Or for some reason you are an AI that thinks it’s a person.

If y’all want to fanboy logic your way into a complete waste of resources and time then be my guest.

Wall Street investors took you up on your offer.

People have already mentioned ProtonDB for games. Another website you can use for alternative versions of software is https://osalt.com/

As a matter of fact, you did

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/

I am a paid user of Tuta and I have never seen any ads. Where did you see them and what kind of ads?

Yeah, what is the key verifier thing? It’s not like it’s Windows and needs a purchased license key, right?

That sucks about your friend. I can relate.

Scammers hacked my elderly mother on her windows laptop. They tricked her with an ad saying there was a problem with her computer, and they had her install remote access software. She mentioned seeing the terminal so I assumed they installed (at least) a keylogger. Luckily, they either ran out of time, or their con took two days, but they said they were going to call my mom the next day and have her log in to the bank to make sure her computer was still working.

So, I wiped her computer and installed Linux Mint with auto updates set up. She only had one simple question about logging in to google chrome and that’s been it for the last month. She has just been using it no problem.

Side note: The next day the scammers had the nerve to call my mom and ask her why her computer was turned off.

more than likely it was the two emails in the gmail app

Welcome to a world outside of enshittification!

A friend of mine in college pirated a japanese show which included the ads. The first episode seemed to have subs with legitimate translations. The rest of the season the subtitle author had fun and changed them to make fun of the ads. It was pretty funny.

There were no quizzes though…

It’s cool you got to try out plasma mobile! I haven’t had the chance to try it myself, but I have been using phosh which works well too.

I appreciate this post. I think you are right that those of us who value privacy and try to take steps to minimize eventually having those moments of having to step back and reassess our threat model.

Every now and then I ask myself why I resist the duopoly of Apple and Google, and the answer is because I value a third option. Like you mentioned in your post it may seem bleak now, but it might not always be this way. And if we ever do reach a more privacy conscious society, it was because all of us in the privacy community kept the flame going by supporting and using that more privacy focused third option.

I remember it for the same reason. Pretty cool that the project is still going

If you want a nice looking distro with some interesting features try Nitrux: nxos.org

In Lemmy, and I would say in the Fediverse in general, the population skews left. That means there are more terms to describe the spectrum. Mainstream media and social media label anyone centrist and towards the left as liberals. And of course the Far Right labels the same people as socialists scum.

My rubric for here in the fediverse is as follows. Liberals are generally referred to as capitalists and/or believe capitalism is still the best economic system that only needs minor reforms, along with social justice reforms. Tankies are generally the ones that want to enforce the social and economic reforms with an iron fist, even against the populace at large if necessary. Leftists are generally anarcho-something (socialist/communist), and believe major change is needed beyond the system we have in place now.

Again, that’s my rubric, and I’m sure other people have their own.

The best way to fight is to prevent it from happening in the first place. I would recommend carrying an air horn or whistle and use the noise to scare it off.

I guess it’s less the services and more the updated hardware that tempts me. I don’t do anything that requires a lot of computing power, so I get tempted to get something with Samsung Dex or Motorola Ready For to use it as both mobile and laptop/desktop.

I do use the Librem 5 with convergence, but storage is becoming an issue. I have a few things I can try to maximize storage before seriously considering something else.

I have significantly reduced my usage of Google and Apple services for a couple of years now. Sometimes I wonder if I should go back, but then I see the enshitification of it all and it reminds me why I did so in the first place.

Indeed. Anytime someone asks for my ideology I always say “I’m a filthy commie.” 😂

Let go your earthly tether Enter the Void empty, and become wind