I think the argument is that since some of the extensions that are probed can be political in nature, which can reveal political identity, which is potentially unlawful in the EU. However, it really needs to be up to a judge to make a decision on that.

In general what they’re doing is legal, and the BrowserGate people are using niggling little details, a handful of extensions out of the 6000 probed, to justify this argument. I couldn’t say, especially as someone from outside the EU, whether this is actually illegal or not, but it’s definitely in a nebulous area at the moment.

Though I agree it’s sensationalized in terms of claiming it’s “searching your computer” and doing “corporate espionage.”

Literally? They’re searching installed browser extensions, that’s not “my computer.” Sure, it’s identification data, and it may brush up against EU laws, but “illegally searching your computer” is definitely a bit of hyperbole.

They are not “literally” searching my computer, as much as I am not literally fucking your mom.

“Yes, LinkedIn was probing for a lot of extensions, but there was no scanning of your computer and no malicious code, just a simple JavaScript technique to determine if the extension was there.”

Reguly decided to test the resource probing and results obtained on a sample 10% of the 6,000+ extensions. “One extension refused to have its tab closed and reopened itself every time I closed it. Others changed my home screen, the about:blank page, and added bookmarks.” Another Rickrolled him, playing the ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ video every time he opened his browser. “To say that a lot of these are the worst of the worst extensions out there is not an understatement.”

What’s more, statistically from his sample testing, he believes only around 2,000 could be detected by LinkedIn, when even 6,000 is just a small sub-set of the total number of extensions that exist. If LinkedIn was intent on fingerprinting or profiling its users, there are better methods than this.

“I don’t see anything that indicates malicious intent here,” he told SecurityWeek “It is discovering some information, yes, but I don’t think it crosses the threshold to malicious – I think that’s a very sensationalized view of what’s going on.”

Asked why LinkedIn is doing this, he replies, “I don’t know. But for me, a common trend across these extensions is that they have data scraping functionality and are not well known. And they were problematic at times. Many of them gave me that used-car-salesman vibe that you see in the movies,” he continued.

“I can’t help but wonder if LinkedIn wanted to know if these extensions were there to try and defend against them. I certainly wouldn’t want one of my LinkedIn contacts to be running these extensions and visit my page with these scrapers installed. I feel that a user with these extensions installed visiting my LinkedIn page is more of an affront to my privacy than LinkedIn checking to see if I have these extensions.”

Of course, depending on interpretation, this still may not be appropriate or legal in the EU. However, it does seem that BrowserGate’s claims are a bit on the exaggerated side.

OP’s link with Google’s AMP nonsense removed: https://www.securityweek.com/browsergate-claims-of-linkedin-spying-clash-with-security-research-findings/

Yes, consumer routers are much lower powered because they’re built to be a router so they can simplify it to the basics needed just for routing. The trade-off is that most off-the-shelf consumer routers don’t support V-LANs. The person you were responding to notes they have a Mikrotic device, which is one of the most popular series of devices for people to put OpenWRT on. (EDIT: Memory was foggy it’s actually devices with MediaTech CPUs is what I am thinking of) The major downside here when it comes to exposing devices to the internet is you lose the strong firewall. Part of why the OPNsense firewall is stronger than what a consumer firewall even with OpenWRT on it is because it isn’t just built to be a router, and being much beefier allows it to handle much more complex firewall rules and things like packet inspection or intrusion detection. OpenWRTdevice has a basic firewall which will do the job, for sure, but I am definitely on the side of using something a little bit more powerful for more firewall features and options. You’d probably still be relatively safe with OpenWRT/, but the low power of the devices may make them less robust depending on how many users you plan on having, in which OPNsense’s beefy nature makes it more robust for more data passing through.

EDIT: Those Mikrotik devices OP is referring to are different than what I was thinking of, but they also have a good price point and are dedicated routing appliances thus lower power draw (many of them support Power over Ethernet). Their OS isn’t as open as any of the others though, however it offers a full featured enterprise grade router OS. A good choice for someone who isn’t as savvy off the bat, although you lose the powerful firewall.

https://mikrotik.com/products/group/ethernet-routers

They also have a demo of their RouterOS which seems like it’s very full-featured: https://demo.mt.lv/

Yeah, get your new OPNsense device fully set up through the guide, and it will act as a router and firewall. Once it’s ready to go, plug it in with ethernet to the Verizon router (with the ethernet connected to your OPNsense going into the WAN port) and make sure it’s picking up internet from the Verizon router. Once you’re sure it is, then go into your Verizon router’s settings and turn on bridge mode. The internet should auto-reconfigure for your new router to grab the IP from the modem by passing through the Verizon router.

If for whatever reason this doesn’t work, you can regain access to the Verizon router by doing a factory reset (as you won’t be able to view it’s settings as it no longer has an IP on the network in bridge mode). So don’t be afraid of it, worst that can happen is a factory reset. Just back up your settings beforehand (either manually writing them down or exporting a config file) so you can restore them easily.

I am pretty sure both switches will need to be managed because you will need a trunk between the firewall and the first switch and a trunk between the first switch and the second switch. A trunk needs to be defined on both ends, and with an unmanaged switch in between the firewall and managed switch I am fairly sure that’s not possible.

There are two types of ways VLANs communicate, and that’s through trunk ports and access ports. Trunking ports basically bundle all the VLANs together and send them to the next destination, such as another switch. Access ports are for giving access to end devices for a specific VLAN.

So I am fairly sure you’ll need a trunk between Firewall and Living Room Switch and a trunk between Living Room and Office Switch. It’s been a minute since I did work with VLANs myself though, so others feel free to correct me.

Related, I am also fairly sure the router itself will need VLAN support so while it’s understandable to not want to replace it, it may be a requirement and most consumer routers don’t come with VLAN support. Options are finding a router that supports alternative firmware like OpenWRT or DD-WRT which adds VLAN support or go whole hog and set up OPNsense or PFSense and essentially build your own router/firewall.

EDIT: I just looked at the Home Network Guy’s guide you linked to. His guide is helping you build a combination router and firewall with OPNsense. If you really need to keep the Verizon router, check if the Verizon router has an option called “Bridge mode” where you can bridge the connection to your own router/firewall and basically turn the Verizon router into a dummy passthrough device that the network just sort of passes through and otherwise ignores.

Where do all the lovely self-hosters here turn when they want to chat networking or server hardware?

I know this might seem like a strange answer, but… IRC channels on private torrent trackers. Many of the people on these sites actively have large and complex setups running. There often is a lot of talk about hardware for servers and networking in those IRC channels. Or at least there is on the trackers I am on.

I know that’s not necessarily a helpful answer to anyone not already in the private torrent tracker community, since its often quite a task to get involved if you aren’t already. However, it’s one that I have had great success with, personally. To anyone who already is on a private torrent tracker, if you haven’t checked out the IRC, give it a shot and see.

Oh and don’t forget you can self-host The Lounge for a self-hosted web-based IRC client.

You’re welcome and no problem, I went looking for it because I wanted those tips too ha.

https://programming.dev/post/47150919

The original thread with advice given to OP, in case anyone else is also looking for similar suggestions.

The slaves for sure, but it also creates a situation where the powerful may not be giving enough food to their security forces, and their security forces turn on them, joining the slaves in outright rebellion.

Not that this will bring more food in, but it could result in some of those “powerful” people suddenly not being so powerful.

Security through obscurity isn’t security.

There goes my excuse for not giving up and just paying for Unraid.

The last time I even remember private trackers being taken down was in the days of Oink.UK and What.CD.

Oink was shut down in 2007 and What was shut down in 2016, both mostly because they had grown so big they were hard to ignore. A lot of modern sites keep an upper limit on the accounts they allow to prevent too much growth and attracting attention.

Hell, I remember baconBits having an upper limit of less than 10,000 accounts. Once that limit was reached, you couldn’t even send out invites.

Also, public trackers that were huge like RARBG survived until finances shut them down, via COVID and the war in Ukraine, they were never taken down forcibly, and they were massive and widely used.

FUCK YEAH

Just fuckin with ya. Those are all valid gripes. I guess I got in on the scene way early through invites from friends and so I’ve hardly ever had to go through any interview process. I think the only place I “interviewed” was baconbits and it wasn’t really an interview since I mostly just shared evidence of good ratio on other trackers with long-lived accounts. I’ve had an account in good standing on Cinemageddon for… 18 years as of next month. Getting over that initial hump made it pretty easy to get in with good standing, and most decent trackers aren’t that hard to get good ratio on.

Second verse, same as the first.

*laughs in private tracker

You don’t make history by selling quality copper or following through on a deal, that’s for sure.

The Saudis and others are already considering pulling investments from the stock market in the USA to safe places due to this war.

Couple that with Iran potentially targeting important infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the UAE such as desalination plants, which could cripple them domestically and we’re looking at a recipe for the US stock market tanking and the AI bubble bursting as it can no longer be floated by wealthy middle eastern investment.

On the one hand, religious fundamentalists are fucked in the head and just want violence and their opinions and feeling should be discarded.

On the other hand, while it’s in many ways commendable that the Iranian president wants peace, he is negotiating with a group of people who are not acting in good faith, and should probably himself remember the axiom “never obey in advance.”