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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • I recommend a different consideration than the usual design, battery life, OSHW, etc : connectivity.

    So typically you get BT but that’s not enough, you need a bit more since it’s not a well recognized device, unlike e.g. headphones. Typically you would need a companion app, for GrapheneOS, Android more broadly, iOS or a Linux phone. This is where GadgetBridge comes in. The goal of the project is to… bridge gadgets that are not standalone. Instead of having a myriad of (usually proprietary) apps that basically all do the same thing (pair, configure, handle notifications both ways) have 1 that does it for all such device.

    From that standpoint, namely GadgetBridge support, at the moment the recommendation is Pebble (which is how the project started) or PineTime.

    PS: I personally have a Pebble (with hardware issue, so not sure were), a PineTime (also hardware issue, touch on screen AFAIR) and finally a Watchy and… honestly I don’t wear any anymore. I don’t get enough benefit from it as typically I have a phone nearby and when I don’t it means I do NOT want notifications.









  • utopiah@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlAntiviruses?
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    11 days ago

    Thanks, it’s quite interesting but again IMHO it relies on bad practices. If you’ve been compromised and you “restore” (not in an sandboxed environment dedicated to study the threat) then you are asking for trouble. I’ll read a bit more in depth but the timeline I see 1987, 1998, 2017 show me this is a very very niche strategy, to the point that it’s basically irrelevant. Again it’s good to know of it, conceptually, but in practice proper backups (namely of data) remains in my eyes the best way to mitigate most problems, attacks and just back luck (failing hardware, fire, etc) alike.


  • utopiah@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlAntiviruses?
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    11 days ago

    12 years ago I took “Malicious Software and its Underground Economy: Two Sides to Every Story” and it was quite interesting not so much for the technical aspect (which was still nice) but for the economical aspect that is often underappreciated. The core idea was that scammers or hackers might be doing it for fun, as you did, or learning, as I did… but the ones who keep on doing it sustainably make money out of it, consequently they are predictable. Namely they need repeatable methods that scale or that target a specific group. I really recommend taking a similar class but anyway, the big picture here is sure, maybe AV would miss such things and yet it wouldn’t really matter because nearly nobody does that and/or it wouldn’t propagate much.


  • utopiah@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlAntiviruses?
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    11 days ago

    That doesn’t make much sense to me, one backup data, not executables or system. Even if they were to be saved in the backup then they wouldn’t get executed back.

    Anyway, that’s still conceptually interesting but it’s so very niche I’d be curious to hear where it’s being used, any reference to read on where those exist in the wild?



  • utopiah@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlAntiviruses?
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    11 days ago

    Nothing needs an antivirus if you backup your data properly.

    PS: I’m getting downvoted for this so I’ll explain a bit more : if you backup properly, you can restore your data. Sure your system is fucked… but who cares? In fact if you care for your OS installation then right away it shows you are NOT in a reliable state. You install another OS and start from there. Maybe it’s not even due to a virus, maybe your hardware burns in fire, same situation so IMHO a working backup (and by working I mean rolling, like TODAY it’s done without your intervention) then you restore. Also please don’t tell me about ransomware because even though it is a real threat, if you do your backups properly (as in not overwritting the old ones with the new ones) then you are still safe. It can be as basic as using rdiff-backup. It’s fundamental to understand the difference between what’s digital and what is not digital.


  • It’s not just for Linux but :

    • there is an error message somewhere

    It’s fundamental because instead of saying “It doesn’t work!” and get no useful help, people must think of it as an investigation (or whatever get them going) looking for clues. Until you get the right message and can provide the right context (e.g. what computer are you using, what OS version, etc) then you get generic help which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure it’s not entirely impossible if you are both lucky and patient but you are doing yourself and others a huge disservice.

    Before Linux maybe they were used to black boxes but here, nobody is intentionally trying to hide away anything from you!

    PS: bonus, notes are basically free. Jolt down notes about anything and everything you are learning. Don’t just “use” a computer, LEARN how to use a computer.






  • I setup WireGuard only last week so maybe I’m the one who misunderstand something : on your LAN assuming you are NOT using your router (or switch, or a networking device) to be a peer of the VPN, don’t you need to add each machine as a peer to the VPN? Also doesn’t that leave the most granularity so that the (root) user of each machine can chose to be on/off and more, e.g. split tunneling?