Sounds like a them problem then.

podman exists and doesn’t force root…

It’s yours, no issues trusting a public instance with your searches. Pages full of settings to tweak as you like. Less problems with an algorithm ‘helping’ you. It averages searches over multiple search engines that you choose, you can set up your own (or a curated) block list of crappy AI slop sites, don’t like fandom.com or something, gone. Manage your own bangs, e.g. !aa for annas-archive. Pipe it through a VPN with gluetun for better isolation. If you have your head around docker already it’s more like half an hour to set up, so why not?

Can hook it up to perplexica and a local LLM for a fully local AI search that you define, use it as a MCP server, do deep research with it…

You’ll be fine, make sure it’s a x16 card (vasty majority are), stick it in your x16 slot. Make sure you have enough power, some are pretty thirsty these days (it’s usually on the specs sheet for the card and on your power supply in the case)

You can also upgrade the CPU to AMD Ryzen 3000 series (e.g. 3900X, pretty cheap second hand) by upgrading the BIOS here for a nice performance uplift. Get to at least 16Gb RAM (DDR4, also cheap).

Later, you can recycle this as a home sever or swap to a motherboard that supports Ryzen 5000 series (also cheap these days), which will take all your present hardware and enable CPU upgrade to say 5800X3D to make it a gaming beast (at least for a couple of years).

know truth from fiction.

You jest, but…

You are aware that Netflix et.al. put compression on their streams (usually quite a bit in regards to bitrate) ? It is often the case that BluRay rips etc. are available better on the high seas…

While I generally agree and consider this insightful, it behooves us to remember the (actual, 1930s) Nazis did it with newspapers, radio and rallies (… in a cave, with a box of scraps).

Fair enough, I got the wrong impression with the post (which I did read) finishing with

It is not impossible to circumvent these issues, for instance by paying for a jmp.chat phone number with monero XMR. In this case you don’t actually have the sim, but rather access it remotely over XMPP. If you do this over Tor very little can be used against you.

and so on, which I found wanting from a privacy perspective at the implied threat level. No phones (or perhaps faraday bags, or aircraft mode, if tested, depending on threat model) is a much more astute take home, hence the spycraft suggestion.

Anyhow, best of luck.

So, your key takeaway seems to be getting an untraceable phone number. From an opsec point of view I see a few problems.

First, this is implicitly aimed at going against state level actors, which is a whole other game than random internet services. With that in mind…

You assume TOR is actually anonymous, but it has been shown that with enough compromised exit nodes that fails. It’s also a NSA project originally, which may or may not be relevant, the code may be good and is open and has had eyes on, but at the least shows they are intimately familiar with it.

You assume acquisition of Monero is uncompromised and untraceable. Perhaps cash at a machine might be pretty good, but a camera could easily invalidate it, or the machine itself be compromised, wouldn’t be hard to imagine a profit motive or false flag driving that.

What’s the security implications of the XMPP protocol ? Just using TOR may not be enough (I don’t know, just asking the questions). What about the other end of the phone call?

One approach, especially for local efforts, is just using old school spycraft, dead drops, one time pads etc.

You asked for feedback.

Until next week, sigh.

Huge kudos to Freetube, I love it. Just the opposite to Alphabet, go on, be evil again.

Would’ve sworn Potatohead/Voldemort was a caretaker and they’d switch for the election. Instead the shit stain is neck and neck (according to Murdoch polls). Wtf is wrong with this country, we see Trump and go ‘hold my beer’. May not be the worst timeline, but it ain’t good.

He wants real estate.

I could care less, but then I wouldn’t care at all…

Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or incompetence).

This works for individuals, but when it comes to corporations, you really have to ask, why not both?

Clear as mud. (I actually dimly get it, I’m a dev, but mere mortals will be clueless and move on). Farcaster is right, you need to define terms and give examples of actually getting this up and running, you’ve got way too much internal context that you’re not making explicit. Not an attack, trying to help, project sounds cool.

FreshRSS for those playing along at home…