Another main reason why I took off my hat back then was because I was a broke college kid with garbage internet speed and my only computer was a laptop. Torrenting shows sometimes means I need to have my laptop on for days. Now I have an entire homelab setup with a dedicated VM on one of my servers for torrenting and I can afford fast internet. I was pleasantly surprised how efficiently I can torrent when I got back sailing recently.

They already do this. I was offered to plug some kind of monitoring device into my car for a period of time to determine my driving behavior for potential lower rates. I went for higher rates.

For me it’s just more power efficient to run a VM on my TrueNAS for this purpose if I need to download very large files over night. It also speeds up file transfer / storage.

As someone who works in the tech industry. I can tell you people here are not tech illiterate, but most just dgaf about privacy when they can trade it in for convenience. That’s why most of them are okay with designing apps that have zero respect to user privacy and they see nothing wrong with it.

Some malicious users do use VPNs to send spams and many websites automatically bans these IPs. Normally switching to a different VPN server will resolve the issue.

Donated $20 to GrapheneOS when I first installed it. $5/mo to Signal. Local charities in my hometown.

I wouldn’t call going from mad profits to okay profits a sign of downfall. Having decentralized technology doesn’t mean decentralization will actually happen. For instance look at E-mail. It is technically a decentralized service, but most people still uses services provided by big tech vs operating their own servers. Such a system does give you more choices, but don’t expect this future will be without big tech.

replying to you on lemmy discussing perfectly legal topics, so I have the it pointed to a node in my city for best performance

Not trying to dismiss your sufferings but I still think our generation had it way better than our grandparents, and probably better than 90% of the people in the world if you live in an advanced economy. For instance my grandfather went through the bloodiest war in human history, a bloody civil war, and a famine that killed millions of people. The problem right now is getting all the negative information that you have no control over from the internet, that’s why I stay away from tuning into any news these days.

The closest country with the friendliest law of what I’m currently trying to do

Then you need both anonymity and privacy. Sometimes you do need both but they’re not the same concept.

Privacy without anonymity is you using the bathroom with everyone seeing you walking in. They know you used the bathroom but have no idea what you did inside.

Anonymity without privacy is like you pissing on the street with a ski mask on. Everyone saw what you did but no one knows who you are.

Having both is walking into the bathroom with a ski mask on. No one knows who you are nor what you did inside.

Can you do usb drag and drop for kindles? I always thought you need to send the book over to the special kindle email address.

I’m sort of a Linux nerd and I have an iPad. The reason being when I bought my iPad not many Android tablets satisfies my needs. The few that sort of do don’t support third party ROMs and stock / manufacturer bloated Android imo is even more of a privacy disaster than stock iOS. However that has changed since the release of the new Pixel tablets which supports Graphene. I might try that out when my iPad retires.

The approach I took is organize my contacts into three categories The people that I talk to on a daily basis, people that I occasionally talk to, and people who I rarely ever talk to. For the first group (less than 10 for me), mostly close friends and families, I just bullied them to use an alternative platform like Signal until they caved in. For the second group, I recommend Signal to them but also left them with my phone number so they can text me if needed. For the third group I did nothing. Then I proceeded to delete FB Messenger off all my devices. I still log in to the web version maybe once per month to check if anyone from the third group needs to reach me or if there’s any group events going on. I did not fully get off FB but I ended up reducing 99% of my usage and 100% of the garbage in app and location tracking. To me this is good enough

You can alleviate this by using a VPN, configure you browser to minimize fingerprinting and use NoScript which allows you to block their trackers on third party websites.

I share a YT premium family plan with my parents and some friends. When I want to watch something that I don’t want YT to track I just switch to Newpipe

I got some insight from a friend who works at a major supplier for these retail stores in Canada. He said how they manage prices is that when they anticipate a rise in cost they’ll jack the price all the way to a future projected target instead of following the current inflationary rate so that they won’t need to constantly quote their customers different prices. They don’t care because they know it will get passed downstream.

It depends on your threat model. Do you think Google knowing your video watching preference is dangerous? For me I don’t care if Google knows my music and video preferences in general. If I’m watching things that I don’t want Google to know I use Newpipe on a VPN. But sensitive document uploaded to Google drive? Not anymore.

I haven’t looked into their code yet but that’s an interesting thought. I wonder if you can fork their code and operate an instance where private messages are disabled.

I do understand the reaction. I have relatives in China that believe the HK protestors are foreign spies and a threat to national security that needs to be hunted down. They also thinks the political interference scandal is all made up by the Canadian government. If that’s the information you hear day in and day out then it’s natural that you believe in it and become upset when your reality is getting challenged.

I also agree with you on the last part. It doesn’t make sense for Trudeau to take on India for no reason at this point in time when India is crucial to the West in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Unless the matter is serious he has nothing to gain and everything to lose.