iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 22/09/2026

Thanks so much Mara! Feel free to message me any problems you run into! 🥰

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 25/08/2026

Heard through the grapevines that this VPN is actually good, idk might try it out.

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 21/08/2026

What should we change "Traffic is vulnerable" to? Feels a bit too alarmist RN.

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 21/08/2026

Is it legal to send marketing emails like this w/o an option to unsubscribe? I never asked for this, and at minimum it's a dick move.

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 02/08/2026

CAPTCHAs in 2028: Draw an SVG of an Axolotl driving a Honda Civic who just got pulled over.

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 29/07/2026

Who's going to DEFCON next week? 🙋

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/07/2026

Ding ding ding! Yes exactly... IIRC ssh just concatenates all of the args together with space as a delimiter as the command string. I guess there are non-POSIX shells, so it's hard to decide how to quote properly... But would much rather prefer if ssh just errored on more than one arg.

020

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/07/2026

Quiz time: how many directories does the following command create on the myhost machine (assuming no existing directories): ssh myhost -- mkdir -- "dir" "one more directory"

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 13/06/2026

Yesterday, for the first time since 2008 (17+ years), warrantless spying of Americans using FISA Section 702 ended. This is huge, and definitely cause to celebrate! 🥳

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 01/06/2026

All regular expressions are irregular expressions (Given that you can hardly tell if it’s BRE, ERE, or PCRE)

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 29/05/2026

Turns out, you can simply tell gpg-agent's ssh support to always offer your ssh key and have pinentry wait for you to insert the key: gpg-connect-agent 'keyattr <AUTH-SUBKEY-KEYGRIP> Use-for-ssh: true' /bye For older gpg-agents, use the sshcontrol file: www.gnupg.org/documentati...

020

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 29/05/2026

If you use a YubiKey for ssh (via gpg-agent's ssh suppport), you probably see this error often when your YubiKey is unplugged. /1

110

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 14/03/2026

Why did we stop making music like this?

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/03/2026

Woke up in a cold sweat. Dreamt that they added a new flag to virt-install: virt-install --age-verifier 😖

020

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 16/02/2026

Back in my day you needed a 9/11 to trick people into giving up civil liberties.

020

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 10/12/2025

ISPs can't even spy on your TLS traffic without breaking your internet. Obscura VPN users unaffected.

100

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 09/12/2025

Free civilizations cannot exist without privacy.

131

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 18/11/2025

Every Cloudflare outage makes me wonder: Can we develop an open-source, local Cloudflare? Modern tooling/packet bypasses like XDP and BPF surely lower the barrier-to-entry to meaningful DDoS protection significantly.

120

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 28/10/2025

😲 Ubiquiti just made a Flipper Zero for SFP modules!

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 27/09/2025

You can tell I had a lot of fun chatting with @ente.io's CEO Vishnu 😊 Fighters for digital privacy, unite!

030

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 16/09/2025

User data is toxic waste. Companies that don't treat it as such are ngmi.

140

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 19/08/2025

🎉 BIG NEWS: Obscura is now on iOS! Obscura engineering team remains undefeated, even against the goliath that is App Store Review and In-App Purchases. We'll do a blog post about this someday, so folks can learn from our battle scars!

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 18/08/2025

Anyone know of folks that have worked with the Android `VpnService` API?

011

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/08/2025

iOS Obscura folks: We're trying our very best but the incompetence of Apple App Review is just staggering.

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/08/2025

> Apple: Confirming that you've fixed X, only Y needs fixes > Us: We've now fixed Y > Apple: Please fix X > Us: You literally just confirmed that we already fixed X > Apple: Please fix X (no details added) > Us: Here's proof we fixed X > Apple: Please fix X (no details added)

100

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 03/08/2025

British lawmakers are buying their VPN subs with taxpayer money… and telling the same taxpayers not to use VPNs. You cannot make this shit up.

112

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 30/07/2025

Don't know enough to have a good opinion unfortunately 😅 (mostly used Guix as a package manager rather than an OS) I'd guess there's much more flexibility by being able to fully program using Guile instead of systemd's ini-style files!

010

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 30/07/2025

I am a systemd lover and I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE

120

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 25/07/2025

“We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place.” – A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto An open and private internet is more important than ever. That's what we fight for at @obscura.net

011

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 24/07/2025

Source: lists.archlinux.org/archives/li...

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 24/07/2025

A Remote Access Trojan Malware was found in packages for Librewolf, Firefox, and Zen Browser last week 😰 If you were an Arch Linux users who tried to install these browsers via patched packages in the AUR, please check your system!

110

Reposted by Carl Dong → obscura.net

Obscura VPN @obscura.net · 18/07/2025

NEW in v1.128: Location Switching in the Menu Bar A lot of you have asked for this, and it's finally here! Switch between your pinned locations and Quick Connect right from your menu bar! (See video below) Felix the friendly bot will miss you, but he understands ☺️

021

Reposted by Carl Dong → obscura.net

Obscura VPN @obscura.net · 15/07/2025

Hey folks! Our 25% off launch sale will be ending next Monday (July 21st). If you haven't taken advantage of the sale yet, this is your sign to do so 😄 If you subscribe, we'll honor this sale price indefinitely 🔁 We've also recently added WireGuard support and iOS Testflight!

132

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 11/07/2025

James Dyson just made hair being stuck in Vacuums a thing of the past. Nobody is as obsessed with building the best Vacuum as James Dyson. Nobody is as obsessed with building the best VPN as our team at Obscura. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve6...

youtube.com

The Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones™ cleaner | Global Premiere

Join James Dyson as he introduces the new Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones™ cleaner. Our latest, most advanced floorcare technology – now available in Japan.The f...

000

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 08/07/2025

I knew there was something familiar about the American Megatrends BIOS logo... Skynet had ring-0 access the whole time!

120

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 04/07/2025

So Gemini on Android is about to forcefully get access to your WhatsApp + Messages, regardless if you've previously turned it off? And they want to dress it up like they're helping you? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something here...

100

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 03/07/2025

In the digital age, our de-facto privacy rights in the physical world are being stripped away. Even worse - surveillance mechanisms are being set up. As people wake up to this, privacy-by-default will become table-stakes for digital products. techcrunch.com/2025/03/02/...

techcrunch.com

Signal is the No. 1 downloaded app in the Netherlands. But why? | TechCrunch

Privacy-focused messaging app Signal has been flying high in the Dutch app stores this past month, sitting in pole-position for much of it.

011

Reposted by Carl Dong → obscura.net

Faceless Alien @justa9.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

9403120

Carl Dong → obscura.net @carldong.me · 02/07/2025

Today's background music: A dramatic reading of RFC 2119 on loop 😆 soundcloud.com/ericwbailey...

soundcloud.com

RFC 2119

https://ericwbailey.website/published/you-must-listen-to-rfc-2119/

010