[SILENT - 1.9s]

but until you start i i mean and still until you're honest with yourself we're not going to

solve these problems like how can we solve a security a privacy problem how can we solve

data ownership issues if we're not honest about who's doing what and how if we're not honest

about the perpetrators of of you know really bad security and privacy and data handling

then we're not going to stop it you can't say you over there you're not allowed to do it this

isn't like a drinking age folks like you can't say that it's good for some people and bad for others

you

Well, well, well, we're back.

Back on the microphone.

Microphone, check one, two, one, two.

What is happening, everybody?

It's your boy, Simon, in the greatest privacy podcast in the universe, in the morning.

Yes, what is going on?

Episode 55, Closed Network Privacy Podcast, recorded today, Sunday.

March 29th, 2026. Data privacy, data sovereignty. I don't know. I just want to use an operating

system. Can we just live? Can we just live a little? That's all I really want. And I kind of

feel like it's all just slipping away from us rapidly. And I try really hard when I'm putting

these podcasts and show notes together and things of that nature. I try really hard to not sound

negative through everything I'm talking about. And it's becoming increasingly difficult.

That's why I abuse nicotine. So I pop a fresh six milligram peppermint Zenichino, a little

nicotine pouch.

So...

So yeah, always trying to cope. I was trying to find ways to cope, right? And yeah, it's important

to stay healthy. So don't do everything I do. It's just, you know, some of my coping mechanisms.

And yeah, sometimes I need to do that in order to get through some of the things I'm about to

talk about. So yeah, welcome back. Episode 55, my issue with Ubuntu Linux. Your phone is now

the checkpoint. We're going to talk about age verification. We're going to talk about iOS 26.4,

the architecture of an identity-gated internet, which is what I'm labeling this episode. It's a

long label, but it kind of fits. And I'm going to kind of talk about what my strategy has been lately

and kind of how I'm shifting and changing things, both in my personal and in my work tech stack.

So I'm going to be talking about how your phone is now the checkpoint. We're going to talk a little

bit about age verification, a list of operating systems right now, rejecting or accepting age

verification.

uh you're going to be referencing some of that uh some of the current laws and current laws that

are coming into place including brazil's you know digital eca that went live on march 17th

no one was ready for that uh discord leak which that was actually back in october but i think

it's important to bring that up as well as in the united states colorado sbs 26-051 which is every

os must uh must check you know must must card you basically is set up and character.ai rolling out

kyc that's an ai companion that's now requiring government id as well as uh in the united states

kosa versus the app store accountability act two very different bills the kids online safety act

and the app store accountability act i think it's important to talk about that and the bypass problem

which is getting worse and with

you

ai deep fakes and how kids are getting around this stuff um i also uh going to reference a

video that was in i saw on youtube by austin evans pretty fairly popular youtuber and he was

did a video on his uh google takeout which is you know you can download everything google's

ever tracked about you and it's very very disheartening he had a 527 gigabyte data file

so i'm going to go a little bit into depth into these two particular topics my issue with

ubuntu canonical and just that the slow erosion of linux trust so that's going to be a large

portion of the show in addition to the phone being the checkpoint and the age of verification stuff

and i and i i kind of feel like a broken record and i'm i'm really trying not to talk about this

ad nauseum too much

because it's kind of everywhere but i think it's important to talk about these things and talk

about them with other people because we're starting to see some uh quite a few or at least i'm seeing

quite a few different like edge cases and they're not really so much edge cases as they're happening

a lot in the uk is ios 26.4 is rolled out and live and a lot of people are saying well just

don't upgrade well there's also a ton of zero day vulnerabilities in ios 18 uh that 18.4 that

you really kind of do need to upgrade unless you want to be uh at risk from some of those things

but um yeah so before before i get uh wow before i get too far too far into the weeds on all of that

um i'm just going to take a quick second and thanks thank thanks thanks to you thank you

to our patreon subscribers and lightning boosters and direct supporters and talk

a little bit about uh how i'm kind of shifting and changing things so i want to give a quick

shout out to michael bates david tk uh a new member trying who just signed up like the day

before yesterday vo mr milk mustache hutch uh thank you thank you for the patreon support

it is um very very helpful there's um other ways you can contribute as well i've also opened up

direct support at closed network.io so if you don't want to use patreon you can also subscribe for as

little as five bucks a month i might open up even cheaper plans if that's your thing this is a

totally listener supported podcast we don't take any advertisements we don't do any affiliate links

none of that horse business up in here the top lightning boosters these are people donating

with bitcoin bond wartime circus media

at SNX, Firefly Go, and a couple anonymous just absolute freaking chads out there donating

sats through Podcast 2.0 apps. Those are where you can stream Satoshis. They're just

small denominations of Bitcoin. You can support anyone that uses Podcast 2.0 doing that.

And most do. I was actually doing some yard work this afternoon and listening to

Linux Unplugged with Chris and all them. And they accept sats. They adopt what I call the

no agenda value for value model. And it's modeled after Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. I've been a

long time no agenda listener. And I've always respected the model. Does it make you a lot of

money? No, it does not. I could probably at this point sell my soul and sell VPN ads and all that

kind of stuff. But I'm not going to do that. Because

I want to stay impartial. I want to stay objective. And if I talk about a service,

it's because I either like it, I've used it, but it's not because I'm incentivized to do so

financially. So that's why it's important that I take this time and say thank you to those who

support this because it's what keeps things going. It pays for infrastructure and server fees and

hosting fees and podcast microphones and all that fun stuff. And eventually one day I would love to

be able to either do this more full-time or maybe in full-time along with some other projects that

I'm working on. And that would be awesome. That would be a dream come true. But I also know that

the value comes with the value in exchange. So that's what I'm focused on is providing

quality information, infrastructure, community support, all those things. Because really,

I'm just a person who takes the time to do this, but I don't know everything and I'm not an expert.

and everything. And I'm not ignorant enough to claim that I could be. I just know I can't. So

the more people that we get together that are trying to solve a lot of these problems for

ourselves, the stronger we become. And that's why the community is really, really important.

And when I say community, I'm talking about people who contribute. So I want to say thank

you to Unintelligent 7. Thank you to Mattis Max and some other community members that are always

helpful in the matrix chat room, which currently sitting at 443 people in the main matrix chat

and a few hundred in our off-topic channel, our meme dump channel. And that's where a lot of the

conversation happens. We've actually had some spicy conversations going on in the SimpleX chat over

the last week. And of course, we also have a signal group chat. I decided for now to post those links.

So if you go to closednetwork.io and you go to the about section, you can actually, actually, no.

I didn't actually post those. I posted my direct access. So if you want to reach out to me,

it's easier for me to do it this way. Because in the past, I just had you guys email me and I send

you back a link. But better yet, if you're already on SimpleX or Signal, you can just go to the

website, go to about, add me, connect to me. Maybe we can chat. I'll do my little sniff fed check on

you. And if I don't detect anything too weird, then we'll get you into the groups if you're not

a Matrix person. Down the road at some point, I'd like to have some other more permanent stuff set

up, whether that's through Matrix on a dedicated server, whether that's maybe through something

else like XMPP. I'm not really sure. We'll cross that bridge. But I think once we get to like

1,000 or I don't know, more than 700 users in the Matrix chat because it's an encrypted,

it might become a little problematic. That might be a scaling issue we've got to deal with.

I'm not really sure.

also host around mastodon server you can connect there i'm on x i'm on nostr and uh there is a

youtube channel although i've only ever done a couple shorts and i was kind of messing around

with it but um i think i'm actually going to do a proper video on a new product that i ordered

uh for uh for myself as a work replacement machine so stick around for that i will probably

drop that into the group chats and probably patreon and things of that nature before uh

anything else but you know just subscribe or share it with your friends share it with your

family that would also be great uh the more reach that we can get the better so all the housekeeping

out of the way um we're gonna kind of i'm just gonna jump right into it i'm gonna jump right into

my issues with ubuntu lately now i am not a huge ubuntu user actually i haven't really

used if unto i do use uh ubuntu server uh in some of my self-hosts

environments whether they're virtual machines or native servers running for different purposes but

as far as on the desktop I've not really used Ubuntu in a very long time and I think I was just

I've just always been turned off by the snap stuff and everything and and I kind of dove into

some stuff that I wanted to understand a little better and it's a bit cringy so I'm just going to

kind of get right into it and I want to kind of walk through like a use case scenario so

this has been building for a few years now and this week it hit a point where I think

I just genuinely can't ignore it anymore so Ubuntu the distribution that arguably introduced

more people to Linux in the last 10-12 years than any other distribution it's it's massive

um

you

That kind of just works term is usually associated with Ubuntu.

And when I say Ubuntu, also derivatives or spinoffs like Linux Mint is a good example of that.

Pop OS, kind of, but they've actually kind of changed quite a lot there.

And I have a lot of respect for what Canonical has built.

But over the past few years, Canonical has been making a series of decisions that individually you can overlook

or explain away.

But together or compounding, they've formed this pattern.

And that pattern is worth understanding.

Whether you're a daily Ubuntu user, a sysadmin running it in production,

or just someone who cares about the direction of open source software, where it's heading.

So I kind of broke this into four different issues.

And these, I want to be clear, I'm speaking for myself.

And I don't necessarily want to feel like I'm projecting my...

ideology on you. I just want you to process this. Use your critical thinking skills. Listen to a

myriad of different sources. And then make your own decisions or forge your own path. Definitely

don't do something just because it's what I am doing or someone else is doing without kind of

looking into things yourself. But I deep dive into this stuff. So my issue with issue number one is

the silent snap installations. So here's a scenario. You do a fresh install of Ubuntu, let's

say 24.04. And you want to install a browser, right? Maybe it's brave, but let's just say

Chromium. Chromium is a good example. So you go to the command line and let's, you know, I'm a command

line kind of person when I install stuff, but maybe you're using the graphical user interface. It

doesn't really matter. But from the command line, you would type sudo apt install chromium dash browser.

So in this scenario, fresh install installing this, well, what something happens quietly.

in the background. There's no dialogue box. There's no warning, no consent prompt. And what

Canonical has done is replace that APT package with a traditional, or what they call a transitional

stub. Its only job is to silently pull the snap runtime and install a snap version of Chromium

instead. So you thought you were running a standard APT operation or an apt installation, but you

weren't. So now for a casual user, maybe that's fine. Maybe you don't care. You got a browser

installed, whatever. But for a sysadmin or someone running scripted deployments, for someone who's

explicitly removed snapd from their environment, this is a fundamental violation of what the package

manager is supposed to do. The contract between a user and their package manager is simple. Do exactly

what I tell you and nothing else. This is why we run Linux after all. This is, we've left the

Windows, we've left macOS ecosystems, and we have control over our computer and we want control over

what it installs and what it's doing. We want it to verbose on the screen what it's doing.

And that isn't just Chromium. On Ubuntu.24.04, several popular apt package names have been

quietly converted to these transitional stubs. The practical consequence does matter here. So

what happens is Snap reinstalls SnapD, even if you've previously removed it. The Snap package

auto-updates on their own schedule, completely independent of your apt upgrade commands or

planned maintenance windows. In enterprise environments, that's a compliance and change

management problem.

And

And snap binaries live outside standard path directories, which can silently break scripts

and monitoring tools.

This was a deliberate product decision.

And it's not only the place of canonical that treats your infrastructure as a delivery

mechanism for their ecosystem, right?

I mean, it's kind of like them taking over and choosing how your infrastructure and the

delivery of your packages gets installed within their environment, within their ecosystem,

the Ubuntu ecosystem.

So issue number two is the terminal is becoming a billboard.

And I want to be careful because I know it sounds like old man yelling at the clouds and

that kind of thing.

But just hang with me because there's a real operational concern underneath this annoyance

that I have.

And Ubuntu Pro upsell, right?

messages can appear inside apt upgrade output commands, like the output from those commands.

Canonical's message of the day news system fetches promotional content from Canonical servers

every single time you log in. These messages show up in automated logs, like a junior engineer

running a deployment at two o'clock in the morning sees this message in a terminal and

it's got to stop and figure out, is this a warning? Is this an error or is this an ad? Like what is

this extra data that's being fed to me inside the terminal? And here's the part that goes beyond

like the inconceivable part for me is that that message of the day fetch is making an outbound

HTTP request to Canonical servers on every login. So your infrastructure is phoning home

and you may not have consented to that.

Alright, let's do that.

Let's do that.

autoprote routes

it's not prominently

documented either from where I can

find this information

so

and this isn't new territory for

Canonical either if you

remember or if you were paying attention

you know a few years ago they were shipping

Amazon search

integration into the GNOME desktop

and it was collecting user search queries

and there was a big backlash

that forced them to roll it back

but it's something that they did

and you know

the promotional

instinct

didn't really

disappear though right it just found new

home inside the terminal now

and the command line has

decades

long reputation for precision

and honesty and just

kind of the purity of things like

when you're on the terminal or you're on your TTY

you should feel like you're just

it's just you and

the layer between commands being

issued to the kernel and the kernel processing

and there's nothing in Нач

but not some intermediary messaging promotion ad for Ubuntu Pro to upsell you to Ubuntu Pro

…

you

inside the terminal. I just think it's insane. And so, I don't know, inserting these commercial

messaging into it just kind of reflects like revenue optimization mindset for me, like kind

of in shittifying the application, the operating system. And we haven't even got to the age

verification stuff. But my third issue is also malware inside the Snap store. And I don't want

to be an alarmist, right? But the Snap ecosystem is proprietary. It's not like auditable by just

anybody. A lot of times there are packages and repositories of packages for different distributions

that are all very auditable. The package manager installer is auditable, but Snap isn't. So,

this is where it gets kind of more serious for me.

is when you force users onto a specific package distribution system,

you take on a responsibility and safety for that ecosystem.

And the Snap Store has kind of been struggling with that responsibility.

In February of, I was going to say last year, but actually the year before,

there was a fake Exodus Bitcoin wallet that got published to the Snap Store.

And there was a user thinking it was the legitimate application.

This is a Bitcoin wallet. It's pretty serious.

That had downloaded and deposited nine Bitcoin into that wallet at the time.

That was close to half a million dollars and lost it.

That was a life altering loss for that person or for a lot of people.

And that person was trusting that they were installing an application from a store,

from a proprietary store that had some sort of checks and balances,

especially for applications around finance.

You know, and you might-

I think.

expected that that would have triggered some sort of iron clan review process and instead the

problem uh you know escalated into january of 2026 you know by security researchers including

alan pope who spent over a decade at canonical i think and still you know maintains like nearly i

think uh dozens i'm 50 or more packages inside the snap store and exposed a sophisticated new attack

campaign and here's how that how that works is attackers stopped creating like new suspicious

accounts and instead they hunted for expired web domains that used to belong to legitimate

long-standing snap publishers and they'd register those domains set up uh and you know

set up email servers and use them to take over

the original developers, Snapcraft accounts. And once they controlled a trusted account with a

history of clean packages, they'd push a malicious update designed to harvest cryptocurrency wallet

recovery phrases or exfiltrate that data into attacker-controlled servers. And so by the time

the user noticed something was wrong, the damage was done. I mean, they've already kind of completed

what they were trying to achieve. And Alan Pope's public commentary on this, he was quite pointed.

He noted that even when security professionals actively report malicious snaps, removal can

take days. Days. So, you know, wallet draining malware or like living in the store and the

response time is days. So, you know, you're talking about a pretty large user base that

this could be impacting.

a lot of different people and i know that this may seem like well that doesn't sound

too serious too often but it just kind of again is one of my issues with ubuntu and kind of the

direction that they're going uh with with these package manager installations and then issue four

there's that cve 2026 3888 which is a privilege escalation and um there is uh i'm trying to

remember i because i didn't have it in my notes the research unit i think it was like qual something

call um q analysis or something like that and they they're they're a threat research unit and

they disclosed a high severity uh local privilege escalation vulnerability affecting the default

installation installation of the ubuntu desktop specifically 24.04 and later and it's being

tracked you can track it that

you

cve 2026-3888 um and it has a you know cv ss score of 7.8 pretty high so the the short version

of how it works is there's two core system components that are involved there's the snap

dash confine which is the highly privileged process that builds the secure sandbox before

a snap application runs and systemd dash temp files uh the service that automatically cleans up

the state uh temporary files so in default ubuntu configuration the cleanup daemon is scheduled to

remove old data from the temp directory on a cycle like 30 days and 24.04 and then 10 days and later

versions an attacker waits for that cleanup cycle to delete a specific critical directory that snap

dash confine depends on and once the system removes it the attacker quickly re

creates the directory with their own malicious payload in place and then on the next sandbox

initialization snap dash confine you know running as root blindly mounts those malicious files this

could be arbitrary code gets executed and could result in a full system compromise now um the

attack does you know requires local access and some patience for for the timing window obviously

for when these files are being purged but it requires no user interaction and minimal privileges

to execute and canonical has released patches so if you're running 24.04 25.10 or the

upcoming 26.04 which come out next month update your snap d packages like right away if you haven't

run updates if you're one of those people that's like i run updates like once every three months

six months like you might want to run that you might not be in you know as a high threat for

something like that

just being that you have to have local access, but nonetheless, I mean, these are just things

where it's like, why is this a thing, you know? But Snap was designed to increase security through

this containerization and strict permission model. That's the pitch. The reality is that

enforcing that isolation at the kernel level requires enormous complexity. And the more

complex, you know, the more complex things are, there's potentially larger attack surfaces and

the very system designed to make your software like safe or safer has introduced a root level

privilege escalation into potentially millions of default Ubuntu installations. So, you know,

I, again, I kind of want to, some of this is like not really that big of a deal.

And Ubuntu is not a bad operating system. I'm not.

trying to convince anybody to like oh my gosh like uninstall tomorrow and leave or do something

that's not really it but it's just genuinely like it is an important just you know it's probably one

of the most important distributions in the linux ecosystem and canonical is a financially successful

company they've reported you know uh i think approaching 300 million in annual revenue

and you know their work in cloud and iot and enterprise and all that is significant and

i don't want to like take away from all of the positive too that they've done but as i am the

reason why i'm highlighting this is i'll get into it a little bit later is these are things to research

when you're researching different operating systems that you might be wanting to solidify on because i

am in that mode i am evaluating different operating systems to migrate my work machines from mac os

to linux on my personal machines i've been running

Linux for a long time, but they're not always the best for a work environment because I generally

like to run Arch and I run a custom Hyperland configuration. I have another laptop, which I'm

running Omarchi on, and I'm just kind of trying different things and see, you know, CacheOS as

well I have on another ThinkPad. And for me, I'm trying to find an operating system that's not

forcing age verification or using the version of SystemD that's going to, you know, have that

implemented, but that can also be stable enough and use every day for work functions. And what I mean by

that is, you know, if I have to jump on an 8 a.m. call on Zoom or a Teams call or something of that

nature, I need the system to just work. I need not to have Wayland breaking or my window manager

breaking or because I'm on a rolling release, some packages broke and now my microphone doesn't work.

Uh, so,

speakers don't work. You know, if, if you're an Archie user, you're, you're familiar with dummy

output. It happens. Right. And you can't always just reboot in the, like in that, in that moment.

So, and I don't have all the answers. I'm just telling you the processes I go through and how

I evaluate. So what should you do if you are an Ubuntu user is just, you know, basically update

your system, right? That's a pseudo app update, ampersand, ampersand, pseudo app upgrade command,

make sure your snapd package is updated and then, you know, make, make decisions based on what she

feels right for you. And I feel like Ubuntu is at an inflection point where the upcoming 26.04 release

is expected to integrate snaps even deeper into the core system. Whether that deepens the trust

problem or resolves it depends on decisions Canonical hasn't really made yet or

made public or made that in anywhere that I can find. And so what I'd say to anyone evaluating

Ubuntu right now is, you know, go with an eye open, know what you're getting into. And if your

threat model or compliance requirements don't align with a proprietary auto-updating centrally

controlled software channel, might be a good time to look at alternatives that deserve your

attention. So that's all I'm going to say about that. And again, the reason why I even brought it

up is because Ubuntu has been in my scope for a potential work machine, work operating system.

Again, needing something stable, well-supported. And I know if you were in the comments,

you might say, oh, use Fedora, you know, use this, use that. And you're right. I mean,

I am evaluating a lot of...

different options because whatever i kind of choose for my work machines i kind of need them

to just be very stable uh maybe that's nix os and i don't know right might be an immutable

operating system like uh silver blue or whatever i think that's what it's called fedora's immutable

system where you don't actually update the system you update the you snapshot and you update the

entire image of the os versus updating the kernel and things of that nature so maybe that's a route

i'll look i mean i'm just kind of an old diehard arch guy and arch is 85 reliable 90 reliable for

me but that that's i need i need i need it to be a little bit more than that so i'm going to shift

gears and to the second major point uh or uh you know topic that i wanted to talk about and that is

the your phone is now the checkpoint so ios

26.4 rolled out a couple days ago. Already seeing tons of posts on X, aka Twitter, where people in

the UK are having the verify you're 18 or over message on their phones. And there are some

problems where there's even older people. I've seen some in 67 and 71 and different people that

are retired. They don't have credit cards. They may not even have a valid driver's license that

are having a real time proving that they're over 18 because they don't have an easy way to verify

with their credentials because they don't possess them. So they're being basically downgraded on their

experience to what they can surf, what they can watch, what they can search for, what apps they

can install on iOS. And, you know, I'm like, okay, these people updated their phone and didn't think

twice about it. And then right away, you know, the top of their settings.

is a new prompt. Confirm your 18 plus. Not from a website, not from an app, but from the operating

system. This is like the new internet where your phone decides what you're allowed to see before

you've even opened an app. And so kind of just pulling this apart at looking at some of the

most significant changes in how digital identity works at the device level. So we're specifically

in this context, I'm talking about iOS 26.4 and the UK rollout, as well as in the US state by state

legal kind of patchwork that's been building over the last couple of years and what it all means for

your privacy, your anonymity, and frankly, your freedom. Because to me, you can't really have

the

freedom of expression or thought or communication or ideas without having unfettered access to your

own hardware and having the you know the the wherewithal to run what you what works well for

your life and so this is going to become a big problem and in the united states um it's going

it's it's like being implemented over time i think in colorado this will be kind of in effect

january of 2027 there are versions or of this that are being introduced in different states

and honestly i don't know if something like this would ever roll out at the federal level

in the united states but i could maybe see people trying i could see legislators trying to do that

and yeah so a few days ago let's get let's get back to the apple thing before i drift off too far

in the so apple pushed ios 26.4 uh and they pushed it out everywhere but specifically to users in the uk

you

And buried in the update was something that caught a lot of people off guard, which is that OS level age verification prompt right at the boot, you know, right in the settings.

So the message was simple, like to change the restrictions, the UK requires you to confirm you are an adult.

And the reactions have been mixed, right?

All to save the children, to save one child.

So a quote from, I might mess up the name, Silky Carlo, director of the Big Brother Watch, called it absolutely outrageous, arguing that Apple had put a chokehold on Britain's freedom to access apps unless they hand over sensitive ID documents.

So on the other side, Ofcom, the UK regulator called the move a real win for children and families.

Yeah, so that that tension right there is pretty much.

much summed up in these, you know, entire debate in two sentences. You know, one is absolutely

outrageous and the other way is a real win for children and families. So child safety versus

adult freedom and privacy sits right in the middle. So how does this work? So when you install

iOS 26.4, Apple first tries to infer whether you're an adult from your existing account

signals. And I've talked about in the previous episodes, the last two episodes, I think about

these signals. So whether you have a credit card on file, how old your Apple account has been active

and when inference succeeds, the whole process is pretty quick. But if it doesn't usually like within

20, 30 seconds, right? If you have these signals, then it can know that you're, you know, an adult.

But if it doesn't, then you're asked to scan a government ID or a credit card. So

on-device. Now, fortunately, there are no third-party apps involved in doing this. So

Apple insisted on that. So the verification is at least happening between you and Apple.

Now, I would argue that you shouldn't have to do it with anyone, but I would rather it be with

the OS manufacturer than some shysty persona or third-party app that's been known to be breached

or sell that data. So what does Apple receive? It's a simple yes or no, whether you're over 18,

nothing else. So to Apple's credit, there's a meaningful better model than individual app

verification. But I kind of want to pump the brakes because the architecture is being built and it's

it isn't about just keeping kids off of adult content. It's about establishing something much

more foundational. And that's what I'm seeing also with what we're seeing in open source

operating systems that are on the fence of trying to figure out, do we do this?

Do we not? If we do, how do we handle it? So the bigger picture here is it's an identity

mediated internet is what we're moving to. One researcher described it, what's happening as an

identity mediated internet architecture, a digital environment configured around verified user

attributes before any other interactions occur. So age is just the first attribute being deployed

in the OS layer. And I believe that to be true. So think about what that means. So no app level

gating, right? Not website level gating, but device.

level gating. The phone becomes the checkpoint. And once the infrastructure exists and some time

goes by, once your device is the thing that vouches for who you are, it can be used for a lot

more than age. So California's AB 1043 requires every operating system provider, Apple, Google,

Microsoft, to collect user age at setup and broadcast an age bracket signal to apps.

And that deadline for California is also January 1, 2027. That's 32 and a half million smartphone

users in one state, right? That one state is bigger than a lot of countries that are also

pushing for this. So the shared logic, right? Driving this across every jurisdiction is the

app by app and site by site age checks are two.

fragmented to enforce. So moving verification to the OS layer creates a single auditable

checkpoint. An auditable, that word does a lot of work. For governments, that's a feature.

For privacy advocates and for anyone who values anonymous access to the internet,

that's the threat. So looking at the US landscape, it's basically just a patchwork on fire.

So we're just going to zoom out to the United States because that's what's happening

where it's arguably more chaotic and more consequential than anything Apple just did in

the UK. So let's kind of step back. 2025 was the year of age verification we went from

a fringe policy experiment to a sweeping reality. Roughly half

of us states now mandate some form of age gating nine states laws took effect in 2025 alone now

and i don't have them all off the top of my head but i know like louisiana and texas and a few

others so those are the ones age gating at at like websites like generally porn sites and things and

gambling sites and stuff but it's it's just like layer upon layer like lasagna right and

the legal ground like shifted in a major way last summer so in june of 2025 the u.s supreme court

upheld texas's age verification statute uh in the free speech coalition versus paxton ruling that

states can require adult websites to verify user ages so applying intermediate security

ruling it it didn't violate

the First Amendment, according to them. The ruling opened the floodgates, though.

So the quick tour of what's now in effect or coming online is what I'm about to go into.

So we have Utah's App Store Accountability Act that goes live May 6th of 2026. So that's

age categories shared with developers when requested. Louisiana has Act 481, which goes

into effect July 1st, 2026, which is the same framework, same API. Texas SB 2420 was effective

in effect January 1st of this year, 2026. New account holders are required to confirm age at

setup. So minors must join family sharing with parental consent for all downloads.

Currently, it's under preliminary injunction from a federal court.

So we'll verify the, you know, I have, I, I, I need to, I need to follow up on that,

but that's the last I remember looking at it for, for Texas SB 2420.

And then Alabama has Senate bill one eight six.

It goes a little further age prompt required a device set up.

If identified as a minor, a content filter activates automatically.

And then we obviously have Brazil as well as Australia and Singapore,

where Apple has all already blocking 18 plus apps downloads unless users confirm adulthood.

And then that went into effect on February 24th of 2026 of this year.

So the patent, that's why I kind of use this word patchwork because it's real and it's accelerating

and it's a very kind of complicated to stay on top of and follow.

Unless you're really paying attention to like some of the tech news,

you know, if you're not paying attention, you might just wake up one day.

And all of a sudden, your phone's asking you for your ID or your computer's asking for your ID.

And some of those state laws aren't using OS verification.

They're using third parties to verify your identity.

And you don't have any control of who has access to them, how long to retain,

what the security is of them.

Are they verifying your age and saying, cool, if you're buying alcohol at a liquor store

and you flash your ID, is it only for that moment and they verify you

and then you're good and you leave?

Or is it stored forever?

We don't always know because that isn't disclosed to us at the time

where you're being prompted to prove that you're over 18.

And some of these applications, by the way, too,

are not necessarily have anything to do with adult content specifically.

They're just maybe social media apps or communication apps

or apps for booking travel even in some cases.

So what's the privacy problem?

here? And who does it hurt? So this is, you know, I guess it depends on what side of the fence

you're on. But the EFF's 2025 assessment is age verification measures sensor for the internet

and burdens access to online speech. They undermine the fundamental speech rights of adults

and young people alike, creating new barriers to internet access, and put at risk all internet

users' privacy, anonymity, and security. And they're not wrong. Age verification systems,

no matter how privacy-preserving the architecture claims to be, creates a new data surface, a new

point of failure, a new choke point that can be subpoenaed, hacked, or quietly repurposed.

And these age gates deterred.

deter lawful adult access, reduce anonymity, and create friction that changes behavior.

So some adults get blocked, or some individuals will get blocked entirely, and those without

government-issued ID, those incorrectly flagged by automated systems, those that are unbanked,

and the undocumented domestic abuse survivors who don't want to hand a credit card to a tech

company, these are scenarios or real people in the real world that will be impacted by this,

that cannot do the verification, or they are unwilling to do so because they are living a

greater fear than the average person. Yeah, teenagers who just want to access information

about their own health, their sexuality, their safety, those are impacted. The systems are

designed to protect vulnerable.

often, the most vulnerable are often excluded first, right? And that creates this bypass

problem. So what are we talking about bypass? So we've seen skyrocketing increases of VPN uses,

VPN usage, like NordVPN reported 1000% increase in the UK in purchases after the Online Safety Act

when enforced. ProtonVPN now saw 1400% more signups in minutes immediately after the law was

implemented. You might have seen that. It's probably kind of starting to flatten a little

bit, but we're seeing people who know how to use a VPN and they're using them to circumvent

where their location is. The people who don't know have no workaround and their internet just

got significantly smaller, especially if they can't verify it because maybe they're

one of these elderly retired they don't have a credit card fixed income they don't use credit

and maybe they have an expired driver's license because they don't drive anymore

i don't know i know it's especially in the u.s like id is kind of a very touchy subject right

people will be like well who who doesn't have id well you know i'm typically that's used in the

context for voting and most people do have id but there's a lot of undocumented people who need to

use the internet and pay bills and download apps and whatsapp and talk to friends and family back

home they might be here illegally whatever that can't and what about those people i'm not really

sure i'm not i'm just kind of i'm trying trying to come up with scenarios and different people that

will be impacted uh because this is just kind of like a clean across across the board so

centralizing these age checks at the os layer is a more privacy protective uh process and i i think

i think than the fragmented alternative which is each

Each app by app or each developer, you know, that has an app that needs to be verified because requiring verification of the app marketplace level is, you know, not not ideal.

At least in my opinion, it's not ideal.

And Apple's model, you know, right now, from what I can see, what they're looking like is it's you're verifying with them.

It's on device processing and there's no third party broker.

And versus the alternative.

So none of it's good.

And, you know, and I don't I don't think I think we're just going to continue to see these laws roll out in different countries, in different states in the US.

I don't haven't seen much in Canada that's doing that yet, but I would imagine that might be a topic of discussion.

So we'll see age is the first attribute being deployed in this in this layer.

And.

I don't know.

the way I see it is that's the infrastructure being built and that infrastructure could support

other layers. It might be that in order to use a social media platform, and I'm just coming up

with what we could see, in order to use a social media platform, you will have to use your real

identity associated to that registration of the account because they want to make sure, and

they'll say it's to protect kids, and they'll say it's to reduce bots and reduce harmful speech or

whatever they want to label it, but what it does is it ties everything you say back to an audible route

to a real identity, so the freedom of talking about uncomfortable topics and what would be

anonymous channels may not exist in the future, at least not in today's internet, the centralized

internet that we talk about, and that's not parallel.

paranoia. That's just how the infrastructure works. You know, roads get built for commerce

and then used for surveillance, right? Networks get built for communication, and then they're

used for monitoring. The pattern is consistent. And the legal pressure isn't slowing down.

Analysts expect states to continue passing these laws, age verification, design code requirements,

restriction on minors access. Despite significant losses in court, you know, more restrictions or

content and advertising, you know, will follow. More lawsuits, you know, probably will come,

but they just keep changing and altering some of these laws that are proposed that get challenged

in the courts, and they kind of just reintroduce it in a different package. And so the momentum isn't

really stopping. And the question is whether it gets, you know, channeled toward genuinely private

privacy preserving architecture or towards the kind of ID everywhere internet that makes

anonymity this structurally impossible to achieve so where does that leave us right now so if you're

in the uk you just got hit with the ios 26.4 prompt and this is specifically to apple users

and there are 31 of you listening so this is highly applicable um you have options right you

have the credit card confirmation it's probably the lowest friction point uh long account history

may clear you automatically uh if if you have neither of those apple's asking for a government

id scan and it is on device and but it's still it's still scan it's still a scan and i you know

i don't i don't i don't again i don't have all the answers i'm just trying to come up with good

good scenarios if you're in the u.s and your state you know determines um your exposure right now like

utah texas louisiana alabama you're already inside the compliance windows so

So, you know, write your legislators.

Reach out to your congressional representatives

and lobby for your freedom.

On the global side, the pressure is moving in one direction

to device-level identity and away from anonymous access.

So you can stay informed,

understand what signals your device is transmitting about you

to the apps that you use,

you can, you know, follow the podcast.

And, you know, it's like,

it's kind of like there's not a lot of great off-ramps

unless you're willing to switch to something

that's maybe slightly more inconvenient

or slightly more uncomfortable to use.

But, you know, it preserves your privacy,

like trying to obtain a Pixel phone,

an unlocked Pixel phone,

preferably secondhand or...

without any KYC tied to the IMEI, meaning that you are buying it used secondhand or a friend or

family members may be buying it and you're giving the money or you're ordering it anonymously using

like a non-shop or something like that. And then you're putting Graphene OS on it because Graphene

OS has said publicly on Twitter that they will not implement any OS verification into the operating

system. Now, that may mean that you are breaking a law in your jurisdiction and that's something that

you're going to have to be okay with. But I think that the sooner you come to grips with some of

these things and the sooner you start experimenting with some of these open source projects that are

focused on preserving your privacy, the more comfortable you can get with the idea of

managing your operational security that doesn't docks you out. So there's actually a pretty good

resource that Lunduk, he is.

a podcaster, put on a GitHub page that will be linked in the show notes. And I also copied the

current list today of developers or publishers that have decided they will not implement age

verification or are currently restricting access in regions with age verification laws to their

websites or downloads. So on the operating system side, we have Omarchi Linux, Devon Linux, Slackware,

Vendifal, Wolf Linux, Graphene OS, FreeDOS, Artix Linux, DB48X, Arch Linux 32, which is a 32-bit

operating system, Ageless Linux, Garuda Linux, Void Linux, and Endeavor OS Linux. And I'm glad to see

endeavors on there because that actually is one that I've been considering for my work machine,

though I'll probably start out with Arch.

Um, but we'll see.

So the short, the, the, the list is fairly short so far down.

A lot of other distributions haven't necessarily kind of remained quiet.

I know Papa West, uh, is based out of Colorado system.

76 is based out of Colorado.

They will likely have to, uh, get in line to do age verification.

The developers or publishers, uh, that have said that they, uh, have plans or intend to

comply with the new age verification laws.

As of yet, the functionality is not implemented, but they have said that they're either planning

to find a way to be compliant would be Ubuntu, Pop OS, Elementary OS, Midnight BSD, and Fedora.

Doesn't really surprise me with Fedora and Ubuntu, especially specifically because Fedora is pretty

much, you know, owned by Red Hat, AKA IBM.

Ubuntu is, you know, canonical.

these are big for-profit corporations and they don't want that liability same with pop os that

system 76 they're literally operating in in a state that's already uh have plans to implement

this uh is is law so you know yeah covering covering outside the u.s we have the brazil

uh digital eca which went live literally just uh in the last two weeks and that's their

mandatory age verification law um right after that proton vpn reported they had like a 250 percent

increase in brazilian signups between monday and thursday on that march 17th that it rolled out

and tuesday the very next day and you users scrambled uh to avoid submitting biometric scans

identity documents to to access their social media there was uh uh you know p you know people are

people who don't follow this kind of

of stuff or just kind of getting hit with it. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, what I can't,

I can't access my social media. I can't do stuff without age verifying myself. So, uh, said that

there was an article in, um, at a fruit, uh, I think I have a link to it in the show notes at a

fruit. I just found it in my, in my searches, just a blog. Uh, so the law contains its own

internal contradiction. Article 37 says regulations cannot impose mass generic or indiscriminate

surveillance mechanisms, but article nine bans self-reported age. And then article 12 demands

an auditable verification. So, um, and it's, they're also, they're putting together a list.

Allegedly Brazil has a list of, of specific companies, including Ubuntu, where they're

following and making sure that the, you know, this includes like rockstar games and steam OS and

Apple and Microsoft, but also Ubuntu is on there that they're making sure, um,

um,

that they're following the laws. So they're looking at this, they're like calling out

companies specifically. And then Colorado SB 26, uh, dash zero five, one age attestation on

computing devices. So that passed the Senate on March 3rd of 2026 with a 28 to seven vote.

And there's a Lincoln legis scan where the bill, where you can go look at the bill and see who

voted how, but the bill, uh, doesn't regulate websites. It shifts responsibility directly to

the operating system providers and app distribution infrastructure. So OS providers would be required

to collect a user's date of birth at the account setup, generate an age bracket signal and make

it available to developers via an API every time an app is downloaded or launched. And, um, the

kicker is the bill will never, never specifies how age is actually determined. Um, account holders just

indicate.

and airing and quotes their birth date so there's no id check no verification mechanism any user

could lie and the system would accept it so uh there was an article on on it's fos saying it's

a strong angle this is it's you know it's a strange angle this california ab1043 is a you know

little sibling to to to that law but potentially even more technically sweeping because it

explicitly covers linux distros and general purpose computing devices so it does include that

again this patchwork stuff right and so what what am i doing i am trying to set myself up for success

for the long haul where i am using as little or no operating systems going into next year

uh that are going to be complying with this and it's out of principle right not every

one can do that. And, you know, it's very likely that I might be in a similar scenario where

for my personal devices, I could probably do that. For my work machine, I am, you know,

an entrepreneur, I have business, I have employees, I have clients, where I may still be stuck

using, just like a lot of people who work in corporations or whatever, using Microsoft or

using, you know, Apple products where, you know, you are required to use certain tools to do certain

jobs, especially when you are working with clients with different deliverables and you're collaborating

and, you know, it's easy to say, oh, well, I just use Slackware and a Graphene OS phone and I won't

use anything but Signal and I'm just going to use Tor. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, if you like

live in your mom's basement and don't have a real job or it requires you to use these,

any of these technologies, sure, you could do that. But for most

people in the real world that have uh jobs or kids that require them to use certain things for

their school accessing their grades or communicating with their teachers and all these different things

like you can't just say like oh i only talk to people on signal so if you're not going to talk

to me on signal i guess we're just not talking you can't say that to clients or uh potentially

employers and things of that nature you have to work with the systems that they have implemented

so in my case i'm i i have already for a very long time isolated by device compartmentalization

right i have certain devices that are work machines or a work phone and i have other devices that are

my simon as i live in the world devices my computer my laptop tablets and things of that nature my

phones and you know it's hard because i'm sitting here going like i'm gonna have to you know do some

of this

stuff likely with some of this but i'm trying my goal is to see if i can even get all the way out

of that will i be successful i'm not sure that's part of the journey i will tell you this don't

drive yourself crazy uh don't don't give yourself an anxiety attack over this stuff because really

depending upon your threat model it it may or may not it really just doesn't need to take over your

your entire life and i've let that happen to me on many occasions and i'm sure some of you might be

able to relate where you you spend too much time going down the rabbit hole and you feel you get

this like defeatist feeling of like how am i going to navigate my digital life in the future and

maintain as much sovereignty as possible right well every little thing you do can help whether

that's switching to paid services that uh are are are

you

focused on privacy and security over corporate profits, whether it's self-hosting and learning

how to do some basic stuff with an old laptop, an old computer, a Raspberry Pi. And maybe you

just want to say, I just think I want to have a backup of my photos locally. I'm going to set up

an image server or is it Prism? I forget the other. I actually never really used it. I use image

and NT for my photos. Locally, I use image. Maybe it's just your contacts. You want to manage your

contacts in your calendar and you want to do that through CalDev using like NextCloud. Maybe it's

not even that complicated. Maybe it's something simple, your notes. Maybe you just want to go

ahead and use a local notes taker or maybe use something that's, if you're not ready to host

something like that, maybe use Notes Nook or Standard Notes, something that's end-to-end.

encrypted but you pay for these services and you pay for them because it costs money to run this

infrastructure it costs money to pay developers to maintain the applications and keep the servers on

ideally you know you want to eventually maybe move to a model where you're the person that's

responsible for maintaining your servers but maybe that's like maybe a little too technical so you

know you're not comfortable and that's okay move to things that you're comfortable with and i've

said it in the past i'll say it again use a password manager right try to break up your

identity that you use for registering accounts on different websites with email aliases uh like

simple login or non-daddy or whatever you want to choose you know create an email alias so it's just

a unique email address for that one thing you're going to sign up for online or you're going to buy

a product online use you know if you're in the u.s you can

use shielded uh payment systems like privacy.com cloaked my sudo it's a different you know number

of different services there's jmp.chat for phone numbers there's you know sms for sats there's

uh different different ways to break up the association of what information you're giving

out to who you are in the real world and just by adding these different little things in can

actually really add a lot of make it much more difficult for correlating identities uh back to

who you are in the real world and let's be real the trade-off is pretty crappy right the grocery

stores the gas stations every single place you go to has some sort of real crappy loyalty oh if you

if you give us your information we'll give you a five cents off a gallon of your gas today

that's how little they care about your your data like they should you know

what i mean like five cents off a gallon really really you're gonna save 50 60 70 cents and trade

off all your personal information your email address your name your phone number maybe your

address for 60 70 cents i mean i know what you're saying well then i'll get it every time i go yeah

but what do they get why do they offer you anything at all like they because this is the

new oil your information not just your data but like your purchasing habits your travel habits your

known friends and colleagues who you're with what you do where you go what you buy what time you buy

how what frequency you buy all of that is where the real value is for these you know marketing

companies that are that are selling and trading your data uh as a commodity because it is a commodity

it's very valuable to them and the more

more you can break up that chain of identity correlation back to you, the more A, you can

track who's selling your information, and B, you can burn that stuff at any time. And it doesn't

mean anything, right? Especially if you only use it that one time. And you can find hacks

to use this stuff, right? You can actually manipulate the system. I don't know if I should

say this, but not very often. But once in a blue moon, we like to go to Chili's for dinner. And

it's a chain restaurant. And it's generally microwave food. But whatever. They have good

chips and salsa. And they have okay drinks at the bar. And some other stuff's all right.

Am I recommending it? No, not necessarily. But it is what it is. Well, if you register for their

chili rewards, you get free chips and salsa when you go. So what I often do is I'll

Oh, yeah. You want to go to Chili's? All right, let's go to Chili's. I'll fire up a my pseudo

profile.

file. I'll go onto their website and I'll be like, yes, I'd like to join your rewards program. I'll

give them that one, that, that pseudo account. I just created the email address, the phone number

attached to it. Cool. We go to eat dinner and we go to pay. They have the little tablet on the

table, which always annoys the crap out of me, but whatever. And so I just punched the number in

and I get the chips and salsa taken off. It's free. Right. And I pay for the meal and we leave

and I literally burn that pseudo account. You're never going to contact me again. You don't know

who I am and I will do this every time. Do I feel bad about it? Not at all. Not at all because

they are going, they get so much more value in the long run out of collecting all this information

from all the users that like, this is how they increase their revenues. They, they literally

that like, they're basically saying like, yeah, we're going to, we want to, cause they'll track

you through all different other ways, not Chili's directly, but the ad companies that, that are,

are, are responsible for.

all these loyalty programs, everything. They're the ones that are actually doing all the tracking

and, and brokering your information. So for me, I'm like, dude, if you're going to, if you're

going to hellscape me, I'm going to hellscape you back. You know, like let's, let's play,

let's dance, let's do this. And I know it's kind of silly, but those like small little things can

just give you a little bit of feeling of like ownership and control back over who gets access

to what of you, you are not in any way, like we've been conditioned to just like, oh, we have to give

this information. Like they asked for my phone number. I need to give it to them, especially

if I want to redeem my points or whatever, create pseudo accounts for this. Is it a little bit more

work? Is a little bit more time consuming? Can it actually end up costing you money? Yes, but that's

the price to preserve it. It's also the price to protect yourself. You want to sign up for that $2

dollar and 99 cent Hulu 30 days special.

sign up for it. Use an email alias, create a unique password in your password manager,

use a privacy.com one-time use card that can only be charged like five bucks and you pause

it immediately after, or it's a one-time use. And you know what? When they try to charge you

for the full amount the following month, it's not going to go through. And you got a month worth of

TV. They're the ones that offered it to you at $2.99, $3, right? And they'll do it over and over

and over again to win your business because for them, it's a numbers game. And very few people

will use that kind of a method. They'll just use their regular credit card. They'll use their

regular Gmail address, like their normal stuff. And then they'll forget to cancel it until they

see it on their credit card statement. And then boom, they just milked you for another 50 bucks

or whatever the plan is after the promotional offer. Netflix is increasing. Everything's getting more

expensive. So, you know, it's either like accepting this mentality of like, I will just always pay for

what I need in perpetuity forever.

that will always get more expensive

and own nothing

or I can set up my own server.

I can buy my own used CDs off eBay.

I can go to the music store.

I can actually enjoy the process

of discovering physical media

and then rip it to my Jellyfin server.

I can rip my DVDs.

I can, you know,

we'll just kind of end it there.

But you get the idea, right?

You can actually own that content again

and watch it wherever you want,

wherever you are.

And that's, to me,

that's like what ownership is.

Do I own the media?

No, no, I get it.

It's a lot of people out there.

I get emails.

If you buy it,

you don't own the movie.

I know that.

But I own the right to watch it

anytime I want.

If I go buy a paperback

or hardback book,

it sits on my shelf.

And unless there's a fire

or I lose it

or lend it to someone

and never get it back,

like that's my book forever.

Do I own the words in the book?

No, it's copyright.

it, but I own the right to read it anytime I want versus a digital publication. And then a year from

now, I bought this digital download for an ebook or something. And then like it disappeared because

now they no longer have a deal with that publisher. So now the money I spent, it's just in the

garbage, right? So this is, you know, and that goes for all sorts of stuff, movies and TV shows

and everything else. I'm just sick of it. I am so just tired of being worn down and monthly

subscriptions and you pay for stuff, you try to do the right thing and then boom, they can just yank

it out from you. Whether it's a video game, whether it's a movie, it's so frustrating. And yeah, I just

want to empower people. I just want to empower you to like, feel like it, get some wins where you can

just a little bit. You don't have to, you know, eat, what is it? Eat the whole elephant? How do

you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

you know you're not trying to eat the whole thing at once that's a terrible analogy that's probably

an american thing too but the point is is that you're not trying to consume and you're not trying

to do it all overnight over a week over a month i've said it many times before this is and it can

this is a process and it could be fun it can be fun to learn new technology it could be fun to learn

how to code it could be fun to learn a new operating system uh you know it wasn't too long ago not

everyone had a smartphone and that's only been in the last 20 years really probably 17 to 18 years

uh where where not every single person had one right you might have had cell phones but they

were more primitive but smartphones really we're talking about a decade and a half like and you

learn how to use that you learn how to use setup you know phones and rokus and apple tvs and all

this other stuff learning how to use a linux

operating system and maybe try experimenting with docker or a raspberry pi with like umbral or

casa os or something of that nature i mean that maybe jump right to like proxmox virtual servers

and stuff but you could start really simple there are a myriad of youtube videos there are so many

great youtube channels out there people who make fantastic content on self-hosting you just start

searching self-hosting whatever it is you want to self-host and there are guaranteed like some very

good youtubers with very good tutorials and guides on like how to set this stuff up where do you think

i learned how to do it all right forum threads uh youtube videos and talking to people online

oh i ran i'm setting this up i ran into this problem oh try this okay cool oh that worked

thanks for that i mean it's like everything else right i mean i'm not a karmic

but I can research some videos and help my son changes lower control arms and a suspension.

I helped my brother. We did a body lift on a Sequoia a month ago. I mean, like, I don't know,

but you know what? You just start turning wrenches and you start doing stuff. And when you run into

a snag, you research, you ask for help, and then you move on. And so I feel like that's kind of

what self-hosting is in a lot of ways where you're like, Hey, um, okay, let me start with photos.

Let me start with my contacts. Let me start with like my files. Okay. I want to get my stuff out

of Google drive and put it somewhere where only I have access or control who has access to it or

scan it or whatever. What does that look like? Maybe that's just something as simple as buying

an off the shelf Synology NAS. I probably wouldn't pick that my first pick, but you know what? If

you're not that technical, that would be a better solution than giving it to Google or using heaven

forbid Microsoft one drive, please kill me now. Do not use one drive. So I'm just kind of, uh,

ranting at this point. I'm way off track from like some of the other things that I was going

to talk about. But really, I think at its core, these are the things that are on my radar. We

also have such other weird stuff going on. The US is banning like Chinese made routers and stuff

now. I don't know what that means. So I'm over here going like, huh, A, I can stock up on some

gateways that I think I might need down the road, which I actually did this week. I picked up

another Unify machine just in case for my work side of my infrastructure. I don't know if

they'll get banned. Maybe they probably might. I don't know. Who makes routers in the United

States? I don't know. There's a single company. So what's the alternative if my back is up against

the wall? Well, I guess I'll use a Linux box and I'll install OpenSense and learn how to do

everything that way. There is an option. There are options. Is it the easiest way? Not

necessarily. But is it a better way?

probably yes right to go down a path that you're maybe a little uncomfortable going down and then

you know what if if you if you find that you enjoy it this could even be potentially something you

could do for a living down the road i don't know so uh you know because ai might be replacing my

job so i got to figure something else out right it's like you know think about it first so some

things i'm experimenting right now is um a i'm getting a new piece of hardware that i'm very

excited about b i'm experimenting with open claw and running um a self-hosted self-managed

assistant using both local llms as well as uh commercial llms for for different use cases

trying trying that some of this stuff out i'm not ready to talk about it yet i still have a lot to

learn this is an area without i'm not an expert i don't know i'm figuring it out and once i find

stuff that works if it's beneficial i'll share it if it's not i won't share it i don't know

you

um but that's that's kind of how all this works right we just just try stuff try on shoes see

how you look you know you check out you check yourself out in the mirror right when you're

putting those new shoes on you're like i don't know do i do i see myself wearing these new j's

i don't know they look kind of kind of fresh but are they me um these are this is kind of what

you're trying stuff on maybe linux different linux distributions you're trying different

applications that could replace something and maybe it's libre office maybe it's only office

maybe it's something else to replace microsoft office to save you that money on that subscription

because what do you really use anyway you make a couple powerpoints a year and you use some word

documents and you got your spreadsheets for your budgets and things like that too libre office can

do all that could do all of that next cloud could do that only office can do that so you know also

think about saving yourself money for the rest of your life using open source software

you're ah yeah so you know

You know?

I don't know.

Am I frustrated?

Am I a little down?

Maybe a little bit.

I'd be lying if I didn't, you know, think like all this dystopian crap wasn't real.

It is real.

It's the reality we live in.

But, you know, again, take some time, step back and say, well, okay, what am I going

to do?

Build a plan.

And come join the chat.

Come talk to us.

Come talk to me.

Come talk to other people.

We're all in the same boat.

We're all trying to figure out the same thing.

We're asking the same questions.

There's no 100% way to do the right thing.

It's kind of tailored.

You figure out what works best for you over time.

Maybe you just set up a sync thing server and you just, you know, save your stuff locally

and sync thing between a laptop running in the closet somewhere.

It doesn't have to be this crazy elaborate system.

But at the end of the day is you want to be in control of your data.

Your data is like your files.

It doesn't have to be in control of your data.

your email, your communications, right?

You at least want to know how it's being used

and how much of it is being exposed.

And the more you start understanding that,

the more you will determine for yourself

what's important to you and what you care about.

And sometimes you still have to, you know,

deal with stuff in the real world,

but you get smarter about how you go about that.

You get smarter about what information you give

to sign up for those accounts.

And you just become a savvier person.

And this will also protect you.

It'll keep you protected from being hacked as easy

or a data breach exposing something

because that data breach maybe exposed your login,

but that login was only good for that one website.

It doesn't work on other websites.

So you become a smaller target, right?

Because there are going to be other targets

that are going to be easier in that breach.

And so they generally will go for the easy kill.

first right they're going to spend a lot of time when i say they most of the time these things are

scripted out by hackers they're not like an actual person trying to log into each account these are

scripts that are running and checking and seeing if they can log into different websites with with

the credentials they found in that data breach so anyway um normally i have like i kind of keep

forgetting to have like an app recommendation so i was like looking at my phone while i was

to see if i had like any cool app recommendations and um i i don't i don't i don't really have

anything on this particular episode to recommend um i i have set up my own audiobook server i'm

enjoying that very much and um you know that's an open source project and there's a audiobooks

mobile app that i'm looking at on my phone i i've really started i've really an audiobook shelf is

what i'm using and quite enjoying that a lot and especially running my own server that that's

there's just something very big

about that that you know um but i have a couple of some things in the works uh for some episodes

i've been working on the youtube content um also too i am doing a newsletter i actually pushed out

my first one you can register for free over at closed network.io i'm the only one that will ever

see the email address but i love seeing all the email aliases keep that up you can also join for

free uh you can also join for as little as five bucks a month if you want to support the podcast

the show you know all the stuff that we do um the forum the chats the you know uh mastodon server all

these different things uh that's always appreciated and uh but you don't have to there's you don't have

to pay you can join for free or you can subscribe to the newsletter for free and i have some uh blog

posts that i'm working on that i'll be putting out this week and those go out in the in the email

blast um i also

last

last episode was like a mini pod. So I put that in there too. And it's just another way to kind

of keep people updated or things that I think are important or that I'm writing about. I actually

have a blog post that I'm working on right now, specifically on the Ubuntu stuff. And I think

sometimes that might be easier to share with a friend or family member that you might think

would benefit from that. So I'm trying to expand my content reach and be a little bit more

direct in my communication through like email and things of that nature. So I'm going to try to

stay consistent with that. And also, I know I've got to talk to Aaron about reticulum and yeah,

so some cool stuff coming up. Anyway, thanks for being part of this. Thanks for listening. Even

if you're just listening and you don't want to participate, that's totally cool. I hope you're

doing well.

you're doing well.

I hope everything's going great for you.

And if you have any questions for me directly,

you can always just shoot me an email,

simon at closednetwork.io.

And until next time,

I'll catch you when I catch you.

I'm lacking the spirit.

You talk out your neck,

I'm going to show you I'm with it.

I've been really happy you to sit and watch me win again

and win again and win again.

I know it's probably getting on me

when I'm sending them.

So if I ever win again,

there's nobody to minimum.

I didn't have to sell my soul.

Please don't play no games with me.