TLDR give advice on opsec, digital footprint reduction and privacy. Assume a threat model starting with companies and moving to nation state suppression and targeting, below is my original post.

So the election is coming up in the US and regardless of who wins theres a good chance states and possibly the federal government will start targeting us more. However they can't target what they can't find in light of that any hackers, veteran protesters or cybersecurity experts I want to hear your opinions on reducing or eleminating your online foot print. Below are some things I have found between hanging out with programmers, military and reading please if I am sharing bad advice tell me (and why its bad) and I will edit my post I can save a direct copy in the comments if you wish also the threat model here is corporations to start( as they sell data to governments) and going closer to the government

OPSEC. "Even a fish wouldn't get caught if he'd keep his mouth shut"

Don't tell anyone anything that don't need to know. Signing up for a rewards card? Burner proton or tuta email or better yet skip it and pay cash when not legally required do not give accurate information about yourself and be extreamly suspect as to what orginizations you give your info to. Improtant note this includes real life assume people will remember what you say and do and be as forgetable as possible.

Don't leak data this is a wide field so lets start easy to hard

PC, use the Tor browser(interesting note the NSA has been shown to log if you visit the Tor browsers website so ideally use a VPN we'll get to them in a bit) if all you are doing is reading online NEVER login anywhere while on Tor. Hardened Firefox or Arkenfox for where you have to login, switch your DNS resolver to quad9 or similar privacy focused DNS (you most likely use your ISPs or googles by default) switch your OS from microsoft it could be ubuntu and it would still be leaps and bounds better then Bill gates system and use a program like Fawkes or similar to scrub the metadata from any pics you post and make them resistant to facial recognition

That being said if you are going to consider hardenedBSD for a more stockish feel and ideally go with qubes OS this runs everything as a VM and has a very good reputation for a reason

Mobile, ideally buy a used or new google Pixel and flash Graphene OS you CAN still run all your google apps but they are all sandboxed and prevented from sharing as much data we will talk de googling in a bit Bromite and hardened firefox for browsers, Orbot lets you use Tor on your phone, new pipe for video(its a youtube scraper that can play any youtube video and stores your info locally) keep everything on the device if you can

Universal

Search engines startpage(based in the EU but bought by an ad company) and duckduckgo(based in the US but default for the Tor browser) Get a VPN your main options are proton VPN, iVPN and Mullvad VPN mullvad accepts cash in the mail and Monero.

Degoogle Youtube = newpipe, libratube, odysee and peertube Gmail = protonmail and tutamail Google docs ? Theres a proton alternative but no idea how good it is Alternativeto.net is a good place to find more options

Personas

If you have ever made a DnD character sheet you'll get a head start here we want to create characters we play as online, weither that is boymoding or as ourselves each persona has a subset of interest that are ideally as general as possible so as to be hard to select but importantly they are as close to real as possible they have a name, birthday, favorite food, first pet, they went to school, played sports having detailed characters with believable backstories and interests that are I cannot stress enough DIFFERENT FROM YOU will aid you greatly in putting out fake data and never putting out actual data. Make as many of these as you can juggleto divide up your life so orginizations see smaller and smaller slices of the real you on your PC you do this with accounts on android you can do this with profiles and you should be able to sign there names easily and as a practiced motion

Erasing yourself Hopefully you have multipul email accounts because I want you to go through find every single account you do not actively use and delete it but first we need to burn it Some organizations do not actually delete you that mark you as delete with your data still exists to steal burning you is the process of making that data juck so if its a social media

Fake all your profile info(create a mini persona to help) this person is not your age, race, sex, height, weight, or economic class you share no interests and any likes, saves, or posts you made are getting deleted, then switch your email to a gorrila mail account that lasts only 1 hour, unsubscribe from all emails, switch the password to as long as the site allows with a random password generator(you may be tempted to reuse this or a phrase do not do that) and ask them to delete you if you need to maintain an email to send them to do this make a burner proton or tutamail account using your VPN(do not use a proton mail account if you bought a VPN from them)

Congratulations you've just deleted your account and even if they kept your data or it gets hacked before being deleted its all bullshit anyway and if you could NOT delete your account its all random bullshit anyway

Now do that same process for every single account

"But Emily I wanna keep this one!" I hear you then we need to move you a burner tuta or proton mail account, scrub any comments posts or replys as to where you live, what you do, who you are

Lookup

Have I been pwned Lookup your email and phone # in a people searching website And techlore go incognito I don't think its perfect but following everything there is a DAMN good start IMO

"I'll just delete my data before he gets in office if he wins" "But I don't care who has my data" "I will not hide from bigots" "Kamalas gonna win anyway and the boomers dying off means none if this will happen anyway" "Is this a problem I'm to europian to understand?"

1 websites take time to delete you data doing it in january means it'll still be accessable so you need to do it NOW 2 you may not care who has your data but bigots do care, and they care about you in a similar way to hitler cared about the jews 3 safety and hiding is more important then being out and going to jail and there are people who want to legally define us as porn and then make porn illegal 4 no one is garanteed to win and the odds are still WAY to close remember the polls from 2016? 5 the far right is growing in the EU and the train station is not the place to be hiding your cap

I know its just a start but I do hope this post gets good productive engaugement please forgive my spelling or grammer where I may have messed up.

Hii. I always wanted to learn .NET Core but I couldn't come up with effictive strategies. I generally learn by reviewing/developing small projects but .NET Core is much more complicated than the frameworks I have learned so far so my plan didn't work :( . Do you have any recommendations?

Homage to https://www.reddit.com/r/transprogrammer/s/5sUZAxBeCC ✌️

I am over the moon. It’s been really tough the past few months but today it all seems worth it. I’m in the last steps of multiple job opportunities and I can’t believe I even have choices now. I’m falling for this career to be honest. I have so much fun typing code and now I’ll be able to have a job that is not actively putting me in danger. I started my journey in this subreddit so I wanted to share. I would love to make more programmer friends. I’m always down for a project or playing games.

Edit: Spoke to soon, job didn’t wanna continue because i didnt pass the values test. Anyone have any tips for that?

Hi everyone!! Registration is open for Technica, the largest hackathon for underrepresented genders hosted annually at the University of Maryland, and fully virtually through our interactive application, Gather! Technica provides everyone with a weekend (October 26th - 27th) of prizes, excitement, hacking, networking, and breaking into the tech industry! Register today at gotechnica.org/register, share this with your friends, and celebrate our 10-year anniversary with us! Follow us on Instagram @gotechnica for more info as well!

Hi all trans person here (ftm) who has been struggling to find a job for 2 years with a BS in chemE and MS in biomed.

I have been getting interviews on and off during this time, taking breaks while dealing with rejection. I do feel like it’s due to discrimination. Many ppl say I pass as cis but I don’t believe it because I’m in my early 30s and look 18. I feel like many employers have clocked me because the age and appearance don’t really add up. I also feel hopeless with job opportunities as I don’t have any.

I’m starting to wonder if I should switch careers and go back to school. Revature (a known scam company) reached out to for me software development but I’m unsure whether to pursue this or not. If I were to switch, IT/cybersecurity/software eng/architecture seem most interesting to me. Having a remote job in one of these fields would be my ultimate dream. However, I’m aware that some of these fields are already over saturated and it’s hard to find a job.

Some background: I have basic understanding of coding as I’ve taken some Java and matlab courses. I feel like I’m tech savvy a bit as I’ve always built my own computers and know my way around them.

Any advice/tips would help.

I week ago I updated my pc OS from Windows 10 to Windows 11, and it's actually way worse. Ever since I updated all programs take more time to run and even built-in things like the search bar and the windows button freezes. The reason I found for this malfunction was the programs running on the back, specifically the Widget panel… the Widget panel that I couldn't use because I wasn't using a Microsoft account. So, that leads me to think: why do companies do that? They add things people might or might not find useful or even just decorative things that consume performance instead of optimizing the system or adding things people want. I assume they do that because a nice-looking UI can attract the attention of more users, but is the performance reduction worth it? I want to know what you think. Thank you for reading.

i’ve been wanting to get into building my own pc and was wondering if there were any trans youtube channels on the topic :)

Hi, I want to contribute to open source software, primarily on Github. So I was wondering what open source projects do you folks contribute in? Even better if you are a maintainer. I would love to see what you all or working on.

Oh i heard somebody commenting about trans programmers but is that really real??? Is there a lot of trans programmers??? Then hi!! One more! Also i would like to know what kinda of thing people post here .. not sure still (*≧▽≦)

hi! i recently started college at weber state university and have been having an identity crisis on what to do. i originally was going to do psychology & social work but started to realize i wasnt best fit for that. ive become really interested in computer science lately and specifically game dev, but i have zero knowledge of programming or tech stuff. i was wanting to ask a few questions :)

1. what is the math side of the degree like? i hear its very math heavy and im good with doing certain kinds of math but not others

2. is cs friendly to lgbtq+ people, especially trans?

3. should i persue this degree even if i have no experience?

thank you for your help :3

Pipe function showcase in blahaj application

Now blahaj application not only shows blahaj in HD. It have option of coloring text so you can read your text or print it and then transform then by blahaj to get effect from image. Fortunately, yesterday big goal had been finished. 0.2.0 version was released and i'm proud of it. Now blahaj is in version 0.2.2, as soon I will implement queer flags for Terminal, fix bugs, make blahaj image displayed correctly on another terminals where viu cannot make it perfect, and maybe rewrite blahaj to C/C++ in future? ;>

Anyway enjoy!

https://github.com/sech1p/blahaj - here is my project
https://github.com/sech1p/blahaj/releases - releases of blahaj, now it's on version 0.2.2, every change on versions are precisely described

ThinkPad L470. I bought it for 50 bucks, used. It's pretty cool for programming and light games. I bought stickers too (some of them are I got for free from FSFE) and I put some of them on my laptop and I think now it's gayer. I love my New laptop :3

I'm likely to start work at one of two companies in the next few months. I've been transitioning medically since 2022 but I feel ambivalent on actually coming out in the workplace and may end up presenting as male to at least get past any probationary periods. Do most of ya'll prefer to start work as your true selves or do you present a facade for a while?

It's hard to know who might be transphobic in a smaller company and I haven't had a job in a while so I feel a little apprehensive about coming out.

Solved, put writeHead after all setHeader calls

Here is the code in question

//.
//. API message page
//.
else if(req.url?.startsWith('/APIMessage/')) {
    const id = req.url.replace('/APIMessage/','');
    const rows: any[] | undefined = await db.query(
        `SELECT * FROM APIMessages WHERE ID='${id}'`
    ).catch(err => {
        console.log("database error:",err);
        return undefined;
    });
    console.log("debug 1");
    if(rows != undefined) {
        console.log("debug 2");
        if(rows.length > 0) {
            console.log("debug 3");
            res.writeHead(200);
            res.setHeader("Content-Type", "text/html");
            res.end(GetDirectoryPage('./web/APIMessage',{
                response: rows[0].Header,
                body: rows[0].Content,
            }));
            console.log("debug 4");
            return;
        }
        console.log("debug 5");
    }
}
console.log("debug 6");
return HttpResponse.NotFound(res);

Here is the output

Server is running on 
request:  - /APIMessage/30 - GET
debug 1
debug 2
debug 3
node:_http_outgoing:699
    throw new ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT('set');
          ^

Error [ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT]: Cannot set headers after they are sent to the client
    at ServerResponse.setHeader (node:_http_outgoing:699:11)
    at ResolveRequestFromAuthorizedIP (WebServer.js:365:21)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:105:5)
    at async Server.requestListener (WebServer.js:382:16) {
  code: 'ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT'
}

Node.js v22.7.0

I have checked the logic over multiple times, there is no way any headers are sent before the above code gains control, GetDirectoryPage does not send any headers, HttpResponse.NotFound does, the function containing this code returns to a function that could set headers but only if the condition on which this function is executed isnt met. I'll probably just end up having to rewrite the entire project in C++ (which will be a major pain but at least I dont have to be worried about this type of issue in C++) considering this issue but I would still appreciate any help.

I've already tried asking chatgpt and googling for the issue, neither of which have turned up anything useful.

Edit: Reddit Butchered the formatting

Hello! I'm trying to make application which displays blahaj in terminal! It uses viu to render blahaj in HD. It's my first project which I published to internet and npm and I not send it to trash. It's written in TypeScript and in future I want to rewrite it to Rust

https://github.com/sech1p/blahaj - feel free to star, contribute, criticism, review, etc.

Thank you and have a nice day beloved gays!

https://i.redd.it/nom1ygm5demd1.gif

Im considering working and studying in IT in the future. I'm just wondering how peoples experiences are as it is a very male oriented job. How is the work envoirement? How is the envoirement at university? etc.

Edit: Thanks for everyone sharing their experiences!

Hey everyone, I’m still looking for a job. If anyone has any leads or tips. I’ve been struggling to even get the initial interview. Mostly jobs in latin america so the discrimination stats are high. Any sites I can look for remote opportunities that hire internationally? I can work with: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap, React, Java (a bit of Ruby), SpringBoot, MySQL, Git Control, Scrum. If any teams need help, reach out to me!

Hi, I'm looking for some advice about how to prepare for technical assessments. I had a job as a junior software developer (that was the job title but it was more like full stack web dev stuff) working on an application with PHP, JavaScript and MySQL but got made redundant about 2 years ago and fell into a depression. I'm trying to get back into a dev job and boost my confidence but I really dread technical assessments in interviews. 😔

I think I need to do some practice and build my confidence so was wondering if anyone has advice on how to prepare. I need to brush up on coding and feel like I've forgotten a lot of the common functions and syntax. Also I am really bad at setting up environments - first I did a condensed course where it wasn't really covered - then was working on a long term project so this was done once by a senior dev and then I only had to worry about writing code. If anyone has advice on the following points or in general I would really appreciate it! 😁

1. What kind of stuff did you do to sharpen your coding skills-were there particular puzzles, challenges or sites you used?
2. What environment would you use for a web dev interview-would you just throw together something in XAMPP; or build something more heavy duty like a Docker set up; or something else entirely?
3. If doing a take-home task, is it better to use frameworks or just code in a native language?
4. Also just psychologically, did you do anything to deal with the nerves? 😖

Thanks in advance! 🦈🖥️🙏

so i tried to learn c++, but then i realized it is too hard for my lil smooth brain, so im gonna learn python, sorry for asking again but does anyone have youtube playlists to learn python for a person that doesnt even know anything in regards of coding?