Mikina

That's seriously impressive. I wonder, what is your threat profile for all of these? It seems to me like some of the things you do have a drastic impact on user experience, while also not providing that much of a benefit unless you have some really sensitive data.

I think that EEE would not be as impactfull here - I mean, at this stage, without Meta and already at small numbers, if they went through the EEE cycle we'd probably just be in the same position. Meta people came, and then left, nothing really changes. The people who are here are already decided to avoid Meta and other platforms, and they already have features Fediverse doesn't.

My issue is that by Federating, Meta is stealing and monetizing our content we post here, to fill their bullshit Threads with content, which its severely lacking. I hate that and don't want that in the slightest.

I'm glad to see my instance is part of the FediPact! Thanks for the link.

My own setup from the top of my head would be:

• Browser: Mullvad with Mullvad VPN, LibreWolf for stuff that breaks. Brave if I really have no other choice.
• Phone: Pixel with Graphene, main profile is Google-less, second profile with Sandboxed GServices for apps that don't work without it but I need them, downloaded through fresh gmail profile. Third profile linked to my old gmail with credit card for the two apps I bought and sometimes need to use.
• Mail: I use Protonmail, with my own domain that sounds vaguely corporate. I have a catch-all address, and generate random name.surename@mycorpdomain.com addresses for each service.
• File storage: I have a NAS, that I use for most file sharing I need.
• Music: Jellyfin server with Headphones and redacted.ch account, and I also make sure to support artists every month by spending what would be my Spotify subscription price on Bandcamp albums
• Desktop: I run Nobara, too lazy to run QubesOS - plus I game a lot, so it would be infeasible. I mostly try to get stuff on GoG and back it up on my own NAS. I have a ZeroTier network set up for streaming through Sunshine/Moonlight when I need to game from a laptop.
• VPN: I use Mullvad paid for with Monero, because it plays nicely with the Mullvad Browser fingerprint.
• Home automation: I have a few basic stuff made for Home Assistant that is running on RockPI I have at home, everything local and without any cloud, mostly through ESP32s.
• Messaging: This is the one I hate the most - most of the groups I'm working with or volunteering for use Messenger, so I have a Matrix server hosted that bridges it and Discord. It's not ideal, but better than having anything Meta on my phone.
• Payments: This one is the one I'm struggling with the most. I pay by card almost everywhere, because cash is so much effort. I've tried looking into crypto or prepaid cards, but it's really hard to find anything without KYC in Europe, so I've given up. I'm looking for advice regarding this, but I'm afraid that aside from switching to cash I'm out of luck.
• Passwords: I just use Bitwarden with YubiKey setup, same as using YubiKey for every important MFA I can. I have two backup keys stored at home, so I don't need to use other recovery methods that would render it useless.

Few recommendations from the top of my head, from skimming the post.

I'd recommend checking out QubesOS (https://www.qubes-os.org/), especially since it seems you switch between ToR and already use Silverblue, which is AFAIK similar, but why not go all the way in?

Also for VPN - I've switched Proton for Mullvad VPN, because I really like the idea they are going for - if you pair Mullvad browser, that is designed to have the same fingerprint for all users, with a VPN that's from the same company, you can kind of expect that most of the Mullvad VPN users will also be users of Mullvad Browser. Which means you will not be one of the few Proton VPN users with Mullvad fingerprint, but will have the same fingerprint as most of other users of Mullvad VPN. This will make it harder to fingerprint you based on your browser. One word of warning, though - don't install extensions to Mullvad. If you do, you break the "same fingerprint" premise, and the more extensions you install, the more identifiable you are. Mullvad should be used without any extensions.

Another thing I see is music streaming - I think that in general I'd recommend just getting a cheap laptop/NAS and run your own Jellyfin, and slowly start building your own music collection. You can also run Matrix server as a bonus, and bridge all your communication (including Signal, even though that may not help that much) - but it does help if you need to use some kind of service, i.e Messenger, for group or work related purposes.

My approach to music was to cancel my subscription, and then use the money I save to spend on albums on Bandcamp, so I still support the artists I want. I make sure to do that every month. Since there's just wast amount of music to get, I use Headphones with an account on redacted.ch to fill my library, but I still make sure to buy albums I like even if I already have them downloaded. The added bonus is that you actually don't loose any of your music, if the artist decides to pull it off the streaming service, which has aready happened to me several time.

If you want hosting your own LLM, take a look at https://refact.ai. But note that it's not really cheap, I've recently upgraded my computer and decided to use my NVIDIA 1060 to run refact, and it still didn't work well - 8Gb of GPU memory is borderline usable, and I couldn't do the finetuning.

What happens if the prisoner just refuses to work?

I did switch around a month ago due to a thread similar to this, and I have booted windows like twice since then, and im really glad I made the switch. So, yes, threads like this did help me, while also providing good starting tips.

If you use nvidia, make sure to choose a distro that deals with their drivers by default. I havent manage to get Nvidia drivers and ingame cutscenes to work on Fedora, but after switching to Nobara all is well now. (And switching to KDE on X11, since wayland was freezing occasionally and some apps wouldnt work)

Aside from HDR, I still havent managed to get HDR working and its starting to look like it wont really be possible. And Unity. Unity simply doesnt work both in a VM and on Linux, so I annoyongly still have to dualboot.

Other than that, ive switched around two months ago, and aside from the first pains caused by me choosing Fedora instead of Nobara, everything mostly works without issues.

I see. IIRC from school, "factor" actually has a definition - it's either something you have (keycard, phone), something you are (biometrics) or something you know (password).

For authentication to be truly an effective MFA, it would have to require at least two of those factors. And that's also why I.e email isn't really a MFA.

So, I guess it boils down to where are you storing your passwords. If they are also in the password manager, then, its only 1FA, because knowing your password manager password is enough to defeat it. (Or, if someone finds a zeroday in the pass manager).

Is that second factor, though? If I understand it right, you are basically generating your MFA from your password manager, is that so?

I'd recommend going for the app dev. I always knew I will be workig in gamedev, but choose my bachelors degree in general software engineering, and only went for Masters in gamedev.

I've been out of school for around 5 years now, and I'm really glad I chose SWE instead of anything more specialized - because it has given me the broadest outlook on IT as possible, from documentation best practices, through UMLs, to various obscure languages from Smalltalk through Lisp, assembly and Prolog to C, Java and C#, while also having some optional classes focused on cybersecurity or AI.

Most of what I've learned, I don't really remmeber or use daily - but, the information has somewhat stuck with me, and I can quickly recall the general concept every time I enounter a similar problem, which makes research a lot faster. If I need to write something in a language that's not my main focus, I can be certain that no matter how unknown, I've already worked in something with similar concepts. And that makes it so much easier to quickly understand syntax and start writing code.

I can't imagine how difficult it would be for me to grasp how the hell is something like Prolog supposed to work, but having to sit through classes on it that I barely remember has left me with a vague recollection of what's the purpose, so if I encounter anything similar, I can just pick it up almost immediately. And this goes for most of styles of languages or problems - I've already dealt with something similar.

Not to mention that while UML diagrams and general documentation practices may sound pretty boring (and they are), I've already encountered situations where the diagram was integral to understanding what are the docs going for - and I was able to get it instead of having to figure it out by myself, because I've already worked with them at school.

Also, having options is nice - After the school, I went to work in Cybersec, even though I had only like one optional class on the topic, and I can see how much it has helped me having a borad overview in comparison to colleagues who didn't have it. I can write scripts in whatever we encounter, I have a deeper understanding of how other developers write code, what could be wrong, and have a better educated quess at how exactly does the stack we're black-box testing works. And looking up the more specialized cybersec knowledge is way easier, than researching a stack of technologies I've never seen or work with in my life. And that's where the broader degree has helped me the most with.

Also, you can probably enroll into optional classes that are outside of your field of study, which I really recommend - I was doing that a lot during my studies, and it were the most memorable and usefull lectures I've had.

This is so sad to read... It makes me so angry that even when they won several lawsuits, Sony could just drive them out of business by suing them some more, and threatening stores that wanted to sell their software.