Mikelius

Tor is definitely another option. For my personal use however, I have my entire network covered by a VPN so all outgoing traffic uses it.

I’m sure I could setup Tor to do the same, but I imagine my family and I would get blocked more heavily on sites, as well as get our bank accounts and such flagged or something.

Like many things, it obviously depends on your threat model.

Ultimately being truly anonymous on the internet is pretty hard, and thus VPNs are mostly helpful for getting around region blocks for streaming services, not for obtaining more privacy.

I disagree.

There seems to constantly be two sides of the privacy discussion with public VPN options and they’re both wrong on their own. It’s correct that using a VPN on its own is not enough to keep you private online, fingerprinting being one example to why. However, not using a VPN but having no identifiable browser fingerprint doesn’t either, since your IP is still a fingerprint too.

I like to give the following analogies:

1. Doing only an oil change on your vehicle but no other maintenance won’t keep your vehicle running forever
2. Doing all vehicle maintenances except oil changes won’t keep your vehicle running forever

If the goal is to be private, remember that a VPN is only one tool in a very large tool belt.

I have forks that are updated every night through a cron for these very reasons. But I didn’t ever set it up for Android apps… Time to fork a whole lot more projects. sigh

Unnecessary rant: I actually just had to downgrade my 575(?) driver after spending a few days trying to troubleshoot a freezing laptop. One day I walked away when it happen and that actually gave me the logs I needed to find the Nvidia driver was freezing the machine and then spitting logs out after giving up 10 minutes later (but still keeping things frozen). Was driving me nuts, thinking my hard drive was seeing the light, even though all tests for it were passing with flying colors!

I’m hesitant to try this new version since I didn’t see anything in the changelog about freeze fixes lol.

I use it for my media server and have been for a long time.

Tldr: started so I could learn and understand Linux, still use it since I’m comfortable with it and it’s familiar/fast for my needs.

How it started: I kept going back and forth between windows and Linux, but never truly understood Linux like I did Windows. I eventually decided that I should try to install a Linux distro from scratch and learn the entire process manually so that I could understand it at a strong level. Gentoo has some of the best, if not the best, documentation for this. After spending several days going through the entire install process to finally get that login screen and UI up and running, I had learned more about Linux in those few days than I did the previous 3 years. I wanted to keep going, so I kept it on that laptop and continued to learn and become way more efficient than even Windows.

Why I still use it, specifically for my media server: partly because I understand Gentoo more than any other distro I’ve used, so I’m extremely comfortable with it. But mostly because I know every little thing on my server. I never find things I don’t recognize, because I installed it. I made the explicit decision to all the software I installed on my system. And I truly do feel like I’m in absolute control of the entire thing, in and out. On top of this, it’s truly as high in performance as it sounds.

As I type this, my media server is running 76 docker containers (no, not 76 services), 4 of which are game servers I host 24/7 for friends, and I’m only using 32GB of memory. CPU is rarely, if ever, above 20% (12 core Ryzen). The need to upgrade is really far out there, so that just adds to my reasons to continue using it. That being said, I’ve never run something like a Debian media server with all the same stuff on it… It’s very possible it’s just as good, but I really don’t know. I’m too comfortable where I am to spend time finding out lol.

If you use nextcloud, especially for your friends and family, the passwords app is really good there. Plenty of apps and plugins available to use it everywhere.

Add

PATH="${PATH}:~/.local/bin"

To your .zhrc or .bashrc (whatever you use) and either source the file or open a new terminal. Should be as simple as that (assuming +x permissions)

Rather than leave another long reply to read, I’ll leave my thoughts simple: if you have another computer you’re not using, try Linux mint and see if it fits your needs. If it’s too much and you can’t get the time needed to figure things out, 11 might be the choice (for now).

But either way, keep Linux on the second and learn a little bit as you get time to! :)

They’re blocking my VPN connection… I’ve already got problems with this lol.

“Texas Data Privacy and Security Act”… This is a thing? lol

For those of us not using Wayland, any idea if this still applies? Waiting on my flatpak version to support audio sharing with screen share… And please performance improvements.

Haha, 1 year ago… Cannot remember, but I’m positive it was some failed autocorrect. Unfortunately I can’t figure out what was autocorrected. I’d just ignore “dusky” in that sentence. I don’t even know what word means lol

Actually, there are some apps and even phone level things that do try to call to custom DNS, ignoring all the phone settings, including those defined in the global settings. Termux nslookup is one I can think of at the top of my head that ignores the phone’s settings and instead tries to call to Google DNS. I’ve got DNS default blocked in a custom script for AFWall on my phone, excluding calling my custom DNS, and see the block frequently hit. Just now checking, I see 54 blocks on 8.8.8.8:53, 2 blocks on 1.1.1.1:53, and 16 on “other” port 53 (catch all block).

Think the best solution is either a router firewall setup if always on the wifi, or a phone firewall app that can act as a VPN and just default block everything, or something like that. If rooted, AFWall does wonders.

I’ve been using the fdroid syncthing-fork version for a long time now and haven’t had any issues at all… Doesn’t mean it’ll last forever but it’s been getting the job done for me even in its current state.

… And can’t remember my original reason to use the fork instead lol

Hmm that’s actually something I hadn’t thought about, but yeah it probably wouldn’t work for an offline mode… If the app is already open, maybe it would work, but I’m not 100% sure. In general, it does require internet to connect to your home assistant (my phone is setup with wireguard to VPN into mind so it’s not internet facing). So yeah unless it can be used during those random connection drops, maybe not a perfect option :(

My family uses a custom Todo list on home assistant. I’ve got a separate dashboard of items we can just click to add to the grocery list, and then when shopping, checking them will move them out of the way. Very convenient, quick, and shared. So if you use HA, it might be good option, especially since you’re wanting something simpler (I was in the same boat)

Interesting, I didn’t have this experience a couple of years ago. I wonder if they’ve just upped it to try and “automate” things more with the crazy amount of tourism they’re suddenly getting. Also I’d be curious on which airport you went to, Haneda or Narita?

If the scans and such were in the states, I’ve requested opting out and no one really cared, they just said okay. Funny enough, it actually made me go through quicker than it was taking everyone who did the face scans, contradicting the sign claiming it’s quicker.

I left like a decade ago when they asked me in a chat to verify my identity by answering a question asking what my first car purchase was. I’ve never given then my SSN or that kind of financial details, so the fact they had these questions and details about me terrified me at the time and I immediately requested to delete and close everything with them. Haven’t used PayPal again since then.

Glad it’s getting a little more light. Been trying to tell people this for a few years now lol. It’s the reason I’ve stayed away from it since first learning of the tool and looking at the “source code”.

Glad I looked at this thread. The fact they’re cheap and have what sound like reliable PoE hats… Tempted to replace a few old Pis lol. Maybe. But can at least say no future devices will be Pis at this point.

Note: only using them for simple things. Wireguard VPN (no I don’t have a fast internet so I don’t need more than the 1gb connection speed), pi hole, and a touch panel I installed that connects to home assistant on the wall.