• 17 Posts
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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 21st, 2021

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  • kevincox@lemmy.mlMtoOpen Source@lemmy.mlGIMP 3.0 Released
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    6 days ago

    Actually I would pick GIMP.

    1. Says what it is, an image editor.
    2. No popups and random interruptions.
    3. Not only AI editing examples which makes me thing the tool is AI only.
    4. An overview of the variety of major features it has rather than just AI editing.
    5. Links to helpful documentation rather than endless marketing pages that say nothing.

    Really think only thing I would like to see is some screenshots and examples of using the tool, rather than just info on what it does. But the Photoshop page barely has this, just a few examples of the AI tools.




  • It’s definitely an option. It will do the things that you want (as long as your phone is online, but that is the same for any other solution).

    sending Signal messages with it would be less secure

    Yes, this is because Beeper converts the Signal protocol to the Matrix protocol and vice versa. In order to do this it needs to access the messages. So it needs to decrypt the messages, then re-encrypt them on the other side. This means that the bridge (in this case operated by Beeper) has access to your messages. This is often referred to as “end-to-bridge” encryption, as it isn’t end-to-end anymore.

    This is going to be true of any bridge you use that is hosted by a third party. You are always adding one additional trusted party into your communication.

    the recommended bridge instructions sends me over to Beeper, since I don’t have my own server

    Yes, to practically operate a bridge you need your own Matrix server. This is because the bridge will create a new Matrix user for every remote participant (every phone number you communicate with in this case). Doing this with regular mechanisms would be difficult (as signup is likely restricted in some ways) and inefficient (as each account would need to be checked for new messages separately). Beeper runs their own homeserver so that they can operate their bridges. However Beeper’s bridges are only available to users on the same homeserver (this is not a protocol limitation, just their choice). So in order to use their bridges you need to make an account with them (which you can, it is free IIUC). Beeper also offers custom clients which have special features for interacting with their bridges (for example making it easier to start a conversation with a new phone number).

    The alternative would be to run your own server and bridge (or hire someone to it on your behalf).



  • Yeah, this is basically how it goes. It depends what country you grew up in. Canada is the same way, almost everyone who grew up in Canada can swim (not necessarily well, but able to manage). This is partly due to the number of lakes that exist near populated areas so swimming is a common passtime and boating accidents are a fairly high cause of accidental death. There are some countries where it is much more rare.





  • kevincox@lemmy.mltoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldMini pc arriving tomorrow
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    2 months ago

    IMHO Arch is actually a great choice. They do have a minimum update frequency you need to maintain (I don’t recall exactly, I think it is somewhere between 1 and 3 months) but if you do, and read the news before updates (and you are usually fine if you don’t, usually the update will just refuse to run until you intervene) things are pretty seamless. I had many arch machines running for >5 years with no issues and no reason to expect that it would change. This is many major version updates for other distros which are often not as seamless.

    That being said I am on NixOS now which takes this to the next level, I am running nixos-unstable but thanks to the way NixOS is structured I don’t need to worry about any legacy cruft accumulating from the many years of updates.

    And after all of that I don’t think it really matters. I think any major distro you pick, weather stable, release-based or LTS will be fine. They all have some sort of update path these days. (unlike in the past where some distros just recommended a re-install for major updates).


  • Only if they gain possession when the device is running with the drive decrypted and they keep it running the whole time. That is a lot higher bar then being able to turn the machine on at any time and then recover the key. For example if this is a laptop that you are flying with. Without auto-decryption you can simply turn it off and be very secure. With auto-decryption they can turn it on then extract the key from memory (not easy, but definitely possible and with auto-decryption they have as long as they need, including sending the device to whatever forensics lab is best equipped to extract the key).


    1. Wiping the drive is a lot easier, just overwrite the root key a few times.
    2. If you store the key on a different drive you can safely dispose of the drive just by separating the two. (I do on my home server, keeping the decryption key on a USB drive. If I need to ship the server or discard old hardware I can just hold onto the thumb drive and not worry about the data being read.)

    Security is always about tradeoffs. On my home server unattended reboots are necessary so it needs to auto-decrypt. But using encryption means I don’t need to worry about discarding broken hardware or if I need to travel with the server were it may be inspected. For my laptop, desktop and phone where I don’t need unattended reboots I require the encryption key on bootup.



  • That’s true. And I’m not saying B2 is bad, it is just something that you should be aware of.

    Their automatic replication isn’t quite as seamless as GCS or S3 though. For example deletes aren’t replicated so you will need a cleanup strategy. Plus once you 2x or 3x the price B2 isn’t as competitive on price. My point is that it is very easy to compare apples to oranges looking at cloud storage providers and it is important to be aware.

    For me B2 is a great fit and I am happy with it, but I don’t wan to mislead peope.


  • I think it depends on your needs. IIUC their storage is “single location”. Like a very significant natural disaster could take it offline or maybe even lose it. Something like S3 or Google Cloud Storage (depending on which durability you select) is multi-location (as in significantly distinct geographical regions). So still very likely that you will never lose any data, but in the extreme cases potentially you could.

    If I was storing my only copy of something it would matter a lot more (although even then you are best to store with multiple providers for social reasons, not just technical) but for a backup it is fine.