I got my Kobo eReader literally days ago, phew

Unfortunately, nothing. Always comes from different instances for me. Whack-a-mole

It’s so hot, imgur is at capacity and only returns json

This. NameCheap actually responds to abuse reports, as well. Turns out they actually think it’s bad for business to allow grifters and con artists to use their services, unlike other major registrars.

Barely Bones sounds like a skeleton’s Only Fans

From my experience, almost everything fails except for one combo: Amazon + United Kingdom. This combo has been flawless every single time, no failures, even when all others fail in the same session.

That being said, the downloaded audio format is hardly consistent. I’ll download a whole album, and half will be in FLAC, the other half in OPUS. Not a big deal with ffmpeg available, but still weird.

Don’t be ashamed, some stuff is getting harder and harder to detect. Especially when big artists with massive reach like James Blake are pushing it, it will only continue to get better…

lmao, my exact reaction. That ape in the beginning was the first thing, then I skipped to the middle and it was even more obvious, and near the end there’s an old man with an appearing/disappearing thumb… not to mention a bathroom full of furries in front of urinals? JFC.

The comments are just… depressing to read. “Powerful imagery in this video!” 🤮

It’s kind of a moot point if you’re in the USA. There are only 3 companies that actually own and operate cell towers: ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile. I’m speaking in terms of privacy, not coverage or quality.

Any other company just leases usage of the towers from one of them.

• PureTalk = ATT
• Mint = T-Mobile
• Cricket = ATT

Then you have T-Mobile that gobbled up a bunch of smaller companies and kept the names to trick you into thinking it’s a different company (kinda like Nestle and their local bottled water companies). T-Mobile also owns Sprint and MetroPCS.

They understand this 100%

I’ve had a good experience with RamNode, and very little limitations in what I can do.

They used to be headquartered in Atlanta, GA (with servers in all major countries/cities) but were recently bought out by another slightly larger provider. I haven’t had any negative experiences since the buy out.

https://ramnode.com/

I have 3 minecraft servers running on one VPS at RamNode (it’s a dedicated server, not shared). One is vanilla, one is a heavy tech mod, and the other is a heavy RPG mod. People come and go all the time, no issues. $50/month, though. Note that minecraft is not the only service running on it. It gets very heavily utilized for many, many things.

RamNode will kick you in the ballsac if you try pirating with them, though.

Just because something is developed in the USA does not mean it will follow authoritarianism. These projects are open source, and many USA based open source projects are fighting back against this stuff. Besides, the internet is the internet, and these open source projects will live on beyond any USA law. This is the very point of the licensing. Having said that, I do agree with you on the RHEL/Fedora side of things.

I’m not sure about the Debian legal ties, I’ll have to look further into that since you didn’t give me anything to reference. Still, the key point here is open source, which means you can review the source code and security experts will, too. Signal is also a USA based company; France and Sweden are trying to force backdoors on them, yet Signal has vehemently said, “No. Fuck Off.” So, clearly it’s not just the USA doing shitty things.

I get that the current political situation in this shithole country is absolutely horrifying, but that does not immediately mean that the entire population of the country is with the fascists by default. Starlink being used for election purpose should be the number one red flag indicator that the citizens of the USA did not actually vote for what’s happening and it was manipulated. Because of the fascist playbook and money, it is difficult for the proletariat to do much without seriously violent actions.

I just don’t agree with your sentiment on this US jurisdiction idea when it comes to open source, non-profit projects. And to be clear, it’s OK that we might disagree. I’m just providing discourse with a healthy dose of skepticism.

jurisdiction in the US, which means a lot of Linux distros are not an option anymore.

Please elaborate and provide some receipts to what you mean.

I know your list is what you use, my list is more data for you to DYOR and find even better, privacy respecting alternatives than what you suggested. As you say, do whatever you think is best.

Thanks for coming back around about it. Still, I agree with you and consider it a red flag, it is antithetical for a privacy person that claims to support FOSS.

Instantly, I don’t trust whoever this is. That’s a red flag. Matters a great deal to me, thanks for pointing it out so I don’t give the site a click.

• Chromium forks are troublesome. I’d suggest Mullvad Browser or LibreWolf instead.
• Qwant is nice, but SearXNG aggregates qwant together with several other engines. Then there’s a new up-and-comer called Mwmbl.
• Proton is yet another ecosystem that pretends to be for privacy while actually doing the opposite. Instead, Tuta or Mailbox (only downside to mailbox is no free accounts).
• No comment on payment systems, I don’t trust any of them except maybe a local Credit Union.
• Practically any Linux, don’t limit suggestions to one distro when there are many with varied support and out-of-the-box options.
• Mullvad VPN + Mullvad Browser were made for each other, browser being co-developed with Tor Project, and is the highest rated in terms of defeating browser fingerprinting (even over Tor), and they have pioneered DAITA. I see many, many mixed thoughts on Surfshark. It is mainly a cheap and better alternative to Nord or Proton, but Mullvad is only $5/mo and you get so much more.

None of the above are USA-based apart from Mwmbl, but it is non-profit and wholly FOSS.

Test your browser fingerprints:

• https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
• https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/

You mentioned another excellent tool, Aegis!

I use it too, and I have it set to auto-export every time I add a new OTP provider to my SyncThing system. Since you can encrypt the exports, it fits nicely and have my OTPs available everywhere.

Indeed. Fuck Swiss Google.

https://tuta.com/

I’m tired of all these ecosystems going fascist.

I’ve seen others mention the redundancy for the PSUs. One note about that, they are meant to be plugged into 2 different circuits! Otherwise, if they are on the same one and it fails, then redundancy is out the window.

Not a requirement, but if this is going to be a data hoarding type deal or you want it highly available for your purposes, then you should make sure you keep this in mind.

On that same token, read up on RAID Levels for hard drive redundancy.

Just FYI, duckduckgo has an agreement with Microsoft regarding ads.

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duckduckgo-private-search/