Sophocles

You also might try changing VPN protocols. OpenVPN and Wireguard are the 2 most popular, and there's also L2TP on certain providers. For me OpenVPN drains faster than Wireguard. And if I remember correctly, using L2TP on Mozilla vpn drained like 0 battery when I tried it, although L2TP is developed by Microsoft so take that into consideration

Pretty much any VPN will drain your battety due to constant connection checks, but some are better than others. I'm on CalyxOS (custom android) so I can't speak to IOS, but I juat tried out various VPN services until I found one that worked. Ironically Mullvad was the one that drained the battery the least for me. Nord, Proton, and Air drained it the most. You could also try Mozilla, Proton, Riseup, or Xeovo VPNs which all have respectable terms of service and are trustworthy imo

I love the animal art! The lobster is my favorite 🦞

If you're looking for something on an individual level, I've found that simply putting yourself out there is the best way to find like-minded people and worthwile conversations online. Send people messages, conpliment peoples' ideas, and do it on multiple platforms. Follow random people, strike up random conversations. Not gonna lie, maybe 70% of people I've tried to talk to this way are dry, uninterested, or too introverted to be comfortable talking to a stranger. A few have even been hostile, but I've also made a couple of long term friends this way. One of my best online friends started talking to me because I put up a "I'm bored, lets be friends" post.

Finding something you're interested in and looking for others who like the same thing is also a great way to find people. I used to play Call of Duty a lot and would invite random people to voice chat. I ended up having a team of 6 and we would play almost every night. It doesn't have to be gaming either, it could be a science club, religion, or city event among other things

This. I've learned recently that you shouldn't assume the worst of people right off the bat. Most people are in the middle of the Bell curve; they are not your enemy, nor are they your friend. To assume that they wish to harm you or leave you out is, more often than not, false. It's more likely that you just arent in their current sphere of attention

Me in 2004: Roblox

Me in 2008: Roblox

Me in 2014: Roblox

Me in 2018: Roblox

Me in 2024: Roblox

I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.

Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There's just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.

Open world is great when it's done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?

Steam Deck adhesive is unironically one of my favorite smells ngl. Guilty as charged

I've been using Calyx for about a year and I feel like it does the job well. Here are some things I've done to harden my Calyx phone:

VPN: Turn on "Always on VPN", " Block Connections without VPN", and "Global VPN" in Settings>Network>Your VPN. I use Mullvad VPN as I think they have a great reputation and also is easy on battery. Furthermore, you can pay with cash voucher or crypto. You can also use the built in Calyx VPN but it is a bit slower. If you use Mullvad you can also turn on custom DNS, quantum resistance, and multihop if you wanna go a bit further.

Apps: Only use trusted apps and avoid "big tech" apps like instagram and anything google. Anything from FDroid is vetted through a strict FOSS policy and is generally safe to use. Look for alternatives to playstore apps and try to replace as many as you can.

Settings: App access: In settings>Apps>Permissions, only allow what apps need. For example, your photos app doesnt need location data, so keep location off. Go through each app and remove as many permissions as you see fit. Also make sure any apps with systemwide access are trustworthy. Camera and Mic: Calyx offers camera and mic off switches via the main pulldown menu. Make sure they are always off and only enable them when necessary. DNS: use a private dns host, such as base.dns.mullvad.net (found in network settings) Auto-Reboot: turn on auto reboot in settings so that if your phone is ever brute forced physically, it will make it much harder to crack USB: turn off USB access to your phone unless needed under "More privacy settings"

SIM/Contacts/Phone Generally apps have access to your contacts and phone calls. If you get a sim and phone number through JMP, all of your calls, texts and contacts will be sent through your vpn/internet rather than a cellular network (although they only service Canada and the US). This wont protect you from whoever you call/send to, but it will secure you on your end. Also note that any sim has the ability to triangulate location via cell towers. Jmp doesnt protect from this, but does have a degree of separation from the actual telecom provider. You could also use a faraday bag while you're out as an alternative. (Edit: just saw you are stuck with a sim. You can actually get JMP as a second sim with a second number. Use your main sim for data and your JMP sim for call/text. You would still be able to be triangulated, but your provider would at least be barred from monitoring the XMPP communications.)

Firewall: Use the built in firewall to always block new network requests. Only allow vpn access with exceptions you see as needed. Also do so for the system apps, but only block what you know about. You can research what each system app does, but there are a lot.

Work profile: Use the work profile to isolate higher-risk apps apart from your main apps. For example, I have a copy of the fennec browser in my work profile to access instagram, so that not only is it isolated by browser, but also it's completely separate from all of my other apps.

Browser: use Iceraven, Fennec, Tor, or Firefox to browse. Be aware that Firefox sends diagnostic data, but the other ones are much more hardened. All of them also have a feature to add webpages as apps if you don't want an actual app (e.g. instagram).

Messaging: Use Signal, SimpleX, Jabber/XMPP, or Matrix for communication. Only compromise for friends and family, and if possible try to get them on board too, although that is harder than it sounds.

Physical protection: Use a long login password and the Sentry app from fdroid to purge your phone if password is entered wrong too many times. Set up a bare bones dummy user profile in case someone forces you to login to your phone (e.g. a criminal or a nosy relative).

Location: Keep your location off or disabled entirely. Try to navigate maps the old fashioned way. It's hard at first, but gets easier with practice. You can use an offline map like Organic Maps. I used it with no internet to cross the USA from New York to California and it went smoothly if you have a good sense of navigation.

I hope some of this helps!

In my opinion, the privacy violation would be taking my biometric data without my consent (e.g. facial geometry, fingerprint, blood, dna/genetics, etc.) While yes my face is public, I'd rather not give them a high-res facial geometry map that gets fast-tracked directly to a database.

Making it harder for them makes them put in the effort to track or profile people which does not eliminate the problem, but does make it more difficult and thus more resource consuming for them, especially if many people do the same

I did a deep dive into frontends because I love organizing stuff in general. I use different frontends for each device I have because they all have different pros, but overall my favorite is Playnite because of its metadata and sorting features. For Windows I use Playnite, on Linux I use Pegasus, on Steam Deck I use RetroDeck/EmulationStation, and on handhelds I use Knulli Firefly.

Playnite is imo the king, because it has really beautiful themes with custom cover art and can sort games in basically any way possible: by system, rating, genre, name, release date, you name it. The only con is that it's Windows exclusive (for the near future) and is janky in Wine/Lutris.

Pegasus is spectacular for its fine grained control, and can be configured to do basically anything. Its like the Arch Linux of the frontend world; start with the basics and build from the ground up. With tinkering, it works great on almost any platform.

RetroDeck is great because it's plug n play. I love to tinker, but I also wanted a platform to just play my games without hastle or messing around. I find myself actually playing my games on the deck instead of tinkering with the frontend.

Knulli Firefly is great for smaller screen handhelds for a similar reason. It's very customizable, but also works straight away with little to no hastle. It's also better than most stock OSes that ship with emulation devices

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