Still, linux desktop is going up, with a fraction of the marketing power Windows and Apple have.

This isn’t entirely true. Linux is getting a lot of help from Microsoft. <wink wink>

A bit cumbersome if you are traveling and using a different public wifi every time though

You’re not wrong. But you’re probably also familiar with the “secure vs. convenient” dichotomy: the closer to the “secure” end of the spectrum you get, the more cumbersome things will inevitably get. If you feel like you’re jumping through too many hoops and you don’t know what for, chances are you’re overshooting the target in terms of your threat model and might get away with doing less.

1. Disable DNS once. Find out URL/IP of captive portal that way.
2. Add to hosts file (Win/Lin/Mac). Maybe even give an alias: “captive-school”, “captive-library”, etc.
3. Turn DNS back on. The hosts file will take prerogative over DNS settings, i.e. it is resolved first.

Most lists from https://github.com/blocklistproject/Lists

It does say that, and yet I’ve been doing it for years without issue. You just need to know what you’re doing, i.e. you need to be able to tell apart the connections that are required to make a site work from those that aren’t needed and can be blocked without issue. If you don’t, Tracker Control will break a lot of sites, and they probably don’t want to deal with the resulting support requests.

But if you’ve been using NoScript for a while, you will feel right at home with TC and be able to use it with browsers as well, which is where a lot of tracking happens.

The critical part is: how many supposed “quality” alternatives have been proven not to do any logging? Mullvad has been proven to be solid. They were raided and had jolly little to hand over to authorities on their customers.

How many of the other VPN services can say that about themselves?

I second this. Firmware on these controllers is really hit and miss. My first controller (gen 5, iirc) worked flawlessly out of the gate. My second (gen 6 (?)) would comstantly connect and then disconnect again. A firmware update (on Windows, grml) did the trick back then (and now I’m not touching that shit again).

It’s a mixed bag really. Disabling JavaScript thwarts a lot of tracking efforts. But at the same time it puts you into a very small niche of users that, combined with other data points (user agent, IP location) makes you pretty fingerprintable.

Coming from a fellow JS Disabler, mind you.

I feel you. Handoff was dodgy af. I’ve switched to BasicSync for this very reason. It’s a minimal Frontend, handling only execution conditions on Android. All config is done through the webUI. It works great and avoids some, if not all of the trust issues.

Immich is dead-easy to set up on its own. I’m a great fan and have been running it for >2 years now.

That said, I don’t think it’ll work for you because:

• I gather you have little experience in self-hosting services. Sure, one can learn all that, but if you’re becoming a parent soon, your priorities will be elsewhere (as they should).
• self-hosting stuff isn’t a one-shot - it does come with maintenance costs. You need to keep your boxes up to date, swap out dead hardware, manage backups… You may not have time for that.
• Running immich itself is relatively easy. But running it securely is a different can of worms. Immich is a young project, written by enthusiasts, but not vetted for security like professionally-deployed software is. Thus, it’s not advisable to expose it to the open internet. Since you want to share access to others, you’d have to setup Wireguard VPN tunnels for your relatives, which complicates matters.

Obviously, I’m making a lot of assumptions about you. Whether these are true is up for you to decide.

Obnoxious Windows 10 “upgrade” nag screens on Win 7. If you think you can push me, I’ll push back harder. That, and Snowden showing the world that American tech is backdoored all the way to hell and back.

Man, your basement has the weirdest carpet I’ve ever seen. Also, much too bright for my taste. If you can see the keycaps without backlight, you’re doing the lighting wrong.

Corporate-driven > community-driven distros

It is now.

Is it Shitpost Saturday already?