3WolfMoon's recent activity

  1. Comment on New Firefox features: Built-in free VPN, split view, tab notes in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    It's my understanding that a VPN server can only serve an end user at half of its rate, considering it needs to download the requested data and upload it to the user.

    It's my understanding that a VPN server can only serve an end user at half of its rate, considering it needs to download the requested data and upload it to the user.

  2. Comment on New Firefox features: Built-in free VPN, split view, tab notes in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    Mozilla VPN is a reskin of Mullvad. One would assume their upcoming free offering makes use of the same partnership, but they aren't explicit in the blog post. Proton's free plan does have various...

    Mozilla VPN is a reskin of Mullvad. One would assume their upcoming free offering makes use of the same partnership, but they aren't explicit in the blog post.

    Proton's free plan does have various restrictions, most notably for many users probably being limited to a single device and not supporting P2P, but it doesn't have data caps. The built-in Firefox one will be severely limited in comparison, proxying only your browser traffic with a 50GB cap.

    14 votes

  3. Comment on Need help deciding if I need to replace my Pixel running grapheneOS in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    https://grapheneos.org/faq#legacy-devices https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime

    GrapheneOS aims to provide reasonably private and secure devices. It cannot do that once device support code like firmware, kernel and vendor code is no longer actively maintained. Even if the community was prepared to take over maintenance of the open source code and to replace the rest, firmware would present a major issue, and the community has never been active or interested enough in device support to consider attempting this. Unlike many other platforms, GrapheneOS has a much higher minimum standard than simply having devices fully functional, as they also need to provide the expected level of security. It would start to become realistic to provide substantially longer device support once GrapheneOS controls the hardware and firmware via custom hardware manufactured for it. Until then, the lifetime of devices will remain based on manufacturer support.

    https://grapheneos.org/faq#legacy-devices

    GrapheneOS can only fully provide security updates to a device provided that the OEM is releasing them. When an OEM is no longer providing security updates, GrapheneOS aims to provide harm reduction releases for devices which only have a minimum of 3 years support. Extended support updates at minimum will be done until the next Android version. [ ... ] Harm reduction releases do not have complete security patches because it's not possible to provide full security updates for the device without OEM support and they are intended to buy users some limited time to migrate to a supported device.

    https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime

    4 votes

  4. Comment on Need help deciding if I need to replace my Pixel running grapheneOS in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    Maybe they're a Fi user referring to this promo?

    Maybe they're a Fi user referring to this promo?

    To qualify for the $250 discount, you need to do all of the following:

    • Purchase the device or currently be in a group plan with the purchaser.
    • Activate the device on an existing full service plan (data-only SIMs do not qualify) within 30 days of the shipment confirmation.
    • Remain active and in good standing on the qualifying device for 120 consecutive days. Pausing, changing, or suspending the account will void the promotion.
    4 votes

  5. Comment on Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code? in ~comp

  6. Comment on I made a word game in ~games

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    The solve video is really cool, great addition! It worked perfectly for me. I'd share it here, but don't want to spoil today's puzzle for others. This is minor, but you may want to limit the input...

    The solve video is really cool, great addition! It worked perfectly for me. I'd share it here, but don't want to spoil today's puzzle for others.

    This is minor, but you may want to limit the input length of leaderboard names. There is no feedback that you're exceeding the limit until you see your beautiful name chopped off on the board.

  7. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    I'm not completely sure either, as I know little about Canadian law or Deimos's personal feelings, but I haven't seen anything to suggest discussion of piracy should be discouraged. I just comment...

    I'm not completely sure either, as I know little about Canadian law or Deimos's personal feelings, but I haven't seen anything to suggest discussion of piracy should be discouraged. I just comment in good faith and assume if something isn't welcome it will either be pointed out to me by a more longstanding community member or deleted by Deimos.

    I avoid direct linking as it's more frequently frowned upon both by discussion sites like Tildes and sometimes the would-be linked communities themselves. In this specific case, if someone wasn't willing or able to do the last bit of research to find appropriate links on their own, they likely wouldn't do well on a private tracker anyway.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    (edited )
    Link
    Agreed with other comments here that you should interview to join your first private tracker(s), as it avoids risks from both ends: You end up as a bad actor, your inviter is associated. Your...
    • Exemplary

    Agreed with other comments here that you should interview to join your first private tracker(s), as it avoids risks from both ends:

    • You end up as a bad actor, your inviter is associated.
    • Your inviter ends up as a bad actor, you are associated.

    Reputable trackers will often have official recruitment to other trackers in their invite forums, which can be accessed after reaching certain user classes. This is the recommended path to future trackers if you don't know and trust someone who already has access.

    Don't fall for much of the newbie misinformation you will see many places outside of the trackers themselves. It's often spread by those who are upset they were unable to gain access or lost access to trackers, usually because they broke the rules and are arrogant or straight-up dumb:

    Spending money for tracker access

    No reputable tracker offers paid access. At most, they may offer small (often cosmetic) benefits for donators. In no way is paying a requirement for use, any site pressuring you towards payment is not reputable.

    Being intimidated by tracker staff

    The vast majority of tracker staff are in the position because it's their hobby. If you're genuinely attempting to contribute, they will probably be willing to help, but you're expected to read the rules, wikis, etc., be respectful, and use your brain. You can also use trackers longterm with minimal to no community interaction if that's what you desire, but the communities are often informative and helpful.

    Ratio is too difficult or requires a seedbox

    It's entirely possible to use private trackers on a poor home connection. They often encourage uploading and long term seeding through bonus point systems, allowing you to improve ratio over time even if nobody downloads from you directly. Don't immediately download as much as you can upon getting access. Download things you're actually wanting and seed them for as long as possible (forever would be best.) Competitive trackers with small filesizes will take you much longer to build a comfortable buffer. Make use of any freeleech, tokens, bonuses, etc. where possible.

    If you want, you can set up a seedbox of some sort to improve buffer faster, but it's not a requirement or cure-all. There may be some discussion on relevant topics in the tracker forums.

    Luckily, you're looking for a music tracker, and what I would consider the best current music tracker offers both an interview process and a high quality invite forum. You may have to idle in IRC for quite a while before given an opportunity to interview. They offer a preparation site which you should study beforehand. Answer to the best of your ability, but do not try to cheat the interview.

    Here is a spreadsheet with some information on many trackers. I'd recommend looking at RED and MAM as starting points given your mentioned needs.

    13 votes

  9. Comment on Lawsuit alleges that WhatsApp has no end-to-end encryption in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Signal details how they handle attachments somewhat in this blog. full text of relevant section The simple guess would be that WhatsApp uses a similar process, since they use the Signal protocol....

    Signal details how they handle attachments somewhat in this blog.

    full text of relevant section

    When something big needs to be sent through Signal, we send it as an attachment. Big things include photos, videos, files, and really long text messages. Even the end-to-end encrypted archives that are transferred from the primary device to the new linked device — as mentioned in the previous section — are sent as attachments.

    Let’s say that someone wants to send a friend a picture of their cat on Signal. To make this happen quickly and easily, instead of sending the large image directly inside a Signal message, Signal encrypts the cat pic and uploads it to a file server. To ensure that the intended recipient (and only the intended recipient) can see the cat pic, the sender shares a decryption key and the download location for the uploaded cat pic in a specially formatted Signal message. The sender can re-use the same location and key across multiple messages for each of the recipient’s linked devices, but the sender only needs to upload the large file once.

    This speeds up the process of sending big things on Signal, while ensuring that only the intended recipient with the decryption key for the attachment can ever access it. We’re so serious about this level of privacy that all encrypted attachments are also padded to prevent those without the decryption key from determining the exact size of the encrypted attachment.

    That’s how attachments are sent in Signal, to ensure privacy and speed. But of course we don’t want to hold onto that cat picture on our file servers forever, even if it’s end-to-end encrypted. The Signal servers automatically delete encrypted attachments 45 days after they are uploaded.

    This follows from how Signal delivers your messages. Each device on a Signal account has its own mailbox. Devices are always retrieving messages from their mailbox when they are online, and as soon as the device confirms they’ve gotten a message, it is deleted from the Signal servers.

    If a device has been offline for a while, it may have a lot of messages waiting in its mailbox when it returns. Today, Signal will hold a message in a device’s mailbox for up to 45 days, giving an idle device a chance to wake up and fetch it.

    Since we know a message is only available for 45 days after it is sent, we assume that if a device hasn’t retrieved the attachment after 45 days, it won’t ever retrieve it.

    It’d be nice if we could know when everyone has received your cat picture so we could delete the attachment earlier. But, we really don’t want to know who’s downloading a particular attachment and when, so we don’t track that. In general, we can’t tell who received an attachment pointer, how many received it, which message(s) included it, and who downloaded it — we’d like to keep it that way. So we always delete end-to-end encrypted attachments 45 days after they are uploaded.

    The simple guess would be that WhatsApp uses a similar process, since they use the Signal protocol. Exact implementation may vary of course.

    that doesn’t seem e2ee, as it would be trivial to intercept.

    Only insomuch as your typical Signal text messages are trivial to intercept, as the content of your messages should be E2EE. In this case, that should be the attachment containing the media location and decryption key.

    I'm far from an expert, so this is an educated guess based on available information. Feel free to correct if you have experience in this domain.

    4 votes

  10. Comment on Youtube channel recommendations 2026 in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    It's very possible that's where I initially found him! I had forgotten about that, thanks for the reminder.

    It's very possible that's where I initially found him! I had forgotten about that, thanks for the reminder.

  11. Comment on Minimal image self-hosting in ~comp

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    I was surprised too when I made the switch! I suppose the behemoth complexity of ShareX is antithetical to a lot of popular Linux design choices (KISS and all that) and it requires a massive...

    I was surprised too when I made the switch! I suppose the behemoth complexity of ShareX is antithetical to a lot of popular Linux design choices (KISS and all that) and it requires a massive amount of rewriting to port because it makes heavy use of Windows APIs.

    After not liking Flameshot I switched to using ImageMagick and copying the resulting image to my clipboard. I have 3 separate commands bound to different keys.

    # "full desktop" (excludes 4K TV I have plugged in above monitors)
magick x:root[3840x1080+0+2160] png:- | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

# current window
magick x:$(xdotool getwindowfocus) png:- | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

# select custom area
import png:- | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

    I mostly take screenshots to send directly to friends in chats that support direct image pasting, so uploading to a host is not a huge concern for me, which makes this slightly off-topic I suppose (sorry!)

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Youtube channel recommendations 2026 in ~tech

    3WolfMoon
    (edited )
    Link
    I read through this thread, but didn't take the time to read through the two previous, so apologies if some of these are already mentioned: Atomic Frontier makes wonderfully shot informative...

    I read through this thread, but didn't take the time to read through the two previous, so apologies if some of these are already mentioned:

    Atomic Frontier makes wonderfully shot informative videos on a variety of interesting topics. I consider him a bit like old Tom Scott with much higher effort camera work and editing, and often more in-depth/sciency topics.

    Breaking Taps builds cool stuff with some very intricate machining. I'm not well researched on the topics he covers, but I find the videos engaging and he seems to have the craziest machines in his workspace.

    Blacktail Studio does a lot of epoxy-heavy woodworking with what I think is a pretty good sense of humor. Similar to machining, I know very little about woodworking but find the videos engaging.

    IMPERIAL covers a range of historical and political topics with great scripts and animation.

    Ordinary Things was mentioned once in this thread already, but I'd like to give them a second shoutout. I really enjoy their work.

    GIFGAS makes urbex/trainhopping videos. They get taken down more and more often by YouTube, unfortunately. I prefer the style of his videos over Shiey, who is his friend and a much more popular creator.

    LaurieWired in-depth computer science and programming presented in a way that doesn't require tons of previous knowledge. Great aesthetic.

    Edit to add a few more I remembered:

    Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't in his own words "A Low-Brow, Crass Approach to Plant Ecology & Evolution as muttered by a Misanthropic Chicago Italian." Very knowledgeable guy with entertaining presentation.

    Folding Ideas surprisingly not mentioned yet, deep dives into a range of subjects.

    HELP I'M ON FIRE minor shoutout as they have very little content and I'm not sure if they plan on making any more, but I really like the few short documentaries they made.

    Jam2go digital artist / game dev / musician with some fun / informative / interesting videos across those categories.

    Physics for the Birds Simple explanations, drawings, and demonstrations on problems and concepts in a variety of topics (math, physics, programming, etc.)

    Posy a mixed bag of beautifully shot and sometimes informative looks at various things (most often retro technology)

    WatchingtheAerial deep dives on filmmaking and movie topics

    8 votes

  13. Comment on Minimal image self-hosting in ~comp

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    Flameshot is the closest Linux alternative to ShareX I'm aware of. I briefly tried it many years ago when switching off of Windows. IIRC it could only upload to Imgur without modification. I don't...

    Flameshot is the closest Linux alternative to ShareX I'm aware of. I briefly tried it many years ago when switching off of Windows. IIRC it could only upload to Imgur without modification. I don't remember the specifics of my other gripes, but it didn't feel like a ShareX replacement to me (which is likely not the aim of the project, to be fair) and I didn't use it for very long. It may have changed significantly over the years and/or be fine for some people.

    While writing this comment I came across SnapX, an in-development hard fork of ShareX with Linux support. Given the warning in the README about it not being ready for use, I'm not sure on its current functionality.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Recommendations needed: Favorite “comfort” movies in ~movies

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    Agreed! Fantastically over the top in almost every way. Beautifully animated, whacky characters, and a straightforward fun story. Really great brain-off fun. I do prefer the Japanese audio but the...

    Agreed! Fantastically over the top in almost every way. Beautifully animated, whacky characters, and a straightforward fun story. Really great brain-off fun. I do prefer the Japanese audio but the English audio is also good and often gets thrown on when I'm multitasking.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on Recommendations needed: Favorite “comfort” movies in ~movies

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    Barbarella is probably a polarizing one since it's essentially a sexploitation flick, but I love the atmosphere and general sillyness of it. The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies ever. I...

    Barbarella is probably a polarizing one since it's essentially a sexploitation flick, but I love the atmosphere and general sillyness of it.

    The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies ever.

    I still haven't read the novel for The Count of Monte Cristo (much to a certain friend's dismay,) but the movie is super densely packed fun. I assume that's a consequence of cutting up and condensing the novel for runtime. Maybe that would annoy me more if I had read the book first?

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Recommendations needed: Favorite “comfort” movies in ~movies

  17. Comment on The 2025 Steam Winter Sale is live (runs Dec 18 - Jan 5) in ~games

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    I have ~18 hours in it, all playing online co-op with some friends, and all before some of the latest major updates. It's janky and rough around the edges. Many things are a bit tedious until you...

    I have ~18 hours in it, all playing online co-op with some friends, and all before some of the latest major updates. It's janky and rough around the edges. Many things are a bit tedious until you get enough upgrades. The systems have some decent depth to them and it's definitely fun to goof around in for a while at the very least. The normal $25 price point is probably a bit high unless you're extremely in to the style of game, but it's completely worth the sale price of $2.50, IMO.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Scripts I wrote that I use all the time in ~comp

    3WolfMoon
    Link
    Easily my most used and most general script is a slightly modified version of this (archive link since the original seems to be down), letting me cycle between audio devices with a keyboard...

    Easily my most used and most general script is a slightly modified version of this (archive link since the original seems to be down), letting me cycle between audio devices with a keyboard shortcut.

    My other most commonly used scripts are way too niche to matter here.

  19. Comment on Humble Bundle: Image Comics in the ‘10s in ~comics

    3WolfMoon
    Link
    For anyone looking to get the best image quality possible I'd check out the PDFs. In Kodansha bundles they are much higher quality than the other offered formats. The highest available quality of...

    For anyone looking to get the best image quality possible I'd check out the PDFs. In Kodansha bundles they are much higher quality than the other offered formats. The highest available quality of any source, AFAIK. I haven't bought this or any previous Image bundles, so I'm not sure if the same applies.

    You can use something like Xpdf (pdfimages/pdftopng) to extract the images and repack them to a more versatile format. With western comics it may be worth converting them to JPEG or some other format, as full colour PNGs are usually super bloated.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Can I hope to defeat telematics in a new car? in ~transport

    3WolfMoon
    Link Parent
    No personal opinion as the service isn't relevant to me, but their FAQ seem to be mostly aimed at concerns like yours and a very brief glance at their privacy policy seems to line up with the...

    No personal opinion as the service isn't relevant to me, but their FAQ seem to be mostly aimed at concerns like yours and a very brief glance at their privacy policy seems to line up with the associated claims in the FAQ. These are still their own claims and justifications so do with them what you will.

    7 votes