a 3rd partition formatted to FAT32

exFAT is also pretty solid for this purpose and doesn’t have the file size limitations that FAT32 has.

OC spray, aka ‘oleoresin capsicum spray’, aka pepper spray. People often get it for self defense against humans or bears. The bear version tends to be a much larger and stronger bottle.

I don’t normally open carry, though to do regularly concealed carry. Have been told by others a few times they were happy I was carrying, made them feel better when we happened to get into a seedy area. Luckily nothing came of it, and hopefully it stays that way forever.

But it’s getting so hard nowadays

It’s a sliding scale; it isn’t just ‘full privacy’ or ‘no privacy’. Everyone makes compromises somewhere based on their personal preferences. Most people would agree posting their credit card number on a public forum is too far into the ‘no privacy’ band, for example.

how does privacy improve the world

It’s up to you, but I don’t like trusting my personal info with untrustworthy companies.

It might be worth switching providers. Starlink and 4G ISPs (TMobile, Verison) are surprisingly good.

Making it harder for firearm education, use, handling and entertainment videos to be on the most popular video platform is not a positive step. The resources people have to safely handle and use firearms has now diminished.

Many of those are due for retirement purely due to age. There isn’t a replacement system for many of them. Furthermore, countermeasures have gotten better; future designs will better take these into account.

What the fuck is a GRAVITY BOMB

Simply means it is a free-fall bomb. They are cheaper to make as they don’t require an entire ICBM to deliver.

Ryzen laptops which feature capable integrated GPUs serve light and medium gaming tasks well. For heavy use, there are desktops, which is where the real power is. Portable systems like the Steam Deck are also hitting from the mobile side as well.

Gaming laptops have always been an extremely niche product and have gotten squeezed from all ends in recent years.

Tell Russia to stop issuing nuclear threats, we just got another one from Putin in the last 24 hours. It’s easy to dial back tensions when you aren’t being threatened with annihilation on a daily and weekly basis.

they also had gay marriage … before we did

The US legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015; Mexico didn’t achieve the same until 2022.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage (Timeline section)

Yeah, that’s the issue with the argument of ‘just turn it off’. You can turn it off, then tomorrow there will be another thing to turn off (hope you were paying attention to the news to find out what it was!). The next day an update will come along and turn half of them back on. The following the mental script you made to will stop working because they moved half the settings, etc, etc, etc.

It’s a never ending battle as Microsoft fundamentally does not respect their paying users. Microsoft could add a top-level toggle box to automatically disable bloatware, telemetry, and the privacy nightmare that is OP’s story about how the OS records everything you do, but they don’t have this. They don’t want you turning this stuff off, they don’t respect you.

There are lots of random assholes on the internet. I like when they are forced to stay on the internet and not able to bring their asshollery into one’s real life.

If you have a username attached to a publicly posted comment, people will be able to see your history. The internet is forever. Publicly posted comments are, by definition, not private. Treating them as such, in any capacity, is a mistake.

The biggest thing is to not post personal details, or to even post accumulations of details over many comments that can narrow things down. The weather where you are at the time, what type of car you drive (or your lack of a car), what type of job you have, etc, etc, etc. On their own, each of these pieces of information don’t mean much, but you start putting them together and you can narrow things down considerably.

It is also not a bad idea to occasionally throw in some misinformation about yourself. Maybe you don’t drive a Corolla, but instead a Hilux.

Yep. Passcode unlocks are legally protected, unlike fingerprint unlocks. If you have any desire to keep the police out of your phone, you should not have fingerprint unlock enabled.

Best description of this I have seen is: the 5th Amendment protects compelled production what you know. It does not protect what you are (fingerprints, hair, etc).

Really happy to see replaceable batteries! It’s a wear item and guaranteed to brick your device after a number of years if they aren’t replaceable.

Framework absolutely makes PCs. Most notably in the laptop form factor.

Brave is one of the more privacy-centric search engines. I don’t think it is the best on privacy, but it is pretty good.

Google to stop spying on basically everything if you have a default Android install.