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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • and the government would have to explain precisely why they decided to ban all Google services over a song about freedom.

    They wouldn’t explain shit. This is an authoritarian government we’re talking about; they have near total control of what information gets to their populace.

    More likely they’d just accuse Google of supporting terrorism, and make a show of raiding their offices and jailing their local executives.

    I don’t think the people in charge would last long if that happened, considering how integral Google’s services are to many people’s lives.

    This is China we’re talking about. Chinese equivalents to nearly every big tech service are more than present and accounted for, even often preferred by the local populace. Hong Kong is a little different, but the CCP still exerts near total control there.









  • 520@kbin.socialtoLinux@lemmy.mlLinux for Kids?
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    6 months ago

    I learned to program when I was 10 on a Commodore 64. And we would wear an onion on our belt which was the style at the time… Sorry, where was I?

    Totally get that, but we live in a much more dangerous and predatory computer landscape these days. It would be foolish not to take some precautions.


  • 520@kbin.socialtoLinux@lemmy.mlLinux for Kids?
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    6 months ago

    Standard Ubuntu should have you covered.

    One word of warning though, don’t be too egregious with the parental controls. If your kids are motivated enough, they will find a way around it.

    Education really is your best weapon here. Tell them about the dangers of the modern web and computing.




  • Imagine your computer is a big block of flats and your applications are all people who live in the building.

    Mail sent to the building address alone isn’t going to reach the intended recipient, because the postman doesn’t know what flat to post it to. So they need additional information such as ‘Flat 2C’

    That’s the basic concept of ports. It’s basically additional addressing information to allow your computer to direct internet traffic to the correct applications.

    When an application is actively listening on a port, it means that they are keeping an eye out for messages addressed to them, as designated by the port number. While an application is sending or receiving messages using a given port number, that port number is considered ‘open’.

    Now, all sorts of applications do all sorts of things. Some are for the public to use and there are some that are useful within trusted circles, but can be abused by malicious people if anyone in the world can send messages to it. Thus, we have a firewall, which acts as a gatekeeper. A firewall can ‘block’ a port, denying access to a given group of people, or ‘unblock’ it, allowing access.

    VPNs are a totally different thing. They are literally middlemen for your internet traffic. Instead of directly posting a message to somewhere and receiving a direct reply back, imagine you flew out to Italy to use a post box there and receive replies from there.