Hacker News: mwinatschek

New comment by mwinatschek in "Apple needs a Snow Sequoia"

mwinatschek — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 03:05:37 +0000

The first thing I do when I reinstall macOS is to disable most of the ”features”, services, and apps Apple added over the last decade. I can’t imagine how cluttered my digital life would be if I’d depend on all those useless toys Apple stuffed into the OS and abandons a few years later (looking at you, Dashboard).

My initial wish for Apple was to make macOS as bulletproof, lightweight, and bug-free as possible. But now I just want to use Linux on my M1 MacBook because of all the bullshit that’s going on in the US right now. It’s only a matter of time until the Trump administration will start to dismantle the American technology sector, beginning with the softening of encryption and the death of Advanced Data Protection I currently rely on on iCloud. Mark my words.

Like I’ve said in a couple of comments before in other threads, I’d love to switch to Asahi but without native disk encryption I just can’t. If my laptop gets stolen, all my files would be visible to the thief, and that’s a risk I’m not willing to make.

New comment by mwinatschek in "The F-35 as a Subscription Service"

mwinatschek — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 03:31:23 +0000

Could that become a problem with any electronic product made by US companies? If their government demands Apple, Google & Co. to remotely brick computers, phones, and tablets for whatever reason, why should I bother buying them in the first place?

New comment by mwinatschek in "Fedora 42 Beta"

mwinatschek — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:31:53 +0000

I’d love to install Fedora Asahi Remix on my MacBook but without built-in disk encryption the whole operating system is unfortunately quite useless for me.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39941021

New comment by mwinatschek in "Fedora 42 Beta"

mwinatschek — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 23:15:53 +0000

Many US companies operate via subsidiaries and manufacture their products in Asia. But that doesn’t matter if the main business is based in the US. The current US government, its seemingly random tariffs, and their plans to cut their country off the rest of the world make it hard for me to invest my money and energy into products from the US if I’m not sure if in a year from now I still will get support for them as a customer from Europe.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones"

mwinatschek — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:38:27 +0000

I’m with you on this one. I’d be fine with Apple opening up their ecosystem in a safe and careful way to other companies but only if the security stays, at least, at the same level - and if I’m able to turn off these options in the settings.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Fedora 42 Beta"

mwinatschek — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:16:33 +0000

I’d love to try out their products, but as an European it could become a problem in the near future that they’re an US-based company.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Moving away from US cloud services"

mwinatschek — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 11:09:37 +0000

Hot take: If the US and EU secret services stop sharing any intel with each other, wouldn’t it be smarter for Europeans to use American services now more than ever? Because even if they’ll get their hands on your nudes, tax docs, or pirated movies, what could they even do with it? If you use an European company on the other hand and some local government wants to fuck you up, it’s much more easier to get their dirty hands onto you, your family, and your friends.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Moving away from US cloud services"

mwinatschek — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:20:38 +0000

I thought the whole point of this post is to get away from US clouds. So why should I choose Cloudflare and Azure in the end?

New comment by mwinatschek in "Sanitext – Remove LLM-Generated Text Fingerprints"

mwinatschek — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 06:05:07 +0000

"- I'm AI. (Normal text) − І’m󠅘󠅟󠅜󠅑 ΑІ.󠅓󠅙󠅑󠅟 (AI-tainted text)

’ (U+2019) is a right single quotation mark instead of a regular quote"

I think AI just uses the correct apostrophe, isn’t it?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ja/grammar/british-grammar/...

New comment by mwinatschek in "Digg is being rebooted, with Reddit"

mwinatschek — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 12:50:55 +0000

Every failure of once-famous Web 2.0 platforms proves that websites are products of their time - temporary and ultimately irrelevant. Each generation has its own favorite services, apps, and channels, all destined to fade away. Some collapse due to mismanagement, enshittification, bad design choices, censorship, or simply because users move on. Digg is as much a relic of the past as MySpace, and no amount of money, marketing, or exaggerated "superpowers" can change that - especially when they're partnering with a platform that is itself dying a slow, painful death.

Unreasonable mass surveillance to be expected in Germany

mwinatschek — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 06:49:03 +0000

Article URL: https://netzpolitik.org/2025/nach-der-wahl-anlasslose-massenueberwachung-erwartbar/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43168972

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by mwinatschek in "FBI Warns iPhone, Android Users–We Want Lawful Access to All Your Encrypted Data"

mwinatschek — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 06:45:01 +0000

Okay, so that means the US is gonna force Apple to disable Advanced Data Protection too. And soon also Germany wants to start mass surveillance [1]. Privacy is dead, the future looks bleak.

[1] https://netzpolitik.org/2025/nach-der-wahl-anlasslose-massen...

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 03:29:55 +0000

Thank you. My first two steps will be to switch over my computer from macOS to Asahi Fedora Remix and make myself comfortable with finding alternatives to the iCloud service, maybe an encrypted NextCloud hosted on some non-US server provider. I know that Fedora is also US-based but it's the best Linux distro that's currently available for Macs and as soon as i'm getting used to the OS I'll be able to look for other distros and hardware.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:52:23 +0000

Thank you for your real-life insights and recommendations. I’ll consolidate your points one by one. My main challenge is balancing independence with mobility, especially if my lifestyle changes drastically. For example, relying on a homelab wouldn’t be feasible for me. Instead, I prefer to depend on a single laptop and phone while keeping everything else in the cloud. But I’ll check out all the options, thanks.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 13:44:42 +0000

Thanks for the list. It's really sad for me that Fedora is in the "stay away" section because the Asahi version of it probably would be the best one for my MacBook.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 14:16:08 +0000

I remember installing OpenSuse on my PC from a random magazine CD over 20 years ago. Back to square one I guess. But how exactly would choosing a European-based Linux distro be better than a US-based one in the event of a Transatlantic war?

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:15:59 +0000

Yeah, but there are scenarios between no war and a nuclear war - and I want to be at least somehow prepared for those.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:14:07 +0000

I've backed up my personal files. But they lie on a with macOS encrypted and APFS formatted hard drive. So even if I have backups I have to make sure that they are encrypted but also readable by all operating systems...

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:11:40 +0000

Dropbox is based in San Francisco - and also needs some kind of operating system to be accessed.

New comment by mwinatschek in "Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?"

mwinatschek — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:00:40 +0000

It’s fascinating to see people developing operating systems for a post-apocalyptic world. I’m not that pessimistic - yet. I just don’t want to wake up one day to some random pop-up saying all my data and software are gone because I trusted companies one the wrong side of the globe for too long.