You can pick what search engines are sourced, which is fanatic, and it’s fully anonymous. My preferred instance is disroot’s (https://search.disroot.org) as they are a super trustworthy nonprofit in my book.

CryptPad is my go to, there’s many different instances where you can make an account. Fully encrypted and allows for doc sharing plus working with others on the doc at the same time. Offline can be accomplished by ensuring you downloaded the file, and then uploading the updated doc once back online. It’s the bee’s knee’s! https://cryptpad.fr/

The facts are it’s an oligopoly which is rapidly moving towards pairing this with totalitarianism. Propaganda is so pronounced today that finding actual news is a chore, and if shared it’s labeled as “fake news”. A study was recently published demonstrating political moves are made without any care for how it impacts the masses. It’s tough to see the decline happen in real time while most deny it’s occurrence. Most are too focused on owning others in the working class with alternative ideals.

But in the U.S., the natural beauty is phenomenal. Yet it’s being traded to allow conglomerates to squeeze more profit out of dwindling resources. If something doesn’t change the course soon, this answer potentially could land me in prison in the near future. Which is counter to what the country was supposedly established to prevent. It’s rough in many aspects, yet not entirely hopeless, at least as of this moment.

The only real option worthwhile is to get nerdy and play the same game. Change up how and what you connect online as well as running security and privacy based open source firmware + software on your devices. Aside from that, protesting would be another option with some teeth too!

In the big picture, it’s due to the microscopic world having massive implications across life. I’ve also lost friends and family to autoimmune disorders and cancer, so my long term goal is to improve our understanding in the field. Immunology is super fascinating, but there’s more we don’t know than we know about the immune system. We don’t even understand how fever works or Tylenol from start to finish for example!

What makes you stoked about physics?

Mines a toss up between microbiology and immunology, but I also totally get your favorite as it’s the basis for all sciences!

The influencing aspect here is almost certainly tied into the drop of search engine efficacy recently. Big tech finally collected enough data from you and everyone you know to now be able to alter what answer you find for the question you asked. Wildly, this same question now generates different results depending on the profile they’ve assigned you. MullVads Total Surveillance paper published last October highlights this explicitly. This is why data collection matters, not due to ads, but the ability of Big Tech to change how you view the world. Your data impacts the search results you see, as well as everyone similar to you…

Edit: Here’s the link to the MullVad paper https://mullvad.net/pdfs/Total_surveillance.pdf

Use latlong.net/convert-address-to-lat-long.html, life saver with osmand+!

I know a cat that loses it’s mind for Nutzo, the one with a bunch of different nuts. I’ve seen it even get the classic dog and peanut butter mouth situation going on too lol

With the original Beeper app you made an Apple ID through Apples website to use for setting up iMessage. This does require folks having the email in order to use iMessage, so definetly worth setting up an alias. It still works, while Beeper Mini doesn’t apparently.

Ya, implying recommending FOSS options is an involuntary action was tongue-in-cheek.

When I say “don’t think of a panda”, what do you think of? Pretty much the same thing with saying “don’t recommend me FOSS options” lol

Classic example of judging a book by it’s cover I guess. The fact big tech is embracing open source software more and more, you’d think this assessment should no longer be the case.

Even without being a programmer, associating Free Software with a MASSIVE purchase is bonkers.

This is the way, it’s easy and at times even contagious!

We Might Be Drunk is the podcast I listen to with the most consistency, and definitely worth a listen. Two of my favorite comedians (Mark Norman & Sam Morrill) who are hilarious while also getting into aspects of day to day life.

“The older I get, the longer the days but the shorter the years.” - Gramps

I’ve given Qubes a go, it’s a bit much for my threat model. Fedora is a well ranked OS from a privacy and security standpoint, not on the same level as Qubes, but Qubes uses it as the base OS. Fedora’s easier on the eyes and straight forward. Is Qubes your daily driver?

I’m mainly privacy and security focused when it comes to software. My first Linux distro was Whonix. It’s like if Tor expanded from the browser into an OS. Its a bit clunky and outdated though, so not a great daily driver. My second and current distro was the KDE spin of Fedora. It’s been amazing top to bottom. Unfortunately Red Hat recently started some drama, but Fedora shouldn’t be impacted as its upstream. If Red Hat’s greasy paws do mess things up, I’m thinking about running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Hopefully it’s just me over thinking and Fedora will remain a stellar OS option for years to come.

I know www.open-assistant.io was looking for help from anyone to put the final touches on their AI a little while back. Haven’t kept up recently but it’ll be a solid option once live.