DLN Xtend - Episode 5

#1

In this episode we cover community news, Google’s Project Nightingale and HIPAA concerns, does Linux feel slower with CPU mitigations, Nextcry and is self hosting Nextcloud such a good idea, and the System76 press and creators event.

DLN Xtend - Episode 5

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#2

Loving this podcast!!! Listen to it while walking my dog.

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#3

Thanks @EricAdams and @CubicleNate! Love how you get really into some underlying issues here. I think with personal data becoming increasingly at risk of being accessible or marketable, there are some serious ethical issues that I really believe some kind of co-operation upon, if indeed we can trust corporations to remain ethical in the face of potentially huge profits…

I also wonder at times about how many people benefit day in day out from open source work done by volunteers yet somehow have such a sense of entitlement that they apparently feel no problem in making demands in a way that probably could be undermining the spirit of good-hearted folk who are working for free and sharing what they do…

I think widespread accessibility and at times ease of use of technology can also, unfortunately, bring with it a false sense, literally of “security”. From my understanding, maintaining a public-facing server would require a pretty deep understanding of security issues and a lot of highly specialised work; how much is provided by default by personal cloud solutions, I really don’t know, nor would I venture to try to set something like this up without working very hard to learn the security issues! As for organisations and their lack of backups… Honestly, the number of times I’ve seen corporate systems that seem insanely insecure, with those potential insecurities completely ignored because (to date) they don’t seem to be affecting operations, is shocking…

Thumbs up to System 76 from me too :slight_smile:

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#4

I appreciate that people want to control their data and take the initiative to run their own servers. Doing the bare minimum best-practice hardening will close off most attack vectors so the bots and script kiddies are unlikely to find a way in. I myself hesitate to host sensitive data on a public facing server even with the proper precautions because I don’t know what I don’t know. Basic things like pictures and documents without critical personal data…sure. But I wouldn’t put any of my bank records or taxes and so on in an instance of Nextcloud that is public facing. I don’t need immediate and ongoing access to any of that kind of stuff so putting it out there would provide no benefit and add risk for no reason.

Glad you are enjoying the show!

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