Recent comments in /f/AskRamble

_____ wrote

Reply to comment by DeusExMachina in Could you add a picture/media viewer ? by DeusExMachina

True, and I do use TOR to post and browse here, but I'm glad the IP logs get cleared regularly. I think websites and apps should help the people who aren't being careful as much as possible. For example, people were uploading pictures and videos to Parler without stripping the metadata first. They should have been stripping the metadata before uploading, but Parler also should have done that automatically for all posts.

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_____ wrote

Reply to comment by Rambler in Could you add a picture/media viewer ? by DeusExMachina

You can already create multiple accounts and throwaways, but I believe you're requesting an, "anonymous" user account where any user can opt to have their post displayed as 'anonymous' (or 'guest') or similar? I'm down for it.

Yeah. Without this feature, someone who is really serious about privacy but still wants to post a lot might want to have as many as three or four accounts with different levels of privacy.

*One for non-political posts that are very connected to his identity. Such as answering that "What if you had 1 million dollars?" question or posting in hobby sub-forums.

*One for political posts that are somewhat connected to his identity because he also shared them with people he knows in real life or shared them on other social media.

*One for mostly political posts that are not connected to his identity. An account where he can post freely what he thinks about politics or any controversial subject without worrying.

*One or more accounts for posts that absolutely must not ever be connected to his identity for some reason.

That's a lot of accounts to deal with, so most people don't go that far or even think about going that far, but as long as there's a relatively easy way to anonymously post, that could improve peoples privacy a lot. If someones doing multiple things on one account, even he's good about hiding his IP, a girlfriend, friend, or family member who looks over his shoulder and sees his username could read through his posts, find some "red flags" or something and report him to the authorities while showing how the personal info posted about life experiences, hobbies, etc. connects to his real identity.

So basically, the feature should be easy enough to use that people use it regularly, but not so easy that automated spam is an easy thing to do. A simple captcha might be the way to go.

As for changing the timestamps of created posts, a “before insert” database trigger would work. The code in the first reply here could be modified.

https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/143953/how-can-i-set-timestamps-default-to-future-date

You could generate a random value between +240 and -240 minutes. Then add that value to the current time. That way, if you’re sorting posts by timestamp, their position in the list won’t be too far off. It would still be enough to make it harder to answer questions like “What timezone is this user in? Are they employed? Do they have a regular sleep schedule? I have the ISP records for John Smith. Was John Smith using an anonymity network or hitting ramble’s IP address when this was posted?”

Actually, since there aren’t a lot of new posts per day, you even could do something like +720 and -720 minutes and it would still be fine for now but you’d need to narrow the window later once more people join and start posting more often.

Optionally, you could change the timestamps even more with replies to posts. I don’t see a sort by new option for replies in Postmill and even on sites like Reddit that have it, I’m guessing most people don’t use it much.

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BlackWinnerYoshi wrote

Reply to Would Ramble support multi-languages ? by DeusExMachina

You can change the language (user -> User settings -> Language). About them, I assume you have to fork Postmill (which is what this forum is using), copy the *.en.yml files while also changing the ISO 3166 code (e.g. to *.pl.yml), translating those new files, then making a pull request to the Postmill repository you just forked. By the way, I checked how many lines of messages are there, and it's 580.

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takeheart wrote (edited )

Reply to What would you do if you won $1,000,000 USD? by Rambler

federal reserve notes

Uncle Sam isn't taxing the shit out of it

Wake up, sheep. I'd probably burn that trash, that would be unclean of course but still better than spending the filth.

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Rambler wrote

Reply to comment by _____ in Could you add a picture/media viewer ? by DeusExMachina

You can already create multiple accounts and throwaways, but I believe you're requesting an, "anonymous" user account where any user can opt to have their post displayed as 'anonymous' (or 'guest') or similar? I'm down for it.

Automatically stop logging the ip address for users that reach a certain non-spam non-illegal post count and remove all ip logs for that user.

I already do that via a cron job for all users. IPs get purged at a regular interval.

Maybe even obfuscate when people post since everyone has a unique pattern of when they like to go online.

I like this idea. I have no idea how to implement it and I know on Linux you could, in theory, do this (kind of) with XDoTool ( https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/ " xdotool - fake keyboard/mouse input, window management, and more " ) but that's client site, and not server side, and kind of a pain in my limited experience with it.

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BasedPatriot wrote

Reply to What would you do if you won $1,000,000 USD? by Rambler

I'd be frugal, have a small cabin built ontop of an underground bunker. It'd be hidden, accessible through only a false floor or wall to access. I'd fill it with supplies. I'd build a cool backyard shooting range, too. Then probably save the other $500,000.

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_____ wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by Rambler in Could you add a picture/media viewer ? by DeusExMachina

I'd be interested in occasionally helping with some features here and there. I'm admittedly rusty with both PHP and vanilla JavaScript though since I've mostly worked with typescript, jquery, and front-end frameworks. I've been considering contributing to some open source free speech + privacy oriented project after seeing how much censorship there is, and how even the sites that are more pro free speech are not good at protecting user privacy. I downloaded Docker + Postmill + the images but still need to get it all up and running.

There's a lot of potential for a new fork of Postmill to have features that make it better for free speech and privacy. I'm thinking stuff like

  • Option to post anonymously. Would need to figure out some way to limit this. Maybe give users with a high non-illegal non-spam post count a key.

  • Moderator elections for certain forums.

  • Automatically stop logging the ip address for users that reach a certain non-spam non-illegal post count and remove all ip logs for that user.

  • Maybe even obfuscate when people post since everyone has a unique pattern of when they like to go online.

If it has enough desirable features, then other people who are considering making a Reddit-like site would consider using the fork instead of Postmill. Anonymous posts would especially be a desired feature. You see it all the time on Reddit that people make accounts like throwaway20473632.

It could be called “Free Private Postmill” or something unconnected to Ramble. Eventually Ramble’s culture could become more like Voat as censored people migrate here and then devs won’t want the name “Ramble” on the gitlab page that potential employers see.

I think if the fork is uploaded and the vision is put out there on other pro free speech forums, a lot of developers would be interested.

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MilkyPastel wrote

Reply to What would you do if you won $1,000,000 USD? by Rambler

Year One& Two: First, I would undoubtably go out for the single most expensive meal of my life at a michelain star restaurant. I'll say that would cost $500. I still have 2 years of college left, and Ideally I would want to invest it all during that time, but realistically I am only human so I would take out $30K to live on for a year, and an additional $20k for tuition for both semesters that year. I absolutely could survive on less than 30K for a year, but knowing my own foolish spending habits when I have money I'm accounting for stupid spending. I would invest my remaining $949,500. Good hedge funds report 15% annual returns, so going by that metric after a year I would have $1,091,925. Take out another $50K for living and tuition, then reinvest and I have $1,198,213.75 by the time I finish college.

Year Three: From here I would accelerate my 10 year plan. Looking at landwatch.com I can see there is an 80 acre property available for $250,000 in Montana already with power and septic hook up, I'd buy that. Until the property is ready I would move out and rent a hypothetical house nearby. Idk what rent actually costs out there but for simplicity I'll stick to 30K a year living expenses, a factor a medium uhaul into that since SO and I dont have too many belongings. Once we get to MT I wouldn't do much with the property for the rest of the year, but I would take $2K to upgrade equipment for my soap making business. After these expenses, I am left with $916,213.75, which never left my hedge fund investment account so by the end of the year it has accumulated to $1,053,645.81.

Year Four-Seven: I just googled how much it costs to build a house, and and results vary wildly. SO and I want a house that isn't too big, but also want a conservatory and a fully functional laboratory so we can both work from home so I'm just going to guess this would be a $1 million home. Obvi we can't pay for this all outright or we would go broke immediately, so I'll say we take 4 years to build it, and split the cost over that time. By now we should both have careers, and no longer need to live off of the passive income from interest so I'll no longer be taking out 30K for living expenses. 250K out of our savings, with the remainder compounded annually at 15% for 4 years:

Year Four: $1,053,645.81- 250,000= 803,645.81 x 1.15= $924,192.68

Year Five: $924,192.68- 250,000= 674,192.68 x 1.15= $775,321.58

Year Six: $775,321.58- 250,000= 525,321.58 x 1.15= $604,119.83

Year Seven: $604,119.83- 250,000= 354,119.83 x 1.15= $407.237

Year 8: Alright, my dream house is built, I've had 5 years since college to perfect the art of perfumery and introduce perfumes to my soap business, and now I have a fully operational chemistry lab to start refining my own ingredients. I imagine SO and I are making enough to live comfortably on by this point, so I invest the entire remaining $407.237 into my perfume ingredient refinery. Greenhouses, aromatic plants, trade agreements with farms overseas where rare aromatic plants grow, that I wouldn't be able to grow in the U.S. (cinnamon, myrrh, etc.) Through wise investing I stretched the 1 million and used it to establish my dream, in only 8 years.

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Wahaha wrote

Reply to What would you do if you won $1,000,000 USD? by Rambler

That little amount of money isn't even enough to make me dream. I'd likely just put it in my account and not care much about it either way. It's something nice to have, but not life changing. You'd have to add at least four zeroes. With ten billion in paper money I could do some basic dreaming. Still not enough for big dreams, but it would be a start.

I'd invest in the creation of an anime studio in Japan that would churn out all the anime I want that nobody makes. It would likely cost a couple of million per series and I'd want hundreds of them.

But yeah, with just some pocket change, I wouldn't do anything.

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_____ wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by Rambler in Could you add a picture/media viewer ? by DeusExMachina

JS dev here. One of the things I really like about this site is that it is usually fast even when using the tor network.

Of course, for the best security, people should always have JavaScript disabled when using tor, but tor with JavaScript enabled is better than nothing and some people may use the site that way.

I noticed in the Reddit enhancement suite code that DeusExMachina posted, they are using typescript and lodash.

I would consider using vanilla JavaScript to minimize bloat for people who use anonymity networks. Some people who are really into privacy deliberately only use old computers too. So maybe just use the compiled JavaScript generated by the typescript. (It won't be as easy to read as the typescript though) Or use the typescript as a guide and write some similar code from scratch. Lodash isn't necessary either.

Are you still looking for help with this feature request or are you already on it?

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