Device-wise, have you considered separating your project and personal computer? You could coreboot a small light Chromebook as a personal, ultraportable device, and get a hefty laptop or even a desktop for the hard stuff.

Chatwise, there’s Matrix, XMPP and SimpleX at least. And Briar and Session. But Signal with its phone number registration is the easiest for others to jump to.

And yes, it’s a constant balancing act between privacy and convenience… and the IA of the security triad, and open source principles. Just like with most things, there’s no perfect solution, you just learn to live with the least bad ones.

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To me the value has come mostly from “ok, so it sounds to me you are saying that…” and the ability to confirm that I haven’t misunderstood something (of course with current LLMs both the original answer and the verification have to be taken with a heaping of salt). And the ability to adapt it on the go to a concrete example. So, kind of like a having a teacher or an expert friend, and not just search engine.

Like the last time I relied heavily on a LLM to help/teach me with something it was to explain the PC boot process and BIOS/UEFI to me, and how it applied step by step on how successfully deal with USB and bootloader issues on an “eccentric” HP laptop when installing Linux. The combination of explaining and doing and answering questions was way better than an encyclopedia. No doubt it could have been done with blog posts and textbooks, and I did have to make “educated guesses” on occasion, but all in all it was a great experience.

Yup! Even just LUKSing a partition is hacky. And I lose things often, so it’s an important thing to me.

I didn’t realise iodé supported relocking on FP4. I don’t suppose it’d also happen to support microG in work profile only, deleted from the personal profile?

Because I’d love to return to ethical hardware from Graphene/Pixel, and the lack of FDE on Ubuntu Touch really rubs me the wrong way.

i was well on my way to Ubuntufying my FP4, and then realised there was no simple, update-proof method to encrypt /home. 😭 As I lose things a lot, and don’t want to half-ass or possibly miss something about encryption, that’s a dealbreaker for me.

So next attempt, PostmarketOS! After a detour back to Android to reliably update the startup splash.

TIL chemists clearly got confused by D(ex)/S(in) and R(ight)/L(eft).

Yes, please and thank you!

Don’t get me wrong, Graphene would still be my choice for privacy & security. But what started out as a quest for privacy has somehow morphed to include FLOSS idealism, even AOSP derivatives feel “too google” now and I feel bad carrying a Pixel.

Eh, users can still learn a little, and fiddle with their personal stuff. My little “corebooted Chromebook running Q4OS Linux looking like Windows XP, with background from Apple and the start menu labeled as Finder” brings me joy every time I use it. It was and is pure fun.

And the great thing about enthusiastic devs is that they tend to be happy to spread the joy of their own personal projects and help, unless they get overwhelmed by help requests.

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1. “Easy and painless” depends on your point of view, and we here tend to be biased. For example, just a couple of months ago I had to explain to “a normal person” how to make backup copies of a folder to a pen drive. She did not want additional backup software (and I still don’t know if W10 would have had the functionality out-of-the-box). Copypasting files was too difficult. In the end she decided to go with “save as”, which sounded like a horrible idea to me, since she’couldn’t remember how to open anything in Word that wasn’t in the recently used list when starting the software, and she is going to lose track of which file is which at some point. I doubt it would be “easy and painless” for people like her, who are very common outside our little bubble.

2. Making someone change their opinion is not a sprint, but a marathon. State your opinion openly when relevant, don’t get into an argument, let it brew, mention it again when it comes up, live as you “preach”. That person I mentioned? Happily using Signal with me. Eager(!) to try Linux once W10 support runs out. I’ve told her I’ll install Mint DE on my laptop and loan it to her for unhurried testing and learning this summer while having her familiar backup to lean on if it gets difficult, and to install the same on her own computer when the support runs out, if she still wants me to.

Sleep apnea diagnosis and CPAP.

I’ve tried postmarketOS with Phosh briefly, and while it’s not in my use yet (I have an irrational fear of WebDAV but need my NextCloud), it looks rather “non-blinged” but functional.

Just clarifying that neither F-Droid nor Aurora have anything to do wirh piracy.

F-Droid is for open source software and while yes, some of the apps are replacements for that wouldn’t fly in the app store (NewPipe, Spotube), they are not pirated or piracy tools.

Aurora is just a front-end for Play store that mainly allows you to download free apps without a Google account.

Dean was the one that wasn’t Dean in Gilmore Girls, right? What was that Dean’s name in this again?

I’m going to be boring and just say “Survivor”.

Not just because she is one, because obviously she is, but because around the time of her ordeal(?), 7-9-ish hours ago, Parg’s “Survivor” was making it through Eurovision’s 2nd semifinal.

A little or a lot more every year. Though humanity is pretty resourceful and nature has tardigrades, “never say never” to some post-apocalyptic 10k populations of one or the other surviving somewhere.

There are 202 proven uses for a dead cat, plus the ones when it’s still alive.