And E2EE is only available on phones, circa a couple of years ago anyways

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You know it’s not even E2EE by default, and when it is it uses a homegrown algo that is not exactly well spoken of? (at least V1)

Omega-3 is an EFA

My bad, “I’m not a scientist” bit me hard here lol, though I did read that if you get your omega-3 from plant sources (linolenic acid) its absorption rate is extremely low comparing to sources like salmon.

Regarding supplementation, I feel like having to do that because of inherent issues with your diet is somewhat of a dirty hack (I do take some supplements though, so I’m not gonna pretend like it is not an option).

Even taking this claim at face value, we would have to solve plant based diet issues, such as insufficiencies in some vitamins (e.g. B12), complexity of getting sufficient amount of essential amino acids (esp. omega-3) and omega-3, slow but steady reduction in an overall amount of nutrients present in both vegetables and fruits etc.

And if we say that the answer is to “engineer” foods: fortify grains with vitamins, come up with “equivalent on paper” diary replacements (e.g. oat “milk”) etc, then we need to ask ourselves whether this is actually the answer? Can we effectively reduce foods to a small number of “key ingredients” and add them everywhere? Is this sustainable? What about the environmental impact of running all those factories that “engineer” plant-based alternatives to the foods our ancestors ate for generations?

I do not know the answer, I’m no scientist, nor proponent of any specific way forward. I just read stuff. The only thing that I do believe is that there is no silver bullet.

Books I find very interesting:

• In Defence of Food
• Ultra-Processed People

UPDATE: Corrected that Omega-3 is indeed not an amino acid

The article you’ve linked ignores two very important points: how much of that land is marginal (not suitable for growing crops) and the fact that our monoculture approach to growing crops is as much (if not more) devastating to our environment.

There’s no way to put it apart from “humans destroy habitats”, and I don’t think that it makes much difference whether the land was dedicated for grazing or crops.

Any study that mashes together processed and unprocessed meat in epidemiological setting is next to meaningless in my opinion. You can associate basically anything this way.

Guess where read meat and processed meat intersect? McDonald’s, for example. Now tell me that eating sirloins kills me.

It is reasonable yet subpar under a threat model where you do not trust any single provider, which is a model I find appropriate most of the time.

You should not assume your password manager is unhackable.

That’s my main point. Perfect is an enemy of good indeed, but I feel that doing things properly the first time is a good idea in general, especially when it as easy as using a different app for your TOTP tokens. It’s a low hanging fruit really.

Please don’t use your password manager for TOTP tokens. It is called two factor authentication for a reason.

For MFA apps, Google Authenticator seems to be the norm.

I personally use OTPAuth with sync disabled and regular backups. Mostly because it is easier to organise and back up.

Regarding hardware security keys as part of MFA, you can either get yourself dual USB-C / Lightning or USB-C / USB-A keys from Yubikey. Then just buy a USB-A to USB-C dongle (or vice versa) and keep it on your key chain. That’s mostly what I do, not ideal but does the job.

I also use OnlyKey for some passwords, especially encryption passphrases on some servers and laptops. I usually need to enter them on boot, and it just takes too long to do that manually and I’m lazy.

I agree with you on most of the points. Some security is better than nothing. More security is better than less, layers and all.

Regarding data breaches and malware, and threat models in general. We should not forget phishing too. People voluntarily entering their credentials on a website masquerading as their bank etc.

With all of that, having your credentials split over multiple applications and devices actually saves you from an endpoint compromise and evil maid attacks, at least in a sense of limiting the fallout.

Regarding VeraCrypt and “FREE”. While it is, again, better than nothing, VeraCrypt is fiddly, not always works consistently on all operating systems (I look at you, MacOS), and is susceptible to key logging. I prefer actual certified hardware with physical keypads instead. It is not free and has its own downsides, but it is just something I find more appealing.

As a rule of thumb, do not put all your eggs into one basket. No software is infallible and vulnerabilities can be uncovered and exploited in both open and closed sourced applications.

That’s being said, as long as you don’t store all information necessary for a successful login in your password manager, you should be fine.

So storing credentials for your bank account is fine, as long as it is also protected by MFA and you do not use the same password manager for handling that.

You can store PIN codes from your debit cards in the password manager as long as you do not store card number / expiration / CVV2 there too.

Personally, I keep passwords in a password manager, MFA tokens in a separate authenticator, MFA recovery codes go to FIPS 140-2 certified encrypted USB sticks (3 separate copies). I do store debit card PIN codes in my password manager, but only alongside the last 4 digits of the card number.

Type hints are cool. Runtime enforced type hints are cooler.

https://github.com/beartype/beartype

• Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Region
• Settings -> YOUR NAME -> Media & Purchases -> Account Settings -> Country/Region

Both must be changed to a different region to fully switch. Requires a valid payment method from that region (e.g. a debit card from that region). There are consequences to changing regions too, so be careful.

From my experience, sometimes you also need to contact Apple support to finish the change process. Otherwise it may just revert back.

Overall, Amazon surely knows where you are now and it will be set in your Amazon account, I suspect there is nothing you can do.

The best way to achieve what you want is to boot something like TailsOS and create a new account while under the VPN in that region. With a payment method from that region.

VPNs are not magic. Most big companies nowadays have means of detecting actual user locations, which is pretty trivial if you use an app or an operating system that leaks data when under the VPN.

Indeed

Books, online courses. Education in depth, ideally.

Yeah but… Brilliant has… a trial period. Seven days is plenty to realise that there’s next to zero educational value in that platform no matter how hard it is shilled online.

They are pretty poor courses anyway, why would you want them?

I’ve never heard of that project, looks pretty cool! To be clear, I do not say that “one guy” cannot possibly make great software. Passion projects are a thing. What differentiates them from the Abode situation, in my opinion, is that passion projects rarely have strict deadlines and paying backers who expect software that is Adobe-level in terms of quality and polish in a roughly 1 year.

I’m highly sceptical of this shipping in a state that can compete with Adobe at the end of it all. The branding itself is asking for trouble, which is just plain stupid if you are serious about long-term and sustainable development of the whole suite, and 180k is not enough to even put together a competent alternative to Illustrator, not to mention Photoshop and InDesign.

And before people start claiming that you can fund this by outsourcing to Eastern Europe / India etc, please bear in mind that you usually get what you pay for. A competent developer with enough experience to actually make this happen won’t come cheap, and opportunistic juniors with big ambitions won’t deliver.

I wish this project all the luck it can get, but I’m personally banking on Graphite and Inkscape from the FOSS world and Affinity suite from (as of yet) less corpo commercial offerings.