Category: videos

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Nothing to Hide

If you’re reading this blog regularly, you might have asked yourselves why all the thoughts about security, privacy, freedom, and so on lately? And you might be one of those who say “I have nothing to hide”. Well…

This one is a must see. It helps if you understand English, French, and German at least a bit, but even if you don’t, watch it to the end:

This comes from the PeerTube, and it promotes those free and decentralised services, and for good reason as you will hear. So please do yourself and us all a favour and stop using Facebook, Whatsapp, and all of that – and replace it with something like Signal or even better, XMPP. We will all profit from it.

Oh, and in case you have an old Android phone which isn’t supported with regular updates anymore, try DivestOS. And if you have a new one from Google, try GrapheneOS (or else, DivestOS again). Sure you can’t live without that intrusive Play Store? Have a look at F-Droid instead. Or are you using Apple instead? Maybe think again… and please start encrypting. You can at least do that even if you stay with a standard Google or Samsung or Apple device.

As always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

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Congrats Michael!

Congratulations go out to Michael Dunlop who scored his 24th TT win in the Supertwin class yesterday, which makes him the second-best rider on this track after his uncle Joey (with 26 wins).

After Michael first won this year’s Supersport (600cc) class on a Yamaha, and the Superbike (1000cc) class on his Honda, he won this one on a Paton S1-R, a brand which I hadn’t heard of before. But they seem to be popular and fast, and as you can see you can win races with them. So here’s the makers’ site about the Italian bike, and here’s a bit of an onboard video on one, from about 4 years ago:

Riding the Paton S1-R on the Isle of Man TT mountain course + walk around

And here is how a real legend does it, on the same motorcycle. They say you’ll need 3 years to learn the track, and just watching and listening to this one with John McGuiness makes you believe that:

Milky Quayle’s TT Lap Guide with John Mcguiness

Much better to learn on a 2-cylinder “classic” than on a warp-speed superbike, isn’t it?

Like always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

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First fatality at this year’s TT

Sad news from the Isle of Man: yesterday Spanish rider Raul Torras Martinez, 46, died after an accident in the Supertwin race. Spoken obituary and other coverage here:

Daily Round Up – Day 9 | 2023 Isle of Man TT Races

One of the written ones with a bit more info is here. RIP Raul, and condolences to your family.

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Clara et son fameux papa

This is ten years ago already – but I just found out now:

Clara et Jean-Luc Ponty au Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval

So good to hear his daughter perform “Enigmatic Ocean” and “Mirage” with him… and more of Clara on her internet page.

Like always, thanks for viewing.

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About phone (and desktop) security

I know at least one former colleague who really cared about privacy and security concerning his mobile phone. And this morning, I’ve heard an interesting interview with Gabe, one of the developers of GrapheneOS, using NewPipe on GrapheneOS on my late brother’s Pixel 3a device – that looked like this:

That’s one and a half hours of a really interesting interview, so it’s really worth it. And I can confirm how secure those mentioned Titan M chips are, not even Google could hack or circumvent those, so if I wouldn’t have been able to guess my brother’s passcode, that device of his would have been an expensive paperweight.

I also liked how Gabe gave lots of credits to Apple because of their long-term support of their iPhones and devices, but yes, with the Pixel 6 and newer, things are improving on the Android side as well.

About desktop security: it’s actually worse than this, the same interviewer has some other interesting videos about that, or tips how to use Tor on your phone.

Recommended listening. And like always, thanks for reading.