Google play is so bad these days. Basically any app which doesn’t have ads gets shadow banned or removed or something. It’s gotten to the point where 90% of the time that I search for an app on there, it has been removed, to be replaced with tons of junk apps that are full of ads and malware.
It helps, honestly one of the best defensive strategies is defence in depth.
Also doing basic things like running your webserver in a VM, and you can write some script or something to just block any IP that is port scanning I’m pretty sure. I would do that if I was hosting. Also remember to block port scanning in Firefox. It’s not enabled by default. This helps to keep you safe when you land on a scanning webpage.
This is why I use emby.
Who cares? The average EU citizen will benefit far more from the regulation. I don’t think any of their laws have been bad so far, mostly requiring standard connectors, requiring user access to install what they want without apples permission, and monopolizing software stores in general. This might be a great opportunity to actually get some consumer friendly competition out of Europe for once. Also Samsung already allows third party app stores, has USB C like every other modern device, and allows side loading. It’s going to get interesting once Google starts complaining that they can’t control users devices after they buy them as well with their upcoming ban on non Google approved software installations.
In steamos, you have what is called an immutable file system. This means if you try to install anything outside of a flat pack in the user directory it gets wiped on updates and maybe reboots. This is probably because the VPN is trying to install something lower than the user level and so it breaks, and so it’s only working temporarily. Idk though.
You have basically two options. You can hack steamOS a bit, mount the system as rewritable, and install an overlay file system, and write a system D script to do this at boot, but a better way would be to download bazzite and install it on your steam deck. It has a ostree file system which is annoying in its own way but it’s relatively easy to install software and modify the system with. All you really have to do is follow a guide on the internet to download the ISO, copying it to a thumb drive, and boot using the power+volume down key to install it.
This will solve most of your issues, but you have to learn to use the fedora system which is a bit different mainly that you use rpm-ostree to install software rpm files if you don’t have a flat pack.
Flatpacks are great for many things, but for installing lower level stuff you might need to install it to the actual system with rpm-ostree in fedora or pacman or whatever in arch which is what the native steam deck is built on if you have the hack in place.
You can also try another VPN which might work better. It may or may not work.
I would just install bazzite until steamdeck catches up a bit. Get KDE if you want a steam deck like experience.
Also after bazzite, id get protonup-qt, to install proton-GE versions which make some games run work much better due to it’s better .net implementation and shader code. Bazzite also has a better flat pack repository out of the box. The steamdeck repositories have a lot of common software missing.
You should also overclock the CPU to 4.0 ghz which should be stable on most decks. I wouldn’t mess with the voltages because this causes issues in many games. Don’t do this before you install an operating system, do it and rest for a few days with a known working config to make sure it’s not crashing more often. This overclock will help many games run much better, especially sim and strategy games. The option to change this is (fClockMaxOverride), and the value that you would set is 4000 you have to patch the bios, maybe downgrade it, and download a tool called smokeless_UMAF to do this. I downgraded my bios using steam deck bios manager to 106, and used some script I forget to patch it to unlock the debug options. Bios 106 which gives the best compatibility with overclocking in my experience. This won’t make the GPU any better which is the main bottleneck in most games, and overclocking the GPU in my experience caused thermal throttling and stuttering, but overclocking the CPU is a nice boost in many games and also improves the feel of the device. If you combine this with smokeless_UMAF you can add 2 w to the tdp, 2w in my experience is about all you can add before getting your SoC in the 90+ range, but you also have to write a systemD script to use ryzenadj to set this on boot, or use a desktop script to set the TDP in the desktop. Every time you open the bios however without snoklessUMAF, if sets the max TDP back to 15.
I also disabled performance limitations reason, which allows the GPU and CPU to draw the full 17w. If you need help with any of this feel free to message me and I’ll get back to you when I can.
For right now, if that seems like too much, you should just try to get bazzite on a USB.
Personally what I do is I use a windows PC to format it into fat or fat32 or whatever the thumb drive needs. You can do this in Linux but I always have issues trying to format drives into fat on linux, I use a program off the flat pack store or whatever to copy the ISO.
Then I go into the bios and disable TPM, and if available on some systems, disable uefi, and go back to legacy boot, and install bazzite. (UEFI and TPM are trash) Disabling either of these will likely break whatever OS you are currently running.
Then in the setup after you boot from the USB, you need to set it up to delete everything on the drive, and then let it auto install on the drive. After you install, let it sit for a while and you can install some of your stuff like firefox and log into your stuff. Then shut the machine down fully and repower it if you decide to do any updates. This really helps.
Install proton-GE, maybe think downgrading your bios or overclocking. Set up your extra drives on steam. Ask chatGPT to help you understand how to add your drives to auto mount with the fstab file lol, oh Linux. You don’t have to do that immediately. Maybe a project one day.
Anyways like I said, hmu if you need help.
I like KDE because it doesn’t look like it was made in the 1980s but I know many fellow nerds probably like the nostalgia.
Thxs I’m glad someone appreciates it. I feel like I’m insane sometimes in this world, because most people don’t really seem to care about any of the things I care about.
cd /
sudo rm -rf *
Basically the Linux version of deleting system32 but idk I’m not a super Linux nerd yet.
I would never want a verified bootloader on my device. I’d much rather have an open user friendly bootloader. All you need is for sd cards to not be the default option and not allowing the boot to be written to except in the bios. Verified bootloaders mostly exist to keep people out of their own devices and to get rid of freedom with software. They do it because at first they wanted to protect their DRM and now because they want to make sure you can only access stuff Google or apple approves of. Everyone knew that’s what they were doing and they denied it and they knew what they were doing anyways. Corporations just do not want people to be able to make their own decisions about stuff. Platforms like YouTube used to be amazing in the early internet days. A treasure trove of knowledge and perspectives and amazing mature content. Now it’s algorithmically controlled brainwashing and corporate gatekeeping of knowledge.
Really the only security you need is to have up-to-date patched web resources, and port blocking if you are t completely unaware of computer security. It’s not bad to have an option for a safer level of access for people who don’t know, but they went way beyond this to keep actual tech literate people out of their devices. Anything beyond those basic security measures are essentially useless anyways because they are going to rely on zero day exploits which people cannot anticipate. In fact most developer tools that arent android studio on a pixel device or something rely heavily on zero days and hardware bugs to get root access. What did Google do? They tried to redesign Linux to be a rootless and immutable file system. I honestly hate all of that and I just want to put Debian on a phone with working cell radios so I can use it as a cell phone. I don’t even care about YouTube anymore it’s essentially useless now. I’m just going to get the cheapest phone I can and leave it in the car with no data plan and build my own portable device running Linux so I can download stuff I want to listen to at work instead of using their trash. That will piss them off anyways if you leave your phone in the truck because the government will get paranoid that you are talking about something they don’t want you to talk about and it will piss off Google because your data will be less valuable to them. If many people start doing this, leaving their phones in their vehicles at work, or in the house instead of carrying them, because they have become almost entirely useless unless you want to consume tictok brain rot, they might actually realize that they went to far. Since I know people can’t be bothered to protest, I realize that they only thing I can do is just try to create my own solutions. I bought some raspberry pis a few years ago for this very reason just in case the UnS went full fascist. I keep old cell phones around that I know have exploits so I can install what I want on them and not get stuck in the big tech cartel of mind control and surveillance.
What kind of ideology is not wanting corporations to control your access information and stuff you buy? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not an ideology that’s just something everyone wants.
Also there is nothing unsafe about the network idea if you use encryption like every other computer for the past 30 years.
I have considered getting a pixel phone. I had one but the screen broke in my pocket I think which annoyed me. I have a Motorola phone with an unlockable bootloader but the chip set is dumb so it makes getting the one ROM available for it, difficult to put on there, and also you have to do a lot of stuff to get the ROM to have most of its basic features working.
You are using the word ideology incorrectly. An ideology is an overarching vague and large idea that encompasses political systems. It’s things like fascism or capitalism or socialism. I don’t see how any of that has anything to do with things like human rights and freedom which is universally desired by all people. Even fascists want privacy they are just too dumb to realize a total state isn’t going to give it to them.
Hard if you don’t have a snapdragon device. Mediatek processors have all kinds of stupid bullshit that makes it really hard to flash a file without their key. We really need to start sharing key generators for things again, especially for the bootloaders for our computers we buy.
Literally a government backed monopoly funded with trillions of take payer dollars at this point. When I run for president one day, besides things like completely banning 100% private political campaigns and proganda, one of the first things im going to do is force the FCC to create a wide pocket of bandwidth for a open source and private mesh networks with a range of around 20-50 miles between devices with fallback modes of hundreds of miles, and maybe another fall back mode for thousands if antenna size allows for this inside cell phones. That way we can control our own cell phones and have a citizen licensed cell network.
No you can’t use graphene is because almost no device supports it anymore. Very few devices have an unlocked bootloader, and commands don’t work on devices that don’t have a snapdragon chip set.
Also using airplane mode completly defeats the purpose of having a cell phone.
I have been trying to find a single open device to replace my android phone with for over a month now. Every single one of these devices are only sold with support for European cell networks. The radios inside American cells phones are controlled by parents and property standards so that you literally cannot buy a device that can access the network without one of their radios(which is a fully programmable tracking device almost hidden to the OS BTW) you cannot reproduce or even modify the radios due to this horrible law in the U.S called DMCA, which means if a device has any drm software on it at all, which is basically everything nowadays you can get sued by the company that made it by making any modifications to the device that they don’t approve of.
It’s not disinfo, I know the facts and I don’t deal in lies and disinfo. I research everything I say extensively and verify it myself.
This is standard for tor, you have to jump through several nodes to get to whatever server you are accessing. There isn’t that many end points and many of them are controlled by feds which mean your data has to also pass through monitoring software which is essentially a slow software router to bottleneck everyone’s traffic. However with tor you get pretty close to real anonymity with your connection, however using Tor as a VPN completely defeats this purpose because all your software and stuff is going to be pinging servers of companies and leaking your personally identifiable information.
Even with just using a browser in a sandbox, it’s hard to actually stay anonymous on Tor because if your browser leaks any information or runs any compromised script which can fingerprint your machine, you lost your anonymity. The only real anonymity you can get for the most part is not using the Internet for stuff that you don’t want to be traced back to you. For hacking type stuff, you could try proxying behind several machines with memory only programs that delete themselves after you finished, while carefully controlling each and every packet being sent to make sure it’s completely anonymous. You can almost guarantee that some corporation some where research’s exploits in tor and common computer hardware to dox you to governments and criminal groups. I wouldn’t put anything on the internet you don’t want the governments, corporations and criminal mafias and cartels of the world knowing.
Remember Tor was created by the D.O.D, just like the internet was created by Darpa and Google was seeded by the CIAs venture capital firm. The technology and plans for mass surveillance were already being established in the 70s and 80s, and Google was created expressly for the purpose of facilitating mass surveillance which is why they were the first company to destroy the internet.
I guess the most annoying part of it to me is that you have put your locations in quotes if you use them in a shell. I do use spaces for file names sometimes, except when writing code or something, then I use underscores.
In the U.S you can’t buy any of these devices because the cell networks are privately owned and one of the unofficial conditions of you getting access is that you have to have government surveillance and soon censorship on your device, as well as locked bootloaders with signing and stuff. They are currently spending tons of money in Europe to get rid of freedom of thought over there as well. You guys might have 10 more years.
Cool, I have some ideas as well, like maybe write a script that hashes configuration files that needs a secret password to put into edit mode, if the config changes without being out into edit mode first, disconnect the server. Maybe use a raspberry pi that’s hidden from the network to do this. I know that wouldn’t work for large websites maybe because they can’t afford to go down for hours at a time, but it would give you an additional layer of security for sensitive stuff. I’m more into game programming but I know how exploits work and stuff. I’m pretty sure many types of things like this already exist in the market. One idea I had was pretty neat. Basically in your eula you reserve the right to hack back people that try to hack you, and you have an automated system that uses some known exploits to get a ping or maybe install a rootkit on anyone who is trying to mess around in your system. Later you can just get on and deanonymize them. This requires you actually spend time researching your own zero days. People in defcon hacking competitions do this. They are sort of masters with decompilers and hex editors.