Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
danirabbit@mastodon.online ("Danielle Foré") wrote:

Christian nationalism is really accelerating in the USA and “we have to fight the godless communists” rhetoric is exploding after several democratic socialist election wins. Democrats have pledged to put a stop to it, and by “it” I mean the progressive policies

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
thedarktangent@defcon.social ("Jeff Moss") wrote:

Next up, a #DEFCON #VPN service sounds awesome. Like with email there is plenty of expertise on how to build VPNs. Technically it is a realistic goal, so let's investigate!

To be attractive to a large customer base you need to offer a lot of locations with an ever changing pool of addresses for when some get blocked by someone in the world.

Those two things mean you need a pool of providers and great automation playbooks where you can easily spin up and provision "secure" VPN gateways all over the world.

Because of the reliance on 3rd parties, unlike with email, you now have to worry about the legal concept of the 3rd party doctrine, so have some more lawyers ready to do battle.

Then two things happened, I spoke with two different people with experience in the VPN game. First someone who served as a CTO to a large VPN provider.

They spent all their time trying to save money, automate more, and respond to non-stop customer complaints from over seas business people. Chine would block some VPN addresses and they could no longer connect to their company back home and they needed to do that RIGHT NOW. So a sort of daily fire drill. The increasing VPN competition meant they had to keep spending on advertising and cost control.

The second person put the final nail in the coffin. They explained as far as they could tell about half of all VPN providers had ties to intelligence services. Either as fronts or investors or super friendly "partners". Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, some Middle Eastern countries, all play in this space.

This means half of the VPN providers have a different business model than the other half. Their goal is maximum people at the least cost to cast as large a monitoring net as possible, and revenue from paying customers doesn't have to actually cover your operating costs.

Building a #VPN service the right way would mean we would be more expensive, in fewer locations, and support only the strongest technologies - all things that would reduce your pool of potential customers.

So, like the private email idea, it was interesting to investigate, we learned a lot, and we will never enter the VPN market.

Instead we run free #Tor relays and support @torproject Please support Tor and other privacy technologies.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
thedarktangent@defcon.social ("Jeff Moss") wrote:

For #DEFCON to do private email we would want to host our own servers to avoid the 3rd party legal doctrine, and keep them secure.

No problem, we have a secure location and lawyers.

Back during COVID when we were investigating this it was still possible to gather some open source info on how large other private email services were. How big was the market? Could you make enough money to hire the people and buy the servers?

MailFence, Proton, and others showed it was possible if you were very efficient. Great!

Then I spoke with someone who worked at a white label email service provider. I realized DEF CON would never do a private email service for two reasons:

CSAM: They explained they had about 10 people dedicated to responding to legal requests around CSAM, not including their lawyers and LE relationship people.

SPAM: They had another room with about 30 people dealing just with spammers and the impacts of spammers. Managing their ASNs, netblocks that get lower reputation on blackhole lists, moving customers to "clean" netblocks when a shared block gets polluted by spammers, etc.

Conclusion? If you are very successful you can look forward to having a room of 40 people dealing with LE, SPAM, CSAM, Networking, and that's before you add on customer service. That doesn't seem fun or very DEF CON Hacker anymore.

Next up, VPN.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
thedarktangent@defcon.social ("Jeff Moss") wrote:

Back during COVID I looked into starting either a #DEFCON #VPN service, or a private email service.

Both VPN and email are well understood services, there is no shortage of people with expertise, it is not a big technical challenge to set up and operate...

Each became impossible or unattractive after talking to people who have operated them at deep levels over time. Here is why:

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net ("Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:") wrote:

I don't use commercial VPN (Virtual Private Net) offerings, but when a Swedish VPN company defends (in my opinion) massive donations by one of their CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) to a far-right political party with "free speech" and "it's his private choice", it tells me it's not a company I would consider to use as VPN provider. That's my choice.

https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822264297340100

#Mullvad #VPN #Streisand

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
alice@lgbtqia.space ("🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)") wrote:

I really hate the fact that "being hate-crimed" is a valid concern that basically all visibly queer people have a gut-level understanding of.

jwz wrote:

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein another artifact comes to light
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2026/06/27.html?utm%5Fsource=sp%5Fma

Boosted by jwz:
DemocracyMattersALot@mstdn.social ("Democracy Matters :verified:") wrote:

#OnThisDay #ThePeoplesHistory

JUNE 27, 2015: BREE NEWSOME REMOVES CONFEDERATE FLAG

While politicians debated the implications of taking down the Confederate flag after the white supremacist murder of nine African Americans at Emmanuel AME Church, Bree Newsome scaled the South Carolina state flag pole and took the flag down.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bree-newsome-removes-confederate-flag/

Boosted by jwz:
splitbrain@fedi.splitbrain.org ("Andreas Gohr") wrote:

my dudes (it's always dudes). when someone asks a question on the internet and you don't know the answer. Just fucking ignore it. "helpful guessing" is not helpful. the internet is a big place - there is a good chance someone will actually know the answer. if you want to be helpful, just boost the question.

Boosted by jwz:
VeroniqueB99 ("Vee") wrote:

Boosted by jwz:
tael@yiff.life ("Tael 🔜 AC26") wrote:

Ok, just to sum it up for those following along at home:
NordVPN: confidence scam, the Raid: Shadow Legends of VPNs
Mozilla VPN: reseller of Mullvad
Tailscale: partners with Mullvad
ExpressVPN: Israeli
Private Internet Access: ditto
ProtonVPN: sponsors French fascists
MullvadVPN: donates millions to Swedish fascists

am I missing any?

Boosted by jwz:
jplebreton ("JP") wrote:

OpenAI employee Tarun Gogineni aka "roon" just openly worshipping death and human enslavement to the god-computer he believes he's creating. your IPO just got pushed back bro! it's all falling apart! your nihilism was pointless and evil and you'll be hated for the rest of your days!

Boosted by jwz:
swachter@toot.boston wrote:

Apparently my ongoing evolution into full crone includes dropping bangers like "it's reprehensible that a bunch of men stole everything we ever wrote and want to sell it back to you" and "aren't you scared that the most unethical people who ever lived know so much about you" and "we eat three billionaires and the rest fall into line" on unsuspecting grad students who are trying to tell me that AI can be used for good

Boosted by jwz:
MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social ("Scary Austin") wrote:

Mel Brooks is turning 100 years old tomorrow. Everyone knows and loves his comedy. Not everyone knows he served as a US Army combat engineer in WWII and was in the Battle of the Bulge.

Happiest of birthdays to the GOAT of mocking Nazis. ❤️

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-hilarious-way-mel-brooks-taunted-nazis-on-the-world-war-ii-battlefield/

Boosted by jwz:
theonion@threads.net ("The Onion") wrote:

GOP Urges Democrats To Tone Down Rhetoric Used To Quote President Verbatim

https://theonion.com/gop-urges-democrats-to-tone-down-rhetoric-used-to-quote-president-verbatim/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

I think cleaning my typewriters might be my summer project.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
stux@mstdn.social ("stux⚡️") wrote:

More people have been arrested in the Swamp Pool disaster then in the Epstein case, this tells you everything you need to know about this dictator

#Trump #Epstein #Trumpstein #USPol #USA #US

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
sambowne@infosec.exchange ("Sam Bowne :donor:") wrote:

Texas mandates Bible readings and Christian-infused curriculum in public schools - Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2026/06/27/texas-mandates-bible-readings-and-christian-infused-curriculum-in-public-schools/

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
edolnx@kind.social ("Carl") wrote:

@mwl I firmly believe that the complete lack of understanding, and support, around IPv6 by last mile (and especially residential) providers in North America is the absolute largest impediment to broad adoption

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
ChangeChameleon@dragonchat.org ("Change Chameleon 🍇") wrote:

Heads up.

Have you seen that new chat feature on YouTube? I just discovered if you hit "Share Link" and send someone a YouTube video, it will now be considered an invite to chat as well. Meaning the tracker link attached to the video now links to you directly. To turn this off when hitting share, go to the "sending as person" drop down and click "change in settings". That will take you to the privacy settings where you can toggle it off.

I had thought my brother had initiated this to try the feature. Turns out it's an on-by-default setting that links directly back to your username (or real name depending on your Google account settings) when you share a link outside YouTube.

It's now more important than ever to remove the tracking markers from links if you haven't been doing it before.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
drscriptt@oldbytes.space ("DrScriptt") wrote:

Question: How does the network and computer industry pronounce BDSM?

Answer: IPv6

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I hate that the idea that we should all be kinder to each other has been co-opted by the worst people.

It used to be this subversive thing that came with showing kindness to those in the margins, like when Mr. Rogers shared a pool with a Black man.

Now, kindness is more about shutting up and ignoring atrocity in favor of being polite.

Without fail, when someone says we need to be kinder to each other, what they really mean is poor people need to die quieter.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
lexxy@social.foxtail.garden ("Lexxy") wrote:

BlueSky / the AT protocol is not federated, and will never be federated (unless there are significant, breaking changes). A central authority will always be in control of what users will see, who they are allowed to interact with, and who is allowed to say what and when.

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

Relax. This is one of the coldest summers you'll experience for the rest of your life.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

it's MANthematics, not WOMANthematics

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

okay brain done for now

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
JulianOliver ("Julian Oliver") wrote:

A piece from March this year on the why's of deploying a VPN for your org/fam/people.

https://courses.nikau.io/2026/03/24/why-run-your-own-vpn/

Yes I plug our training in there at the end, as a shortcut to getting to a good setup, but the rest of the text stands completely independent from that.

However you get there, running VPN infrastructure for a community you care about, in an ethically aligned jurisdiction, can be a significant contribution to wellbeing, and helps decentralise the fight for privacy.

neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik") wrote:

Did you know? omg.lol has a member map!

https://home.omg.lol/map

Of course it’s totally voluntary, and I designed it so that you can’t zoom in too far (to discourage anyone from accidentally revealing *too* specific of a location). But it’s fun to see if you’re near other members, or just to see where folks are out there!

neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik") wrote:

Lrnu, V ernyvmr gung guvf vf sne rnfvre gb qb va Qvfpbeq. Ohg EBG13 vf sha! Naq shyyl pbzcngvoyr jvgu rirel VEP pyvrag bhg gurer. *Naq* vg’f gbgnyyl jbegu vg sbe gur jubyr “jr’er abg tbvat gb znxr lbh unaq bire lbhe VQ sbe fbzr fghcvq ntr irevsvpngvba guvat". Fb, lrnu.

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

And the thumbnail of course.