And E2EE is only available on phones, circa a couple of years ago anyways

Telegram’s servers are located in US, Singapore, Netherlands (and maybe some other countries) from what I’ve gathered. And all chats that are not E2EE’ed are stored there, encrypted at rest at best with keys in the same database, or somewhere else that can still be accessed in automated way. Maybe it is not even encrypted at rest.

The point is, all those countries are either in 5 eyes or have information sharing agreements with 5 eyes countries. So as far as I’m concerned, TLAs can still have their fingers in those pies, in addition to Telegram’s overall shadiness and Russian ties. So maybe you get KGB strongman keeping a watch over your chats too.

This is not something I’d have much confidence in to be honest.

Switch to Telegram

You know it’s not even E2EE by default, and when it is it uses a homegrown algo that is not exactly well spoken of? (at least V1)

It is reasonable yet subpar under a threat model where you do not trust any single provider, which is a model I find appropriate most of the time.

You should not assume your password manager is unhackable.

That’s my main point. Perfect is an enemy of good indeed, but I feel that doing things properly the first time is a good idea in general, especially when it as easy as using a different app for your TOTP tokens. It’s a low hanging fruit really.

Please don’t use your password manager for TOTP tokens. It is called two factor authentication for a reason.

Until next time they try to push through something similarly stupid. Now it’s EU’s turn to make their mind too.

• Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Region
• Settings -> YOUR NAME -> Media & Purchases -> Account Settings -> Country/Region

Both must be changed to a different region to fully switch. Requires a valid payment method from that region (e.g. a debit card from that region). There are consequences to changing regions too, so be careful.

From my experience, sometimes you also need to contact Apple support to finish the change process. Otherwise it may just revert back.

Overall, Amazon surely knows where you are now and it will be set in your Amazon account, I suspect there is nothing you can do.

The best way to achieve what you want is to boot something like TailsOS and create a new account while under the VPN in that region. With a payment method from that region.

VPNs are not magic. Most big companies nowadays have means of detecting actual user locations, which is pretty trivial if you use an app or an operating system that leaks data when under the VPN.

Indeed

Books, online courses. Education in depth, ideally.

Books, online courses. Education in depth, ideally.

Yeah but… Brilliant has… a trial period. Seven days is plenty to realise that there’s next to zero educational value in that platform no matter how hard it is shilled online.

They are pretty poor courses anyway, why would you want them?

The enshittification of the internet shall continue.

We will fight and we will lose, as depressing as it sounds. The vast majority of people just don’t and won’t care.

Welcome to the vergecast, the flagship podcast of left wing propaganda

In all seriousness though, this is one of the podcasts I tune in to religiously. It’s just too fun and serves as a great high level of “what’s up in big tech” even when my brain is mush.

Depends on what you want to self-host. In general, I would advise against self-hosting anything before you familiarise yourself with the basics of *nix, networking and cyber security.

You at least need to know enough to make sure that whatever you host is only available within your local network and is inaccessible from the outside.

Once that’s ensured, go nuts, experiment, learn, evolve.

In terms of how to start, really depends on your budget, what hardware you can spare, how much space you have at your place etc.

For the most basic playground it’s enough to have a raspberry pi or similar, or a very old laptop / desktop computer.

For something more swanky you can get old Dell servers (e.g. R420) online for around 100$ or so. They are quite power hungry though. Or you can get yourself a NUC and use that.

If all of this sounds like too much work, just get yourself QNAP / Synology NAS and see what it can do for you (it is way more limited in terms of options, but easier to setup and you can still have your Plex / file sharing / docker containers).