For sure. I recall installing an open source mahjong from the android google store when I bought my first ever android device about a decade ago. Instantly took over my tablet and kept throwing ads at me. And it got into the root and wouldn’t go away when doing a reinstall. Fortunately it was a super cheap tablet that I only got to toy around with. But I have had no interest in ever getting another android device since then.

Yep. People have a bad habit of sticking to their habits beyond the point of usefulness. Myself included.

lol… I get that ;]

I’d probably stick with it as well. My current view is that VPN mostly just provides a cover for general piracy. If “they” wanted to devote the effort they could figure out who I was. But I am sure a lot of vpns serve as honey pots and you wouldn’t want to blow your cover just for someone downloading a movie they never would have paid for anyway. They got the signature thing, but if I was doing something serious then that is going to be quite different than my general use signature and match every other user of Tails or whatever. The signature thing really sucks, but we do have control over what signatures we leave where and via vpns and tor those different “personas” don’t need to be connected by singular ip address.

Or at least that is my present opinion. If anyone here has a good argument against it, I’d like to hear it.

Yep. Learning anything new or even just changing habits takes effort, time and mostly a sense of responsibility for yourself. A lot of the non-mainstream things we do in pursuit of privacy really aren’t much more complicated than their mainstream counterparts.

Thanks for rubbing it in… and failing to mention what service you use.

It can, but it isn’t likely as specific as an ip is.

My view is that security/privacy is a sliding rule and that every little effort helps.

It isn’t just Mullvad. I’m sure it is also AirVPN and I presume that it includes all of the popular ones. I doubt port forwarding has anything to do with it.

It was worth skimming through it for me…

I think they would argue that it would be the perceived security that rust has. But I agree with your point and wonder if it will really deliver on those goals.

Didn’t know its been a whole decade.

The history of Microsoft creating backdoors in windows predates XP. While Windows XP is most certainly not as evil as Win10, it certainly never meant “freedom”. Nor did 95, NT or even 3.1. Other than the backdoors, windows has always been closed source. Nothing free about it.

The fact that the youtube person assumed the opposite strongly affects her credibility. Windows backdoors have been a common topic since the 90’s.

I largely agree with stupid_asshole69’s comment, but I will add that just using a common commercial printer and using cash is still an option.

The rule of thumb is that you want at least the same amount of ram that you have (plus a little more just in case) if you have a laptop or similar where you’re going to use hibernate, since that works by moving whatever is in the ram into the swap.

Also, note that swap is basically emergency (and slow) ram. You want enough to handle any emergencies. Although I think it gets used before ram fills up completely. There are a lot of uses of ram where swap works just as well. Like if you got a program and/or browser tabs open in the background that you’re not presently using, it needs somewhere to store that data. And don’t forget about all the programs you may use that handle or process large files. Typically that gets loaded into ram (or direct to swap if fast access isn’t needed), and if ram can’t hold it, something that is used less is moved to swap.

But if there is no room, it keeps trying any way and it all freezes up like what op describes.

So… since people often have 16 gigs of ram in their machines, no, that isn’t a huge amount of swap to have. Even on my desktops I generally have at least 32 gigs swap just because I often do things that fill up a lot of ram. One of them has 64 gigs ram, and it can fill a good chunk of the swap as well if I try to render something heavy in Blender. Add on to that, I may have a vm open as well. That often uses swap along with filling ram. And of course general web use where it is normal to keep several tabs constantly open.

I want to make sure I have more swap than will ever be used. Because if it does get used, then that means it and ram is full and the computer will freeze.

yep. short for USB-diskette ;]

Is your swap big enough? Some installers default to only 1gig. That isn’t big enough normally.

If it fills the ram and the swap, it will cause what you are seeing. Typically the suggestion is a little more than however much ram you have. Personally I set it at either 16 or 32gigs or more. Depending on the machine and what I intend on doing with it and how much drive space I have available.

You can keep a system monitor open (or top, htop etc) and keep an eye on it when you’re doing something ram hungry, like having a bunch of browser tabs open or whatever. If it freezes and you look over and see the ram usage pegged to the top, that will suggest that that is your problem.

I don’t know. I’d be interested in learning more about that as well.

I do like it better than element, though. It is more light weight.

I use librewolf for browsing (with the temporary containers addon), nheko for matrix, thunderbird (of course)… that has pgp functionality built in.

When it comes to web browsing I think it is a good idea to use more than one browser. For most general use stuff I use librewolf and already mentioned. I do all my work related stuff, banking and purchasing in chromium. Unfortunately we’re back in the days of internet explorer when a lot of mainstream sites are broken and only work well on one browser. But the uses I mentioned are not as important in regards to privacy so it works for me.

Crypto sites are also often to be built for a chromium base, but I like to keep those separate and use Brave for that.

I’ve heard it is getting better. It would be worth downloading and trying a live-usb out and see where it is presently at.

Or just run a live disc.

It is so easy for everyone to just answer this question for themselves rather than read articles about it. And it takes about the same amount of time and effort.

Yes… and if it needs to be said, I am also directly implying that anonymity is a large and crucial part of privacy.

I do a lot of risky and dangerous shit on the internet.

well… this seems to be the bigger issue. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if it ain’t worth it, then it ain’t worth it. That seems to be what you are telling yourself.

If you’re ready to cut bait, then you just need to drop every connection that existed during that period. And start anew putting a solid line between before and now. Be the ringpop you want to be and act like old ringpop never happened. I suspect that guilt might be playing a part in your angst as well. The only way to fix that is to be a better man.