That’s a fun problem, if you enjoy recreational mathematics. However, if you need to deal with this nonsense on a daily basis, it get’s old pretty fast.

Oh, yeah, the pounds, shillings and pence system was just epic. One pound (money, not weight) is 20 shillings (because why not), and one shilling is 12 pence (just for maximum confusion). In order to use measurements or money, you need to memorize a bunch of arbitrary conversion factors, which was obviously loved by everyone.

Using a 100% de-googled Android would be best, but it comes with some serious compromise, so this option isn’t for everyone. The second best options are also pretty good and quite practical in comparison.

It really depends on your situation and the kinds of threats you’re trying to mitigate. If you need to have a spyTV, spyPhone, a spyPad or something similar in your life, using DNS filtering may be an appealing option. Ideally, you would have zero iOS or Android devices in your household, but life isn’t ideal.

How about a NextDNS subscription? You can use that to filter out a bunch of creepy tracking, ads and other stuff. Ideally, you would only use devices and software that don’t do any creepy stuff, but the world is what it is, so using a custom DNS is a good idea.

I’m not touching an app owned by Meta. If people want to message me, they can use Signal.

Turns out, this policy has weeded out lots of useless conversations from my life. So, I see it as a win.

Thanks. That was a good summary, and I appreciate that you brought up threat models.

People should think about what kinds of threats are worth their time and money. If that list of threats contains something where a VPN can help, you should totally consider getting a VPN. If your threat model doesn’t include things like that, VPN might not be the solution you’re looking for.

Brining up trust was another good point. People should think about how much they trust their ISP or some VPN company. Obviously, you can’t trust every VPN company out there, but where you draw the line is closely connected to your threat model. For example, if you are a journalist in dangerous country, picking the right company is a matter of life and death. If you are in a safer environment, your threat model is probably very chill by comparison, so you might be fine with some less secure options.

Deceptive marketing and straight up lying is so prevalent that people have all sorts of wild ideas about VPNs. That’s why it’s high time someone cleared things up.

VPN: essential or snake oil?

History repeats itself.

Some Old Thing (software/website/service/whatever) becomes bad, and people get really upset. Initially, many say that SOT is going to die. Techies switch from SOT to New Great Thing. For a while, techies at NGT celebrate and pat each other on the back for making this brilliant move.

Meanwhile, normies at SOT continue to use it. They hate it at first or even complain about it, but eventually they get used to how bad SOT is. Every now and then, they hear about NGT, but they just can’t switch because reasons.

After a few years it’s clear that, SOT hasn’t died yet, but also continues to have quite a few users too. Some people end up using both, while a small group of people vow to never touch SOT ever again. SOT and NGT both continue to exist, because apparently there are enough users for both.

I’ve seen these things happen so many times, that it’s about time to point out that there’s a pattern. Just look back at any tech controversy over the past 30 years and you can see it usually follows this pattern pretty well.

My guess is, the people who care didn’t stick around. As s result, quality went down.

The tin can phone inherently provides end-to-end encryption. The acoustic signals, which are essentially longitudinal mechanical vibrations, travel directly through a taut string or wire. This physical medium ensures that the sound waves are converted into mechanical vibrations at the transmitting end and reconverted into sound at the receiving end, effectively eliminating any possibility of electronic eavesdropping or interception.

One of the most significant advantages of the tin can phone is its complete absence of a digital footprint. Unlike modern telecommunication devices that rely on electronic signals and data packets, tin can phone operates purely on mechanical principles. This means there are no digital records, metadata, or logs that can be hacked, traced, or subpoenaed.

The simplicity of the tin can phone renders it immune to a wide array of cyber threats. There are no software vulnerabilities, no firmware to update, and no risk of malware or ransomware attacks. The device’s operation is entirely analog, relying on the physical properties of sound waves and mechanical vibrations, making it impervious to digital exploits.

The physical nature of the tin can phone also contributes to its security. The string must be kept taut for effective communication, and any attempt to tap into the line would be immediately noticeable due to the loss of tension and degradation of sound quality. This provides a built-in tamper-evident feature, ensuring that any unauthorized access attempts are easily detected. On top of that, if someone attempts a man in the middle attack, you should be able to see it happening during the call and act accordingly before any sensitive data gets exposed.

The operational simplicity of the string and cans phone is another layer of security. With no complex interfaces or user authentication mechanisms, the risk of user error leading to security breaches is virtually nonexistent.

If it supports Electricity V 230, you should be fine. If it’s still on V 120, all bets are off.

CommonSense 2024, the best antivirus solution I’ve ever tried. Highly recommend it. Compatible with phones, tablets, computers, potatoes etc.

As I look at this thing from the inside of the fedibubble, it looks like it’s going to be the best thing ever.

Can confirm. I have a few accounts for keeping different interests separate in YT. I also keep those accounts in different container tabs, but recommendations tend to leak anyway. Google knows what I’m up to.

Here’s a fun little experiment you can try. Make a list of random topics and have a discussion about each of them on separate days. Make sure each topic is something that could result in creepy suggestions or ads on YT. If even one of these topics produces the expected result, you could be on to something.

Nah, who needs any reviews when you can trust autocorrect to handle every situation perfectly every time. Never had any issues with it and never will.

Good job. This post shows that it’s s complicated topic, so squeezing it into a binary answer just isn’t going to work.

However, when it comers specific details, such as your data being sucked up to the servers of a creepy company, you can definitely provide clear answers. In situations like this, I tend to make a spreadsheet that lists all the useful details and rates each browser accordingly. Then, you give your subjective weight to each detail, and calculate a weighted average of each brewer. This final score is highly subjective and debatable, but at least you have some sort of answer that helps you decide what’s best for you.

Winamp source code was published on github, but the license said you can’t fork or share the code. Such a license isn’t compatible with github, which is all about forking and sharing.