Turturtley

I'm probably not the best person to talk to about Firefox hardening. Because... I don't. I only go as far as using firefox containers.

My threat model is to counter:-

• ISP data logging
• government filters
• region blocking
• hyper-personalised marketing

I use a VPN for the first three, and I use Ublock, and don't use google/meta/twitter/amazon/ebay for last.

I personally believe it is impossible to escape fingerprinting unless you're on Tor Browser, but using Tor paints you as a target in my country per the first item above.

I also work in financial services, and am a user of my company's product. We do significant 'device intelligence' and 'behavioral intelligence' on client devices, auth attempts, and actions taken in sessions. Log in too many times from too many different (seemingly) devices, user agents, IP addresses, regions, etc and it increases our customer risk assessment of you. Tick over a threshold and your account falls under enhanced customer due diligence. Tick over another threshold, and we'll set auto-blocks until we can investigate. I assume that any other financial services provider worth their salt would do the same to counter fraud, money laundering, and meeting sanctions.

I basically use a split tunnel VPN. VPN traffic for general browsing, email, etc. And looking as much as a regular user as possible when accessing financial services, government websites, etc.

And yeah, agree LibreWolf is great. Only downside for the average user is the lack of an auto-updater. So the only tweak i'd do with LibreWolf would be to set up a cron/systemd timer to update it nightly.

I'll politely agree to disagree. I've seen The Economist labeled as neoliberalist, but my personal opinion is that they tend to push more for centrism and social democracies in the articles and podcasts i've consumed.

If OP has access to these magazines, it doesn't hurt for them to check it out for themselves.

Now in terms of media literacy, i'll throw this into the ring. When reading an article, we should categorise what we read into the following. Verifiable Fact (ie, it is possible to obtain primary evidence that it had happened), Opinion (Someone's interpretation of a piece of information in context of their own bias or goals), or Fabrication (Generalisation, unverifiable evidence, No True Scotsman arguments, etc).

I tried to call out the bias that The Economist has for OP, but it doesn't change that their 'Factual Reporting' is high. You may not agree with their Opinion of what the facts mean. But it doesn't change factuality if it is verifiable. Given OP's interests "politics, philosophy, interesting facts, history, social issues." I maintain that The Economist is among the most well written magazines that provide what he/she is looking for.

And on the note of bias, i'll ask. "Is Lenin's opinion of a Western magazine in context of UK inaction in WW1 following Germany's invasion of Serbia really the most unbiased evaluation, nor is it even a relevant evaluation given that it was made over a hundred years ago?"

The Economist. They’re big on free markets and open democracy. So they’re pretty much smack dab in the middle for political bias (i consider then ‘soft’ neoliberalism. Still neoliberalism but at least they still respect that there is a human price that needs to be considered). They’re recognised for reliable, factual reporting and analysis (as long as you keep in mind their analysis is coached per their belief in free markets/open democracies as the superior model). But in terms of factuality and having journalists on the ground actually interviewing primary sources, they’re great. https://adfontesmedia.com/the-economist-bias-and-reliability/

My line of reasoning is that American democracy was flawed from the moment the constitution was written. Too much focus on liberty. Not enough focus on electoral systems, and the potential problems of each.

No mandatory voting + first past the post counting has resulted in extremist politics. You don’t need to gain the support of the majority of americans, just the undying loyalty of a small amount, and disnenfranchising the rest.

I can see America moving to the Alternative Vote. But even better if Americans move to Mixed Member Representation. I can’t see how America will ever move to mandatory voting though. Everytime i’ve tried to convince Americans that this is required to foster a larger, more civics educated, more engaged populace, i get shouted down that it’s unconstitutional. Yes i know it’s unconstitutional, but you guys have amendments.

And for that note, i think American constitutional law is stupid. The supreme court should not get to decide laws by interpretation. If the law is ambiguous, throw it back to congress to work it out.

I tried Obsidian, but it didn’t give me anything extra on top of using Helix with Marksman, dprint and git. 1% the ram usage of obsidian, versioning, auto-formatting, link auto-complete, page pickers/traversing, global search, etc. there’s literally no reason to use more electron bloatware.

I basically use Markdown files for anything i would’ve done in Word, and python streamlit + pandas + csv files for anything done in Excel (and capable of handling millions of rows more performantly)

My issue is that while i am concerned about privacy, i’m more concerned with security patching. And none of these smaller browsers have the resources to turn around security fixes as quickly as firefox or chrome.

Firefox is the least of the concerns as long as we have the config options to disable anything deemed not privacy-respecting.

LNP putting ideology over facts? No way! /s

Helix. I hate tweaking my ide. I just want to launch it and get to work. Setting up my LSP/formatter/theme is the most i’m willing to put up with and that’s all Helix asks for to be an IDE.