I do not use Google products or use FB or most social media and family looks at me as if I am from Mars. Some do not even know what Linux even is. If I installed it on their machine and didn’t tell them what it was, they would just think it is “another” Windows.

Once a non-tech guy asked how I find stuff if I did not use Google Search. Another thought that I used Terminal, not because I need it but because I wanted to look Retro.

To plenty computers or tech in general are not their thing.

Caring for your Privacy and the general privacy of society in the aggregate, given the increasing data mining, collecting, advertising and other trends is the normal mindset.

Getting propagandised and brainwashed into thinking that paying, with your own money for literal microphoned devices operated by for-profit-focused Corps that will listen in and record you so as to give you lazy weather updates or help you play a song, or purchase knick-knacks online in exchanhe is the crazy take.

Getting you to feel ackward is the point of peer-pressure and their Marketing. Just ignore it. You are not in the wrong.

Gradually? By 10’s launch, it was already adware/spyware. 11 is not even attempting to hide it, if you look at it objectively past the PR.

Ukraine was supposed to have democratic elections. The current regime’s mandate ended in June. Since then, they are in power illegally and by sheer Presidential decree, for democracy, you see.

This has been done for decades. It is PR 101, and it is done to indoctrinate and subsequently normalize XYZ onto the average consumer/citizen.

In Marketing, you get taught that the average person has a memory of 3 to 6 months for issues like this, at the most. So, if you can afford to stretch something for longer, than acceptance on average, will always go up. Attention span are short. In other cases, it alleviates any cases of legal liability. Since no one can say they were not warned.

I knew that 23andMe would eventually breaker to that. Told people not to do it. Oh, well.

I opted out of LinkedIn and PayPal, but I wish I didn’t have to use them. Plus I do not fully trust them to respect the option, too.

In fairness, no one who understands how Laws actually work says that. Problem is that most people just do not care.

I got people saying I was silly paying a bit more for when I wanted to use some VPS boxes located in not 14 eyes countries.

Personally, I got a large dumb flat TV and use a small PC attached to it with Linux with all the privacy trimmings, VPN, etc. Use a browser, like Librewolf or FF with ArkenFox, along with Freetube on it which we control with KDEConnect from our phones. Once you setup the proper commands on it, it is fly and forget. You can pick a stripped, privacy focused distro, too. Most of my PCs/phones are on WiFi but for that box I plug it to the router via cable, directly, for faster display speeds. You can download other media software and run it through, if you wish.

Power usage is minimal or at least I do not see my power bill go up substantially, or noticeably. Have had this type of setup for over 15 years. Never had to worry about microphones or cameras as there are none to worry about. No terms to agree to that will get changed on a moment’s notice, either. No spying or dialing home. Sometimes, the best way to win is just to not play their games. Have 0 complains.

It is the same with Google Fonts. Everyone uses them, so your browser will have to ping Google Servers to get them. Even blocking them, puts you in a smaller bin of users since most people do not block them, which can help them profile you.

I got lucky and forced everyone I keep mostly on touch away from Gmail and into either my Nextcloud instance chat and/or Signal, XMPP or Delta Chat. Which are on mobile.

Another user mentioned PGP, great in theory, but most people I know do not use it and will not touch it. They think it is too complicated, which is not. But people are lazy if they do not care about privacy. I got lucky that I made most switch.

On my laptop, I update my bashrc on Excel, in Wine, then export it as a PDF, OCR to .md, Pandoc it to an .Org, and then finally, write it down on paper and re-type it on my phone’s Termux’s Emacs instance, then TRAMP it to my PC, in the other room.

I use biebian, btw.

Agreed. It makes sense that if you live in the West that you are going to get Western propaganda. What was a bit more surprising was the wall-to-wall level of psy-op grade propaganda coming from the Americans and of some of the other countries, like the Germans.

The reductionist mindset of a multi-layered, regional geopolitical situation was reduced to we, the Americans.NATO = the white-wearing good guys, Russians = bad guys.

I mean, it is not like this has not been done before and from all sides. Yet the level in which any valid criticism of what is essentially an exercise in NATO expansionism, and the repercussions of that push, which ends with the Ukrainians being used a cannon fodder as a way to weaken the Russian military is a prime example of a Machiavellian strategy, in my opinion.

Ukraine will be the one to pay the highest price, just like the Cubans have, in the inverse case, since the Cuban missile crisis. I was looking at a demographic chart of Ukraine and their population has taken a huge blow, either due to deaths or people fleeing the country. Now, who do you think is going to the all the contracts to rebuild everything back up, later on?

Fair. should have been more clear. I use Betterfox with my own tweaks, essentially a mix of AK and BF. Since BF is just based off AK. The AK maintainer has stated in the past that he just steals it off him. However and as you said, when jumping to site to site, AK is more likely to break things, which requires a bit more troubleshooting. Which I do not need for work since I know most of the sites I will be on. So outright privacy is not the primary goal there.
I used BF and tweaked upwards, rather than to undo AK settings. It’s just less of a hassle.

If I want AK, I use LIbrewolf since it already uses a lot of Arkenfox, along with my own tweaks for personal use, where I take privacy more seriously. Each browser has different uses.

Kiwi does extensions, too. Do not use it, though.

Use more than one.

On PC, my daily driver is Firefox Developer, patched with my CSS along with Betterfox for enhanced privacy over ArkenFox. I am an Admin and run a number of sites, so this helps.

Librewolf as general backup. Mullvad as second backup but I find that I am not the best use case for it, on top that I use different VPN services. It is for non-tech users, is not bad, just not the best tool for me but it is what I will tell people to use when using my PC since the other two have very UI minimal, heavy keyboard-centric setups. Tor for when I need more privacy/testing. Keep a copy of ungoogled Chromiu, mostly vanilla, only uBlock, again for testing and the off-chance fuzzy site but barely ever use it. They all, aside UG, sync bookmarks via Nextcloud instance so I do not need to sign into FF sync.

On Android, Mull, or CookieWeb Preview because the excellent extension management due to their pop-up window. Great for things like uBlock on medium mode, otherwise medium mode on mobile is a pajn to use, on Mull I keep it on Easy mode. Nevertheless, uBlock is a must in today’s internet. Tor for when travelling abroad and do not need to sign-on to anything. Keeping extensions to a minimum. Each browser connects to different DNS services to minimise overlap, along rotating VPN servers from non-5 eyes countries as the minimum. Sounds like a lot but once you set it up, it is mostly set-and-forget.

Although true. The root is that no super power likes another super power or its proxies on their borders. Russia does not and stated as such for decades. Hell, China literally helps fund the NK government and puts up with it, so it does not have SK, and its American bases on its south border. The USA put an embargo on Cuba for over 60 years because they put Russian weapons 90kms from Florida and Cuba would not capitulate. So much for the Cubans and the USA’s hypocrisy to memory hole this fact.

Yet somehow many Americans are so blind to not understand that Russia does not want Ukraine as an USA puppet next to them, which they would be. They see it as a clear and present danger --whether others see it or care, does not matter-- just like how the USA saw Cuba. I think we can all agree that Putin is a despot but to not see and understand of just how obvious Super power Geopolitics works or only see the one side of the issue because it is convinient is quite the statement on USA propaganda and the ongoing push for expanding of the Monroe Doctrine as status quo. Operation Condor comes to mind.

Super powers actually care little about smaller countries if they so not fit or push their specific geopolitical interests. No exceptions. Despite the real loses of human life, to the American government the Russia/Ukraine conflict is a but proxy war meant to weaken Russia for its own geopolitical goals. Some politicians stated as such already, despite the previous humanitarian PR. Calling any of this so-called Russia propanda as a way of side stepping by some, does not make it any less correct. Sadly.

The most annoying thing is that the peace accords back then where known to be derailed by the USA and UK, like it was 100% not a secret, absolutely public knowledge if you actually cared about the actual geopolitical region and were paying attention to what was going on outside general news media. Academics were saying the same as well.

The Western media utterly, and seemingly in conjunction decided to under report this to well, mostly to Americans. So your average Americans were kept in the dark of how instrumental they were in escalating this war. And painted anyone who stated actual reality as merely Putin puppets. The manipulation was strong since it seems to have worked wonders.

I fail to see how the USA and by extension the UK are any different when playing the disinformation and misinformation game. Everyone blames everyone else and claims they do not do any of it.

Nuland is just a war criminal but one that has the approval of the American military and political complex. I trust people have listensed to the leaked phone call from years ago where she cherry picks Ukrainian politicians to exalt into office? Go democracy.

Although correct, an also pressing question is ‘why’ they do it? And why most people do not care, or are not aware of this type of thing that has been going for decades?

Been curious to try. How is your RAM usage on it? Like that it uses runit. Like my systems to be minimalistic and with little bloat.

Ha. Was about to say the same. Running EasyOS on one ofy extra partitions for testing, and I end up using it as semi-daily driver often due to how light it is. Great on a USB key, too.

It is also somewhat unique, on top of other Puppy distros.

What are ads? I saw one back in 2009, but cannot be sure.