Strypey (was at Quitter.se) @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

An intriguing comparison of #DuckDuckGo ad #StartPage, including #UX, #privacy, #ownership, #hosting, and more.
http://securityspread.com/2016/10/24/duckduckgo-startpage-2016-update/

When I get back from the upcoming trip to the UK for Open 2018, I'm thinking about doing a series of blog pieces on 'advice for windows users'. The first piece of advice would always be 'back up all your user files and install #GNU + #Linux. But assuming they're still not ready to do that, it would be interesting review what their options are for browsers, for example. Suggestions welcome.

Not in his blog piece:
"Last month, the government made a change to Work and Income's policy so any decision to suspend a benefit had to be approved by a second senior-level person."
OR
"Karen Pattie from the Beneficiaries Advocacy and Information Service in Auckland ... "said the new rules were a good move - and she was pleased they were having an immediate impact."
OR
"Ms Sepuloni said this was just one small step in the government's plan to overhaul the welfare system"
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/360495/benefit-suspensions-drop-after-new-policy

Left wing blogger snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/06/27/yay-the-new-government-are-20-less-cruel-than-national-what-a-win/

This is a fantastic video about how the original #StarWars (later titled 'A New Hope') started out as a confusing B movie, but was saved by the heroic group effort of its three editors (including George Lucas' then wife Marcia) and the advice of some of Lucas' director buddies. The film went on to win a number of Oscars, but not Best Director, and for very good reason, as shown in the video (and his subsequent efforts on the "Special Editions" and the #prequels)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMyMxMYDNk

'The Architecture of Open Source Applications' is a set of free books (gratis *and* libre - #CC #BY 3.0) intended to help programmers learn about the various ways of structuring an applications, and which ones to use in which situations
http://aosabook.org/

@nolan not sure why but Pinafore.social refuses to sync with my #Mastodon host today :<

Canada is now the first Commonwealth country to fully legalise and tax recreational cannabis. Are you paying attention #NZLabour and #NZFirst? Think of all that money wasted on prosecuting people for #ganja, and how that could be transformed into tax revenue from a regulated industry. Come on, it's a no-brainer!
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/359464/canada-legalises-recreational-marijuana

Need to recover tracks from #SoundCloud? This site can download stuff directly from their CDN, even with all JS turned off using #NoScript
https://scdownloader.net/

An interview with Denver Gingerich of #JMP, #WOM, and #Sopranica, a project to create a privacy-repecting replacement for the cell phone network:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/595zg5/sopranica-jmp-wom-cell-network-diy-anonymous

#NewWord "cofused", the opposite of confused, denoting greater understanding that results from integrating new information. Usage example: "I'm cofused. You said that fungi are more like animals than plants, and I looked that up, now I understand that life is divided into more than two major kingdoms".

It really annoys me that the password quality checkers now built into a lot of websites and applications haven't taken #KXCD #936 into account, and keep telling me my passwords are low quality, when I'm pretty sure they are not :<
https://www.xkcd.com/936/

I've started using really long passphrases that are easy for me to remember, because they are made up of a meaningful series of words. To a computer though, it looks like a *very * long string of totally random characters. A standard dictionary attack will fail because the words are in a non-English language, so the dictionary attack would have to test every possible combination of every word in every known language. Good luck with that.