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Guys, if we’re already paranoid enough to be interested in a product like this, don’t make us paranoid to even want to “get started” using a product like this.
Sounds like a scam, even if they are totally legit.
Just an FYI:
"AdGuard servers are located in Frankfurt, Germany, and the apps do not communicate to any servers in Russia. This was a deliberate decision to keep our servers (as well as the company itself) in a different jurisdiction. Even among AdGuard DNS servers, which are supposed to be located all over the world, we don’t have any in Russia. With how things are developing, we may soon have no office there either, or have a considerably smaller one. To reiterate:
Secondly, we do not condone what’s going on in Ukraine and we have expressed our opinion on this earlier. Filters maintainers, support team members, QA, developers — the war has changed lives of many people that are very important to AdGuard as a company and to me personally. Our only desire is for it to stop as soon as possible." SOURCE
The Adguard team has been among the most trustworthy in the privacy space, and their self-hosted, and local-first services shouldn’t be casually cast aside so quickly.
That’s crazy! I bet the same bank used a “secure” method for 2FA… like SMS. LOL
Yes, that’s a great FOSS alternative.
The only reason why I don’t use trackercontrol is that I can’t use it at the same time as an actual VPN. And since I already paid for AdGuard, it’s on all my devices. 🤭
Adguard for android (paid). It runs as a local VPN and cleans up everything, including most ads in apps.
You can find cheap lifetime licenses for sale. I’ve been using it for many, many years.
The first thing(s) do:
Millions for companies worth TRILLIONS is like fining ordinary people a few pennies.
If the fine doesn’t HURT, then it’s not going to be effective.
Corporations should be fined at least the value of 50% of the profits from the timeframe they were committing those crimes. If they’ve been breaking the law for years, then the fine will likely be tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.
If the law doesn’t compel these companies to act ethically, they simply won’t.
It would be cool if laws were made so that products must last X number of years, or the customer gets their money back. LOL That should eliminate planned obsolescence pretty damn quick!
But knowing industry, they’d pour millions into engineering products that last X number years + 1 day to skirt a law like that 🫠
Yes, but is this them being assholes, or them wanting to make sure that users aren’t making their system unreliable? I think there would be a huge distinction there.
For example, say a user wanted to create a cache drive using an SSD. But because the user doesn’t know better, they buy the cheapest crap they can find, install it, and set up caching. But because they’re using cheap shit, the drive is slow and the user reports poor performance, system hangups, and other instability.
Wouldn’t it be in Synology’s best interest to say “here’s a list of drives we know will give you the best experience.”?
Now, Synology has already done that, but users are ignoring it and continue to use poor storage drives expecting to use pretty sophisticated features. What now? Well, Synology disables those features.
For example:
De-duplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic HDD firmware updates could also disappear on non-approved drives
Um, yeah. That makes sense. If a shitty hard drive can’t reliably get firmware updates through the NAS, why on earth would they want to keep that option enabled? Same with lifespan analysis. If a crappy drive isn’t using modern standards and protocols for measuring and logging errors and performance data, Synology really can’t “enable” this to work, can they?
That’s what I think is happening. Although, this could be just greed, too. I don’t think there’s any real problem for most users, unless they say that we can’t use fairly common, high-quality NAS drives from Seagate or WD and must use their own branded drives. I’d have a huge problem with that.
Are we overreacting? Hasn’t Synology always had a list of “certified” drives for their NAS’, which end up being the same HDDs we would tend to use anyway?
I can understand that they don’t want people using any garbage storage drives, which could increase failure and make Synology NAS’ look unreliable.
Unless something has changed, this is how they’ve always done it, just like how every laptop manufacturer will say which RAM and storage works best (for reliability and performance) on their machines.
Yes, incoming.
Outgoing is another can of worms.
I try to run any of my iot devices on an isolated network. At most, they can see eachother, and that’s it.
Some devices need an internet connection, unfortunately.
The best you can do, if you’re unable to block their collection outright, is to run them through a tracker-blocking DNS (either self-hosted or something like Adguard DNS).
That can minimize unnecessary pings home.
Personally, if I think that a device is being malicious in their attempts to phone home, I stop using the device. I also try to make an effort to not get a smart device, if the alternative (unconnected option) works fine.
Digital minimalism is one way to protect ourselves from rampant data collection and profiling.
On my Synology NAS, I have it set to auto-block IPs after a few failed attempts. Some days, I’ll have like 50 of those come through at a time (all random addresses from random countries). Other weeks or months can go by without a single one.
So, I think it’s one of those “matter of time” deals, so as long as you are properly locked down, it should be viewed as normal.
I’ve always viewed that style of lighter as one that you might use in an emergency, but that’s about it. Anyone using a lighter on a regular basis would benefit from getting one that can be refilled. But for an emergency, a refillable lighter might be too expensive or problematic.
My 2 cents, anyway. I don’t use lighters like those.
Such as?
A few examples:
Dianty is a Canadian company, but their brown rice comes from the States.
Nature’s Path is a Canadian cereal company, but they make everything in the States.
You can find alternatives that are not by Canadian companies, but are Made in Canada, and those options are better than the above. To Dainty’s credit, though, they only import the rice, but clean/finish/package it in Canada, so they aren’t terrible.
Still, I avoid their brown rice because the main ingredient is American.
Obviously the argument was never to buy something made in USA disregarding who owns the company, over something made in Canada.
I don’t think I was trying to make that argument, at least, I hope it didn’t come across that way.
It’s best to avoid anything made in the States or ingredients from the states. The local of a company’s head office is less relevant if they are employing Canadian workers to make the products.
What?
I’m saying that “Canadian companies” who manufacturer elsewhere, are worse than “foreign companies” who manufacturer within Canada using Canadian ingredients.
My metric, of course, if purely from an economical perspective. There are other factors to consider, too.
No, you aren’t.
For example:
You have a local brand that imports all their goods. How many employees do you think they have? It would all be just sales, admin, and warehouse.
Now say that you have a company manufacturing in your country using ingredients from your country:
You’ve got dozens of farmers, and everyone connected to them. Dozens or hundreds of factory workers, and everyone connected to them. Your “Canadian office” will still employ Canadians for admin, sales, warehouse, etc.
How would that not be better?
To reiterate: Buying from a locally-owned brand who also manufacturers locally is the best. But when given a choice between a company that makes goods in your country, and one that only sells imported goods from your country, the former is going to be more beneficial to the economy.
and I’m American.
You’re not American, you’re a hero. 😀
From a “where does the money go” perspective, that is not true.
When I was researching this, basically the conclusion is that if a product is made in Canada (even if the company is American), you are supporting the workers, but then the workers are likely spending their money within the country, too. This is amplified if the ingredients/materials of that product are also from Canada.
Yes, supporting an American company is still bad, for sure. I don’t disagree.
But if the choice, for example, is to buy from a Canadian company that’s importing from the States (many examples I’ve found just at the grocery store), or an American brand that makes their products in Canada using Canadian ingredients, go with the latter!
Fortunately, we aren’t always forced to make that decision, and can go with NotAmerican products and brands for a large number of items. That’s why Buy European is something I also follow (as a Canadian).
It’s actually more important that the product be made in Canada, rather than who owns the company, since it would employ more Canadians and return more money into our economy.
I’m not sure where Pedigree makes their treats, but if it’s in Canada, it gets a Maple Leaf.
But ideally, you do want a Canadian-owned company making goods in Canada using Canadian ingredients and hiring Canadian workers.
Just for clarity, I followed the links they wanted me to follow.
The sketchy tone and vagueness while they “do stuff” after getting your email seem to have no connection to self-hosting at all.
If my intention was not to self-host, they lost me before I could even trust them enough to provide an email address 😟