Over the past year I have done a lot to shore up my digital privacy and security. One of the last tasks I have to tackle is locking down the many personal files I have on my computer that have potentially compromising information in them (e.g. bank statements). Right now they are simply sitting on my hard drive, unencrypted. Theft of my device or a breach in access through the network would allow a frightening level of access to many of my records.

As such, what are my options for keeping certain files behind an encryption "shield"? Also, what are the potential tradeoffs for doing so? In researching the topic online I've read plenty of horror stories about people losing archives or whole drives due to encryption-related errors/mistakes. How can I protect against this scenario? Losing the files would be almost as bad as having them compromised!

I'm running Linux, but I'm far from tech-savvy, so I would either need a solution to be straightforward or I'd have to learn a lot to make sense of a more complicated solution. I'm willing to learn mainly because it's not an option for me to continue with my current, insecure setup. I do use a cloud-based password manager that allows for uploading of files, and I trust it enough with my passwords that I would trust it with my files, though I would like to avoid that situation if possible.

With all this in mind, what's a good solution for me to protect my personal files?

I got invited recently and registered my account, but since hearing of it I was curious of where the name comes from. Tildes are dyacritics in Spanish that you put on top of vocals líké thís, and they stress syllables and help with pronunciation. Now, it is a coincidence, isn't it?

Hello.
I moderate a reddit sub with about 450 thousand people and we have had trouble with transgender people facing abuse from idiots in two different threads. In one of them, a woman chimed in and it got ugly (4 bans in the first 12 comments), in the other a trans woman took part and got shit for it (also featured a few users banned).

Now, each of them had a very different approach. The first got defensive and stopped participating, while the second took the time to respond to the stupid but not offensive ones, trying to educate them.

So even if this is something that bothers me a lot and makes considerably angry, I realised that maybe I should take a more nuanced view on this, and I should actually ask for more opinions on how to handle thiS, instead of simply applying my own standards and maybe making things worse and/or missing a chance to make things better. And since Tildes has always provided me with intelligent, thoughtful and interesting points of view and opinions, I thought this would be the best place for this question.

And so here I am, asking anyone that would care to give an opinion: what would a good moderator do? How harsh or lenient should we be with ignorant but not offensive comments? Should we get involved at all if the discussion is not offensive? What would make our sub a nicer place to everyone? Any other thoughts?

Thank you very much to all.

There was a recent thread on ~talk about which linguistics habits people find annoying, and much to my horror, I have most of those which were mentioned. After thinking about it a little more, I realized that a lot of these habits were picked up from the media I consume and the people I interact with. I also feel that this problem is exacerbated by my poor knowledge of English grammar.

While I was taught grammar at an elementary level in school, I didn't quite grok it back then, and mostly relied on my instinct, as to what "sounded" right. I have since forgotten most of what I had learnt, and my instinct is failing me - my grammar is atrocious, my punctuation is terrible and I only have auto-correct to thank for my spelling.

I understand that English, like other languages, is constantly evolving. What is wrong now might be right tomorrow. However, I believe that this is no excuse for my shortcomings as there is merit speaking and writing in accordance with what is considered correct in the present day.

I would like to learn English from "first principles", and would greatly appreciate if some users could suggest some books/resources which could help me (bonus points for resources pertaining to British English). Any other suggestions would also be great.

Thanks, and have a nice day.

Hi, I looked through JS files and I noticed that all JS and CSS are called with weird parameter. tildes.css?aadf6c54 tildes.js?e6d30b42 third_party.js?4393e99 (I changed the string after ?)

Does anyone know why is it done and what does it mean?

Anybody here have a good setup for batch-downloading articles/news from several sites you specify, similar to youtube-dl but for general websites? I'm sure it could be scripted with not too much effort but I'm interested what polished solutions there are.

The idea would be so people with rare internet access could go to a hotspot weekly or something and sync that week's worth of content.

I recently enabled controlled folder access in Windows 10. It restricts programs from modifying folders in a blacklist.

I have all of the music/pictures/videos/documents/desktop folders and folders containing backups added, is there anything else I should consider adding?

I've noticed in the last few days that buttons to post a new topic or comment seem to have disappeared from the site. I have to add /new_topic manually to open a post form and press Ctrl+Enter to post it.

Is it just me?

EDIT: If anyone having the same problem with Firefox, it's probably some rogue uBlock Origin filter. What helped me:

• Go to the uBO settings.
• Go to the "Filter lists" tab.
• Push "Purge all caches" and then "Update now".
• Wait for it to update.
• Delete all caches and reload the page.

Either that, or simply disable cosmetic filtering for the site.

The Most Votes/Most Comments/Newest are self explanatory, but what does "activity" mean? I looked at the FAQ and Mechanics blog posts and I didn't see anything explaining it. Is it similar to Reddit's "Hot" view? I'm especially curious because it appears to be the default.

Sorry if this has been discussed already, I wasn't sure how to find it. I'm curious if votes on child comments affect the placement of their parent comments. Imagine this scenario:

• Comment 1 (25 votes)
• Comment 2 (2 votes)
  • Comment 3 (150 votes)

In this example, would the popularity of #3 cause #2 to be positioned above #1?

Edit: Oh the nested list formatting looks weird. Comment 3 is meant to be a child of Comment 2, if that wasn't clear.

I dislike reddit's mobile site, as it is slow, filled with app popups, and my content blocker ends up creating software gore situations.

On the other hand, i.reddit.com is faster, simpler, and the one popup it has is easy to block with element hiding.

Unfortunately, tapping on a username or subreddit link automatically redirects me to the newer mobile site, and I have to add /.compact to the end of the url.

On Android, this is easily fixed by installing an Firefox extension to always use i.reddit, but iOS Firefox doesn't support addons.

So is there anyway to avoid going to reddit's new mobile site? Maybe use a pi-hole to redirect www.reddit.com?

Those that have pursued a career that deals with any type of computer science, what advice would you give to students before they get a job in it? What do you do on a daily basis? What would you have wanted to know before you started?

I'm starting to see occasional collapsed comments when I open threads. The first time I saw one, I thought I'd accidentally collapsed the comment myself, but this one was definitely already collapsed when I opened the thread.

Is this related to the "tagging" system that Deimos discussed the other day? At the time, he said that "tags" wouldn't have any effect. Are these effects now working? What are the effects? Also, there was no actual decision about what the different tags would be, and what they would mean. As I said in that thread, I decided not to use these tags until: a) they were agreed and defined; b) they actually did something. I thought they were just placeholders for now. I'm confused.

Or is there some other feature operating here? For example, people keep talking about "whisper" comments, and I'm not sure if they're just fantasising about a feature they would like, or if it's something that's actually planned. Are these those "whisper" comments?

I read some things about the philosophy and I'd really like to go deeper into it, but the book is so hard for me to read! I can't make sense of much of what I'm reading, maybe it's the vocabulary I'm not sure... Is there a more accessible book about absurdism?

Example post.

Should we add continent tags? We do it with europe and sometimes with asia or south america. But I've never seen north america alongside with usa or canada. When I searched for it, north america tag was used just once, 93 days ago.

Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other.

I prefer "europe".

EDIT

The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not "eu") for topics related to continental Europe. Topics related to the European Union itself can be tagged "europe.eu" (as per @nothis' excellent suggestion.

I'm here staring at my inbox for the third time trying to figure out how the hell the sorting in it works. It isn't alphabetically by subject or user, it isn't the recency of the first message (nor is it the recency of the latest message), and it isn't the number of messages. Testing it now, it also isn't the most recent you've opened, so I have no idea how this works or how to look for anything, not that it's big enough to matter much yet.

Am I missing something obvious? I feel so lost.

Is there a way to view all the subgroups in a group? Right now I don't see any way to access them without someone directly linking a subgroup. I think it would be helpful if there was a list of subgroups in each group sidebar, or a link to a page of them.

I just got here, so sorry if this has been covered elsewhere.

I don't mean with remastered graphics. I just mean the original Doom games. The reason for this is to have a better interface, some good gameplay tweaks (ie. freelook) and a way better multiplayer framework. I know GZDoom does most of those things but it doesn't have a very good multiplayer framework (lots of desyncing) and it would have an even better interface. Another solution to this problem that's not running Doom 1 in Doom 3 if also very welcome. Thanks and sorry for the wall of text.

Hi there! I do not know how to program anything and I am writing this from my android- has anyone created a night/dark mode with a black screen and light lettering yet? If so, please post the link!

I suffer from chronic migraines- it would likely help more than just me!😄

I've been using the Hermit app for Android to make a lite app for Tildes. It's awesome. Just one main problem. Because of some Android limitation shortcuts aren't allowed to be put in the app drawer. I wanted to keep it there to make everything more organized. Does anyone know if it's possible to make an apk (so it can go in the app drawer) that will just link to my Tildes lite app?

Is there some configuration that will cause links on ~tildes to open new tabs. Is this user configurable (Firefox on Gentoo) or is it server configurable, or account preference configurable? I'd like to be able to click once and have the content open in a new tab so I can return to the main page without having to reload.

This is a tricky personal conundrum of mine. I'll try to articulate it clearly.

I believe in compassion, and I want to live in harmony with compassionate tendencies inside. But at the same time, in the act of extending compassion, there appears to be an in-built power gradient: the "giver" is somehow in an "advantaged" position, and the receiver a more disadvantaged one.

An example. I was once in a fast-food restaurant, waiting to order, and I saw the order-taker was obviously new and very nervous and skittish at her job. So after I placed my order I expressed how much I appreciate her service and that I thought she was doing a good job. It was truly what I wanted to say, and I thought she took this well, like, she looked more relaxed as she beamed.

But then there was a power gradient. I gave her something that she wouldn't/couldn't have given me. She was the more distressed one, and this power gradient emphasized that. I don't mean that bystanders were made more conscious of her distress. I mean, it had the potential to make me more conscious of my privilege and her her lack thereof.

And I'm aversive to power. I can be highly sceptical and critical of power. I don't feel easy to have power over someone else. I have had troubled relations with power figures in my life. I easily confuse the natural, benign activation of power with the reflexive, defensive, "shields-up" reaction that I often find myself in. To explain a bit, the latter is really a form of anxiety, perhaps a trauma from experiences of hypercompetition, isolation, and emotional neglect in the past.

In the end, I thirst after commonality, equality, brothersisterhood, close and meaningful contact with others as they are, as human beings, on level ground, side by side, sharing the common condition in our vulnerabilities... But there's this aspect of my character, i.e. the tendency to get tense and look for a "higher ground" and occupy there, just to be on the safe (more powerful!) side. There's this haughty, difficult-to-approach, high-brow me, that I feel get in the way.

I fee sad and somewhat confused about this. I think I'm partly venting, partly asking about your similar experiences. Please consider this topic fairly open-ended. If you have something to say about it, I'm eager to listen to you.

Thanks!

Do Jedi study warfare and tactics? I know they study dueling, but do they also look at more large-scale battles? I was thinking about the Clone Wars revival today and I was kinda wondering why the Republic entrusted their military power to what were essentially warrior monks. Was it just a case of “there’s literally no one else”?

Someone posted comment, I wrote a response (here), but when I wanted to send it, I got this message: Comment not found (or it was deleted). After I refreshed, the comment was gone, not even something like [deleted comment].

Do someone know how the comment removing work?

I was posting a something earlier and tried to use an apostrophe in a tag, and it told me off for doing so. Well, kind of, it didn't mention what was wrong, but it was pretty easy to deduce. Can the "tags: Invalid tags" maybe point/link somewhere about what is or isn't allowed?

(also I'm just really curious, what are the limits? I just found out accents [or at least 'tést'] aren't allowed either)

Okay, I know the obvious answer is the history of the files. But how can I, from the command line, really understand what is hiding inside that .git directory?

Today I was doing one of my periodic disk space audits, trying to figure out where my usage goes. This comes from having a 64GB drive mounted as /home on my Linux laptop. I found some 15G of old video files to delete today, so I'm no longer as pressed for space. But my interest was piqued by one thing I have downloaded from Github that is ~120 megs for a very simple program. Poking around further I find that most of that usage is a single file:

$ ls -lh withExEditorHost/.git/objects/pack/pack-df07816cd15fb091439112029c28ebc366501652.pack
-r--r--r-- 1 elijah elijah 102M Mar 14 23:28 withExEditorHost/.git/objects/pack/pack-df07816cd15fb091439112029c28ebc366501652.pack
$ file withExEditorHost/.git/objects/pack/pack-df07816cd15fb091439112029c28ebc366501652.pack
withExEditorHost/.git/objects/pack/pack-df07816cd15fb091439112029c28ebc366501652.pack: Git pack, version 2, 299 objects
$

Is there a unzip or tar xzf equivalent for Git pack files? Naive usage of git unpack-file is only generating errors for me.

I'm using an Android phone with Chrome 65.0.3325.109 installed.

There's an option in this browser to add a page to the home screen. This creates a shortcut on my home screen. When I tap on that shortcut, it opens the saved page in Chrome.

I had done this with Tildes. However, I deleted the shortcut and made it again. The behaviour has now changed.

Previously, this shortcut opened Tildes as a tab within Chrome. Now, it opens Tildes as its own separate "application". It's not in Chrome. That means I don't get the functionality that comes with Chrome, such as opening a link in a new Chrome tab. In this pseudo-application version, I'm stuck with only one window. I can't open other tabs. I can't simply copy links from one Chrome tab (news website) to another Chrome tab (Tildes).

Did you change something in the past week or so? Can you please change it back? I want a shortcut to a web page to open something that behaves like a web page, not a stand-alone application.

Hi there. The account recovery page mentions that password resets are performed by emailing a specific Tildes address from your own specified recovery address. But as far as I can see, that Tildes reset address that's supposed to be sent to.. is unlisted anywhere on the website. I could be mistaken, of course, but in any case it's not easily visible. Also unlisted is what string should be placed in the Subject field, alongside any body content this sent email should contain.

As to the reason for the inquiry:

So when I registered for Tildes, I generated a password and stored it in my KeePass database like a responsible person. Except... like an idiot, I restarted my computer at some point without remembering to actually save my KP database (I promise this is only like the second time this has happened in 2 years or so), so I'm in the curious position of still being logged in but not actually being able to change my password. Naturally, I explored account recovery options, and registered my email address with the recovery page, but as I described above, I can't seem to find the address I'm supposed to send an email to in order to reset my password as part of the recovery process.

Are users supposed to be able to continue to comment in topics that have been deleted? Once deleted, topics are no longer visible to the group, but the topic is still accessible by URL and users can continue to comment. I just want to clarify if this is the intended functionality or a bug.

Example: https://tildes.net/~test/280/deleted_topic

Mild shitpost, but I'd be interested to see what my 'user ID' is if such a thing exists. I remember seeing that around 50 people were subscribed to the defaults when I joined, but it'd be kinda neat to have an exact number. I'm hoping this is an utterly trivial question for the admins to answer, but if not, please don't feel obliged to waste any time on this :)

Hello,

https://tildes.net/notifications/unread shows only the unread notifications.

If I have marked all comment replies are read, that link will show me an empty page.

So I thought that visiting https://tildes.net/notifications/ should show me all the past replies to my comments, but that's returning 404.

So, is there a place where I can see all the read notifications/replies?