All I’m saying is threat model for journalists, in authoritarian states, are way higher than us. Their research can lead them to get jailed or even killed. Their requirement for privacy is not the same as everyone else.
Everyone needs privacy but not everyone can pay premium for their privacy. Like in real life, privacy and convenience are a compromise. You can pay premium to live in walled communities or be a tenant in a busy apartment complex where most people know about you.
Google, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter are “free” because it harvests data. There are cheap Chinese smartphones because they can shove ads to its buyers.
Not everyone can buy premium smartphones, are knowledgeable to prevent tracking, code, or churn up a instance in the cloud to host a Matrix server to talk with their family and friends. For them it’s a compromise of their privacy with the convenience of using a “free” product. Even in an hosted instance of an open-source software, you have to put your trust on the administrators.
For privacy, anything from Apple, Google, or Microsoft is just deal-with-it topped off with sugar coated marketing. For most people that’s not much of a problem.
But for journalists and privacy conscious people, Linux phones with open source hardware is the only chance for real privacy. Which, unfortunately, are not getting mainstream anytime soon
For Privacy, I think it is almost the same. You could make an argument a router may be more stable, less code, less services which offers more reliability.
The only thing I can think of currently is, on other devices, apps and software may be able to detect a VPN app running but then again most VPN IP are already detectable because they run on non-residential servers.
At the end of the day, it’s connecting to the same VPN.
It’s beneficial in a sense router counts as a single device. VPN providers usually have a device limit. So if you have multiple devices at home, and the VPN is setup on the router, it frees up slots for other devices when anyone is outside. And needs less configuration on all the other home devices including smart-home devices.
Isn’t saying “hard to find an angle that wasn’t a ludicrous dead end.” is a little disingenuous? may be currently but science and technology are ever evolving and new discoveries can change things drastically in many ways.
It doesn’t have to feed the whole world, it just has to convince some who are on the edge and who don’t want to move to plant based meat alternatives. And traditional meat isn’t going anywhere soon and wilI probably never go away entirely.
that was a good read. But when the discussions start, all we’re left is pointing fingers in the other direction.
Automobil points to Aviation, Aviation points to cruise ships. Government points manufacturers, manufacturers point to consumer demands. ㄟ(ツ)ㄏ
As always people are left with the consequence and very small percentage care enough to make changes to their lifestyle to help the environment.
if you fear they might shutdown, you can self-host it yourself and get the functionality and control.
https://bitwarden.com/help/article/install-on-premise/#install-docker-and-docker-compose
last time I tried their search page was very javascript heavy. results were kindof meh but I used it for a couple of months then the slow speed started becoming annoying so I stopped using it. Around the same time, I was trying Ecosia as well, trying out the European search engines, because of their privacy stance.
But they got annoying and Qwant (afaicr) even started showing captcha. I don’t even search that much. Ecosia didn’t implement a dark interface. not that important but kinda blinding during night. So left them both for searx