• 0 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 20 days ago
Cake day: February 9th, 2026
  • shrek_is_love@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why are there "=" symbols all over the Epstein emails?
    0·
    6 days ago

    I suspect they came up with a process for doing the conversions / redactions that worked for the documents they tested it with, and then applied the process to documents in a slightly different format and just didn’t notice. The Verge looked into it and couldn’t get a more specific answer than this:

    With MIME, the “=” is used to signal either that a string of text should be broken for transmission and rejoined — a “soft line break” — or, when followed by two other characters, that it should be converted to a particular non-ASCII mark.

    it doesn’t fully explain why the “=” sometimes replaces letters, like the “J” in “Jeffrey.” No one I spoke to could definitively answer this question, except to say that email is hard and converting it to PDF is harder, and the DoJ was converting a lot of documents in a hurry.

    https://www.theverge.com/policy/879016/epstein-files-emails-text-errors-encoding

  • shrek_is_love@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•how do I make my new phone more private
    0·
    9 days ago

    Here’s what I’ve done:

    • Delete your advertising ID in the system settings
    • Disable the other ad-related settings
    • Disable tracking in the keyboard app (long-press , to get to settings, then click “Privacy”) or switch to HeliBoard
    • Avoid the Google Play store when possible
    • Use F-Droid and Obtainium instead
    • Install the DuckDuckGo browser and enable DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection (I only use the DDG app for app tracking protection and email protection; I don’t browse the web with it)
    • Install Firefox with uBlock Origin
    • Set DuckDuckGo as your search engine in Firefox
    • Make sure your next phone supports GrapheneOS and install that instead of normal Android
    • Wait for real Linux phones to become viable and use that in a couple years

    Stuff I haven’t done yet but probably will eventually:

    • Replace the default home screen app (your home screen is an app, btw)
    • Replace the Google keyboard app

    I haven’t looked for good alternatives for these yet so if anyone has suggestions, I’m listening!