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I know what WINE is and the gist of "Wine is not an emulator". I have used it extensively and for a while it even contained some of my code (not sure if it still does). But it is still emulating but not in the way people think. WINE is not emulating the operating system but it is emulating the interface that an executable interacts with Windows, aka the Win32 APIs and other DLLs.

They even touch on this in their FAQ - *That said, Wine can be thought of as a Windows emulator in much the same way that Windows Vista can be thought of as a Windows XP emulator: both allow you to run the same applications by translating system calls in much the same way. Setting Wine to mimic Windows XP is not much different from setting Vista to launch an application in XP compatibility mode. *

As far as a potentially malicious executable is concerned, you can create a throwaway wine folder to run the thing and delete it as soon as it is done, e.g.

e.g.

export WINEPREFIX=~/tmpwin
winecfg
# disable wininet from libraries tab, remove Z:, unlink all desktop integration folders
wine keygen.exe
# when done...
rm -rf tmpwin

It doesn't matter if keygen.exe is evil because it can write anything it likes to the fake C: and the fake registry and it's blown away. As a precaution disable networking so it can't reach out either. In the extremely unlikely event that keygen.exe had code to detect it was running under WINE, it would still be subject to the permissions of the uid you had run it as, so you could take even more precautions if you felt so inclined. You could even use a dockerized WINE if you felt like it.

Brave is a marching band of red flags. It claims privacy while injecting ads, affiliate codes and crypto into the browser. It's kind of sad to see someone like Brendan Eich who should know better turn to the dark side and pretend this is all fine. It isn't.

Best advice I could give for anyone who wants privacy is use Firefox or a branch of it. Firefox is out of the box the most privacy conscious mainstream browser and add-ons make it more so. If you want absolute privacy you could even use a derivative like Tor Browser.

I wouldn't trust anything from a P2P site that purports to be:

1. A cracked game / application for desktop and mobile platforms. Maybe it's legit but assume it is malware.
2. A serial number generator. If you absolutely must run one of these do it from a throwaway VM, or via WINE emulation to mitigate what it might do.
3. An encrypted archive with a README. It's a scam designed to make people sign up to other scams to release a non-existent password.
4. A movie / audio with an extension such as .scr, .wma, .com, .exe etc. It's malware.

Movies, audio & books are generally safe providing they use a recognized extension - mp3, mp4, pdf, mkv, aac, flac, epub etc. Stuff that runs under emulation like console games is generally safe. I say "generally" because an exploit could still be crafted to escape a popular media player or emulator and cause actual harm to your computer.

All the ads and 3rd party scripts should be considered malicious too and should be erased with an adblocker, or even better use Tor.

So basically use some common sense and if you really want some game or app, just buy the damned thing or wait for it to go on sale.

It's a smart thing for news sources and ngos to do - run an instance and use it to issue posts and provide a platform for journalists. Twitter and other platforms can still receive posts but the "source of truth" is the Mastodon server

I joined it early on not thinking much of it, accepting invites left, right and centre. And then all the recruitment agents began spamming the shit out of me because I was a link so it cost them nothing. If a job said Java and my resume said Java they'd spam me even if I'm on another continent.

So I unlinked the lot of them and my life is relatively peaceful. If agents want to talk to me they need to send me an InMail which costs a point in their subscription but I still ignore them just to waste their points. I hate the service and I hate agents. If I was ever interested in a job spec that some agent sent me then I'd figure out the company from the clues in the spec and approach them directly. Because fuck agents and fuck LinkedIn.

I deleted the Twitter app recently and replaced it on my phone with a launcher bookmark to the website. Loss of functionality was minimal. I lose notifications but on the flipside my browser strips out all the ads and I have 250MB less bloat on my phone. So I'd say I'm on the winning side. Probably true to for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit and any other app which is just a thin wrapper over some HTML.

On top of a big pile of money with many beautiful ladies.

Disable "Mobile services manager". Samsung phones are lousy with crapware these days so I would avoid them like the plague. An eldery relative asked me why he kept seeing ad popups and his device had something called "Samsung Free" that cannot be disabled or completely turned off which pushes news articles, ads and other shit at him. I just turned off as many "interests" as I could and attempted to opt out of the software but it's still there and swiping left on the home page re-enables it. Samsung phones are absolute dogshit these days. I wouldn't go near one unless they could be rooted and flashed out of the box.

Problem with legislation like this is it frequently doesn't take into account that companies like Apple can be devious assholes. Every loop hole has to be anticipated and covered before it can be exploited.

Starlink must be getting like that in some places. The further away from civilization you are, the better the service. Use it in the footprint of a city and you'll probably regret it.