Kinda weird there’s some insistence about open source only getting funding from the purest of sources.

Could be worse, and it’s free money.

The US government is saving copies of tonnes of VPN traffic so they can eventually decrypt it once quantum computers are developed. Anything sent without post-quantum cryptography now will be accessible to the US government once quantum computers are in operation.

I use it. It’s fine. Any paid email provider is fine really.

I’m staying a free user though because I don’t want to get my account deleted if I fail to pay for 6 months due to being in a coma or ICE detention or wrongfully arrested or rightfully arrested.

That seems reasonable. Linux computers are only secure with a skilled user, the average user likely has their privacy better protected by iOS which while slightly weaker on privacy is much more locked down on security.

1. DDoS a free and open source operating system.
2. ???
3. Profit.

The main problem is that it’s just not battle tested like GNU coreutils are.

Mint is the last distro that would push something that isn’t battle tested. IIRC they haven’t even started working on Wayland support.

I’ve hosted mine for decades. Reputation has nothing to do with spam filtering, but you do need at the very least SPF records and eventually* you’ll need full DMARC. the issue is that, without DMARC, any server on the internet can claim to be a valid mail server for your domain. DMARC lets you restrict it to your own servers.

Self hosting email isn’t hard; properly securing and protecting it is more work. I suggest looking into an all-in-one solution like Maddy, which provides IMAP and SMTP, and which make the server-side effort of DMARC easier. You can cobble together everything, too; it’s not hard, but there are more moving parts, more configuration files and file formats to learn, and more pitfalls in setting it up and getting it to all work together correctly.

Like, soon. the longer you wait, the more likely some waste of space on the internet will spoof your domain. Get it set up and working first, then do DMARC the next day. Or do it all in one go, it’s just a bigger bite to take all at once, and it isn’t strictly necessary: you can do it in steps, as long as you don’t delay DMARC by too much.

FIFY

Good luck getting past Google’s spam filters if you do that.

For installing apps and updating, it’s recommended to use the graphical utilities in CachyOS. Sometimes you might need to use pacman but it’s not the default.

I’m using NextDNS, I enabled all of the security filters, and I also block piracy and NSFW sites so I don’t accidentally access them without a VPN.

I’m not quite satisfied with NextDNS, but it’s the only option on which I can block the xyz, click, and top TLD’s.

That’s why I made the exception. I didn’t say “nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re criminals”. I said …

Nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or criminals.

If Windows 12 was just a Linux distro with Windows branding, it would probably be just as successful.

Few people “need” that level of privacy. When you are both private and anonymous that makes the services very inconvenient and uncomfortable to use.

It’s not gatekeeping to say “you don’t need a home security alarm, just a good lock on your door is fine for most people”.

It would be amazing if Microsoft decided to open source Windows 95.

Currently Google takes all your data, bundles it up, and sells it to the US government (and basically anyone else willing to pay). The goal of these paid privacy services is not necessarily to prevent the government from getting your information, but rather to make sure the government at least needs to ask for it first.

There are few services that offer both anonymity and privacy, they do exist but nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or criminals.

There’s also security reasons, having your messages out in the open unencrypted is a security risk.

Anki

Can it? Can’t exactly do double-blind case controlled studies.

More importantly though, economics is rarely studied scientifically. If nothing else, allowing the existing economists of the world to call themselves scientists is not deserved. Until economics is approached with the academic rigour of history and sociology it shouldn’t really be called a science.

[points to any average economists]

Well economics damn well shouldn’t.