From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
WolfFan wrote:
Oh, I don¢t think that he¢s #1. The Double Doc, Petey the Grate, and Kris Krawfurd, all formerly on talk.origins, were worse than he ever was. Our David Brooks and snit, still posting, are as bad or worse.
He is, however, in the top ten.
I wrote this to Chris on the Windows newsgroup just now, but it covers the topic of privacy and header privacy in particular, so I think it's apropos.
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10
Subject: Re: Any point to password protecting the bios if only 3 people in the household, and 2 know nothing about bioses?
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2026 15:58:11 -0500
Message-ID: <10ltnh3$2p6s$
1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
Chris wrote:
I'm not reflecting your ability to explain things. "Maria" is a very well known nymshifting troll on the iphone ng.
Hi Chris,
I'm going to try very hard to correct you while being very nice doing it.
There's this 700-year old concept first expressed by Aristotle & Aquinas
but which is most remembered after being formalized by William of Ockham.
Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the best one as long
as it accounts for *all the known facts*. It doesn't mean "pick only one explanation that fits only one detail and ignore the rest", Chris.
It means the explanation that fits everything is likely most reasonable.
So let's look at all the data, not just one piece of it.
Yes, I change nyms at least once a year. I've said that openly for decades,
and I've always explained why. Basic privacy.
Have I ever not wanted privacy?
Everyone on this newsgroup, for decades, is well aware of that fact, Chris.
But everything else about me stays exactly the same such as my writing
style, my technical depth, my tone, my posting habits, and my long history
of contributing without trolling. In all these decades, nobody has ever produced a single example of me trolling under any name.
You didn't use the word trolling, but your implication is clear, Chris.
You simply don't like how much I know about Apple products, Chris.
And that's fine. You don't have to like that I understand Apple gear.
But if you apply Occam's razor correctly, the explanation that fits all the evidence is simply that I'm the same person I've always been, using a fresh
nym at least once each year for privacy. The alternative explanation you
hint at, which is that I'm secretly some unrelated troll, requires you
ignoring decades of consistent behavior and you maliciously inventing
motives that don't match anything I've ever done.
That's why your conclusion doesn't hold up. It's based on one isolated fact while disregarding the full pattern everyone here has seen for years.
He has this obsession on Apple
"motherships" and how Apple devices won't work without being polled for a
pw several times a day. Many people have told him that is not reality. He refuses to accept it due to his own obtuse experience.
Hi Chris,
Again, I'm going to try very hard to correct you while being nice doing it.
What you said above, is so wrong, that I simply need to point to the full thread on that very topic because you just "saying" that doesn't do that
which even Apple documentation says it does, doesn't mean that "many people have told him" means that what you think Apple does is what Apple does.
From: Maria Sophia <
mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Newsgroups: misc.phone.mobile.iphone,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Why does iOS ask for your passwd even though you never logged out?
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2026 10:21:08 -0500
Organization: BWH Usenet Archive (
https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com)
Message-ID: <10jj995$205k$
1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
I *test* how iOS works, Chris. Not only do I read what Apple documents, but
I test what Apple does NOT document, which is on two iPads, I didn't
re-enter the password even once in two years and *both* were unilaterally bricked (Activation Lock) which required me to go to the local Apple store, twice, since they didn't brick them both at the same time, to show Apple my government ID (so much for privacy) so that they'd unlock it and allow me
to enter my very same password to start the test anew for 2 more years.
In the time of my kid's college graduation, I tested iOS to prove what it
does with respect to the password, so you simply saying all of you who have never tested it nor looked up how it works are "telling me" how you think
it works, doesn't fit Occam's Razor of incorporating all the known facts.
To get those facts, I test & ask probing questions of all systems, Chris.
These are not "trolls" even as you don't seem to like the answers we find.
From: Maria Sophia <
mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Newsgroups: misc.phone.mobile.iphone,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: How frequently does iOS phone home in the background to mothership tracking servers?
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2026 15:02:43 -0500
Message-ID: <10jub94$19rg$
1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
I test Apple/Windows/Android privacy every day, just as I test Apple/Windows/Android interoperability every day, Chris.
I've tested not having a Google Account on Android, for example, Chris.
And I've shown that I can do everything on Android that anyone else can do,
but I do it without that privacy-robbing mothership account, Chris.
That's just a fact.
So is the fact that I've tested setting up Windows 11 without that same privacy-robbing mothership account and I reported on how I did that too.
From: Maria Sophia <
mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-11,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.comp.microsoft.windows
Subject: PSA: I can happily report that my first Win11 Home installed sans a MSA
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:24:16 -0500
Message-ID: <10k3l9g$2ug$
1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
I'm always talking about privacy, from Veracrypt to KeepassXC to setting up
iOS devices WITHOUT the privacy-robbing mothership account, which, let's be clear since people on this newsgroup might not know how Apple does things,
is basically possible but the iOS device won't work anything like you want
it to, unlike what setting up Android and Windows 11 w/o the MSA can do.
Effectively, for iOS, you must have that privacy-robbing mothership
account. Only then does anything "just work" on iOS devices, Chris.
And you know this, but I'm only stating the obvious for the Windows team. Calling me "obtuse" for testing how iOS works, is unfair to my efforts.
I believe you should apologize, but this is Usenet so your active insults
are, to me, water under the bridge as I will remain civil with you anyway.
And is "Maria Sophia" not a real girl? I always read her as being a
girl?
Nope. He's an octogenarian grandfather from the Santa Cruz mountains. At least that's what he's told us many a time. "Maria" is his latest nym. He changes it often for "privacy" reasons.
Notice that I never changed in two decades who I am on Usenet.
And just as I never read from the same news server that I post to, I
practice privacy hygiene a billion ways a thousand times a day.
Having written my own newsreader to gain header privacy is just one aspect
of privacy hygiene that others might not understand, but I don't hide it.
I worked for decades in the Silicon Valley after graduating with higher
degrees from the finest schools in the country, and I've taken an
especially sensitive view to privacy having been a consultant with an engineering-level TSSI special access designation that sits on top of an existing clearance (specifically Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented
Information with additional Special Access Program controls.
Nobody whispers in my ear since I retired 15 years ago, but it should
suffice to say I was helping folks in a windowless building at Fort Meade
do things with our software that costs over a million dollars per seat to
do things that the software was never designed to do by anyone but a TSA.
Note: The 'windowless' buildings of my working days were covered with heavy shielding cloth as I think nowadays they built a new windowless structure.
My main point is I know privacy to the point I can't even tell you some of
what I know, but I can just give you a glimpse of what's publicly known by saying I drastically change all my thousands of screenshots and photos
posted to this very newsgroup over the years, in ways that make Fourier fingerprinting (aka PRNU analysis) less likely to be successful by always-running engines since a typical photo from Facebook (for example)
can *easily* be traced to the same camera's photos on one of those dating
sites (just as an example of what "can" be done by machines today).
Just as I don't read from the same newsreader that I post to, and just as I obfuscate every photo I post so that PRNU analysis is less likely to be successful, I randomize the unimportant components of the Usenet header
using a newsreader I wrote myself in Solaris days to maintain privacy.
Over the years, I've found those who deprecate privacy don't understand it.
KeepassDX is also very easy to use on Windows to save your passwds.
https://www.keepassdx.com/
In practice, it's just a "text" database that happens to be encrypted. >>>>
Yeah, well, I keep "important" passwords in the mobile, portable,
quantum, holographic wetware that I keep on my person at most times.
It seems to work fine. So far.
Until the time it stops working. Wetware, like hardware and software, fails >>> over time. What's your backup strategy?
I don't need one.
When the wetware fails, I won't *need* passwords. That will be the
universal, cosmic, Somebody Else's Problem. :)
If you mean "forgetting", well, I don't seem to have that skill. I
don't seem to have lots of things.
Having an elderly parent with dementia I can tell you that memory is not something you can depend indefinitely.
Also, family might want to access your online accounts when your wetware is EOL'd. Worth considering setting up legacy contacts.
I realize you were responding to another person, but I would like to add
I think all intelligent people must have good memories since being trained
in sciences and engineering requires a vast background in many areas.
However, for adapting to Usenet, where insults are water under the bridge
to me, one comment about my extraordinary memory is that I can selectively 'forget' the personal insults hurled at me when people who don't like the
facts can't figure out any better method to respond to those facts than to deprecate the person, instead of responding directly to the facts proposed.
As for my passwords, I don't worry about my family accessing my activities online, but I think my wife would be bored to tears reading OS newsgroups.
She constantly tells me that instead of posting my tremendous knowledge on Usenet, I should be writing Vine reviews to help people buy products.
For example, since Amazon gives us up to $300K/year of free products to
test, we "earned" over $100K last year working for Vine to test things.
At least that's what Amazon tells Uncle Sam about the free products we get.
--
When you're intelligent, you can do anything as there isn't a single job in the world you can't do as long as your body is physically capable doing it.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2