Yesterday I was on "Joseph Jaffe is not famous" and I had a great time. I was fully expecting a different kind of podcast. First off, I'm not used to podcasting on camera, so that was different, and to top it all off, it was live. I was being entertained by random celebrity snippets being thrown in and before I know it, we're gabbing about getting icicles in your eyelashes when you go dog-sledding. You can subscribe to the show here.
I had notes of topics that I wanted to bring up, and then I barely mentioned them because we got to gabbing on all sorts of things. So, I'll elaborate here.
As I said on the show, my obsession with leaking data began when a friend swiped his phone over my contactless card and told me what my last purchase was. How much information can people get about you, just by using RFID, Bluetooth, unencrypted wifi traffic, and GPS signals?
The answer is, pretty much anything they want to know, and that's not even touching on other weak points, such as all the information your android phone knows about you and where you are, which in turn almost every social media app that you have installed also knows.
The subreddit /degoogle will set you on a path of taking back your data by replacing your google habits with more secure and privacy-minded options.
Now, not everyone can go on a completely different system when it comes to phones, But for those who are into that sort of thing, and who miss physical keyboard Blackberry-style phones, Pro 1x is really tempting.
I've gone off all clouds, not just Google's cloud. But then sharing images and backing things up often still requires disks somewhere. First I had a WD My Cloud Personal NAS drive and found the interface quite lacking at a critical time when I needed to back up a failing laptop while I was abroad. I couldn't bulk upload files the way that I wanted to. Drag and drop one file at a time? No thank you.
Synology 4 personal cloud system had some better app options, I can upload images straight from my cameras wi-fi for example, and share them with select friends and family.
QNAP TS-251A NAS drive includes dual Ethernet ports, an HDMI out for connecting it to a TV and respectable hardware like the dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Celeron CPU and 4GB of RAM for hardware transcoding media files. Also, a sexy little remote control. What's not to love?
The QTS OS also lets you effortlessly install a variety of apps, from the Plex Media Server and file sharing apps to, hello unexpected, a karaoke app, as well as running Ubuntu Linux for added flexibility.
Another option would be the Buffalo LinkStation LS220D NAS drive, as it has built-in Torrent - so you can keep torrenting when your computer is off.
Hardware is an initial cost, and you can spend as much on your own cloud server as you would on a good computer, but at the same time you are killing off the many small bills that tick away every month for cloud services that you are paying for.
Protecting your recovery seeds.
So I stumbled over Billfodl Multishard and was intrigued. You want to put your bitcoin etc on a cold storage hardware wallet, but then you're writing your recovery seeds on pieces of paper that can be cleaned away - or you're writing it down in a password book, and that can be read by others who get their hands on it.
With the Billfodl Multishard, you can split your seed into 3 shards, each with 16 of your 24 words for recovery. Splitting your seed into three allows you to achieve a 2-of-3 style recovery method and ensures that if someone finds your BIllfodl, they aren't able to steal your funds. Very interesting.
On the very same site they also sell what I find is the most interesting tech today from a data protection standpoint. Faraday cage bags. But look how ugly they are.
And that's how I ended up unboxing a Säkra purse that I just got on Jaffe's talkshow. I'm so excited that I found a stylish purse that has a faraday cage built in it that I just had to share. I put my phone in there and am off-grid at any time. No GPS footprint, no secret cell tower pings to a shut-off device. Nothing at all. More secure than airplane mode but better still, it's so easy to just slip the phone in there rather than disable this or that on the phone. And my wallet, to protect my cards. I might have to get this in other colors!
Oh, I almost forgot - don't use Bluetooth keyboards or mice either. I have a Wacom tablet, the Bluetooth mouse was temporary yesterday, and I held up my keyboard to show that it indeed has a cable though not a cool coiled one, yet. For the curious, my keyboard is the Drop CTRL mechanical keyboard which is currently on sale if you want a black one. I do recommend it if you carry your keyboard around a lot, the magnetic "feet" can be removed which makes for slim packing, But if you are gaming, then I'd look at the high profile version instead, which is also currently on sale.
Also, my "Porn Kills Love" t-shirt is from fightthenewdrug.org
