getting into the US now.
I feel like I'm going to be responsible for Trump sending ICE to raid the Shady Pines community event planning committee that picks the color schemes for their weekly card games.
And fight we do. I’ve considered myself an activist for almost 30 years now. I thought fighting for marriage equality was gonna be hard. I’m really not looking forward to this.
Depending on where you live in the world America has been pretty bad for a pretty long time. But I agree under this new technofascist oligarchy it will become a nightmare
These immigration raids and terror tactics are terrible on their own, but it’s especially absurd when Native Americans get caught up in it, and it just fully exposes how disingenuous and transparently racist the whole effort is. So I’m sorry that your peoples have to suffer even more because of this racist mindset.
”If you can’t say, ‘we’ve been here for time immemorial,’ then you’re an immigrant. You’re not from here, so who are you to classify our Indigenous people? These lands have been a melting pot for many ethnicities,” Hatathlie [a Native Arizona state Senator] said.
I heard another more recent example of a car full of Native Americans being pulled over, aggressively questioned, and asked for their papers, but I can’t seem to find it. It’s utterly shameful how we treat people.
The attendance for the next FIFA cup was already looking bad, and I can't imagine the US government wanting your history of online activity to help it even a bit.
I can't wait to see high attendance in Mexico and Canada-hosted matches, with rock bottom attendance in the US. Even US fans travelling domestically, don't go, especially to the states that are falling into line with Trump.
Not that it will actually be recognized for what it is. I may put together a bingo card on the ways media spins it.
They want to stay by themselves? That's fine by me. But then they should also stop exporting their Hollywood and streaming turds (as well as their shit food). That would only be fair. And maybe also stop behaving like if they owned the entire planet?
Lol I don't even remember most of my previous handles. If amnesia isn't a valid defense I'm never getting into the USA. Then again, I have no reason to visit shithole countries in the first place.
I'm a Small Government Republican and I FULLY support this FREEDOM! If you WANT to Come into our Country you have to RESPECT OUR CONSTITUTION (which means you ARE allowed to Shoot Up a School but THATS IT!)!
The username requirement isn't anything new; that requirement was on our DS-160 years ago.
The "wants people to set their social media profiles to public" isn't quoted, so seems less like an official policy anywhere and more like one embassy worker being a prick. Unfortunately, each individual embassy operates independently totally devoid of any accountability.
This process is dehumanizing, inefficient, and totally fucked...but this particular part of it has been this was for a long-ass time.
New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles
“To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M and J non-immigrant visas will be asked to adjust the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to ‘public’”, the official said. “The enhanced social media vetting will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.”
Fair enough, though that's an ask from the State Dept., not a demand from the embassy, as indicated in the OP. It's an important distinction because the embassy holds the authority at that point in the process. They can ignore the guidance altogether or demand everyone open their profiles. They're probably more likely to do the latter now, but they could've done this two years ago too.
Demanding the usernames for the past 5 years and being suspect of anyone not on social media isn't a new, that was my main point. I don't think many people appreciated how shitfucked our visa processes are, even before the current "administration" helping.
I think it's all some level of FUD until there's an example of it being called out as a reason for denial. The fields have been on the application for a while, but I know someone who recently came in with a private ig profile and a vk profile that hadn't been used for anything but chat. Wasn't mentioned at all along the process beyond being on the application.
That may change soon, but it also might just be rhetoric from dipshits playing to their dipshit base.
in other news, the market price of hacked credentials for MAGA-friendly social media accounts:
📈
::: spoiler note in case it is unclear to anyone: the above is a joke.
in all seriousness, renaming someone else's account and presenting it to CBP as one's own would be dangerous and inadvisable. a more prudent course of action at this time is to avoid traveling to the united states. :::
What do you mean "what psyops"? Are you unaware that both China and the US, as well as almost every other country around the world, conduct foreign influence campaigns?
It seemed like the best source available from a ten-second Google search while taking a shit, but I can nip down to the local CIA field office and pick up some classified ops docs if you want a primary source, I'm sure they make that info available.
Yeah and both of those are bad. Product dumping kills local businesses, like how the US sending clothes overseas kills domestic textile industries, and processed food aid kills farms needed for self-sufficiency.
Yes, i want highly centralized production owned by the people not highly decentralized production owned by a multitude of petit-bourgeoisie. I want stuff to be abundant for everybody through mass production, not highly constrained by small scale production.
Small shops aren't the means of production but the profit extraction still operates through robbing wage slaves of the surplus value they create. The petite bougie bosses you're trying to shill for are some of the most reactionary elements that go straight for fascism because it promises them protections from international capital (which is defined as a conspiratorial cabal unlike domestic capital hence their almost anti-capitalist rhetoric sometimes). They're also some of the most cruel because they directly cheat employees that they know and interact with personally.
I mean they make you sign away your rights and tell them if you’ve ever been affiliated with any one who was in or if you joined a communist party. So this is just another layer on the shit cake.
Who TF wants to set foot in that shithole banana republic anyway? Stuff your visa, and return the favor and stay TF out of other people's countries. That would be a welcome change.
if they successfully fully take over, those same supporters now become the new threat
Quite a few of the current crop of deputized ICE agents are MAGA goons from four years ago. So long as you're actively doing the gruesome work of ethnic cleansing, you'll be given a pass.
This is why I’ve already deleted basically everything, social media is a cancer that pushes us further and further apart and replaces meaningful interactions with vapid and shallow counterfeit interactions, it’s a net loss for anyone using it at this point.
My US visa officer: what do you mean you did not have 'social' media accounts in 5 years? No, these weird sites don't count. Underground terrorist? Straight to gulag.
Follows the life of an average part-time hero who manages to win every battle with a single punch. This ability frustrates him as he no longer feels the thrill of fighting a tough opponent, which leads him to question his past desire of becoming stro…
Like a short while ago that website was hit by practically every company in the comic publishing buisness with, I think, a cease & desist letter threatening to hold then legally liable for distributing those companies commodities without a license to do so or some shit.
Or something along those lines. Long story short they got fucked by corporations.
This comic is self punished though, I doubt the original author care about copyright. This is basically a rough draft for the published one that he publishes for free.
It's ultimately not remotely worth the time, money, or effort by whoever has ownership over mangadex to legally contest something that may be free in contrast to the rest of their library that they've been legally threatened to take down.
As people said, the site was "DMCA purged" and lost part of its gallery, which, unfortunately, makes it one of the worst manga sites to read online nowadays, which is a shame I always visited it, but now all that's left is just a hollow body of what it once was.
Auf Dutzenden Berliner Hauptstraßen wurde wegen schlechter Luftqualität Tempo 30 eingeführt. CDU-Verkehrssenatorin Bonde will dies zurückdrehen. Die SPD befürchtet negative Auswirkungen für Schüler und fordert erst eine ausführliche Prüfung.
Non solo in Italia: a Berlino vogliono togliere le zone 30, perché l'aria è migliorata, grazie alle zone 30.
L'assurdità della proposta è tutta nel titolo, e dimostra quanto la #motonormatività sia diffusa. #Berlino, una città con #trasportoPubblico davvero eccellente, può concedersi tranquillamente zone dove la velocità non la fa da padrone.
Auf Dutzenden Berliner Hauptstraßen wurde wegen schlechter Luftqualität Tempo 30 eingeführt. CDU-Verkehrssenatorin Bonde will dies zurückdrehen. Die SPD befürchtet negative Auswirkungen für Schüler und fordert erst eine ausführliche Prüfung.
I wish I was that clever, but no. It's from a researcher named Ian Walker, coined in a very interesting article. It has its own Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonorm…
A new study coins the term “motornormativity” to describe the unconscious biases people form around the societal ills and inequities of automobile driving.
Yep sounds absurd. As I unterstand it the problem is that you need a reason for 30 km/h zones. The reason was the air quality which is now better so there is no reason anymore. Some zones may be kept because the streets are used by school kids.
I think this is still absurd and good 30 km/h zones with synced traffic lights can yield a good traffic flow.
The fact that they have improved air quality is not sufficient reason? Do they think air quality is like painting a house, that it only has to be done every couple of years?
Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have
long considered
Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy.
Now, based on findings
published by the investigative journalism outlet ISt
How would you use it if abandoning it is not an option, safety-wise, on android? Like, opening it in browser instead, killing app from the background, or using some app\tool? Not using it for anything sensitive is obvious.
What are other potential worms is in there you may think of? Recently, Yandex and Meta analytics tools got caught in sending browsing data to phone's localhost - where their locally installed apps caught it and sent back home. If the FSB conection is that deep, there is no end to what they'd want to mine from users.
It's not the first time I see your discovery shared and I want to thank you. It won't completely disencourage people around me from using it but it'd pile up with other many reasons to do so. Someday there would be just enough of them, like it happened with VK, Facebook etc, I believe.
I do information security work, and I used to work closely with investigative journalists hailing from Russia, Kazachstan, Ukraine, and other places in that general area. Telegram is massively popular there. Because of this Telegram has been on my radar for a very long time as a serious security threat – not just because its protocol and management are suspect, there are plenty of other IMs like that, but also because of how many people I worked with had used it.
I've written about Telegram before, on amore general level (linked in the blog post), so when IStories reached out to me for comment on this it was a good inspiration to dive deeper.
How would you use it if abandoning it is not an option, safety-wise, on android? Like, opening it in browser instead, killing app from the background, or using some app\tool? Not using it for anything sensitive is obvious.
I would not use it. I refuse to accept that abandoning it is not an option. There are plenty of options. It's always a decision one can make.
Please remember that even if hypothetically you could use it in a way that protects you from the spying – something I am very, very doubtful of! – the mere fact you are using it sucks other people into using it. You personally become one more reason for someone to start using or keep using Telegram. You personally become one more "user" of Telegram, justifying another media organization or NGO to set up or maintain a presence there – which in turn pulls in even more users into the dragnet.
In other words, your decision to use Telegram anyway, even though you know what the issues are, becomes one of the many things that make other people feel that "abandoning is not an option". I refuse to be a part of that. The only thing I can recommend is to stop using it.
What are other potential worms is in there you may think of? Recently, Yandex and Meta analytics tools got caught in sending browsing data to phone’s localhost - where their locally installed apps caught it and sent back home. If the FSB conection is that deep, there is no end to what they’d want to mine from users.
I think this hits the nail on the head: If the FSB conection is that deep, there is no end to what they’d want to mine from users.
I don't want to speculate. The possibilities are vast. But I will say what I said in the blogpost: Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot.
I don't trust Telegram the company, I don't trust Telegram the software, I don't trust MTProto. I certainly do not trust Pavel Durov. I don't think we need to speculate on what more could possibly be hiding there, what is already known about Telegram should really be enough to stop using it.
The two decisions Telegram made (choice of infrastructure provider who happens to cooperate with the Russian FSB, and attaching a cleartext device identifier to encrypted messages) taken together reinforce surveillance capability of the FSB considerably more strongly than either of these decisions would have on its own.
The entire article seems like an attack. The author finds a unique identifier and adds "Russia bad" throughout.
States the information is in cleartext but then explains how everything is encrypted (in transit).
What will the author do if they intercepted any single online stores transfer of credit card details. Also encrypted in transit but Is that also deemed as cleartext? Or is that okay?
I don't think much new is learnt here. WhatsApp also sends metadata in "cleartext" (not really, as it's encrypted in transit, but this article called that "cleartext").
I can't say I read the whole thing because the technical analysis went over my head, but I don't think we read the same conclusion
Conclusions
Based on the analysis of packet captures above, I believe it is clear that anyone who has sufficient visibility into Telegram’s traffic would be able to identify and track traffic of specific user devices. Including when perfect forward secrecy protocol feature is in use.
This would also allow, through some additional analysis based on timing and packet sizes, to potentially identify who is communicating with whom using Telegram.
Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have
long considered
Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy.
Now, based on findings
published by the investigative journalism outlet ISt
Hi, author here. First of all, in that piece I don't happen to recommend using any specific piece of software. I mention Signal and WhatsApp for comparison, as tools that are considered similar, and yet avoid making the same weird protocol choices.
Secondly, if you have any proof that any specific communication tool is used to "spy" on people, I am sure I am not the only person who would love to hear about it. That's the only way we can keep each other safe online. Surely you wouldn't be making unsubstantiated claims and just imply stuff like that without any proof, would you?
And finally, I've spent a good chunk of time and expertise on analyzing Telegram's protocol before I made my claims. I provided receipts. I provided code. I explained in detail my testing set-up. You can yourself go and verify my results.
Instead, you claim it's "propaganda", while mischaracterizing what I say in that post. Classy!
I'd guess that's like some kind of publisher standard of "sampling size" to see if the comic's qualities fit the tastes of the buyer.
underscores
in reply to Holeheadou92984 • • •JShelter isn't mainly for spoofing, it's about blocking a bunch of potentially harmful advanced javascript features, often used for tracking. Any spoofing is mostly to keep sites working with the missing javascript features.
I have it installed on one of my browsers. I wouldn't recommend using it unless you're willing to tweak the settings for new sites you visit, because I've had it break sites pretty often with the default settings.
Holeheadou92984
in reply to underscores • • •underscores
in reply to Holeheadou92984 • • •Holeheadou92984
in reply to underscores • • •