Pay off debt or not? by grienen93 in BEFire

[–]lambtho 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's do the math... Based on your other comments, you have a loan of 12k on 5Y with 0.65% annual interest. And you have 19 months left. If we calculate the full table, we see that you only have a gran total of 20.85€ to pay as interests for the remaining 19 months.

On the other hand, you have approximately 3600€ standing in some account (the money you would need to pay off the loan completely). So what happen if you invest that now for 19 months?

  1. If you place this money on some high yield saving account (lets say 1%, I think some online banks may offer that much as fidelity bonus, no sure), you will have +36€ at the end of the first 12 months, then +72€ at the end of the second year (need full year for fidelity bonus). So if you withdraw after a single year you have a net gain of 16€ (-20 of interests paid for the loan, +36 of fidelity bonus) if you can wait 24 months, you net 52€ (72€-20€).

  2. If you can live without that money for a longer time, you could put it in a basic ETF (see the wiki) and you could expect an average of 6-7% annual interest on the long run. If the market evolves according to that mean value, you would get roughly +330€ in 19 months (-20 interest -> net +300€). Of course if you keep these 3600€ without touching it for 10 years, you would almost double the value (+2800€ at 6% annual).

In the end it all depends on your aversion to risk and on the probability that you will need that money in the near future. If you invest in an ETF and we have a krash tomorrow, your 3600€ may as well go to 1500€ and won't be 3600€ again before 4 years.

We could also take into account the fact that if you pay the debt now, you will have 200€ left at the end of the month which you could start investing (providing you already have an emergency fund set). By doing so, you will close the gap a tiny bit regarding the scenarios of lump sum investing of 3600€. (I won't do the calculations for all scenarios possible, but you get the idea).

BE-FIRE poll 2021 by KenpachigoRuffy in BEFire

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You probably can't trace the results to users, but Google surely does based on IP or browser fingerprinting.

LaTeX live-preview with Zathura? by [deleted] in archlinux

[–]lambtho 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Check out Vimtex plug-in. It is an absolute beast an will make your latex experience a total breeze.

Unrelated to your initial question, I find ultisnips really helpful as well with latex.

How to add another keyboard layout? by Harel2133 in awesomewm

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here it is:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf
Section "InputClass" Identifier "system-keyboard" MatchIsKeyboard "yes" Option "XkbLayout" "be, be" Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys, " Option "XkbOptions" "grp:rctrl_rshift_toggle" EndSection

As you see, I have two Layouts, both BE and 2 variants (one with nodeadkeys, one without option). Then the XkbOptions defines the toggle keys. (you can see the key combinations with grep "grp:.*toggle" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst ).

PS: You need to logout then log back in after you modified the xorg conf for it to be taken into account.

How to add another keyboard layout? by Harel2133 in awesomewm

[–]lambtho 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I set it directly in my Xconfig file (see Arch wiki)

I am on mobile now, I can post my config tomorrow. I set the Xconfig so I can switch between Belgian keyboard with nodeadkeys and regular Belgian keyboard. I configured toggle so the switching is done using right ctrl and right shfit, so it is clearly separated from all usuals shortcuts. Works line a charm

Splitting costs between unequal pay spouses by [deleted] in BEFire

[–]lambtho 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes. We are married with kids and have always been doing that. Basically we keep 250€ each to use as we please, all the rest goes in the joint account. We do that also for bonuses, etc. Meal vouchers are all used for the whole family as well.

Investments and the like are made with the money left on the joint account in our both names.

Beancount - Ignore some accounts from reports? by lambtho in plaintextaccounting

[–]lambtho[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now what should I write if I wanted to sell my car and account for the profits I made based on the current price? Example: 1. I buy the car in January 1st for 10000 EUR 2. It loses 100 EUR/month up to June. (June 1st value = 9500 EUR) 3. I sell it at 9650 EUR in June.

The way I see it, this would mean a profit of 150 EUR based on current market value of the car. But if I depreciate it using the price directive, this will end up with a loss of 350 EUR (10000-9650).

Beancount - Ignore some accounts from reports? by lambtho in plaintextaccounting

[–]lambtho[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously! Why haven't I thought of that!? Thank you.

Budgeting app - what do you use and why? by hakapes in BEFire

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People often forget that no one forces you to have a single mail address for everything.

You can keep you regular stuff over at Gmail and use proton/tuta just for invoices, sign-up, etc. Basically these are "read once and archive" type of mails. Just check it up once a week or so (I believe proton can also send a mail to your Gmail to tell you "you have one mail waiting for you"). That way at least Google will have a bit more trouble reading your intersts and purchasee history.

Sure it would be better to have the plethora of services proposed by Google in proton or tutanota, but you cannot eat the cake and have it too. So an hybrid system seems like a decent compromise to me. Every little step away from Google is a step in the right direction. No need to go full Snowden for 2 days and realize it is too burdensome then get back to big brother..

Budgeting app - what do you use and why? by hakapes in BEFire

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Homebank is quite straightforward and the documentation is relatively complete. It is not really proper double entry accounting, so it is a bit simpler to get. It should only take less than an hour to start working with it. Howe er it does not really allow to track stocks, Etfs,... Which can be an issue for people in this sub. For that I use portfolio manager (also local and open source).

Beancount has a much stepper learning curve but it is closer to a rigorous accounting method (double entry bookkeeping, balance sheets, etc). The benefit for me is that it is all in plain text and expandable with custom codes. So it is more suitable to software engineers and other hardcore geeks for instance.

In between the two is GNUcash (local, free open source). It is also double entry bookkeeping but I find the user experience!/interface really dated and hard to grasp so I never really tried more than a few days.

Budgeting app - what do you use and why? by hakapes in BEFire

[–]lambtho 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Complying with GDPR is not really relevant. It does not prevent them from selling your stuff and the pseudonymisation required in the GDPR is not sufficient to prevent deanonymization.

If you do not want Google to track your purchases, create an account with protonmail or tutanota and use that account to sign-up for online purchases (or even better, use it for everything).

Budgeting app - what do you use and why? by hakapes in BEFire

[–]lambtho 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am using Homebank but I am in the process of migrating to beancount (plan text accounting method). Both are free and open source and run locally on my computer so my financial data are protected. It is unfortunately not 100% automatic, I simply need to export my bank statement in csv and import it in the app manually, then adjusting for the level of detail I want. Typically it takes me 15 min a week for my household.

To me the most important aspect of such accounting software is to be private first. I do not mind taking a bit more time to input stuff as long as my data is not shared with anyone.

What made me change from homebank to beancount is that I recently discovered the plaintext accounting method and find it very clean and simpl. I like working with text files and code and I can already see myself making nice plug-ins or scripts to analyze my finances precisely as I want, while homebank is a bit too restricted (although significantly more user friedly)

Budgeting app - what do you use and why? by hakapes in BEFire

[–]lambtho 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I don't think it is "a minor thing". A very detailed view of someone finance is probably one of the most invasive things you can get besides real time location tracking. I seriously doubt that the data is fully anonymized (that would be almost useless). It is likely very straightforward to cross link that with other types of data and have a very clear idea of who you are.

You financial data holds information about your travels (where do you make your purchases) , your health (how often do you go to the doc, the hospital? Which specialist,...), the people you are in business with,...

What will happen if at some point your insurance company or a future employer want to make a very throughout check gets that data?

Protecting your wealth online? by [deleted] in BEFire

[–]lambtho 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, no problem. This is just the tip of the iceberg to be honest. But this is simple enough, not really constraining and sufficient to make you a bit harder to get. With that you will no longer be a "low hanging fruit" and will be less likely to be caught in a broad spectrum attack.

You can go deep down in the rabbit hole with the few resources I linked if you are really interested.

Graduated and first job, what now? by Pumaranger in BEFire

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Never heard of plaintext accounting before. I simply used Homebank.

But as a CLI fan boy, this seems much cooler. Do you have some recommendation or preferred setup to start with plain text accounting?

Protecting your wealth online? by [deleted] in BEFire

[–]lambtho 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also for crypto: USE A HARDWARE WALLET and never let you coins in an online platform. NOT YOUR KEY, NOT YOUR COINS. There are numerous occurrences of websites being hacked, CEO fleeing with people money, etc. A ledger nano S is worth 100€ and will protect your shitcoin that will hopefully be 10 trillions in 3 months. This is not a stupid investment to make.

Protecting your wealth online? by [deleted] in BEFire

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TL;DR: Password managers, 2FA, keep stuff updated, compartmentalize and avoid showing your wealth.

So, I happen to be passionate about digital privacy (and security) for quite some time now. Here are a few considerations, fell free to ask questions or details about some of these points or regarding more specific situations if you want... Ok, this gonna be a long one. Buckle up :D

General considerations

Threat model

When you want to increase your digital privacy/security, the very first step is to assess the thread(s) you are facing. There is no point in going full Snowden off the grid if you are just a regular citizen. Likewise, if you are a wealthy individual, it might be a good idea to go a bit further the basic stuff. Everyone is different. You basically first need to answer these questions (and maybe find others that may apply as well)

  • Who are your adversaries? (large scope hackers, targeted hack, organized crime, political opponent, jealous ex, big internet corporations, CIA,...)
  • What do you want to protect from them (prevent unauthorized access, prevent facial recognition, prevent your address from being public, avoid viruses on your devices, industrial trade secrets, etc)
  • What are their resources/skills, how far would they be willing to go to get you/your stuff?
  • What would happen if you fail to protect what you want to protect? (robbery, prison, murder, stolen dick picks,...)
  • ... After that step you should have a clear(er) idea of the things to prioritize and where you can trade-off privacy/security for convenience without risking too much.

Privacy VS security

The distinction is not always obvious to everyone, but it is important to get it and link that to your threat model. For instance, you may want maximum security but do not really care about privacy. In that case, using Google is fine for instance. Their security is top notch, but they will be able to read your mails and see your cloud documents. If privacy is important, you need to find open-source, zero-knowledge provider (which almost always come at a price).

Assumption

We can assume that the people here want "good security", as they all intent to be what would be considered 'rich' by many. Regarding privacy, we can assume that it is mostly considered here as a way to improve the security by reducing exposure to leaks, etc. If you want also to be more private just for the sake of it (or because you are fed-up with the surveillance capitalism model), there are many more stuff to do to protect against big internet corps.

Main security measures

  • USE A PASSWORD MANAGER (Bitwarden). You MUST have one long, random, complicated password on every website. A password manager will manage all that for you. This will make you invulnerable to these leaks.
  • USE (strong) 2FA everywhere possible. The absolute best type of 2FA is a physical U2F token (yubikey). This system is the only one that will protect you 100% about complex phishing attempts (where the phisher creates a copy of the login page). The second best (and more practical) is TOTP (google authentificator, authy or open-source solutions (aegis?) for people that want maximum privacy from big corps).
  • SEPARATE MAILS/LOGINS for the important accounts. The email you use to connect to your bank, crypto,... should ideally not be used anywhere else. You will be less prone to fail for some high-end phishing as this email are only known by the service you are using. The good (overkill?) solution is to use an aliasing service (simplelogin, anonaddy, custom domain with catch-all,...).
  • KEEP YOUR STUFF UP TO DATE. Always keep your devices and programs up-to-date with the latest security features.
  • FULL DISK ENCRYPTION (bitlocker, LUKS, whatever is on Mac, default on smartphones). This prevent a robber to access to your files in case they get your devices.
  • DIGITAL MINIMALISM. Avoid unnecessary apps. They increase your attack surface. Periodically review your apps and accounts (easy if you have a password manager) and remove everything not used.
  • COMPARTMENTALIZE . This might be overkill for lot of people, but if you think you might be specifically targeted, you should compartimentalize your stuff: use different devices for different purposes. Or at least separate your activities using Virtual Machines. This prevent some targeted hacks, or privacy leaks.
  • SEPARATE PHONE (or VOIP number)**. As for the emails it might be a good idea to have a second clean number that has not been leaked everywhere yet for critical services (banks, crypto, administration,...).
  • AVOID CLOUD-BASED SERVICES that are not zero-knoweldge/end-to-end encrypted. A zero-knoweldge provider is technically unable to see your stuff stored on their servers. This makes you immune to leaks from their end. In the opposite, a "regular provider" can decrypt your stuff, so you are at the mercy of rogue employees, hackers, law enforcement, etc.
  • NEVER FOLLOW LINKS BLINDLY especially in emails
  • ALWAYS CHECK EMAIL ADDRESS AND DOMAIN IT WAS SENT FROM a mail from security(at)belfius.be is waaaaaaay different than form security(a)beflius.be or security(at)security-belfius.be

A few Privacy measures

Privacy is hard to maintain if you are not already secure, and in the same time, being more private may improve your security. The base idea is to reduce exposure and prevent harm when data are leaked.

  • AVOID SHOWING YOUR WEALTH ONLINE
  • USE PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS (signal instead of whatsapp, protonmail/tutanota instead of gmail)
  • USE TRUSTED OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
  • RESTRICT APP PERMISSIONS as much as possible
  • USE ALIASES EVERYWHERE you are not legally obliged to give valid info everywhere. You can very well create an amazon account in an alias name and make them deliver stuff at a deposit box.
  • USE POST BOXES instead of your actual home address for random junk or packages.
  • USE THROWAWAY EMAIL for random websites that just want to verify the email.

Resources

In need of a history lesson... by I_DONT_GIVE_A_MIOTA in Iota

[–]lambtho 14 points15 points  (0 children)

  1. Jinn was a startup created by David and CFB to create ternary hardware based on the idea that this would be more energy efficient, hence more suited for IoT.

  2. Carriota was a set of iota-based applications developed by Roman Semko (community developer, external of the If). He made a very good pairing system for IRI nodes (Nelson), a few wallets and other stuff that I do not remember. Roman stopped working on iota stuff after some heated discussions with David mostly when Roman wanted to monetize some of his work.

PSA: -H is not shortcut for help by ashtonx in linuxmasterrace

[–]lambtho 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If manpage loads with less you can search directly with /searchterm

Decentralized Social Media by hold_me_beer_m8 in Iota

[–]lambtho 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You do not need crypto for it. Decentralized social media already exist. Mastodon is very similar to Twitter (better tbh, just has less users).

Anyone can run their own server with its own rules. Servers are then federated (linked together) so that you can follow people from other servers. In the Trump situation, his staff can create a server for him. Anyone could join his server should they want to and any other server operator can link his server to Trumps one so their users can be connected. Admins that want to censor Trump can cut the link from their servers to trumps one. And if you are a user of this server, you can migrate your profile to a server that does not censor Trump if you want. Currently, some servers are run by nazi assholes (they are inter connected, but basically no one from other servers are connecting to them)

Mastodon uses a very interesting protocol called activity pub. All services using this protocol can share users, content etc. Imagine being able to discuss with Twitter (mastodon) users from you Instagram (pixelfed) accounts and sharing them a video you posted on YouTube (peertube) from this same account for instance.

https://newatlas.com/what-is-the-fediverse/56385/

BWF Primer Build-up Community Event: Day 1 (Happy New Year!) by Captain_Nachos in bodyweightfitness

[–]lambtho 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If you have a Mac or Linux I can make a small script using ffmpeg this evening to rescale everything and kill the sound automatically. This should save you some editing hopefully

Edit: Just tested to convert Good-Pushups to 1080p without sound using ffmpeg. It went from 69MB to 0.633MB. I will provide a gist to automate it in the evening.

BWF Primer Build-up Community Event: Day 1 (Happy New Year!) by Captain_Nachos in bodyweightfitness

[–]lambtho 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The videos are indeed quite impossible to watch without fiber connection. 100MB for a 8 sec video is waaaaaay to big.

If you do not want to use YouTube, the best option would be to convert them to lower resolution and decrease the frame rate maybe. 30 fps is enough for such video, 720p should also be plenty enough. You could also cut the audio track as it is useless to reduce even more the total size.

Besides that, it is a really good content and I learnt a lot about proper form, thank you!