Hey everyone,

First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!

Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):

- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)

Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).

We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:

- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.

- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.

- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.

- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.

- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.

There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.

We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.

2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!

Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim

Well, this has been one hell of an awesome ride already. I’m at 70K+ and the biggest ranter as for reputation (those upvote thingies). Although I don’t care about being the biggest one currently, I do take pride in it but I’ll get back to that one later on. (I’ll very likely lose the first place at some point but oh well, couldn’t care less :))

I joined back in May last year through an article I found on https://fossbytes.com (thanks a bunch!), joined and was immediately addicted. The community was still very tiny back then and I’ve got to say that getting upvotes was also not the easiest :P. But, I finally found a place where I could rant out my dev related frustrations: awesomeness. I very much remember how, at first, reaching 1K was my biggest devRant dream and it seemed to be freaking impossible. Then I reached 1K and that was such a big achievement for me! Then the ‘dream’ (read these kind of dreams (upvotes ones) as things that would be awesome to reach not just for the upvotes but for participating, commenting, ranting, discussing and so on within the community, so as in, it shows your contribution) became 10K which seemed even more impossible. Then I reached 10K and 20K seemed freaking impossible but I got there a little faster and from that point on it’s been going fast as hell!

It’s always been a dream for me to become a very big but also ‘respected’ or especially well known user/person somewhere because that pretty much never happened and well, having dreams isn’t wrong, is it?

The biggest part of that dream, though, was that it would be a passion of mine that would get me there but except for Linux, the online privacy part was something I always deemed to be ‘just impossible’. This because irl I ALWAYS get (it’s getting less though) ridiculed for being so keen on my privacy and teaching others about it. People find me very paranoid right away but the thing is that if they ask me to explain and I actually present evidence for my claims, it’s waved away as if it’s nothing. (think mass surveillance, prism, encrypted services, data breaches and so on)
I never thought I’d find any other people who would have the same views as I do but fucking hell, I found them within this community!

Especially the fact that I’ve grown this much because of my passion is something I am proud of. It’s also awesome to see that I’m not the only one who thinks like this and that I’ve actually find some of you on here :)

So yeah, thanks to everyone who got me where I am now!

Also a big thanks to sir Dfox and Trogus for putting your free time into making this place happen.

Love you peoples <3 and to anyone ‘close’ on here I forgot, if you match any of the comments as for privacy/friendliness etc, don’t worry, those nice things also apply to you! My memory just sucks :/

P.S. Please do NOT comment before I comment that I’m done with commenting because I’ve got a lot of comments coming :D

1. I wish that people start taking back their device ownership. Right to repair is an extremely important thing. Like that Nexus 6P that I've recently repaired by jamming another battery into it, now it's at 110-ish% health according to AccuBattery. And it cost me.. €10 or so? All the while if I wasn't able to get in there, it would've been a €120 paperweight (and that's not even considering the €300-ish (? Someone please fill me in on that) price it retailed at back in 2015 when it was a flagship).

(edit the so many'th: according to https://express.co.uk/life-style/... the base model was apparently £449 at release, haven't been able to verify it though.. point is, a paperweight at such prices would've been quite a bummer, I mean for me it was even one given that it failed a mere few months after purchase for €120.. €40/m for a phone ain't nothing :/)

Right to repair is an extremely important thing, and the ability to do so shouldn't ever be impeded. Users should become able again to service the devices that they own.

2. I wish that people start caring about their privacy again. Google and Facebook and the likes are large companies, but at the end of the day, that's all they are. Large companies. And they're hungry for your data, not because they're selling it, rather because they're collecting it to an extent which they shouldn't. Over at DDG (https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckg...) they explain a very much viable alternative revenue model pretty well. Additionally, there's several tools which you can use to limit the amount of data that's being collected about you. These include but are not limited to Firefox, NoScript, ad blockers (I personally use uBlock), a trustworthy VPN (ideally one of your own), and Tor.

3. I wish that software would become less inefficient. It really pains me to see that applications with functionality that could be implemented in a couple of MB at most come at a size of several hundreds of MB. 1% efficiency, even the inefficient as fuck tungsten light bulbs weren't that awful!!! Imagine what could be done with all the hardware we have available nowadays, if every piece of software would be around 80% efficient as is a common norm in electronics. Just looking at Linux which is still in many ways convoluted, modern desktops with a couple hundred MB of RAM usage? You've got it! So why can't OS's like Windows (although I have to say, huge improvements have been made there over the last few years) and browsers like Firefox and Chrome be more like that? I really don't understand.

There's several more wishes I have of course, but those are the most important ones.. hopefully I'll be able to see at least one of them come true during my life.

Remember Apple's initiative to scan photos on user's devices to find child pornography?
Today I finally decided to research this.
The evidence is conflicting.
For context, the database of prohibited material is called CSAM (child sexual abuse material).

“If it finds any CSAM, it will report the user to law enforcement.”
— Futurism

“Apple said neither feature would compromise the security of private communications or notify police.”
— NPR

CSAM initiative is dead. It won't scan photos in iCloud. It won't scan photos on your device. It will be a feature that only works in some countries, only on children's devices, and it will be opt-in. It will only work for iMessage attachments.

This is what Apple actually said at https://www.apple.com/child-safety:
- “Features available in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, and U.S.”
- “The Messages app includes tools to warn children when receiving or sending photos that contain nudity. These features are not enabled by default. If parents opt in, these warnings will be turned on for the child accounts in their Family Sharing plan.”

News outlets telling people they will be automatically reported to authorities, and then telling there can be false-positives is a classic example of fearmongering. I hate this. Remember, anger and fear are the most marketable emotions. They make you click. News are and will always be worded to cause these emotions — it brings in money.

When presented with good news, people think they're not being told the truth. When presented with bad news, even when they're made up, people think it's the truth that's being hidden from them. This is how news works.

Now, a HUGE but:
Apple is a multi-billion dollar corporation. There is no such thing as good billionaires. Corporations will always wait for chances to invade privacy. It's like boiling the frog — one tiny measure here, one there, and just like this, step by step, they will eliminate the privacy completely. It's in their interest to have all the data about you. It brings control.
This is not the first time Apple tries to do shit like this, and it definitely won't be the last. You have to keep an eye on your privacy. If you want your privacy in the digital age, it's necessary to fight back. If you live in Europe, take the action and vote for initiatives that oppose corporate tyranny and privacy invasions.

Privacy on the internet is one thing, but scanning people's devices is a whole another thing. This is unacceptable no matter the rationale behind it. Expect more measures like that in the near future.

Research Linux. Find a distro that suits you. The notion that you can't switch because of apps/UI/etc. may be dictated by our brain's tendency to conserve energy and avoid the change.
Take a look at mobile distros like Graphene OS and LineageOS. The former only supports Pixel devices, the latter supports a wide range of devices including OnePlus and Xiaomi. They'll have FAR better privacy than iPhones.

Consider switching. It's easier than you think. Yes, it's me who's saying this. I do and will always protect people/companies from unjust criticism, and I consider myself an Apple fangirl for personal reasons related to my childhood, yet I won't fight blindly. CSAM initiative is a valid criticism, and there's nothing preventing me from saying this is unacceptable, and Apple deserves the backlash they got.

"There's more to it"
This is something that has been bugging me for a long time now, so <rant>.

Yesterday in one of my chats in Telegram I had a question from someone wanting to make their laptop completely bulletproof privacy respecting, yada yada.. down to the MAC address being randomized. Now I am a networking guy.. or at least I like to think I am.

So I told him, routers must block any MAC addresses from leaking out. So the MAC address is only relevant inside of the network you're in. IPv6 changes this and there is network discovery involved with fandroids and cryphones where WiFi remains turned on as you leave the house (price of convenience amirite?) - but I'll get back to that later.

Now for a laptop MAC address randomization isn't exactly relevant yet I'd say.. at least in something other than Windows where your privacy is right out the window anyway. MAC randomization while Nadella does the whole assfuck, sign me up! /s

So let's assume Linux. No MAC randomization, not necessary, privacy respecting nonetheless. MAC addresses do not leak outside of the network in traditional IPv4 networking. So what would you be worried about inside the network? A hacker inside Starbucks? This is the question I asked him, and argued that if you don't trust the network (and with a public hotspot I personally don't) you shouldn't connect to it in the first place. And since I recall MAC randomization being discussed on the ISC's dhcp-users mailing list a few months ago (http://isc-dhcp-users.2343191.n4.nabble.com/...), I linked that in as well. These are the hardcore networking guys, on the forum of one of the granddaddies of the internet. They make BIND which pretty much everyone uses. It's the de facto standard DNS server out there.

The reply to all of this was simply to the "don't connect to it if you don't trust it" - I guess that's all the privacy nut could argue with. And here we get to the topic of this rant. The almighty rebuttal "there's more to it than that!1! HTTPS doesn't require trust anymore!1!"

... An encrypted connection to a website meaning that you could connect to just about any hostile network. Are you fucking retarded? Ever heard of SSL stripping? Yeah HSTS solves that but only a handful of websites use it and it doesn't scale up properly, since it's pretty much a hardcoded list in web browsers. And you know what? Yes "there's more to it"! There's more to networking than just web browsing. There's 65 THOUSAND ports available on both TCP and UDP, and there you go narrow your understanding of networking to just 2 of them - 80 and 443. Yes there's a lot more to it. But not exactly the kind of thing you're arguing about.

Enjoy your cheap-ass Xiaomeme phone where the "phone" part means phoning home to China, and raging about the Google apps on there. Then try to solve problems that aren't actually problems and pretty vital network components, just because it's an identifier.

</rant>

P.S. I do care a lot about privacy. My web and mail servers for example do not know where my visitors are coming from. All they see is some reverse proxies that they think is the whole internet. So yes I care about my own and others' privacy. But you know.. I'm old-fashioned. I like to solve problems with actual solutions.