Back in my 2019 article “The Desktop Security Nightmare”, I noted that on most of our desktops, we don’t have good control of what data a program can access and when. I noted that we have things like AppArmor, which is something, but not the entire picture. SELinux is so extremely complicated that even Ted T’so had a comment about never getting some of his life back. I don’t like complexity, especially when it comes to security.| www.complete.org
I write this in the context of my decision to ditch Raspberry Pi OS and move everything I possibly can, including my Raspberry Pi devices, to Debian. I will write about that later. But for now, I wanted to comment on something I think is often overlooked and misunderstood by people considering distributions or operating systems: the huge importance of getting security updates in an automated and easy way. Background Let’s assume that these statements are true, which I think are well-support...| www.complete.org
Back in 1995 or so, pretty much everyone with a PC did all their work as root. We ran graphics editors, word processors, everything as root. Well, not literally an account named “root”, but the most common DOS, Windows, and Mac operating systems of the day had no effective reduced privilege account.| The Changelog
Anything that uses encryption to keep content away from spying eyes. End-to-end encryption is the best, because there need be no trusted intermediary. Some software projects are always fully end-to-end encrypted. Examples include NNCP, Syncthing, Yggdrasil, and Gemini. For more on encryption, see: OpenPGP tools: GnuPG (GPG) Sequoia PGP Age (Encryption) signify (not encryption, but cryptographic authentication) Links to this note Encrypting Filespooler Jobs With Age Like the process described ...| www.complete.org
I sometimes see people read about NNCP and wonder “This sounds great! But… what can I do with it?” This page aims to answer those questions. Either before or after reading this page, you might find these three pages useful: NNCP NNCP Concepts Getting Started with NNCP Asynchronous Communication A Quick Word on Background NNCP frees you from the tyranny of online. Compared to something like ssh, with NNCP, you trade latency for reliability and flexibility.| www.complete.org
“Airgap” refers to a computer (or network) that is physically disconnected from a larger network and the Internet. This word originated in the pre-wifi days, when there was literally air between machines; that is, no connecting communication cables. Nowadays, it also refers to a lack of radio (wifi or otherwise) communication. That is, it is complete physical isolation. Airgapped systems are often desirable in situations where Computer Security is important. For instance:| www.complete.org
