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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • People joke about this all the time, and I here the sarcasm in your comment, but technology has come far since the iphone 6 or 7.

    Most high end phones have wireless charging build it. Between the receiver coil and the rest of the phone is a thin sheet of ferrite material to prevent the electromagnetic field from getting to the sensitive electronics. Battery technology has also improved a lot, so much that even relatively cheap phones like the Realme GT Neo 5 charge at 150W!

    From the technical perspective the limit is the cable and connector, because there would be too much losses that heat up the cable to dangerous levels and rapidly degrade the contact area in the connectors. Manufacturers don’t want to deal with this security risk, not the increased RMA rates within the mandated guarantee period, so they artificially limit the charging rate.

    Thing is: You absolutely can charge at higher speeds if you bypass the cable altogether! A microwave outputs usually somewhere between 150W-1000W, so stick to the lower end to be on the safe side. The screen of the phone must face down, because the charging coil is placed on the back. You also must prevent overcharging by setting the timer correctly: If your phone battery has 15Wh capacity, and you are charging with 150W, you must at most charge for 1/10 of an hour, or 6 minutes (less if you are just topping up your phone).

    One final note: fast charging does put increased wear on the battery, so I only recommend to use it when you need it, for example when you need to make a flight and are already running late.


  • That’s because it is cruel.

    Large numbers always seem terrifying, because our human minds are not made for them. The only way to comprehend them is to compare them to other things - in this case all the ways we humans cause damage to the environment directly. Our suburbs are ecological dead zones already. There is just not much space left between asphalt roads, driveways, and neatly trimmed lawn. It’s definitely the cat that goes outside for one hour a day who is the problem. Right next to plastic straws.

    The real frustrating thing about all this that the companies that exploit our planet to core keep doing their shit (Noooo you cant work from home for your office job, you MUST commute to the city daily, because reasons!) while we fight with our neighbors about things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.





  • Thanks for the heads up, my setup is indeed 6-12 months old. My thoughts on the linked list:

    • uBlock origin is the #1 recommended plugin, and can make some other plugins redundent, see below
    • Decentraleyes only helps only for some scripts/sites and may be fingerprintable. Considering that it targets major CDNs and it’s widespread use, I still think it’s benefits outweigh the possible downside, especially if used in conjunction with a good VPN, so its optional but I’d keep it.
    • Privacy Badger used to be unique in that it creates a custom blocking list based on your behavior. There was some security and privacy vulnerability with this method, so it’s no longer done. It depends now solely on a pre-trained list just like uBlock origin, offers no additional features and should be removed.
    • Cookie extensions may give you a false sense of privacy as they do nothing for IP tracking or other vectors. However they do patch one area, and are useful if used correctly and together with other methods.
    • noscript is technically covered by uBlock origin as well, but the UI is far superior and you’ll be using that a lot.
    • Canvas Blocker was an optional plugin to begin with, and starting Firefox 120 the FPP (Fingerprint Protection) can subtly randomize canvas, hopefully with less problems. You should be using this build in feature instead of the plugin.
    • Font Fingerprint Defender is the one plugin that broke tracking on fingerprint.com, combined with VPN IP change, despite javascript being enabled. If you care about privacy, and not anonymity, you should still be using this.

  • Edit: Crossed out slightly out of date recommendations, see comments.


    Do not confuse privacy with anonymity. Your goal is not to defend against governments or other entities with limitless resourced, but against profit oriented companies. By reducing the amount of data you leak and obfuscating what is left, your data becomes progressively worthless as you improve your setup. This is a good thing, because companies will focus their limited resources on areas with a higher profit margin.

    Given your description, I think the network side of IT security is pretty much top notch, firmly in the top 0.1% if not 0.01% of users. However most of the tracking happens at the browser level, so it alone does not protect you that much.

    Firefox is a solid base, but it is optimized to not break any websites, rather then providing maximum privacy. You can try to tweak settings manually, but I’d rather recommend you to use LibreWolf on PC and Mull on Android. Both are pre-configure, hardened versions of Firefox, that also have proprietary Mozilla features like “Pocket” and some telemetry removed form the source. A standard install has basically no downsides, 99.9% of sites work normally and privacy is quite good.

    Librewolf has ublock origin pre-installed and pre-configured with sane defaults. I’d recommend the following additional addons:

    • Decentraleyes: Local CDC cache to reduce third party requests. Improves privacy, performance and doesn’t break anything. No configuration needed.
    • Privacy Badger: Prevents some interactive features (disqus comment section, embedded youtube player, etc) from loading until explicitly confirmed with a mouse click. Also prevents some tracking in the background, but that might eb covered by ublock already.
    • Cookie AutoDelete + I still don’t care about cookies: This combo silently suppresses all cookie pop-ups, allows them for the session and cleans up afterwards. This is different then disabling all cookies, and does not brake websites then rely on them while providing all privacy benefits.
    • Disable WebRTC: WebRTC can leak your IP address, but disabling it breaks eg. real-time video calls. This plugin is a simple toggle, only turn it on when you need to.

    If you are willing to do some fine tuning or accept broken sites, consider also:

    • noscript: Most privacy leaks happen because of Javascript, but disabling it basically makes the modern web unusable. noscript offers a middle ground to enable/disable javascript on a domain-by-domain basis. Can be annoying at times, but arguably the best way to defend yourself.
    • Canvas Blocker: WebGL powers most of the advanced visuals, and can read out a lot of data that is used for fingerprinting. This plugin can randomized requested data to protect you, but it also brakes sites in weird and unexpected ways. It’s powerful, but I rarely use it these days.

    And finally consider some obfuscation techniques to throw of the remaining trackers. Right now I only use one, and highly recommend it because of its effectiveness:

    • Font Fingerprint Defender: Using javascript, websites can read out the list of installed fonts on your device. Some programs install fonts in the background when opening a document with missing fonts, so this list is highly unique for each user and effective for tracking. The plugin throws is some noise, and causes automatic systems to detect you as a new unique user each time.

    All of this throws off the vast majority of trackers, and puts you in the top 0.1% of users. Yes, this also makes you kinda “unique”, because websites may notice the effort you put in to defend yourself. Bad idea if you try to hide from the government, you should be using TOR for that anyway, but great to signal companies that you are not worth the squeeze.

    Keep your head up bro. The situation is not as terrible as it may seem, but companies want you to believe that, so that you don’t even try.



  • Same here. Donated not only to cover my installs, but also for everyone I recommended it to. I hope the f-droid version wont be affected, otherwise I have to uninstall the upcomming bloat- and spyware ridden versions manually from a bunch of devices smh.

    I mean I am fine with apps not being maintained and eventually break, but selling out and breaching trust like this is exactly how regular companies would treat me and why I chose FOSS in the first place.