Why did you think cops like the band so much…?

Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I’d probably get an Apple device.

Sadly, I also don’t like spending money. :P You used to be able to make Hackintoshes, but Apple tends to break them with every software update.

I had been thinking about getting an IoT Enterprise LTSC release of Windows and manually adding the components that I needed. Might still do that with dual boot.

There are a lot of ways to get around that, such as:

I’m doing all of that except the last one already. As has been noted in many other places, Windows itself is now in the business of serving ads directly, and it looks like that’s getting harder and harder to disable. I managed to mostly lock down the Pro release of Win 10 that I’m on right now, but Win 11 will make that much, much harder. If it weren’t for security issues surrounding end of product life, I wouldn’t switch versions at all.

C’est la mort.

But yeah, I’ll def. look for a user-friendly version of Linux when I build my next system in a few months.

I have to use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro every day for my day job. I have to keep up-to-date with my versions, because clients send me files that use features in the latest releases, and not being up-to-date means that things don’t render correctly. (I’m super-pissed that I have to update since Adobe dropped all support for Pantone colors abut a year (?) ago.)

I use Corel Painter 2022 and a Wacom pen display for fun. My guess is that a pen display might get a little weird in Linux, but the one I have is not cutting edge at least.

Yeah, don’t use that for regular work, that’s an uber-paranoid distro that’s intentionally locked down, which means things are likely going to be more difficult to get working.

I know, I know, but I liked being functionally untrackable online, and not getting ads shoved down my throat (…despite working in advertising…) all the time. It’s neat, but almost everything online seems to have privacy-invading features so deeply embedded that the browser built into Tails just can’t use them at all.

Allow me to piggyback on this a bit, s’il vous plait.

Is there a Linux distribution that will run Adobe CC out of the box, games from Steam, and VR headsets? I need a new desktop badly, but I need to be able to use Adobe products as part of my job. (No, I can’t switch to GNU products, because I get files from clients, and I have to be able to work to industry standards.) I’ve used Tails before, which is not a user-friendly product, and it doesn’t play nicely with any other software.

when people google that they want immediate relief, not fucking oh go for a walk every day,

The problem is that there is no immediate relief that isn’t either a) suicide, or b) won’t make things worse in the long run. Even something like ECT doesn’t work instantly; it takes several treatments. Transcranial magnetic stimulation seems promising, but it’s not a frontline treatment. The generic shit is the stuff that actually works in the long run, things like getting therapy, exercising, going outside more, interacting with people in a positive way, and so on. “Self care”–isolating and doing easy, comfortable things–will make things worse in the long run.

720p? Pfffft. 240i. Rip them in ‘2014 YouTube over 2G’ quality.

Deviant Ollam has done a couple of videos about hotel security. One of them–one that I can’t find right now–used a wedge that had an adjustment screw, so that even if the lock was cracked, you needed a battering ram to open the door. OTOH, you could only use it while you were in the room, so it’s not any good at protecting valuable objects while you’re not in the room.

If you’re being personally targeted by someone with any real level of skill, or an organization with resources, most security measures that you have available to you as an individual of modest means are unlikely to help significantly. In general, locks are there to keep honest people honest, and that’s about it.

I think you missed the point. If you’re talking about survival information, you want it as low-tech as possible, i.e., hard copy only.

And remember: two is one, one is none.

I’ve been using a VPN for several years. I’ve tried using every major browser except Mulvad and Librewolf. As far as I can tell, they’re doing some form of digital fingerprinting that I can’t block. My only option would be getting an entirely new computer. I went through and overwrote/deleted 15 years of comment history (but have not deleted accounts), it’s just not worth it to me.

I am using Firefox, and with a shit-load of add-ons that supposedly prevent unwanted cookies and fingerprinting. I use a VPN.

I was permanently banned from Reddit (for advocating firebombing nazis, as if that’s a bad thing). When I logged in to an alternate account, that account was also permanently banned. Any account I tried to create after that point ended up being banned within a week, regardless of whether or not I was using it. I checked online. Apparently this has become fairly common in the last 2-3 years.

While you can minimize your digital fingerprint, it’s almost impossible to prevent all digital fingerprinting. The EFF says that I have very strong protection against digital fingerprinting, but I’m still identifiable to a company with sufficient resources to devote to the task.

First, the fact that I have to download the whole blockchain to use it. I’m not on a super fast connection, so that took like a day. The difficulty and expense of getting Monero was also an issue; I had to buy Bitcoins, then move Bitcoins to an exchange that would let me buy Monero, because the exchange I could buy Bitcoin on didn’t work with Monero (due to the perception that it’s only used for criminal activity). At every step, there’s a transaction fee, and that fee isn’t entirely transparent up front, so it’s harder to estimate what the final price (in fiat currency) will be.

At the tiem I was trying to use it, there weren’t any user-friendly wallets, and I don’t think there was any capability to use it from a mobile phone; that makes it more difficult to use than other crypto.

I’m not sure how well it plays with Tails of Qubes; I never got far enough to give it a shot.

I’m not saying that any of these thigns are bad, but they do make it harder for a typical person to start using, and until more regular people are using privacy-focused crypto and operating systems, they’re always going to have the appearance of being used for crime only.

You should be able to submerge any electronic in a pool of distilled water without any effect on the system, as long as the electronics are very clean, and the water is entirely or largely free of contamination of any kind. If I remember correctly, distilled water is dielectric. I believe that they used distilled water as the dielectric fluid for wire EDM back when I was doing tool and die work (like, 20-odd years ago).

Obligatory plug for Monero.

…Which is a huge fucking hassle to try and use, IMO.