The metadata in the headers can be avoided using Memoryhole and similar protocols which embed the headers inside the encrypted payload. The problem is again barrier to entry. Low-tech users generally can’t even handle app installs on desktops.

When you say “worry”, that’s not the right word for it. My boycott against Google is not fear-driven. I will not feed Google anything it can profit from as an ethical stance. Even if an expert linux tor user were on Google, I’m not sure we could exchange email in a way that ensures Google gets no profitable data. If we use PGP coupled with Memoryhole to strip out the headers, I’m not sure Google would accept a msg with a missing or bogus From: header. But if so, Google still possibly learns the user’s timezone. Though that may be useless if Google learns nothing else about that user. But we’re talking obscure corner cases at this point. Such an expert user would have no Google dependency anyway.

MS/google-dependent friends are generally extremely low-tech. They don’t know the difference between Firefox and the Internet. They don’t know the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet. Linux – what’s linux? They would say. At best, they just think of it as a mysterious nerd tool to be avoided. So what can I do wholly on my end to reach them via gmail without Google getting a shred of profitable data? Nothing really. So I just don’t connect directly with a large segment of friends and family. Some of them are probably no longer reachable. Some are in touch with people who connect to me via XMPP, so sometimes info/msgs get proxied through the few XMPP users. It’s still a shitshow because Google still gets fed through that proxied inner circle of friends and family. In the past when someone needed to reach me directly, they would create a Hushmail or Protonmail mail account for that temporary purpose (like coordinating a trip somewhere). But that option is mostly dead.

I just had to reach out to plumbers for quotes. All of them are gmail-served. All I could do is refuse to share my email address and push them to use analog mechanisms. They are not hungry enough for business to alter their online workflow or create protonmail accounts.

That’s exactly what I did with hushmail. I would tell low-tech folks to get a hushmail account then I would use hushtools.com to do all the key management, putting my key on the keyring and grabbing their key. So the other person did not need to know anything or take any special steps. That was best option of my time. But last time I checked hushmail was still entirely non-gratis.

Protonmail emerged when HM became non-gratis and messed with hushtools. But PM requires every one of their own users to do key management which creates a barrier to entry. I would have to walk a PM user through adding my key to my record in their address book and walk them through sending me their key. That effort is a show stopper for many. I might as well walk them through setting up a PGP-capable MUA. But then if they keep their gmail or MS acct the metadata still feeds those corps.

I give out my XMPP address and offer Snikket accounts. Some go along with it and some do not. I lost touch with some friends. Some people are in contact via phone but that’s not ideal some connections are lost as phone numbers change.

I used to push some people toward Hushmail until they dropped the gratis plans. Then for a while I pressured people onto Protonmail but then distanced myself from PM when the brought in Google reCAPTCHAs and killed off Hydroxide. Tuta is a non-starter because Tuta’s variety of e2ee is incompatible with open standards, thus forcing me to periodically login to a web UI (also due to them sabotaging their Android app by way of forced obsolescence pushed in the most incompetent way).

So it’s a shitty state of affairs. 2024 and simply sending a msg to someone has become a total shitshow.

I refuse to fund my oppressors

Bingo. I live by this philosophy.

Although more precisely: I refuse to fund feed my oppressors. The reason for s/fund/feed/ swap is that our oppressors profit from our data too. So e.g. I won’t even email a gmail user because my data would then feed Google (an oppressor because of how they dictate e-mail terms among other oppressions).

I appreciate the tip. The shank was ½ a bicycle axle bolt with non-standard threading. I could not have switched to a standard bolt because the nuts that interface to ball bearings needed to be on the bolt.

Good to hear your anchors held up over 10 years. Someone else just mentioned they’ve not bee so lucky: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/5372639 I suppose it’s important that they be used in a dry climate.

Is this a friction anchor?

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/f504ebc8-a015-4b7a-907d-85eabdfc260a.webp

I just learned these exist from the other thread. Though I doubt it would have helped in my case. At this point I’ll just have to check it over the seasons and see if temp changes have caused any issues.

I was mainly asking for future reference whether I should repeat what I did or not. I suppose it’s rare that a smooth rod needs to be installed on brick.

EDIT: looks like the link died due to the comment containing that image being deleted. Sorry about that.

Both… functional art.

The original problem is that there was a water shut-off valve for the whole floor in the shower. Very ugly to have a valve in the corner on the floor and somewhat in the path of the water if someone were to point the showerhead slightly outside the pan. The valve handle was rusting. It was embedded in a solid block of concrete with the handle sticking out. The valve started to fail (did not completely shut off the water). And it was the kind of valve where the whole valve needed to be replaced. Terrible work by the builders. I had to demolish the concrete to reach the valve.

So I replaced the valve with the kind of valve that has a replaceable cartridge. But I also refused to embed it in concrete again. I will build a removable sealed box around it. But the box could not be both waterproof and also easily removable on the fly whenever the valve needs to be accessed. So I put a hole in the wall (shower to bedroom). Then I attached a 90° gearbox drill accessory and a shaft to that goes through the wall. On the bedroom side, I could have just put a handle. But I found a wood helm to a ship (miniaturized). I thought that would be the perfect steampunkish valve handle. But it did not clear the wall (in a corner). So i got carried away and put a bicycle sprocket on the shaft, and mounted the helm to another sprocket, which i attached to the wall higher up. And wrapped a chain between them.

Old red brick, which is solid. It’s light duty, and unusual. I cut a bicycle axle bolt in half, and embedded it in the brick so there is a bicycle sprocket on the wall. Then a chain runs to another sprocket, which turns a shaft that goes all the way though the wall to the other side, where it connects to a right-angle gearbox, which attaches to a water valve. But it’s lightweight overall… just the weight of a sprocket, chain, and a small decorative wood thing out of wood to serve as a handle. I suppose you’re sorry you asked at this point.

product 1:

• maintenance: 2 caps/week (a cap is big, looks like ~100ml if i eyeball it)
• clog clearing: 500ml (½ bottle)

product 2:

• maintenance: 25ml/2 weeks
• clog clearing: 300ml (⅓ bottle)

product 3:

• maintenance: 25ml/week
• clog clearing: not mentioned for this purpose

Going from memory I rotated between the products and I think I poured in about ⅓ of the clog clearing doses on the first two every few days… because I was a cheap bastard and just wanted to constantly have the enzymes in there. But yeah, probably a mistake. I think I tried a 300ml dose of product 2 just once. But I probably should have tried a full dose more often.

Right, but these were specifically for cleaning drains. One of them was kitchen drain specific, and the other two were for drains in general. But indeed it’s possible that the clog was not even organic… perhaps calcium deposits from hard water.

I wonder if pouring a whole bottle of enzymes would have worked. When pouring just 50—100ml or so, it would spread out on the bottom of the pipe and only touch the bottom part of the clog. But if a whole liter rushes through at once then it would cover the whole clog. But it’d be a pricey test.

I documented a drain horror story here, the fiasco of which involved 3 different enzyme-based drain cleaners. They seem to have a dual purpose: use a small amount every 1 or 2 weeks as a maintenance task, or pour down a large amount to work on a clog. I had a very slow drain and the enzymes made no apparent difference. But I know in general enzyme cleaners are quite good. It’s amazing how well they work on the oven. I had a general purpose enzyme based cleaner that worked great for things like food spills that dried on a wall.

I guess proteins is a little over my head. I just saw on the label a bunch of pac-mans gobbling up stuff. I understood that… and hoped I could multiply them. So IIUC, I just have to keep buying them and not reuse them much? Do they degrade in the original bottle just the same as if they’re in dirty water?

I don’t have anything specialized like simple green, but wouldn’t acetone or denatured alcohol make a decent primer? I think priming the smooth rubber surface should be the easy part but it’s the bitumen band that’s tricky. It has a sandy texture and sand crumbles off when I rub it. Perhaps I should steel brush it where it needs adhesive.

Thanks for the suggestion but in my case there is nothing to nail to. A shingle must be attached to thick (~2mm) rubber that’s just formed to be vertical. Perhaps I need to rivet the two rubber pieces together. Or I might try construction glue again but also get a couple metal plates and screws to clamp them together as a permanent clamp.

Which git repo is used to host the article doesn’t matter. That project is mirrored on ½ dozen other repos. Did you follow the links of the citations? The article is well cited but sometimes the links go stale (or become cloudflared). If you had trouble reaching the cited sources plz let me know & I’ll get the author to fix it. Or you can file a bug report in the issues tab.

The bug is most likely in the scenario of a default Cloudflare config. Cloudflare pushes a captcha to all apps other than the Tor Browser that come over Tor (in the default config). This would of course cause the #Lemmy javascript to go apeshit.

Better or worse depends on who you ask.

I boycott Cloudflare and I avoid it. Some CF hosts are configured to whitelist Tor so we don’t encounter a block screen or captcha. For me that is actually worse because I could inadvertently interact with a CF website without knowing about the CF MitM. I want to be blocked by Cloudflare because it helps me avoid those sites.

The CF onion (IIUC) cuts out the exit node which is good. But CF is still a MitM so for me that’s useless.

Some users might not care that CF has a view on all their packets - they just don’t want to be blocked. So for them the onion is a bonus.

The drain is working well now after the sulfuric acid cleanse. But I suspect it’s double trapping or something because after draining water some gurgling goes on for a while. I suspect the pipes are embedded in a concrete slab on the ground floor, so rework would require lots of demolition.

W.r.t CSAM, CF is pro-CSAM. When a CF customer was hosting CSAM, a whistleblower informed Cloudflare. Instead of taking action against the CSAM host, CF doxxed the ID of the whistleblower to the CSAM host admin, who then published the ID details so the users would retaliate against the whistleblower. (more details)

There is no way to “disable” cloudflare if an instance has chosen to use it. It will sit between you and the server for all traffic.

Some people use CF DNS and keep the CF proxy disabled by default. They set it to only switch on the CF proxy if the load reaches an unmanageable level. This keeps the mitm off most of the time. But users who are wise to CF will still avoid the site because it still carries the risk of a spontaneous & unpredictable mitm.

wow… that is terrible. You should not have had to go on a dig for such a simple limitation. All this fancy javascript and it failed to do a simple field length check.