Oh, there we go.
Hello, everyone.
We got a lot of stories for you
today.
Chat control,
one point O has been defeated.
DuckDuckGo is building their own web
index.
Vala wants to make payments on Android
that would work on custom ROMs.
So all of that and other news is
coming up next.
Stay tuned.
Welcome back to This Week in Privacy,
our weekly series where we discuss the
latest updates with what we're working on
within the Privacy Guides community and
this week's latest top stories in the data
privacy and cybersecurity space.
I am Nate,
and with me this week live and in
the same room is our executive director,
Jonah.
How was travel?
It was a good trip.
Not too much to complain about.
I didn't have to travel quite as long
as you did.
It was still okay, though.
I've had much worse.
So... All right.
Yeah, with that,
we're just going to jump right into our
main stories this week.
And our first story... Oh, excuse me here.
This is acting up a little bit.
Yeah,
our first story this week is about chat
control.
This is good news.
We don't typically get a lot of good
news in the privacy space.
I mean, I hate to say it,
but we do get good news sometimes.
And this is a good one.
Chat control one point O has...
been heavily, heavily, heavily reigned in.
So for those of you who may not
be aware, chat control,
there's two versions of chat control.
Well,
let me start by saying that chat control
is basically the initiative in Europe to
get companies to scan all communications
and messaging.
and um chat control one point oh is
a voluntary version and uh companies can
choose to comply or not comply and it
basically provided them with legal
protection if they did choose to comply
kind of a whole uh kind of like
what section thirty two thirty is supposed
to do here in the us where like
if you're acting in good faith we're not
gonna you know get too crazy with with
suing you if something goes wrong um two
point oh is
the other one that would require client
side scanning,
even for things like Signal and all these
encrypted messengers.
But yeah,
but one point it was obviously still not
great, right?
Because, you know,
this this blog post here comes from
Patrick Breyer,
who is an MP for the Pirate Party,
which I think is actually the official
name, which is pretty crazy.
But yeah,
and he's he's long been a big,
a big proponent of
of privacy in general in Europe.
He's definitely been pushing for a lot of
good privacy initiatives.
And with this
With this Chat Control,
the Pirate Party put forward Amendment
Five.
Sorry,
I know I'm going a little out of
order here.
Chat Control is one of those things that
has to be renewed every so often,
and it's actually up for renewal here in
April.
Unfortunately,
it doesn't look like they were going to
stop it entirely,
but at least they were able to get
in this Amendment Five here,
which basically says, okay,
it's still voluntary, it's still scanning.
but it has to be limited specifically to
individual users or groups of users
suspected by a competent judicial
authority of being linked to child sexual
abuse.
So basically, like the headline here says,
they've ended the untargeted mass scanning
of private chats,
and they've at least reined it in to
be like,
it has to be people that you think
are potentially guilty of this specific
crime.
um so yeah i mean those are kind
of the facts of of this story um
it's huge news i mean the deadline for
chat control one point oh uh was coming
up pretty quick it was coming up in
april and april sixth i think they said
yeah a lot of countries in the eu
were definitely planning on renewing it um
which would have enabled the current state
of affairs to continue on which isn't
ideal because it provides these companies
a
you know,
a legitimate use for or a legitimate
reason to scan all of this data for
their customers,
as long as they're saying they're doing it
for the purposes defined in check control
one point.
Oh,
they can kind of do whatever they want
scanning wise with
The data of Europeans and now,
even though.
You know,
it'll still be around getting this
amendment in that restricts it to.
Just like court or ordered situations,
I think is.
A huge benefit for sure.
And again,
even though this version of chat control
will.
pretty much inevitably be renewed.
It's in this form still a voluntary
system.
So something like signal is not going to
be affected by this anything with end to
end encryption isn't going to be affected.
It'll mainly be something that like,
probably big tech companies, Google,
Facebook are going to use to scan
messages,
which they were certainly doing already.
So it's not great.
Ideally, you know,
all of these services would have more
privacy by default,
but
at least you can still switch these
private alternatives, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, and it's really interesting.
I know this isn't necessarily relevant per
se,
but this article has some really good
statistics here that I thought were really
interesting.
Like they say here that there was overload
of junk data.
Forty-eight percent of the disclosed chats
are false positives and criminally
irrelevant.
They said in Germany,
forty percent of investigations already
target minors who thoughtlessly share
images rather than organized predators.
So like here in the US, for example,
the age of consent is like eighteen.
And so if a seventeen year old is
dating a seventeen year old and sends an
image to them, that is technically CSAM.
But it's also one of those things where
most people are just kind of like, yeah,
okay, maybe they shouldn't be doing that,
but also we shouldn't treat them like
child predators.
And so he just kind of points out
all the reasons that this stuff is just
completely insane.
And yeah,
it's definitely unfortunate that the whole
thing just didn't get thrown out entirely,
but it is really cool to see it
get reined in for sure.
And that...
I don't know.
Do you think this has any implications for
Chat Control?
That is what I was just about to
ask you.
No,
I do think there is different ways that
they could go about this.
This has obviously been around for quite a
while and I think they have been using
this as an excuse for like,
this has been around for years and now
we want to expand on these requirements.
And so certainly it's not great because it
kind of gives them an excuse to do
all of this.
At the same time,
I think that this version right here and
the proposed to point out version that
they continually try to push across the
finish line.
They are pretty different.
And I don't necessarily know that this
will lead into that.
But it's always a slippery slope.
I think we're always we're always right on
the edge of maybe these privacy
protections no longer working.
So even though
I don't think this is going to be
a huge deal just because it has been
around a while and this is an even
better form of it.
And so we're kind of moving in the
right direction.
I do think when more chat control
discussions come up,
like they did last year, for example,
we all need to stay vigilant about that
and continue posting about that and
continue contacting representatives at
that time.
So in the future,
we'll continue to talk about chat control
if that's coming up and stuff, but...
But yeah,
I think before we move on to our
next story,
we should probably address a bit more
about where we are this week.
So Nate and I,
as we talked about on last week's show,
we are here in Austin, Texas.
EFF Austin is putting on an event that's
actually starting in a couple hours here
in this space.
So this will be...
build up and there will be speakers going
on here.
There's going to be music outside.
It's going to be fun.
All of this is going on during South
by Southwest.
Kind of an unofficial party together by
EFF.
So I don't know if any of you
watching are in Austin,
Texas and want to hop over in the
next two hours, but you certainly can.
Otherwise, Nate,
do you have anything else you want to
share about this event?
Yeah, I've got a
Yeah, so our EFF Austin's president,
Kevin Welch,
he said that we're fighting the
enshitification of South by Southwest and
providing an event in the spirit of the
original South by Southwest Interactive
that Hugh Forrest,
who is one of the co-founders of South
by Southwest Interactive and is actually
one of our keynote speakers here tonight,
he said that Hugh Forrest built over the
years
and we're providing a space of hope,
highlighting people fighting against and
shitification of tech and bad tech laws,
people who are building cool things with
tech and pushing back on bad policy.
So, yeah,
I know we have viewers all over the
country, and all over the world, really.
But, yeah,
if you happen to be in the Austin
area and you're free tonight,
we'll be here.
Well,
we'll be here all night in the sense
of the event.
It goes until ten, I think, local time.
So if you happen to be in the
area, definitely come say hi.
And, you know, if not, just,
Keep an eye out.
I think we're going to try to share
some of the stuff that we learned here
tonight, hopefully.
Yeah.
In the meantime,
do you want to talk to us about
this next story about what's going on with
removing custom ROM hurdles?
Yeah.
So this headline is,
Let's see if it would load.
Paying without Google,
new consortium wants to remove custom ROM
hurdles.
So basically,
a new coalition consisting of the groups
behind EOS, IOD, Apostrophe,
and Vala are pushing for unified
attestation,
which is a Google-free alternative to
Google Play integrity,
which we've talked about a bit on the
show and, of course,
on the Privacy Guides forum in the past.
which if they can do this it would
also potentially open the door to google
free nfc payment options on android which
would be great um this has long been
i think a pain point for many custom
os users and this plan proposal would be
released under an open source license
apache
I think that this could be huge because
we have certainly not only when it comes
to like tap to pay apps but also
just banking apps in general.
I think that we've seen and this comes
up a lot in like Graphene OS discussions.
A lot of banking apps are relying on
this Google Play API to determine like
whether your phone is secure and obviously
That only works on play certified devices
and you have to have all of this
invasive background system apps running
and You have to give a lot of
access to Google for them to give you
the okay,
okay to access your your own financial
information, right, so Yeah,
I think this could be a really great
thing,
if they can get this across the finish
line,
I think that it's going to be a
challenge for sure to get people to adopt
this technology,
especially if they can't get it into
Android first party.
Because we've seen,
like Graphene OS we'll talk about on their
website,
there is a way to run some sort
of attestations that's just built into
Android.
And they support that from a hardware
perspective.
And I'm not sure exactly how this is
going to go.
further than that existing option that
Graphene OS has.
But I think the fact that all of
these banking apps are not adopting that
means that,
or not adopting Graphene OS's alternative
option right now means that there's some
hurdle that we still have to overcome when
it comes to this.
So hopefully more of these custom ROM
developers banding together can
get us over the finish line to make
this more widespread.
But yeah, I don't know.
We'll see.
That's all I can say.
Did you have any thoughts on this story?
Not too much more.
Totally irrelevant,
but I just want to point out real
quick,
I just noticed at the bottom of this
page,
there is the Share on Mastodon button.
Oh, really?
Yeah,
which just came out a couple weeks ago.
There's now like an official Share on
Mastodon.
And this is a pretty big publication.
I don't know how it's pronounced,
but like heist.de.
It's a German publication.
I see them pop up a lot.
So that's really cool.
That is cool.
I will say on our own news articles
on our site,
we added that button
Oh, yeah.
We had that, like, same day.
You were on that.
So if you want to check it out,
you can do that.
But, yeah,
I hope to see other publications about
that.
Yeah.
But, yeah, in regards to the actual story,
I agree.
It's especially...
especially with the ROMs where you can't
lock the bootloader, like EOS and Lineage,
or maybe with EOE you can,
but like with Lineage, for example,
I know a lot of these banking apps
don't run at all,
which it's already frustrating enough that
when you move to one of these custom
ROMs,
you can't use like Google Pay or anything
anymore,
which is super frustrating because I've
actually...
I'm not going to lie,
ever since Privacy.com rolled out their
mobile pay cards,
I've been using Apple Pay like crazy.
Just because I have an iPhone,
it doesn't have a SIM card in it
or anything.
But I loaded a privacy card in there
and I'm like, cool,
now I don't have to use a debit
card.
And it's super,
super convenient and it's super nifty.
But there's nothing like that on a custom
phone, a custom Google,
or you know what I'm trying to say,
a custom operating system.
Yeah.
And I know some banks,
from what I'm told, some banks,
if they offer like, oh, in their app,
they have their own little payment.
You can use that.
But my bank is not one of them.
So I can't do that.
And it's just a real bummer.
So hopefully this is something that will
solve this issue.
And maybe we could start to see more
options in general.
Because it is crazy.
And our official recommendation is still
Graphene OS.
It's very secure.
It's very private.
But...
at the end of the day,
it's your phone.
And if you know the risks and if
you have a reason and it's your,
you fits your threat model and you want
to go with something else,
like it's your phone, you can do that.
And you should still have the ability to
use, uh, you know, your banking at,
like you said, like, Oh,
you can't even access your financial
information,
which is insane because it's your bank.
It's your account.
It's your phone.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's like, Oh,
because you don't have this proprietary
code or whatever running.
So yeah, that's,
I'm really glad to see this coming around.
And I really hope that, um,
that it will, uh,
It will work out and become a thing.
Yeah, Mr. Rabbit here said,
sounds amazing to finally have some nice
payment system on Graphene OS.
So yeah, pretty cool stuff.
Great.
Where are we?
I think we should probably talk about some
site updates from Privacy Guides.
So before we dive into our next topic,
DuckDuckGo,
let's give some quick updates about what
we've been working at at Privacy Guides
this week.
And for those of you who are new
to the show, who don't know,
Privacy Guides is a nonprofit which
researches and shares privacy-related
information.
And we facilitate a community on our forum
and on Matrix where people can
ask questions,
and get advice about staying private
online and preserving their digital
rights.
So Nate has, as always,
been working very hard on the video side
of things,
so do you want to give us some
updates on how that's going?
Sure.
Me and Jordan both, it's not all me,
it's team effort, but speaking of that,
our private messaging video is now
available for Early Access members.
So if you are a member on YouTube,
which actually I do want to shout out,
somebody did join earlier today.
Joey Wardock became a member on YouTube.
We really appreciate that.
Thanks for joining.
And we also,
if you join on our forum,
then you can get early access to videos
as well.
So, yeah,
any one of those people can now go
ahead and view that right now.
And Jonah also rushed out in the sense
of quick turnaround.
Jonah put out a video about Proton's kill
switch on Apple devices and how that is
a little bit problematic.
And I think we're going to talk about
that a little more later in the show
as well.
But that is available publicly for
everyone who wants to go see it.
I'm sure probably some of you have seen
that video.
It definitely got some attention and we
made some changes to our site regarding
this.
So we updated our criteria around VPN kill
switches and we added a warning for
Proton.
Basically the gist of the video was that
the kill switch wasn't working on Mac OS
when you switch between servers.
So there's a brief period of time where
your IP could be exposed and Proton wasn't
very clear about that.
So the day after we published that video,
Proton responded on our form with a lot
of details and they also confirmed that
they were updating their documentation.
So now it's very clear that this can
happen both in their documentation for the
kill switch right now and in the upcoming
update of their ProtonVPN app on macOS.
It'll have a bolded warning basically when
you turn on the kill switch telling you
that this is happening.
And they also committed to fixing this
problem.
Hopefully this year they said,
I think they said
Spring or summer?
I know they said summer.
Spring and summer roadmap, I think.
Yeah, that's what I remember.
So hopefully it doesn't take too long for
them to do that,
but obviously it'll be a bit of work,
I think.
There's two things going on here.
It's tricky because Apple certainly
doesn't make it easy to make a kill
switch in the first place,
and they're kind of dealing within the
constraints of that.
But also,
I think the bigger issue that we had
was just how their documentation wasn't
clear so that people who are on Mac
OS
are affected and they might not even know.
Whereas now at least you know and you
can plan accordingly.
Other stuff on the site, as usual,
Freya has been putting out a lot of
news articles lately at privacyguides.org
slash news.
So there's been more news briefs about AI
agent threats, some new corona malware,
and a lot more.
So if you want to visit privacyguides.org
slash news,
that is a great way to keep up
with updates in this space because we try
to keep you and
informed on privacy and security.
All of the work that we do here
is made possible by our supporters.
You can sign up for a membership or
you can donate at privacyguides.org slash
donate or you can pick up some swag
at shop.privacyguides.org.
I think that's all for updates.
Let's talk about DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo.
Okay.
No,
this is actually pretty interesting stuff,
kind of complicated stuff in my opinion.
So this comes from their sub stack,
which I did not know they have.
I think they have a blog and a
sub stack.
um but this is uh this is actually
a pretty short video it's only about
thirteen minutes if you all want to go
watch it on your own time but um
it's uh it says why duck.go is building
its own web search index and actually if
you don't even want to watch the video
they do have the uh the transcript down
here but it says it was like um
unedited probably automatically generated
so uh personally i found it a little
bit hard to follow i ended up just
watching the video but um basically yeah
like the the title says duck.go is
building their own web search index um
The why is kind of confusing in my
opinion.
It seems to be motivated by AI.
It's something about wanting to like,
I think they're trying to like have more
control over the training data for their
AI summaries and stuff like that.
Which is a really weird reason,
in my opinion.
But I will admit,
one of my concerns with DuckDuckGo has
long been,
and this has just been kind of a
concern of mine in general in the privacy
space,
which is that a lot of these search
engines that we rely on,
like DuckDuckGo and Startpage,
they're not really their own search
engines.
they're meta search engines they're
basically a proxy for like Google or Bing
or somebody else and that really puts them
at the mercy of those companies like
DuckDuckGo caught a lot of slack a few
years ago for censoring things and some of
it I mean this has happened a couple
times so I'm not talking about every
single instance this has happened but in
some of these cases it's not that they
were censoring it it's that Bing was
censoring it and since Bing is their
primary search engine they censored it as
a result and
Yeah, it's just really...
it's,
it's not a good position to be in.
And so, um,
I'm a really big fan personally of like
brave search,
but I understand brave is a very
controversial company.
Uh,
Mojica I think is another like independent
one, but, um,
I know their UI is not always great.
So it's just the point being is that
it's,
it's really good to see more of these,
these search engines kind of like trying
to break out on their own and create,
even if I don't think AI is a
good reason to do it, you know,
it's kind of one of those, like,
don't know how we got here,
but I'm glad we're here kind of thing.
So I'm really happy to see them, uh,
um branching out on their own i think
my big question about this story is do
you know whether um they're gonna take an
approach kind of like what brave search
did where at least initially they were
kind of like doing a hybrid approach where
it was still based on google and bing
i wonder because duck ducko has worked
with thing for a long time yeah and
they do say i saw
in this video that they've been working on
this like indexing on their own for for
a few years now so yeah I saw
that too it's been it's been in the
works apparently for quite a while yeah I
don't know I don't know if you saw
or if they said in this video
whether it's going to be a hybrid approach
like that or not.
I do think it was interesting at the
end of this video,
they said if you have questions,
you can reach out to them.
They might try to address more of this
in the future,
so keeping up with these updates will
definitely be something we want to do.
Yeah, for sure.
I am actually,
my RSS feed is subscribed to their blog,
so hopefully I will see more.
I don't know why they didn't put this
on their blog, but yeah, no,
they didn't specifically address that,
but I noticed that too.
They just kind of casually slipped that in
there, like, yeah,
we've been working on this for a couple
years, and I'm like...
Okay, cool.
Which I get it.
You know, in...
I'm a really big Nine Inch Nails fan
and Trent Reznor over the years has been
involved in like so many other projects
and bands.
And he said in an interview one time,
he's like, yeah, we, we kind of,
cause I'm kind of getting the lore here,
but he was supposed to be in this
band called tapeworm.
That was like him.
And I think some of the guys from
tool and just like all these like really,
really big bands,
but it never materialized.
Nothing ever came out of it.
And so he straight up said in interviews,
he's like,
I learned from that incident to just keep
my mouth shut.
because so many people were disappointed
that nothing ever came out of tapeworm.
So I, I totally understand their whole,
like,
let's just keep this on the download until
we're ready.
But yeah, it's, it's surprising.
Like when, you know,
like Beyonce is just like,
here's a whole album.
It's like, Whoa, what?
So yeah, that,
that really came out of nowhere,
but I think they probably will do the
whole hybrid thing for now.
Um, but I will be interested to see,
it would be cool if they do eventually,
um,
go full in on their own.
Like, Brave is kind of like,
ninety percent Brave at this point.
Yeah.
So...
Jordan said in the comments that they've
found Brave's custom search engine has
been not super great for people outside
the US,
so that could be something to consider.
I didn't know that.
Thank you for the perspective.
Yeah, we'll have to look more into that,
but...
Because I know DuckDuckGo right now,
they...
And sometimes this causes problems,
but they do, like,
have that country selector where you can
see, like,
country-specific search results.
DuckDuckGo is...
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main
search engine for a while,
but it is kind of hit or miss
for me, especially with certain topics,
unfortunately.
Some things that really...
is dialed in on and can do super
well,
but I feel like it's a lot of
keyword-based searches rather than,
I don't know,
I have to look up a lot of
more technical stuff a lot of the time,
and just trying to find out the answer
to a question can be challenging if I
don't know exactly what to look up,
which some other search engines are better
at.
But yeah, it'll be cool.
iLook.gov, so it's exciting stuff.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean,
it's a win regardless whether you're a
DuckDuckGo user or not,
because they are probably the most popular
search engine outside of Google and Bing.
And then I did want to mention here,
the four, two, what is that?
Two, two,
four said Brave and Kagi are the only
exceptions I can think of when we were
talking about,
or when I was talking about how a
lot of them are meta search engines.
We don't officially recommend Kagi.
I don't know why.
Maybe we've just never looked at it or
anything,
but I have heard really good things about
it.
And
About a month ago,
Cory Doctorow gave an amazing interview on
the Jordan Harbinger show,
and he talked about Kagi a little bit.
That's been discussed on our forum for a
while.
I think one of the big things,
at least at the time,
was kind of a feeling amongst a lot
of people that
this sort of stuff should be available for
free because it's such an important thing
for like a lot of people to switch
over.
And so like kind of for the same
reason we have like, you know,
like a web browser has to be free.
It's kind of an access to information
thing, which is challenging.
But at the same time,
I know Kagi has been growing and popular
so much and a lot of people seem
to like it.
So it's probably time to take another.
look at that.
I think they do have the first hundred
searches are free or something,
which if you don't do a lot of
searches, that's probably pretty good.
But I know some days I do a
lot of searching too.
Some days that would probably work for me,
but then other days I would run into
that real quick.
How many searches do you all think you
do in a month?
I'm curious.
I feel like a hundred searches would be
quite difficult for me to work within.
It depends on the day.
If I'm researching for a video,
I'll blow through that in like an hour.
Yeah,
so there is a thread open on our
forum, like with most tools.
I think if anyone has any opinions they
want to share, definitely let us know,
because we should definitely take a look
at it again.
Google?
I think that's everything for DuckDuckGo.
In a minute,
we're going to start taking viewer
questions.
So if you've been holding on to any
questions about anything that we've talked
about or what's going on here or anything
else that you've seen in the community
this week,
you can go ahead and start leaving them
either on the forum thread for this show
or you can send them in the
chat for this live stream um pretty much
no matter what platform you're on we get
all of that combined into one feed here
so we should be able to catch any
comments you send in um but for now
let's check in on the community forum
there's always a lot of activity on the
forum of course but uh here's a few
of the week's most interesting discussions
of course
The remove Proton VPN discussion was quite
a big one and quite lengthy.
And that was eventually split off into a
couple different threads.
But basically,
this thread talked about a lot of issues
that people had with Proton,
especially that issue on macOS.
But there's also an open thread on some,
I'd say,
peculiarities with their Linux kill
switch.
And then the big question of like,
I think Proton has been aware of the
Mac OS issue at least for quite a
while.
Well, actually,
they've been aware of both of those issues
for a while,
but I don't think they weren't explicitly
saying the wrong thing about the Linux
situation.
Whereas on Mac OS,
they were pretty clear in their
documentation that switching servers,
the regular kill switch should protect
you,
and it doesn't because of Apple
limitations.
So I don't know if you are able
to pull up, not this thread,
but their reply.
I think it was in this Proton's misleading
marketing thread.
Was there a second reply to us that
I think would be good to pull up?
Give me just a minute to find that
one.
Here we go.
Do you want me to put it on
screen?
Yeah, I think so.
Okay, let me find it real quick.
It's post number forty-eight,
so I'll just scroll down quite a bit.
Yeah, give me a second.
If you have the sidebar pulled up.
Because they gave one response,
which was very timely,
and they did commit to fixing a lot
of these issues.
And they updated that documentation thread
that I showed in the video right away.
So that was good on them,
but I think their initial response still
left a lot of questions.
So they left another response,
which is this one, actually,
with this picture.
I mean,
that was the original one that you're
showing now, if that's on the screen.
Okay, here we go.
Yeah,
the original one was the one I showed.
Yeah.
So this is the second reply where they
showed exactly what they updated.
And they showed a screenshot of the next
update that I talked about.
So maybe you can make that screenshot
bigger.
I don't know.
But they basically say,
in the client itself,
your IP may be briefly visible when
switching servers.
And they include a link to their updated
documentation.
When that update is coming out,
I don't know.
But since it's coming out in the next
update,
they already have screenshots of it.
I'd imagine it should be pretty soon.
So I'm not too worried about that.
But I'm glad that they fixed a lot
of that stuff.
They also said that they're working on a
deeper fix.
It's already in progress.
In their post,
they said that we've been rebuilding our
network stack with a native WireGuard
implementation developed in-house that
includes a native kill switch,
maintaining the tunnel through server
switches.
And like they said in the other post,
the timeline for the fix is within the
first half of our spring-summer roadmap
cycle.
So if they are able to get that
done in the schedule that they're
providing,
I think that that would be great.
But yeah,
that was kind of the updates on all
of that.
I think their response is probably as good
as you could probably reasonably expect
given the situation.
I'm glad that it was quick,
although it took us making a video about
it for them to make these changes instead
of
acting on the various reports.
I think they said in one of these
posts that
Not a lot of people are on Mac
OS.
Yeah, I saw that post.
There wasn't a very clear demonstration of
this problem compared to what I did in
the video where I showed it.
I think there were a lot of reports,
but I didn't find any major reports or
reports that had gotten a lot of attention
or upvotes or anything on their subreddit.
But certainly the reports that there were
that I found and that other people in
our community found
They were responded to by Proton support
team.
There was also that remove Proton VPN
thread on our forum that was started in
December.
And I know Proton is somewhat active in
Proton related threats on our forum.
Obviously,
they replied to us on our forum.
So that thread did have a lot of
attention.
And I feel like
It's strange and probably not great,
in my opinion,
that nobody in their support team seemed
to have escalated this problem or been
like, hey,
can we have an engineer at least look
into this?
Because I think if they had,
it's an extremely easy problem to
reproduce.
And you can do it on pretty much
any Mac configuration.
So yeah.
A bit disappointing.
I think that they acknowledge that in
their reply to us.
They basically said they don't have a
satisfying answer to that question.
So they can't really justify it or
anything.
But yeah, there certainly was a gap.
I hope,
I guess the most we can hope for
in regards to that is just that they
do better in the future about issues like
this and try to address them more quickly.
But yeah,
all of these discussions on Proton,
I wouldn't consider them fully resolved.
They're still ongoing in our community.
It's tricky.
So it's tricky because I feel like a
lot of the problems that we've seen with
ProtonVPN in particular is stuff on their
client side, their software isn't great.
But the service that they provide,
which is the main thing for a VPN,
it's quality.
And they have a free option,
which is nice for people.
And they have a wide server selection.
And all of that stuff on the service
server operator side of things is good.
And so it's hard to say we shouldn't
recommend ProtonVPN at all.
But if you're offering a client like this
with your VPN service,
I do think that there needs to be
some level of quality control there and
certainly more accurate documentation on
all of that.
So I'm glad they updated it.
But yeah, like I said, ongoing.
If anyone has ProtonVPN opinions,
feel free to share them on our forum.
In any of these discussions,
there's just a lot going on with them.
But that's kind of the update for now.
We'll see what their follow through is
like.
Yeah, it was a really good statement.
I was really impressed with it,
especially just the things like you said,
why this wasn't surfaced more clearly to
users sooner.
We don't have a satisfying answer,
just taking accountability like that.
I think there are some very valid reasons
complaints with Proton.
Their Linux support is always very slow
and lagging.
Proton VPN on Linux is not a great
experience.
But it's like you said, they do provide.
They're the only ones left that still do
port forwarding,
which is kind of a niche thing.
But they are the only ones that have
a free tier.
They have a huge server selection,
like you said.
So they do have a lot of redeeming
qualities.
It's just, yeah.
You know, it occurs to me,
since they're notorious for not having
feature parity between apps,
why didn't they just remove the kill
switch on the Mac app entirely?
Honestly.
That would have been such an easy fix.
And nobody would have been shocked.
It's just like, oh,
there's Proton not having this feature on
Mac.
For all the trash I talk, though.
But yeah, no.
So it's good to see them responding to
this.
It is unfortunate that it kind of took
you having to make a video and privacy
guides having to call them out.
It's really unfortunate that it's personal
rant here,
but it's frustrating that sometimes
privacy companies behave just like big
tech companies where Signal had this thing
where the private keys were being stored
unencrypted on Windows.
And they made a very valid argument when
they're like, well,
if your machine is compromised,
there's nothing we can do about that.
But it's like, yes,
But also, the fix is so easy.
Why wouldn't you just roll it out?
And it basically had to blow up into
a whole thing before they finally did it.
And it's just really frustrating when we
have to see companies shamed into acting
like this.
And it's like,
you're supposed to be better than this.
We just got a comment from Mr.
Rabbit here.
Port forwarding is very niche.
And that is true, but I will say,
I think...
BitTorrent in particular is a good reason
that you would want to have port
forwarding.
And there's a lot of very legitimate
reasons you would want to use torrenting.
I mean,
even mundane reasons like downloading
Linux,
you can alleviate bandwidth from those
servers.
In my case,
I seed a lot of Qwix's libraries,
so pretty much anything you can download
for Qwix to have offline,
like Wikipedia or any of the other stuff
in their library,
I pretty much have all of those hosted,
and I seed all of them on BitTorrent.
And the thing with torrents is...
Even if you're downloading things that are
perfectly legal,
you might not necessarily want everyone to
know what you're downloading.
And there are certainly websites out there
where you can enter an IP address,
and they'll show you everything that's
been downloaded on that IP address.
And so that's certainly a privacy concern.
And I think that port forwarding has a
use case.
So just to go ahead and put it
out there,
the four two two four said VPNs on
iOS also have a big problem with leaking
traffic to this day.
Apple has some big room for improvement on
all platforms.
That's why IVP and kill switches on iOS
don't do anything.
That is true.
If you are an iOS user,
you should know.
And I think Proton has even reported this
to Apple in the past.
that kill switches on iOS are practically
useless.
And Apple, especially on iOS,
has really hamstrung them.
As far as I know,
there's really no way around that,
unfortunately.
And the thing is with Proton,
their iOS implementation and their macOS
implementation is pretty much identical.
These exist in the same source code
repository on GitHub,
where the app that they release on both
platforms is the same.
And that certainly makes development
easier.
It means that they're not taking advantage
of all the tools that are available on
macOS that aren't on iOS,
which is a whole argument that's going on
now.
People are pretty split between whether
they should be going above and beyond
because they're on macOS or whether they
should be doing it according to what Apple
tells developers to do.
There's certainly good arguments for both
sides,
but if you're only using Apple's
Approved api's to like create network
tunnels like this on mac os there are
exactly the same problems as there are on
ios and so like this point about ios
vpn apps leaking traffic like that totally
applies to mac os apps and it just
happens that ivpn and mullved they um
implement, I would say,
a bit of a hackier solution to kind
of plug all those gaps, basically.
So their kill switch on macOS is certainly
much better than Proton.
And if you really need this kill switch
functionality,
especially if you switch servers a lot,
it's probably worth switching to one of
those providers if you're on macOS.
But
I would say that the biggest problem with
the whole ProtonVPN thing wasn't whether
their kill switch worked or not,
because they are working within Apple's
limitations in this case.
I think the big problem was just that
it was very not clear.
In fact, they said the opposite.
They said it would work when you're
switching servers, and it...
And it didn't.
And I think that people definitely could
have been affected by that.
And so that was the main thing.
It was more of a documentation issue for
me.
And I'm glad that they at least fixed
that.
And I'm also happy that they are exploring
ways to improve the kill switch in
general.
That is a longer term fix,
but it'll still be good to see.
And I'm glad they did both.
I got one more before we move on
from Jordan here.
And this might be kind of speculation,
but it says,
were there any changes that will be made
to the website after the response?
Where are we at with that?
Yeah, so that's a good question.
We made a few changes already.
Basically, right now,
and this is more of a temporary thing,
but we are making it clear that this
specific kill switch criteria is only
going to...
We're only going to really consider it on
the operating systems that we recommend
because, like we just said,
it's very hard to do this properly on
Apple platforms in the first place.
And we would probably argue that if you
are this concerned about privacy,
it's
It's usually good to explore alternatives
to Apple and certainly Windows.
And so we're really focused on making sure
these kill switches work on recommended
Android ROMs like Graphene OS and also all
of the Linux distros we recommend versus
every single platform under the sun.
that is just kind of temporary for now
because it is an open question as to
what we should actually do about all of
this we'll probably expand this um to go
back to including all operating systems
but we might uh say that using the
os provided kill switch is acceptable um
regardless of whether that kill switch is
good like on apple's
operating system, it's not good.
But that's more of a platform issue with
macOS that I think macOS users need to
be aware of.
But as long as you're not lying about
how your kill switch works,
we might find that acceptable.
But there are certainly some arguments
that they should be going above and beyond
and using undocumented or unsupported
features if they make the kill switch
better, like Mulvet and IVPN currently do.
And so if you want to chime in
on that discussion,
you can join in on the forum.
I don't know.
what direction we'll go in yet,
but I think a lot of people right
now are leaning towards the first approach
where ProtonVPN stays on the site because,
like I said earlier,
It's not only a matter of evaluating these
clients,
but we're also looking at the server side
of things.
And I think that ProtonVPN does a lot
of things well,
even if we're not super happy with some
of the stuff going on with their clients.
And especially because it's a free
alternative for a lot of people,
or a budget alternative,
especially if you already have Proton
Unlimited.
Expanding access to using a VPN at all
is super important.
And there aren't really any free VPN
providers that come to mind that could
really replace Proton in this space.
So I think that's a really good reason
to keep them on the site.
Yeah, we'll see how that goes.
Certainly,
we'll add more warnings about this.
Proton added those warnings to their
documentation,
but we added warnings in the latest site
update as well.
So that should be clear to people about
what's going on on macOS.
And we can make those warnings stronger,
or we can change our criteria accordingly.
But yeah, no subplans.
But that's where we're at now.
At the very least, for the time being,
it should be clear.
what's going on on macOS so that people
are aware.
Yeah, over on the new oil,
I do recommend a handful of free VPNs
like RiseUp and Calix.
But I even mentioned in the notes that
I'm like, yeah,
they're severely limited in features
compared to what you're going to get on
something like even Proton's free plan.
It's just so hard to beat.
There's certainly a difference between
like these nonprofit projects and like a
commercial endeavor, right?
And that's what I mentioned.
I'm like,
these are great if you absolutely need a
VPN for something and you absolutely can't
afford it,
but you're going to take a real feature
hit.
as a result.
In terms of even the number of servers
available.
You can't even pick the servers.
It just connects you to the fastest,
closest one.
Those tools to me are more anti-censorship
tools.
They're super useful for people who can't
access the internet normally or need...
one of these less popular VPNs that aren't
like probably blocked by less services,
honestly, but might be slower,
definitely don't have all the features.
Whereas there's a lot of VPN use cases
that don't require or like that aren't
censorship circumvention.
And so for all of that stuff,
ProtonVPN usually makes more sense.
And not to like beat a dead horse,
but what you were saying about like,
you know, they're, they're not perfect,
but they still provide a valuable service.
I mean, that's,
I think that's true of anything on,
in the privacy space.
Like there is no perfect service and you
know, everything has pros and cons.
And so, yeah.
It's tough.
But I think that will take us into
our Q&A, if I understand correctly.
Yes, it is time.
All right,
so now we're going to take some viewer
questions.
This chair moves,
and it throws me off every time I
scoot forward.
Yeah, these are cool chairs.
I like them.
Okay,
so we'll start with questions on our forum
from our paying members,
and you can become a member again by
going to privacyguides.org and clicking
the red heart icon in the top right
corner of the page.
So I don't know if we had any
member questions.
No, we didn't have any member questions,
but we did have some questions on the
forum this week.
So let's see here.
We had a note about chat control.
I think there was a question here.
No.
Okay, but we did have this question here.
What are your thoughts on piracy when it
comes to trying to stay private whilst
gaming?
I think I mean privacy.
What are your thoughts on privacy when it
comes to trying to stay private while
gaming?
Yeah, I'll read this before I answer that.
No, no.
I think they're asking if piracy is
acceptable to avoid these.
Got you.
Yeah, okay.
Because they mentioned that most
storefronts download your data in the same
way as other sites, or collect your data,
excuse me.
specifically your interest while browsing
the store and your play time of owned
games.
You say,
I haven't found a store that allows you
to make accounts relatively anonymously
and pay with something like Monero.
GOG seems to be the best option when
it comes to not having your gameplay
tracked because they do sell DRM-free
games,
but you still need to use their
storefront.
And then their library is a lot smaller
compared to like Steam, for example.
A lot of publishers don't want to release
DRM-free files or they have exclusivity
deals.
So it seems the only way to play
games privately,
similar to other media shows,
is to get them illegitimately.
Well, I will say that...
Yeah, first off, Jordan reminded me,
thank you here, that Fria did,
I think last week or the week before,
write an article about how to game
privately.
Not piracy.
Yeah.
That's a separate topic,
but if you are a gamer and you
want to learn about private gaming,
there is a good article about that, yeah.
Yeah,
so I would check that out for sure.
I will say that me personally,
this is my personal view,
and I'm going to end up defending this
one for weeks like last time I said
this.
I...
I gotta be honest.
I think piracy is theft.
And I think all the arguments I hear...
Like, I hear you.
It is messed up that you don't actually
own it, right?
Like,
you buy a thing and you get a
license.
And there's been so many stories about,
like, Amazon pulled, ironically,
NineteenEightyFour out of people's
libraries because of a licensing dispute.
But at the end of the day,
when we're talking about games,
games are a luxury.
And...
At the end of the day,
and this is another argument people make,
that they're like, oh,
but the studio gets most of the money,
but you're still not paying for it.
So my thing is, and here's my thing,
find a way to support the maker.
If it's an indie game,
find some way to pay them and support
them and let them know that you want
more of these games.
You just want them on a more
privacy-respecting platform or something
like that.
Yeah.
The best example I can come up with
is music, personally.
And I say this as a musician.
If you're going to pirate my music,
the least you can do is go to
a show, go to the merch store.
Do something to still show that you
appreciate it and you are trying to
support them.
So that is my personal opinion.
I'm also not going to endorse crimes on
a recording.
I'm just going to say that.
So I don't think piracy is the way
to go.
I think you make really valid points.
It would be really cool to see a
game store that allows you to pay with
crypto, especially something like Monero,
or doesn't track everything you do.
I don't know of any.
I don't know how hard it would be
to make some kind of a storefront like
that.
But...
I will say in my personal opinion,
I think the only exception is probably
like games that are no longer in print.
Like there's an old Jurassic Park game
that I love playing where it's like you
basically build your own Jurassic Park.
That thing has been gone for years.
So like,
I don't think anyone's going to sell it
to you.
Yeah, exactly.
And like you can find them used on
eBay,
but they're like a hundred bucks a copy.
And I'm like, okay,
I think maybe we'll visit the high fees
for this one.
That's definitely not going to the
developer.
For sure.
So that's personally my opinion is the
main issue I take with piracy is that
one way or another,
you're still not showing support for the
product itself.
And I think as long as you can
find a way to do that, you know,
yeah, that's my two cents.
Yeah.
Yeah, retro games is definitely different,
because that's more of an archival thing.
To me,
I think that it's morally correct to
preserve art, actually.
But all of this other like piracy of
modern games, it's like cyberpunk,
certainly an ethical question.
And yeah, I totally agree.
I think
mean ironically like gabe newell had that
quote about how piracy is a service
problem um because people wouldn't pirate
games if like it was super convenient to
just buy them because i think people
really like that convenience we saw that
you know when steam and netflix were first
coming out and they were competitors to
like the mainstream platforms it was like
oh yeah it's super easy to on netflix
subscribe and see all the movies they're
on steam you can just quickly buy a
game i was gonna say honestly like music
streaming
Made me stop pirating music.
Music is definitely the best example.
I think a lot of people could learn
at least this lesson from the music
industry because almost nobody really
pirates music these days because it's so
affordable and easy to stream on pretty
much any platform.
It's nice that there aren't really a lot
of exclusive songs that are stuck on
certain platforms that you have to switch
between.
It's all just kind of a universal system.
I haven't seen that a lot lately.
I remember some big...
headline ones years ago,
but I don't know what the current status
is.
But it's certainly not like a Netflix
versus Hulu situation where they're
completely different now and you have to
buy a million streaming services.
I think that's why people are going back
to piracy.
In this case,
it's not really a pricing concern because
obviously it's still very convenient and
cheap to just buy games on Steam,
for example,
but the privacy concern is real and
Kind of similarly to all those pricing
concerns,
I think that a big way to avoid
piracy would be to encourage more
developers to, like you said,
adopt other platforms like GOG,
for example, is a better one,
even though it's not perfect,
but it's not like tracking your gameplay
and you can...
use it DRM-free, so you can use it,
play games offline, all that stuff.
Ideally, yeah,
you would purchase from a platform like
that versus something like Steam if you're
concerned about privacy.
But yeah, getting adoption is tough.
I do kind of have to agree with
you that it is a bit of a
luxury.
Personally,
I wouldn't think it's right to
not support game developers,
especially in these trying times.
If it's someone like EA,
make up your own mind about that.
But if it's an EA,
I wouldn't really encourage that.
I don't think it's right.
That's just me, though.
I will say,
I definitely know it only goes so far,
but I really think...
think um what's the word i'm looking for
like respectful feedback i think will
really go a long way and i mean
obviously like yeah with somebody like ea
it's going to take a lot of emails
to get there but especially with some of
the smaller developers and studios if you
send them an email and it's all about
how you say it you know if you're
just like you guys suck like okay they're
not gonna listen to you but if you
email them and you're like hey i want
you to know i really want to buy
your game but like i am morally opposed
to steam and i will never buy a
game from them
And it would be really cool if you
guys were on like GOG or like sold
the game directly or something.
If they get enough of those emails,
they're going to listen.
And again, you know, yeah,
with somebody like a big AAA studio,
it's going to take a lot of emails.
But with the smaller studios,
it may not take much.
And it may not be that hard for
them to like, oh,
let me try selling this on GOG and
see if it gets a good response.
And if it does,
then maybe they'll keep doing it.
So I don't know,
because I guess I'm thinking in the
process that like...
Like,
they don't know what they don't know,
so if they just see, like,
this game isn't selling,
they don't know how many sales they're
missing out on and why,
unless somebody messages them and say,
hey,
I'm not buying your game for this reason.
So, yeah, just a thought.
I don't know how well that would work,
but...
I saw this comment from Anbi Damara in
our chat talking about how Steam,
when you buy a digital license,
they never revoke it.
If you buy a game that's no longer
sold or taken away,
you still have a copy on Steam.
And that is true.
I wonder how that works for most games
if Steam went away, though.
That'd be my concern with the whole DRM
thing because Steam is still licensing it.
It's a similar case with old games.
iOS games,
because the Apple App Store works the same
way, which is nice,
but it's still reliant on downloading and
validating these purchases from a
centralized app store.
So there's privacy concerns with that,
and there's also longevity concerns.
Who knows if Steam will be around in
fifteen years?
Can't imagine they're going anywhere,
but you never know.
I mean,
people say that about a lot of companies,
and then they disappear.
Well,
and another unfortunate thing that I can
attest to is just because you buy the
game from Steam,
the developer is under no obligation to
make sure it works on future operating
systems.
Yeah.
So Knights of the Old Republic won.
Thankfully,
and probably two for all I know.
Thankfully,
I can still play that one on Switch
because one and two were on sale for
like ten bucks one time.
And I was like, sweet.
But yeah,
they're not available on Windows Eleven
because they just they never updated it.
They never ported it to newer Windows.
And there's like hacks on YouTube.
They're like, download this file.
And I'm like,
I'm not downloading a random file from a
YouTuber.
But yeah, that's something to think about,
too.
But you're not wrong.
Like KOTOR is still in my Steam library.
I just can't play it.
Can't play it.
So.
going back to the beginning here I will
say not that I want to encourage piracy
either but also like
some an approach that i think that i
felt like morally right about even if it's
not legally right uh and i'm not saying
i do this but i feel like it's
morally right like if you buy uh something
like if you buy a game or like
um the case i'm thinking of was like
if you buy a dvd or a blu-ray
from a store and then you also pirate
it just as yeah for convenience purposes
like yeah like that's different and i
think if you could like i agree
if you're really going to go down this
piracy path, which is your decision,
if you can also buy the game and
just don't use that platform that might be
privacy invasive for playing games or
anything else, something to think about.
Yeah, personally, I'm not opposed to that,
but
So going back to some of our earlier
questions we got, Dr. Warface says,
do you suggest email alias services for
things like utilities,
like Waterphone and Electric?
And also,
do you guys suggest an app for investing
like Schwab or Fidelity?
I guess in regards to the first one,
yeah.
I do use aliasing services for pretty much
everything.
But what I've started doing a lot more
lately is switching to custom domains.
Just because that way if...
It's kind of as portable as you can
get, right?
I use SimpleLogin,
but if SimpleLogin goes away or I want
to switch to another service,
almost all email providers have the whole
wildcard domain,
so I don't even need to really import
my aliases.
I move the domain to the new provider,
and I just turn on wildcard,
and as I start getting emails,
they'll start coming in.
So that's kind of my logic.
Yeah,
there's always a backup if you're using a
custom domain.
Mm-hmm.
I do the exact same approach, I think,
for especially the stuff mentioned in this
comment here.
I would do the same thing where I
use simple login aliases as well,
but I use a custom domain for any
of that in-person stuff, basically,
where the privacy concern about...
people tying those email addresses
together is not a huge concern,
because they already have this other
information.
And so there is some safety in using
a custom domain, like you said.
But there's also a privacy risk,
because if you're the only person using
this domain,
then it's very easy to see if these
accounts are connected just based on the
domain.
So you lose that advantage of using a
simple login.com alias,
which is unfortunate.
But that's kind of the trade-off you make.
I definitely,
especially if you can get a custom domain,
I definitely recommend using email aliases
for every single service you use.
That's definitely what I do,
and that's mainly to serve as a quick
way to prevent people from
correlating your accounts,
but also just I mean,
services get data breaches all the time.
And you don't want like your email address
to match between those data breaches.
Obviously,
if you're interested in finding out
exactly how often that happens,
Nate publishes the data breach.
Roundup roundup everywhere.
He's like starts in our losing my words
today.
It's been a long roundup.
Yes.
We still have a few hours to go
because the party hasn't even started yet
here.
But yeah, Data Breach Roundup,
you can get that emailed to you to
keep up with all the data breaches.
I think there are a lot more than
people would expect.
I think you'd agree.
Oh, yeah.
And then just real quick, Dr.
Warface also asked,
what's our opinions on Windscribe and do
we want to add them down the line?
I mean,
that's exactly what the forum is for,
you know.
I think people have brought up Windscribe
in the past.
That discussion has been going on for a
while.
I don't know what the current status on
it is.
But last I heard,
there were issues with them not having
released the source code for their current
clients yet.
And there were also issues with them not
having released the audits for their
current clients yet.
All of their audits are outdated,
I believe.
They're either outdated or they're
inaccessible.
I don't remember which.
But either way, they don't...
They didn't meet what we wanted to see
at the time.
So yeah.
I think we'll continue to look at it.
We should probably look at it again,
but I haven't seen that thread brought up
recently on the forum.
If anyone has new information about
Windscribe,
if I said something that's wrong,
I haven't looked into this for at least
a few months,
so you can leave a comment on the
Windscribe thread and we can look into it.
But yeah,
I'll try to remember to look into that
again.
But as far as I know right now,
nothing has really changed from what's
been shared over there on the forum.
So I would take a look at that
if you're interested in Windscribe and you
want to
Learn more about it.
Cool.
I wanted to address one real quick from
Leonardo Leo.
You say,
I see many privacy advocates using Mac OS.
As a privacy advocate,
I think you should use Linux.
I want to point out,
and this is a very privileged thing,
but I know this applies to Jonah too,
we have multiple devices.
And so in my case,
I primarily use cubes,
which I'm very open about is like super
overkill for most people.
Multiple devices.
And so for me,
like this here is a Windows device.
And yes, I cry internally every day.
But this is also my device because I
mentioned a second ago,
I primarily use cubes.
Cubes cannot video edit, okay?
Especially the one I've got.
It's just not there.
And it's great for like browsing the
internet and communicating.
But like this is for...
production.
This is for editing videos,
which are all going to be public anyways,
so it doesn't matter.
All of that kind of stuff.
It's different uses for different things.
I think for people who can't have multiple
devices,
I think we would all agree that Mac
is way more private and secure than
Windows.
If somebody was like,
I have programs that just won't run on
Linux, given the choice between the two,
I would personally recommend a Mac.
Again, there's a premium there.
If they have the money,
I would recommend a Mac.
But
It's a, you know, yeah,
my point being is like, I think, yeah,
we agree with you.
I don't think we're advocating for people
to use Mac.
It's just...
You know,
different things for different use cases.
I do like their hardware, though.
I will say I have two MacBook Pros.
I have this M for MacBook Pro and
I have an M one MacBook Pro and
I use Linux on that one because I
think it's the nicest Linux machine.
Um, but yeah,
in terms of multiple devices,
I switched between that and I mainly use
this one for writing and videos and the
other one for all the other stuff.
So cool.
Um,
I guess in response to what I said,
how convenient is it to set up a
custom domain?
A lot of them have documentation to do
it.
Personally, I think it's super easy.
Take a look at the form again here.
It always updates constantly.
I wish I could get all my work
done on GrapheneOS desktop mode.
That would be interesting.
Yeah,
I'm waiting for the desktop mode for
Androids to come out.
They have some form of desktop mode right
now.
I haven't given it a try.
I know some other people on our team
have given it a try.
And I don't know what the latest is
on that.
I got a comment from Mr.
Rabbit asking about moderation on the
form.
I'm not sure I totally understand this
question because I don't think we have
heavy-handed moderation in the first
place.
I think the moderation on the form is
going pretty well.
But there are some discussions about that
going on.
And we're going to post an update on
the form when we know more about what
we want to do.
So yeah, I think
Kind of all I could say, really.
I don't think it's a huge issue.
I'll be honest, I have nothing to add.
I don't really spend a lot of time
on the forum just because I'm so busy
with other stuff.
If somebody calls attention to a specific
post or something, I'll go look at it.
And, you know,
I go in every week to, like,
pull what are the hot topics for the
podcast.
But even then, I just, like,
We were actually talking about this
beforehand.
I sort by basically what topics are hot
right now, and I'm like, oh,
these would be good things to talk about.
We really put Nate to work over at
Privacy Cats.
He doesn't have a lot of time to
just chat with everyone.
I like to be busy, though,
and it's fun.
It's a good job.
I like this job.
Configuration.
Hey, the new MacBook Neo is a catch.
I said this on our forum,
but I'll say it again here.
I think if the Asahi Linux team...
knows what they're doing and also if they
have the resources which is no guarantee
because obviously it's a small open source
project so they might not be able to
do this but if they can Linux on
the new MacBook Neo would be crazy I
think so many people would would buy that
that would be especially if you're just
like web browsing and stuff and you want
to avoid Mac OS but you don't need
a super
I don't even want to say that because
the MacBook Neo is surprisingly powerful.
But unless you're doing video editing,
it's probably not for you.
But I think a lot of people just
basically need Chromebook-like hardware.
A lot of things are done in the
web browser these days.
And being able to install Linux on that
device would be huge.
Because, I mean,
it's certainly better than a Chromebook.
Both in terms of being able to use
Linux and also just the hardware battery
life performance.
yeah I mean you know I was interested
in it but then I thought about it
I'm like yeah that might be kind of
a tough tough order for for video editing
but it gigs around is a bit tough
yeah I'd hope to yeah and also the
the screen size like because I sent it
to I know my my sister has I
think she's still on Windows X and hasn't
I don't think her computer can do XI
and I've tried to get her to switch
to Linux she's a little worried about it
so I'm actually gonna see her in a
few months and
or in a few weeks, I think.
And I'm going to see if like, Hey,
can I install Linux on your computer?
Can I walk you through this?
But, um,
so I sent her the MacBook Neo thing.
Cause I'm like, Hey,
this is relatively cheap.
It's like,
if all you're doing is browsing the
internet, it works great.
I know you'll have to get used to
Mac, but I trust you.
You'll, you'll be fine.
But, uh, she immediately,
and not like angry,
but the first thing she noticed,
she's like, Oh, yeah, that's fair.
I will agree with you on that.
So it would be cool if they had
like even a
Yeah, I don't know.
It's cool.
I like it.
It's just, unfortunately, I want one.
It's like that phone we talked about a
couple weeks ago that runs Linux, Android,
and Windows.
I want it.
I don't need it,
but I want it just because I think
it's cool and I like the idea.
As Jordan just said in the chat, yeah,
Asahi Linux is still limited to M.I.
and M.I.
And that's the main reason I bring up
the whole resources thing because I don't
really...
fully know what the status of the Asahi
Linux project is.
I agree,
it seems kind of like it's stalled,
and I hope that's not really the case.
But I don't keep up with it too
much in terms of what the developers are
doing, unfortunately.
So it could be anything.
But yeah,
if they are able to support newer stuff,
that would be fantastic.
But yeah, we'll see.
I think it's a bummer that it's still
limited to M.One.
And maybe,
I believe they support the M.One MacBook
Air.
So probably if you're looking for a Linux
laptop now and like the MacBook Neo is
convincing,
I think the M.One MacBook Air is probably
around the same price as the Neo and
it's the same performance.
So a lot of options.
Probably in a few minutes.
Okay.
Jordan said thirteen is a nice size.
I mean, yeah, it's great for travel.
Yeah.
I don't know.
That may sound very counterintuitive to
get a laptop and not travel,
but I am that kind of person.
configuration set,
I bet it would be a game changer
in most education systems.
I can tell you from the perspective of
having done IT for a large education
system in Minnesota,
it definitely will not be a big game
changer for at least K-level.
I think it'll be huge for college students
for sure.
Maybe some high schools will adopt it,
especially if they want to show off,
which definitely some schools do.
But
Repairability-wise, I think... Nope.
Repairability-wise,
replacing a screen on a Chromebook is
like, I don't know,
twenty bucks or something,
whereas the screen on a MacBook Neo,
I don't even know what you're going to
do.
The other thing is,
and the more important thing, I think,
in education is that management of macOS
devices is
such a disaster, really.
It's just really a pain to do any
of that stuff on a large scale.
And unfortunately,
Chromebooks provide a very compelling
value proposition to schools because you
can buy so many of them for cheaper
than the Neosto.
And that includes management through
Google.
And it includes usually a warranty that
covers all these repairs.
And it still ends up being less than
five hundred bucks per device.
Which is unfortunate,
but that's the reality.
I think for a lot of school systems,
it's very hard to convince them to do
the most private option as opposed to the
cheapest option you possibly can.
That usually ends up how most schools and
some government programs end up being in
general.
Oh, well.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly like this commenter just said.
They will continue to just buy e-waste.
I think they're getting ready to open
doors.
Yeah,
I think we'll probably start wrapping up
this stream because, like we said earlier,
we're at EFF Austin right now.
They have this party going on.
It starts at six.
But the place that we're at now opens
at...
Five, so a few minutes ago.
So people are starting to mill in.
We'll see how many people show up at
this thing.
I think it'll be pretty cool, though.
I think it's going to be good.
We have a very cool space here.
I wish we could record here all the
time and just go up to...
I don't know how often they do events
like this with speakers, but...
Yeah,
we're at the Butterfly Bar in Austin,
Vortex.
I want to share the list of speakers
at this event here.
At six o'clock, Hugh Forrest,
former president of South by Southwest,
is speaking.
Then at six thirty-five, Dr.
Sharon Strover.
Then there's a bit of a break for
music, I believe.
And then at eight o'clock,
there's a panel of the Austin Technology
Commission.
And then at eight,
there's a talk from John Lipkowski.
And then pretty much in that seven to
nine period,
there will be musicians outside on the
main stage.
And yeah, a lot of stuff going on.
They have a bar here, food, food truck,
all that stuff.
We'll see who shows up.
There should be some other
hands-on stuff and other smaller events
going on.
All kinds of cool stuff.
It's a very cool event, and obviously,
you know, it starts in fifty minutes,
but I don't know if any of you
plan to make it,
or if you're in Austin.
We talked about it a bit last week,
of course, and I mean, if you're local,
there's certainly still time to stop by.
I think you can come by anytime,
because it's open until ten p.m.,
so
there's stuff going on all night.
And we'll be here.
And yeah, as far as those talks go,
we're definitely hoping to talk with some
of the speakers as well or get some
of that content available.
So we can hopefully share some of the
stuff that we saw here.
But we will keep everyone posted on what
that looks like probably next week.
Yep.
I got nothing on.
All right.
You want to do the outro?
Sure.
All right.
So all the updates from this week in
privacy will be shared on the blog every
week.
That post is actually live now.
So sign up for the newsletter or subscribe
with your favorite RSS reader if you want
to stay tuned.
I would like to remind everyone we send
that actually right before we start the
stream.
So that's a good reminder that the stream
is starting and it's got all the sources
and everything we talked about in there.
For people who prefer audio,
we will offer a podcast available on all
podcast platforms and RSS yet again.
And this video will be synced to PeerTube
soon.
Privacy Guides is an impartial nonprofit
organization that is focused on building a
strong privacy advocacy community and
delivering the best digital privacy and
consumer technology rights advice on the
internet.
If you want to support our mission,
then you can make a donation on our
website, privacyguides.org.
To make a donation,
click the red heart icon located in the
top right corner of the page.
You can contribute using standard fiat
currency, such as a debit or credit card,
or you can opt to donate anonymously using
Monero or your favorite cryptocurrency.
Becoming a paid member unlocks exclusive
perks like early access to video content,
priority during the livestream Q&A,
and you'll get a cool badge on your
profile on the Privacy Guides forum,
and of course, the warm,
fuzzy feeling of supporting independent
media.
So thank you all so much for watching,
and we will be back next week.
Or maybe we'll see you tonight.
Who knows?
Hopefully, yes.