R.I.P NexusMods

[zechosen]

I didn't knew that /v/ and some of the /tesg/ cesspit were free to shitpost in here.

[CountShaun]

13 minutes ago, unmatched baguette said:

Thread getting derailed Can't speak for the current version of vortex, but during the beta the ui was unusable, have you tried using MO2? Cleaner, more compact ui with more information (no ads and theme support as a bonus)

I have only just started using Vortex and it seems alright to me. Like I said, it's better than NMM.

 

Never used M02. Maybe I'll give it a try with Fallout 4

[Nessa]

3 minutes ago, unmatched baguette said:

Thread getting derailed

 I think it was already derailed when it started. Besides I think this is the most posts I've done in a single thread here in ages. ?

 

3 minutes ago, unmatched baguette said:

... have you tried using MO2? Cleaner, more compact ui with more information (no ads and theme support as a bonus)

I'm actually a rather big fan of MO2. Only used it during my brief FO4 stint but it's really useful. If I were to ever redo my Skyrim install (unlikely as the mere thought gives me a migraine) I'd definitely prefer that. Best thing too is when you rage against some bug and delete the whole game just to spite Todd (that will show HIM ?), just reinstall and MO has all your mods waiting for you. (What? Am I the only one that does that? haha ?)

[TundraBrigand]

~~ A Few Words On Security ~~

As you're probably aware, this is the year 20XX.

Automated programs roam the net, attempting to log into every single website and surface using massive lists of usernames and passwords from successful breaches. Because about 1 in 4 people re-use passwords across multiple services, this has been highly successful. That's how people wake up to find their Epic Games account stolen, for example. Because people are stupid.

 

The average end user's threat model doesn't need to worry about state-level actors. Common security advice is now to use a small portable book to write your passwords in. As long as you're a common schmoe and not, say, an investigative journalist, this should be very secure.

If you want human-rememberable passwords, consider using a pair of dice and a very long list of words like the Diceware lists to generate a five-word passphrase.

 

This is the year 20XX.

Protect yourself.

[Nessa]

 

2 hours ago, TundraBrigand said:

~~ A Few Words On Security ~~

As you're probably aware, this is the year 20XX.

First off, I love that your only post is on security. It's the little things that go a long way! ? ?

 

Quote

Automated programs roam the net, attempting to log into every single website and surface using massive lists of usernames and passwords from successful breaches. Because about 1 in 4 people re-use passwords across multiple services, this has been highly successful. That's how people wake up to find their Epic Games account stolen, for example. Because people are stupid.

 

Well OK but having an Epic account at all is pretty.... Erm... Ahem, right. I've already gone over my one rant per thread limit. ?

 

You can have the best passwords on the planet and won't matter worth a damn if the site gets breached. So all my 40+ character unreadable nonsense passwords feel good but they'll still get found when the site in question has crap security. Too many cases of certain companies storing those 40+ character passes in plaintext. On public servers. Without any security at all. ?‍♀️

Speaking of which, it's 20XX! Why does the above STILL happen??? Companies should at least have the decency to get actually breached by a professional crooks! Not leave things right in the open where any fool can just pick it up! It's embarrassing really. ?

 

But yeah, if your password is 123456 and you've got a bunch of nude photos of yourself on your phone/computer, you both need serious mental help and a better password. ? Perhaps the latter before the former. ?

 

Quote

The average end user's threat model doesn't need to worry about state-level actors.

 

Yeah, state actors are messy.

• 4096-bit whatever protected password list? Result: they smack you around till you tell them.
• Hid your black book somewhere? Result: they smack you around till you tell them.
• Plausible deniability? You've hidden your passwords but it doesn't -look- like you hid them. Even data experts can't find a thing on your hard drive? Result: they make up charges, probably smack you around anyway, and you still get arrested and promptly jailed after a show trial.

?

Moral is: don't mess with state actors. ?

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Nessa said:

Isn't that just about anything Google now? I finally quit using google's image search (which was the last thing Google I was voluntarily using) because I was apparently searching for the wrong thing. According to Google anyway. ? ? Curiously other image searches have no problem returning what I actually searched for. Go figure. ?

If anyone is still using Google products and thus giving their personal information to Google willingly after Project Veritas, they are either major normies who aren't aware of the major events in big tech or they are simply too stupid to understand the value of privacy and what those big tech are financing with money made from your own information.

Every single digital Google product has some alt tech alternative (most of them FOSS). I've been living Google free even before the  events of Project Veritas and it works. The only difficult replacement was for YouTube, due to their sheer amount of hosted videos, but thanks to their heavy censorship under Susan, you can now find most non-biased news or political commenting (biased or not) on Bitchute, and if you still need to access YouTube for some video that can't be found elsewhere, you can use an Invidious instance.

 

As for two factor, I avoid it like the plague. I am not too keen in giving even more personal information (such as my phone number) to corporations or other parties or install their shitty apps.

I've over a decade of Steam service and once they blocked me from using certain services (such as the community market, trading, etc) because I'd refused to install their shitty app on my phone, I knew it was the beginning of the end for me on Steam.

Plus, biased moderating in the same bias as Reddit moderating (in both games and forums) has made me not log in their platform for almost a year.

I am actually enjoying pretty much their feud with EGS. Two shitty and greedy corporations fighting each other is always a pleasure to watch.

 

My last new mod on Nexus was uploaded in 2018, but I've uploaded new versions of my mods to Nexus this year and they didn't bitch me about two factor.

They haven't bothered me with changing my password yet, but I assume they will once the month ends, in which I'll just generate a random password in my Python password script and save it in the password manager.

[stingray1995]

22 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

Says a lot about how worthless your time is.

 

Sad that you think 2FA is an affront to your dignity, but based on your post, you didn't have much to spare.

I'm thinking about how nice that chair would feel in my hands right now. 

[Nessa]

1 hour ago, Hawk9969 said:

If anyone is still using Google products and thus giving their personal information to Google willingly after Project Veritas....

Wasn't that the thing where they got audio of Google employees saying they did what we all knew they do anyway? ? I mean really, did we need audio proof? ? I'd Google it but.... ?

 

Actually I was just looking into my issues with Google image search. I guess I'm not the only one to have noticed. I regularly need to get face profiles of real people in order to well... avoid making potato heads. (I leave that to Bethsoft. ?) Usually I'll compile a set of profile images of real people, then combine features I want into a new character that can't be hunted down for copyright. (I'm speaking commercially here, modding is much easier.) As such, I regularly need to search for photos of various genders and races. Outside of professional sites, Google was initially a good free alternative. Thing is, some races and genders return the opposite of what you ask for. Very frustrating until I realized some other image searches didn't have this peculiarity.

 

Apparently it's not just racial. I just read about this and tried it. Head to google image search. (And if you're logged in, first slap yourself for having a Google account still, then logout! ?) Search for "lesbian couples". Expected results right? Now try "straight couples". No way is that simply an algorithm error. Particularly since I can do the very same query in some other sites and have expected results for both. So either Google's algorithm is crap or they're doing it on purpose.

 

Quote

I am not too keen in giving even more personal information (such as my phone number)

Whoa now. I draw the line on anything asking for a phone period. Fortunately there are quite a few 2-factor security setups where the phone bit is optional. (For instance I didn't give Steam a number for their version of 2-factor.)

 

If a site goes the phone number route only that is actually a major security concern. Because then when they get breached, either by real hackers or (more likely) their own incompetence, then there is actually some data worth stealing. That's game over. (Of course there are ways to get a temporary phone number just for that purpose but still....)

 

Of course all this said, doesn't appear the Nexus is actually making 2-factor, whatever form they chose, mandatory. So far anyway. I just managed to login to their new portal without a 503. 2-factor appears to still be optional.

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, Nessa said:

Wasn't that the thing where they got audio of Google employees saying they did what we all knew they do anyway? ? I mean really, did we need audio proof? ? I'd Google it but.... ?

 

Most people knew, yes, but Google would just deny and call us conspiracy theorists. With the video leak and the former Google employee leaking Google's documents ( https://www.projectveritas.com/google-document-dump/ ), this has become a pretty decent set of evidences for a lawsuit, government enforcement (they still claim to be a platform and not a publisher) and for your typical normie to start believing the truth.

 

38 minutes ago, Nessa said:

Actually I was just looking into my issues with Google image search. I guess I'm not the only one to have noticed. I regularly need to get face profiles of real people in order to well... avoid making potato heads. (I leave that to Bethsoft. ?) Usually I'll compile a set of profile images of real people, then combine features I want into a new character that can't be hunted down for copyright. (I'm speaking commercially here, modding is much easier.) As such, I regularly need to search for photos of various genders and races. Outside of professional sites, Google was initially a good free alternative. Thing is, some races and genders return the opposite of what you ask for. Very frustrating until I realized some other image searches didn't have this peculiarity.

 

Apparently it's not just racial. I just read about this and tried it. Head to google image search. (And if you're logged in, first slap yourself for having a Google account still, then logout! ?) Search for "lesbian couples". Expected results right? Now try "straight couples". No way is that simply an algorithm error. Particularly since I can do the very same query in some other sites and have expected results for both. So either Google's algorithm is crap or they're doing it on purpose.

 

Use DuckDuckGo and DuckDuckGo Images instead. Another bonus of DuckDuckGo Images is that you can access the link of the image directly without browser extensions, something that Google removed a couple of years ago on their deal with Getty Images, sabotaging their own platform.

 

As for the tampering with results, check the documents above or Project Veritas video. They are clearly tampering with results (Machine Learning Fairness document).

 

38 minutes ago, Nessa said:

Whoa now. I draw the line on anything asking for a phone period. Fortunately there are quite a few 2-factor security setups where the phone bit is optional. (For instance I didn't give Steam a number for their version of 2-factor.)

 

If a site goes the phone number route only that is actually a major security concern. Because then when they get breached, either by real hackers or (more likely) their own incompetence, then there is actually some data worth stealing. That's game over. (Of course there are ways to get a temporary phone number just for that purpose but still....)

 

Of course all this said, doesn't appear the Nexus is actually making 2-factor, whatever form they chose, mandatory. So far anyway. I just managed to login to their new portal without a 503. 2-factor appears to still be optional.

Steam will limit your account for certain services such as the Community Market, Trading, etc if you don't install their phone app for two factor.

The limitation for the market is that your item will only show up for buyers after 1 week of your posting, at that point the value of the item may have changed and you will need to repost the item again at the updated price, and again, get the stupid one week cooldown. It made it impossible for me to use the market, so I just stopped using it altogether instead of installing their shitty app.

The limination for trading is that if you haven't been friends with the person you are trading with for at least 1 year, the trade will only be completed after 15 days (24 hours if you've been friends for 1+ year) of both parties accepting the trade. Before Valve completely ruined Steam badges and cards in the 2019 Summer Sale, it was a pain in the ass for me to find random people to trade left over sale cards that were willing to accept the 15 days cooldown, even the trade bots wouldn't accept the cooldown.

 

EDIT: Attached the Google doc for Algorithmic Unfairness. Enjoy the read and learn why your search results are like that

Definition of Algorithmic Unfairness - PRIVILEGED.pdf

[travelmedic]

So this thread has brought up one interesting question for me, and that is about password managers.  I have avoided them, and as a result been guilty of recycling some passwords on some sites.  

 

Are password managers really secure, or are they susceptible to hacking/data breaches too?  I really don't know much about them.

 

Someone on this thread recommended LastPass, are there others that are also recommended.  If the general consensus is that they're a good, and more importantly safe idea, then I don't mind paying a reasonable amount to get a good manager if need be.

[DoctaSax]

PW managers can indeed end up getting hacked at some point - they obviously invest more in their security than the average firm, but if they ever get hacked, all your passwords for everything are out in the open.

Or the companies could go bankrupt and then no longer provide their service, so you no longer have access.

 

It's safer to use one than re-use passwords across different sites though.

Me, I write them all down on paper.

[Guest]

39 minutes ago, travelmedic said:

So this thread has brought up one interesting question for me, and that is about password managers.  I have avoided them, and as a result been guilty of recycling some passwords on some sites.  

 

Are password managers really secure, or are they susceptible to hacking/data breaches too?  I really don't know much about them.

 

Someone on this thread recommended LastPass, are there others that are also recommended.  If the general consensus is that they're a good, and more importantly safe idea, then I don't mind paying a reasonable amount to get a good manager if need be.

If it's just for web storing, use your browser's password manager. Unless you are using a pretty shitty browser, updates should be frequent for any new exploits. Most major browsers will also encrypt the passwords to a extent and store them in local SQL tables, making them much harder to leak.

Avoid storing really important passwords in big tech browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, IE/Edge, etc). Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Waterfox and other privacy-oriented browsers should be relatively safe to store them.

Prefer FOSS over proprietary for password managers (including browsers), much easier to detect scams.

 

For non-web, I tend to just save them in text to my external HDD, only plugging the HDD for retrieving passwords or storing them.

[Nessa]

4 hours ago, Hawk9969 said:

Steam will limit your account for certain services such as the Community Market, Trading, etc if you don't install their phone app for two factor.

The limitation for the market is that your item will only show up for buyers after 1 week of your posting, at that point the value of the item may have changed and you will need to repost the item again at the updated price, and again, get the stupid one week cooldown. It made it impossible for me to use the market, so I just stopped using it altogether instead of installing their shitty app.

The limination for trading is that if you haven't been friends with the person you are trading with for at least 1 year, the trade will only be completed after 15 days (24 hours if you've been friends for 1+ year) of both parties accepting the trade. Before Valve completely ruined Steam badges and cards in the 2019 Summer Sale, it was a pain in the ass for me to find random people to trade left over sale cards that were willing to accept the 15 days cooldown, even the trade bots wouldn't accept the cooldown.

I just doubled checked what I did with Steam. I used their email authentication nonsense instead of the phone app. If I recall, Steam Guard (the 2-factor whatsit) is required to be able to upload public mods and comment.

But I don't use the market at all and in fact generally don't buy games through steam ever. So perhaps that market thing is in effect for me and I'd just never know about it.

 

Quote

EDIT: Attached the Google doc for Algorithmic Unfairness. Enjoy the read and learn why your search results are like that

 

I didn't read it all (because really, Google) but what I did... WOW. Very interesting. No wonder their searches are skewed to hell. Also I felt like being a Wiki nutter and slapping "citation needed" on several of their assumptions. ? ?

[LesboIsBesto]

Wow what clickbait, and here I thought something bad actually happened to Nexus smh >.>

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Nessa said:

I just doubled checked what I did with Steam. I used their email authentication nonsense instead of the phone app. If I recall, Steam Guard (the 2-factor whatsit) is required to be able to upload public mods and comment.

But I don't use the market at all and in fact generally don't buy games through steam ever. So perhaps that market thing is in effect for me and I'd just never know about it.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8078-TPHC-6195#5

 

I stand corrected. It's actually 15 days for the market aswell (I've stopped using the market when they first introduced this in 2016).

 

As you can see, Valve pretty much tells you to deal with it and install their app on your phone or GTFO their extra services.

If you don't have mobile auth, yeah, it's in effect for you.

[Nessa]

55 minutes ago, Hawk9969 said:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8078-TPHC-6195#5

 

I stand corrected. It's actually 15 days for the market aswell (I've stopped using the market when they first introduced this in 2016).

 

As you can see, Valve pretty much tells you to deal with it and install their app on your phone or GTFO their extra services.

If you don't have mobile auth, yeah, it's in effect for you.

 

What is so great about that article is how they package their argument. It's for your own safety of course. Just give them your phone number. Is that so hard for a little security?? ?  The clue of course is the penalty for not giving them a number. They don't give a rip whether or not your stuff is stolen in case of a breach. They want that number dammit. ?

But yeah it seems I'm stuck as well. But I wouldn't ever use the market anyway.

 

The tone reminds of the time I needed to buy something via steam. They had a rule that you can only upload a mod publicly if you've bought something once. (Convenient rule! ?) So I found a 5€ game and thought that was the end of it. Only I wasn't in the country where I started the Steam account. Steam's response was basically: "Screw you, keep your money, and also we're incompetent." A VPN magically transported me back to the original country and it was solved that way.

 

That said, I was reticent to buy through Steam before that experience. After, I plain refuse to buy anything at all through the Steam store. I find gaming is significantly cheaper and more satisfying when done via sales only. And for some reason I have better luck with sales not on Steam. Also avoids the rage I'd feel plopping down 60 or more for an unfinished game. Which is most of the AAA titles lately. Steam probably still get their 30 pieces of silver but it's at a greatly reduced rate. ?

 

 

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, Nessa said:

 

What is so great about that article is how they package their argument. It's for your own safety of course. Just give them your phone number. Is that so hard for a little security?? ?  The clue of course is the penalty for not giving them a number. They don't give a rip whether or not your stuff is stolen in case of a breach. They want that number dammit. ?

But yeah it seems I'm stuck as well. But I wouldn't ever use the market anyway.

Registering your phone number within your profile is optional, installing the Steam app on your phone is not if you plan to use those services I'd mentioned.

You will be confirming trades and market interactions through the app instead of your email, so you will pretty much be running another big tech app 24/7... No, thank you!

 

Hell, I keep my phone turned off 99% of the time because it's an Android; I don't need Google using its camera and microphone to spy on me.

According to Snowden, Airplane Mode is certainly not safe in regards to privacy and in some cases even turning your phone off is not enough, you need to remove its battery to prevent it from leaving some functionalities still running without noticing you.

 

As for hackers... screw that. Unless they are heavily financed hackers from certain nations, big tech owning your personal information is far more dangerous than any individual hacker.

[faky]

"it's your security, make an effort" line is really dumb.

if i am the one making an account then it's up to me whether i care or dont care about that account being hacked or whatever. why does every single site require an email address to register? "it's to get your password back in case you lose it". AND I DONT CARE. it's just another hoop to jump through. if i dont care about the account, why should anyone else? (and yes, i know there are throwaway email services and i do use them)

my password isnt stronk enough? cool. hack my nexus account that i only ever use to download mods. that will be so much more useful to you than registering your own.

same goes for reusing passwords - if i actually cared about the account then i'd make an effort.

12 hours ago, Hawk9969 said:

Most people knew, yes, but Google would just deny and call us conspiracy theorists. With the video leak and the former Google employee leaking Google's documents ( https://www.projectveritas.com/google-document-dump/ ), this has become a pretty decent set of evidences for a lawsuit, government enforcement (they still claim to be a platform and not a publisher) and for your typical normie to start believing the truth.

 

Use DuckDuckGo and DuckDuckGo Images instead. Another bonus of DuckDuckGo Images is that you can access the link of the image directly without browser extensions, something that Google removed a couple of years ago on their deal with Getty Images, sabotaging their own platform.

 

As for the tampering with results, check the documents above or Project Veritas video. They are clearly tampering with results (Machine Learning Fairness document).

 

Steam will limit your account for certain services such as the Community Market, Trading, etc if you don't install their phone app for two factor.

The limitation for the market is that your item will only show up for buyers after 1 week of your posting, at that point the value of the item may have changed and you will need to repost the item again at the updated price, and again, get the stupid one week cooldown. It made it impossible for me to use the market, so I just stopped using it altogether instead of installing their shitty app.

The limination for trading is that if you haven't been friends with the person you are trading with for at least 1 year, the trade will only be completed after 15 days (24 hours if you've been friends for 1+ year) of both parties accepting the trade. Before Valve completely ruined Steam badges and cards in the 2019 Summer Sale, it was a pain in the ass for me to find random people to trade left over sale cards that were willing to accept the 15 days cooldown, even the trade bots wouldn't accept the cooldown.

 

EDIT: Attached the Google doc for Algorithmic Unfairness. Enjoy the read and learn why your search results are like that

Definition of Algorithmic Unfairness - PRIVILEGED.pdf 96.33 kB · 4 downloads

 

it was common knowledge for a long time that google read the emails from gmail. anyone that assumes their data is safe with any *major murrican company* should really reconsider. not just because of what they do but also because of how their govt and courts deal with breaches. got your credit card/social security info stolen? someone took out loans in your name because of recent data breach? "best we can do is 5$ of compensation and deal with it". as for skewing search results, burying information and censoring opposing views - the signs have been there for years too. anyone that cares already knew, the rest still wont care or do anything. lawsuit? governmental enforcement? please, they have a different kind of relationship. you do not bite the hand that feeds you this much data (can i go off about how facebook-like sites get state sponsorship because they are the easiest way to acquire citizen's really personal data without any effort?)

 

have you tried yandex image search? i started using it with the help of firefox addon and it's lightyears ahead of google image search. like not just finding the same picture (and providing direct links where possible too!) but even finding that picture except in colour (if search was in b&w) and finding very similar images/other images of the same kind

actually screw it, cant even figure out how to image search with the duck. try yandex and tell us how it compares?

[Nessa]

45 minutes ago, faky said:

hack my nexus account that i only ever use to download mods. that will be so much more useful to you than registering your own.

same goes for reusing passwords - if i actually cared about the account then i'd make an effort.

 

That's another thing. If you have an account with no personal information, who cares if it gets breached? The thing that always gets me with a lot of smaller websites (and even Big Tech) is that very often the breaches are their own fault and have nothing to do with users being stupid. Sure there are stupid users like the thing with the celebrity phones, but the usual situation is a site with weak to plain idiotic security.

Case in point, Amazon was breached awhile back. It was their own fault. And my giant nonsensical password compromised. But I didn't store any credit cards and all the hackers got is where I send my packages which is a company. ?

 

Quote

actually screw it, cant even figure out how to image search with the duck. try yandex and tell us how it compares?

For the freebie stuff I do use Yandex actually. Pretty decent image search! The Ducky has similar issues to Google image search. Maybe not quite as bad, but I just did another test and it's showing similar problems. Just for completeness I tested Yandex and got expected results.

 

Now of course you can kind of bypass Google entirely by using stuff like StartPage. (Which is actually the way I used Googe image search.) But that is still a Google search, just behind another site. You can find the same biased search results through that as you can get via Google directly.

 

 

Since really looking into this, I see the Google bias is actually quite dreadful and certainly not limited to images. (And why would it be?) There are some funny at best and at worst horrifying auto-completes and the top results for some search queries are ... disturbing. (Or hilarious depending on viewpoint!) ?

 

As for Google mail.... yeah... no real point in using that now unless you have no issues with every single one of your messages being read, stored, and probably checked for wrong-think. ?

[unmatched baguette]

11 hours ago, travelmedic said:

So this thread has brought up one interesting question for me, and that is about password managers.  I have avoided them, and as a result been guilty of recycling some passwords on some sites. 

Are password managers really secure, or are they susceptible to hacking/data breaches too?  I really don't know much about them.

Someone on this thread recommended LastPass, are there others that are also recommended.

11 hours ago, DoctaSax said:

PW managers can indeed end up getting hacked at some point - they obviously invest more in their security than the average firm, but if they ever get hacked, all your passwords for everything are out in the open.

It's safer to use one than re-use passwords across different sites though.

Me, I write them all down on paper.

Password managers don't have to be online, and should definitely not cost money, my recommendation is KeePassXC with Syncthing to sync between devices, can't really get much more secure than this provided you have a strong master password.
 

8 hours ago, Hawk9969 said:

As you can see, Valve pretty much tells you to deal with it and install their app on your phone or GTFO their extra services.

If you don't have mobile auth, yeah, it's in effect for you.

(Not sure if this still works without root) You can install the app, set up the authenticator, extract the secret and add that to whatever authenticator you use (needs support for steam key generation), I use Aegis which can do that automatically.

7 hours ago, Hawk9969 said:

Hell, I keep my phone turned off 99% of the time because it's an Android.

What about microG LineageOS?

 

And on a final note, you can't really trust any mail provider, even if they "encrypt" your mail, that means they generated the key, and therefore is not end-to-end encryption, if you somehow convince the people you are mailing to use PGP on the other hand, you can pretty much trust anyone. Though I suppose any mail you recieve from companies is still going to be unencrypted and that can be used for tracking/personalization

 

22 hours ago, zechosen said:

I didn't knew that /v/ and some of the /tesg/ cesspit were free to shitpost in here.

You say /v/ but it feels more like /g/ without /pol/ in here

[LinksSword]

I mean to be completely honest making fun of Nexus mod's on here is basically a given meme at this point right? 

 

I myself hardly ever use nexus mods, only to really download stuff so you can say i am just a "lurker"

 

well that is what Mugen Archive would tell me since i rarely comment also that site can go fuck itself too after all the shit they pulled. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, unmatched baguette said:

(Not sure if this still works without root) You can install the app, set up the authenticator, extract the secret and add that to whatever authenticator you use (needs support for steam key generation), I use Aegis which can do that automatically.

I don't know or care anymore to be honest. I gave up on Steam a while ago and I gave up on the extra services years ago.

Others and I begged them to give people who had never been hacked and have been in their platform for a long time to opt out of this bullshit, and they never even bothered to answer us.

 

3 hours ago, unmatched baguette said:

(Not sure if this still works without root) You can install the app, set up the authenticator, extract the secret and add that to whatever authenticator you use (needs support for steam key generation), I use Aegis which can do that automatically.

What about microG LineageOS?

The unofficial branch of LineageOS that is available for my Lenovo phone is very incomplete, with several features (such as camera) not implemented and currently not working. I'd considered it back then and decided not to bother, as I would lose several features that I would require in the case of an emergency.

Other solutions such as investing in a Librem 5 is pure nonsense for me. I rarely use my phone, even before I'd decided to keep it turned off, and Librem 5 is too expensive for the hardware it offers, you are paying premium (the price of a high range GPU) for just privacy.

 

3 hours ago, unmatched baguette said:

And on a final note, you can't really trust any mail provider, even if they "encrypt" your mail, that means they generated the key, and therefore is not end-to-end encryption, if you somehow convince the people you are mailing to use PGP on the other hand, you can pretty much trust anyone. Though I suppose any mail you recieve from companies is still going to be unencrypted and that can be used for tracking/personalization

Depends on the service; On Protonmail I can import my own keys.

But you are right, while Protonmail has support for end-to-end encryption, most people I've to mail are on shitty services such as Hotmail or Gmail, so only the stored data on my end is encrypted.

And good luck trying to get normies to set up PGPs. I can't even manage to get them to download an encrypted file from Mega and use the single .bat and .exe in there to input a simple key to decrypt.

 

5 hours ago, Nessa said:

For the freebie stuff I do use Yandex actually. Pretty decent image search! The Ducky has similar issues to Google image search. Maybe not quite as bad, but I just did another test and it's showing similar problems. Just for completeness I tested Yandex and got expected results.

It isn't as bad as Google because it uses several other search engines for its result; But yeah... because it still gets results from other woke big tech (M$, Yahoo, https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1 ) you will still get some pretty biased results in some cases; "American Inventors" is one of these cases.

It's still a decent place for generic searches though, and as said before, unlike Google, you can get the direct image instantly by clicking "View File".

DDG Images would be the somehow equivalent of Google Images pre-Getty bullshit.

 

6 hours ago, faky said:

lawsuit? governmental enforcement? please, they have a different kind of relationship. you do not bite the hand that feeds you this much data (can i go off about how facebook-like sites get state sponsorship because they are the easiest way to acquire citizen's really personal data without any effort?)

There are lawsuits going on against Google and talk of breaking them up even before Project Veritas; Project Veritas merely gave evidence for something that most already knew, but couldn't provide anything but anectodes.

Since the USA is a corporatist state (they aren't really capitalist), corporations are heavily protected and influential in their government, but they do need to keep their main crap out of public eyes if they want to avoid unrest. Even the government can't protect them forever when this kind of shit hits the fan.

[TundraBrigand]

if you want privacy and infrastructure you can trust, you have to build it.

 

relying on companies to host your email, to do search on the web, to deliver your music/news/whatever - that's a recipe for disaster. companies can and will do everything to make all the money, and that includes selling you out to genocidal governments like the PRC. (Or just messing with your emotions until you buy more products).

 

it isn't about "woke companies" and the "nanny state enforcing political correctness". it's that structures of power always lead to tyranny.

 

the world is a powderkeg, and it's about to be set off by idiot techbros.

 

companies building kill drones, youtube inciting genocide, the world fucking running out of fish.

- tundra

scroogled_cory_doctorow.html

[gregathit]

6 hours ago, TundraBrigand said:

the world fucking running out of fish.

I really hope you are being tongue in cheek with the old Hitchhiker's reference on this.......

[CrazySloth]

Just let your browser save your nexus password... and yes Vortex is a pile of shit, but the nexus is a great place to find mods.