mikedilger on Nostr: I had poor sleep and was very very grumpy. Seriously I was actling like a baby that ...
I had poor sleep and was very very grumpy. Seriously I was actling like a baby that needed a nap and I didn't quite realize that my motivation was mostly due to my physical state, and not the discussion I was having.
But while I'm back to replying to these notes I will add this: Tor proxy via a daemon is dangerous. Because DNS lookups are often run by syscalls which use your systems DNS (maybe systemd for example) and that will bypass that tor proxy. So you'll be leaking to your DNS server all the websites you think you are going to privately.
This is why I think the easiest message to get across to people is that if you want to do privacy you have two options:
1) Tor Browser, which has been scoured to ensure everything is going over Tor, or if you need non-browser software,
2) Whonix, which as an OS has been scoured to make sure everything is going over Tor. Whonix can be run from a VM (e.g. Oracle VirtualBox) or within QubesOS, or on physical hardware.
That being said, there is NO great solution for non-browser tor, because if you use Whonix and try to do things like git-clone, or nostr clients, or bitcoin-core, or whatever, you will find Tor has terrible performance and network connections will just suddenly die, and most software can't deal very well with suddenly terminating network connections. Just a simple git clone will drive you mad. I don't know why tor is so bad... maybe it is just bad for me (maybe the three-letter agencies are trying to boot me off tor) or maybe tor needs help. I don't really know.
But while I'm back to replying to these notes I will add this: Tor proxy via a daemon is dangerous. Because DNS lookups are often run by syscalls which use your systems DNS (maybe systemd for example) and that will bypass that tor proxy. So you'll be leaking to your DNS server all the websites you think you are going to privately.
This is why I think the easiest message to get across to people is that if you want to do privacy you have two options:
1) Tor Browser, which has been scoured to ensure everything is going over Tor, or if you need non-browser software,
2) Whonix, which as an OS has been scoured to make sure everything is going over Tor. Whonix can be run from a VM (e.g. Oracle VirtualBox) or within QubesOS, or on physical hardware.
That being said, there is NO great solution for non-browser tor, because if you use Whonix and try to do things like git-clone, or nostr clients, or bitcoin-core, or whatever, you will find Tor has terrible performance and network connections will just suddenly die, and most software can't deal very well with suddenly terminating network connections. Just a simple git clone will drive you mad. I don't know why tor is so bad... maybe it is just bad for me (maybe the three-letter agencies are trying to boot me off tor) or maybe tor needs help. I don't really know.