Don’t VPN services usually require you to pay through means only available to adults? Isn’t that age verification enough?

Ah but nobody ever writes 50GB of data continuously. /s

Yeah now how will we give all the AI crawlers exemptions from uploading their ID and proving they are of age?

Poor guy, maybe he should get AI therapy.

Why would he fight this law?

Oof, Windows 11 is really needy as far as an OS goes. I forget that the machine is supposed to serve me, not demand things me from the all the time.

The grass really is greener in the Linux world. Hope more people get to experience that soon.

/e/OS looks interesting too and can be delivered from Fairphone with it pre-installed. I’m kinda lost since there are so many privacy-focused OSes based on AOSP. They could probably achieve more by merging some projects, but I imagine there are different philosophies separating them like in most OSS.

In any case, lots of great info here. Cheers again for the insight.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I appreciate all the practical info. So you tried Calyx, Copperhead etc. too?

The biggest thing turning me off most of these security-oriented roms is having to buy a Pixel. I kind of don’t want to go from one American big tech phone to another.

Thanks this is very detailed! Don’t feel compelled to answer any follow-up questions (but you are welcome to!). Just wanna discuss with whoever has opinions and knowledge about it.

One question about lockdown mode on Android though. This means you can’t unlock using biometrics, so you can’t be forced to unlock? On iOS it means it won’t render a lot of scripts and images with tracking on websites, emails, SMS, apps etc. as to make it much harder to exploit anything remotely. I’m wondering if such a feature exists on Android too. I don’t care that lots of websites look janky, I just feel safer knowing most exploits won’t work.

I used LineageOS before my last phone crapped out on me. Ironically I needed to root my phone and use Magisk to hide root in order to make banking apps work. Because the bootloader had been unlocked it failed some google checks or something. Original software support was a pitiful 18 months, so kind of had to go custom rom too.

Thanks, this stopped me in my tracks! I gotta walk the dogs and start doing things around the house.

Not in the market to change phones now, but always considering options in case I urgently need to replace it due to catastrophic failure (and fear of making an uninformed choice due to urgency).

With that said, I have an iphone 11 right now with lockdown, stolen device protection, cloud encryption, and FIDO keys enrolled and it feels very secure whilst still letting me use banking apps normally etc. How does /e/OS compare to something like that and how vulnerable is it to being plugged in and downloaded or wormed by malicious actors, zero-click SMS attacks etc?

Same. Unless it stops getting security updates or has been dropped to the bottom of the sea, I’m holding on to the phone I have.

Oh so that’s what happens when you give the most talentless, bigoted imbeciles, that couldn’t dedicate two hours to learn a little image/video editing, the tools to generate content.

No, not downplaying the effort it takes to master these skills. This is just how long I imagine it takes a normal person to learn how to splice a few clips or make some memes/shops in gimp.

Don’t worry, Trump will bail them out with hard-working people’s taxes.

So a terminally online person is going to tweet about how they saw some idiot pretending to read the Metamorphosis on the metro?

Yeah this is rage bait. Just read what you want and enjoy your life.

I’ll normally tell my managers etc. when they have an idea that would not work well in the real world. However, many people seem like they have an almost theistic belief in the power of AI (maybe because they’re deeply invested) so I’m holding my tongue at work.

For the time being I’m doing my job properly but if I’m forced to do things a certain way even if it’s clearly worse I will comply and let them waste their money. I’m tired and I won’t police decisions above my pay grade.

Still biding my time and waiting for the bubble to pop and the next buzzword trend to arrive.

So the fish won’t feel pain after all.

This is super relatable but I did get a job in a highly specialized field outside what I took my degree in. Mostly luck due to having friends vouch for me and an excellent mentor teaching me on the job early on. Now I couldn’t dream of making that kind of money doing so-called unskilled labor.

Sometimes I do think about career changes to something that would let me switch off and think less about work after-hours. Usually comes down to having to start at the bottom of the career ladder again and for some silly reason worrying my colleagues would think less of me for switching fields.

Sorry I’m rambling but your comment resonated with me.

There are very affordable g-shocks with multi band, using radio signals to accurately set the time every night with an atomic clock as the source. I mean if accuracy is an issue.

The solar models also charge using sunlight and fluorescent lights but will still last about 1-2 years in darkness. Regular wear will always keep it charged.

Not to say an Apple Watch isn’t right for you. Just stating that non-smart watch options exist for those who just want to tell time, date, weekday, accurately with added stuff like alarms and stopwatch etc.

For phones 5+ years of updates is good compared to the alternatives, and is why I have one. For a computer, on the other hand, it’s just not very impressive. Perhaps FairPhones come close (don’t know how long their software is supported but their selling point is longevity), but their specs aren’t that impressive. On the flip side you get something repairable.

MacBooks are often built better with higher quality materials than many other laptops, but it is essentially a computer. Most computers that have high enough specs will always run the latest version of most Linux distributions or Windows barring any need for weird drivers from the past century. Feels a little iffy to have a perfectly good computer that won’t update software anymore just because. Up until recently you could just install some Linux OS on your old MacBooks when it went out of support but honestly I don’t know whether you can still do that after they started making non-x86 stuff.

With all that said, haven’t seen many laptops physically outlive MacBooks’ updates. With the exception of some ThinkPads and possibly some XPS models. Plastic laptops with plastic hinges tend to struggle keeping up, especially if the display is on the larger side. A large gaming laptop living the life of a typical MacBook, going to cafes and university in a backpack every day is probably gonna have more stress on hinges etc.

As for HP I have only heard bad stuff about them for the last 10 years or so. Don’t think I’ll buy stuff from them due to their evil printers that won’t scan without ink etc.

Not many specific recommendations here but just some observations I have made. Hope it’s helpful.