But it’s global version or China version?

China version ROM is like this since the mi 6, the excuse was “limiting grey market sales”

Also the ROM now uses a different signature so from mi 5 onwards, flashing global ROM on china version, doesn’t allow to lock the bootloader again (you can send the command to lock it, but then you get a softbrick)

Illegal but tolerated: just think to all the Chinese companies thriving on Facebook ads sales

They crack down on it only when they need to punish a specific target/person

When you enter China, you have to run their application on your phone to fill the immigration form. Way more convenient compared to the paper slip, right? 😉

It’s this https://apkpure.com/zhong-guo-ling-shi/com.gov.mfa

Luckily, you don’t need to install full malware but only medium malware, there’s a way to run it as a web app inside tencent WeChat by scanning a special qr code.

I run this stuff inside insular because tencent is tencent and even on fully patched Android 15 without any file access permission they still manage to drop fingerprinting files disguised as images in /pictures/.gs_fs0

For connecting to my servers, technically ssh on standard ports isn’t blocked (otherwise it would hurt their bots, no?) but I don’t want to show my server IP address, so I use a hysteria2 proxy hosted on a Oracle VM in the Japan datacenter. There are services like doggygo that rent access to those proxys for literal pennies (like $2 per month) but payment need to do with alibaba’s alipay or tencent wepay which is ultra traceable (linked to Chinese id+Chinese bank account+Chinese phone number) and very stupid. Honeypot?

There are reports of evil maid attacks where a secret service agent poses as room cleaner in your hotel room and tampers with your laptop when you’re away, but for normal people this seems unlikely. Keep your electronics with you at all times, always use a VPN, check hashes of executables if really need to run them (better not) and you’re going to be ok

In this specific case can do it but the bootloader unlock request must come from a Chinese ip address, from a verified Chinese number (get otp code via SMS) and wait like one month

They’re mostly configured to ignore it, at most quarantine it

I set the mail server to bounce everything that doesn’t match dkim.

I almost don’t receive spam anymore.

The problem is that sometimes some legitimate services didn’t configure their email server correctly

Facebook not only sends the code to text without asking, but they love to just directly start the reset password procedure.

Now, that’s super weird. Are they assuming that, because last time I logged in was 6 months ago, I must have forgot my password?

The upside is that in this way they use less plastic. Cardboard can’t be transparent and people doesn’t separate the plastic from the cardboard when recycling.

We all know what razor blades look like so a photo can suffice, no?

He is insane

All that info is publicly available, but a nice CSV ready to be fed to spambots isn’t a really good idea…

If I was involved with wordpress for business, i would start to find a plan b, because now they target wp engine, then who’s next?

LOL genuinely thought it was a case of “engineer hates the user”, instead it was a case “management said we need to save 5 cents for the voltage regulator”

It’s a cr2032 from Duracell with that coating, later I’m going to try that

Raid wasn’t designed for data safety but to minimize downtime. Just swap the drive an continue operating the server seamlessly. Full backups are still required as the chance of complete failure isn’t zero

There are so many assholes like this that unless they’re using MailChimp or similar (cloud platforms where this can’t be done automatically) I don’t even bother with unsubscribing. I just set the mail server to bounce any email from that domain.

It’s still in alpha but hoarder is promising

It’s designed to organize bookmarks, but can also support markdown notes with picture (a single picture, not multiple pictures)

Unfortunately at the moment the mobile app is so alpha that doesn’t support creation or editing such notes, only new bookmarks or new photos.

It uses a headless chromium to make screenshots for URLs.

Optionally, can use a bullshit generator like ollama or openai api keys to automatically create a lot of useless tags to each note

Maybe they really believed that this shit was so good that nobody would ever return or even sell it to third parties in the future

I can’t believe that I watched a 30 minutes rant about puyo puyo until the end, it was interesting even if I’m on the Tetris side, sorry

What I’ve been doing:

Easy option: because I only have around 40gb of music, I sync it between my PC and my phone using syncthing since 128gb is the minimum nowadays

Hard option: streaming is cooler so I installed nextcloud with an optional plugin called “music” which allows to connect an app called “ultramusic” and it becomes “self hosted Spotify” with android auto support and all the bells and whistles. Disadvantage: Nextcloud is a moving target. For some reason they have to release new incompatible versions every two or three months. So for plugin developers this is a very annoying upgrade threadmill that eventually leads to burnout and that plugin dies. Even officially supported plugins sometimes don’t support the latest version when they launch it. If you choose to use nextcloud with docker, make sure to stay behind 1-2 versions (tag nextcloud:28 when nextcloud:30 is released) or your plugins might suddenly break without any warning. According to fanboys this is the industry standard nowadays and it’s up to the user to manually check the GitHub issues of each of the 30 plugins if it’s compatible before updating. Even if it’s official plugin. They call it “stable” but they mean “beta testing for the paid enterprise version”.

Unfortunately the hardware is so closed that even themselves can’t reset the software for refurbishing

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/7/24211339/humane-ai-pin-more-daily-returns-than-sales

Once a Humane Pin is returned, the company has no way to refurbish it, sources with knowledge of the return process confirmed. The Pin becomes e-waste, and Humane doesn’t have the opportunity to reclaim the revenue by selling it again.

You phone doesn’t have the low-res laser projector gimmick that is invisible in daylight, runs extremely hot and drains the battery in one hour

The fact that suddenly it went to watch a leisure website during work… did they use stolen screen recordings from human activity for training? Like if some corporation allowed them to record all the activity of their employees for training