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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • Hot take, but your local community matters infinitely more than the construction of your house. Build somewhere you have neighbors yoh get along with who will stick their neck out for you.

    That being said, you can do the following:

    • Plant/build near large trees to cover from satellite/aerial photography

    • run conduit throughout so you don’t have to rely on wireless networking

    • install security cameras that feed somewhere local (I’m assuming nobody who breaks into your house gives enough of a shit to fins and destroy your recordings)

    • buy actually good locks, doors, and doorframes. Make sure you’re aware of what to expect from these, they wont actually keep someone out, they just make entrance louder and slightly more cumbersome.

    • build a secret sex room for you and your spouse. This is less of a privacy asset, and more just a fun thing to do.


  • Our local PD literally have access to stingrays, cellbrite/Pegasus (I don’t actually know which one they pay for) and military weaponry. In the suburbs, they have armored vehicles as well (tanks and APCs, not armored swat trucks).

    Obviously it varies by where you live because different departments will have different levels of funding and will ask for different toys from the feds, but you’d be surprised how comically over equipped many PDs are.



  • If OP was trying to secure themselves against interest from conventional state actor like a large intelligence service, I’d say they probably need to throw their phone in a woodchipper and start hitchhiking to the nearest professional spy training program.

    More realistic concerns that an ordinary person probably has are casual mass surveillance and local police fuckery. Random AOSP Roms are not sufficient to handle either of those threats.









  • What do you usually use and offer when people ask you for contact?

    Ask your family/partner/friends to use signal, it is idiot proof enough for most people. You can provide your email and phone number for acquaintances who you don’t speak with enough to justify installing signal.

    I’m not in any student groups, but you can make a dummy Facebook account and only login using their website from behind a VPN.

    Banking app I used has blocked me from app after few years of using it when they realized I have it from “unofficial” source - Aurora store.

    Just use their website and carry a physical credit card in the back of your phone case.

    What’s your way of transport after having few beers in pub? Do you use taxi via calling it directly or use that weird Telegram taxi addon?

    We literally just drive drunk here. Is public transit an option? Again, you can sandbox these apps or use their respective websites.

    Is there a way to convert google map pins to open source solutions and vice versa? What’s your recommended software for directions? What do you use for driving?

    Organic maps is good if you have an address and only need directions. If you need complete records of where local businesses are and traffic info, google maps is your only option. I’d set it up in a sandboxes container though, at the very least.

    Do you track fitness activities?

    No, and I’d argue that nobody other than serious athletes need to. That being said, you can get a tracker that does not connect to your phone or the internet.

    Do you have good phone recommendations? I know that GrapheneOS+Pixel is one, but what about others?

    Graphene+pixel is head and shoulders the best option, especially in places like the US where you have to worry about illegal searches. Privacy requires security. That being said, there are alternatives if you cannot afford a new device: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm