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 Fedora? I’ve had one or two issues with the updater if I postponed the updates for a while, yet sudo dnf update always fixed the issue. I feel like thats step one for terminal use really. It’s also nice when it’s done this way you typically don’t need to reboot, unless it’s kernel or driver updates.

I feel like Mint is the move if you never want to utilize the terminal. But while it can be intimidating initially, after using it, you’ll grow to love it. Truly makes life way easier. I learned by first finding threads on my issues to copy and paste commands. After doing that enough you’ll gain an understanding of the main commands pretty quick. Fedora is a great starter in my mind, as you can do everything through the GUI when first starting, but unlike Mint, you can still get nerdy with the terminal when you feel up to it. Using a VM is a solid option to learn the terminal without any risk, worst case just delete the VM and make another. But you’d have to mess up pretty thoroughly to need to do that in my experience. Fedora, or Nobara which is a gaming and media centric fork of Fedora, are amazing due to the ability to run great out of the box plus being able to dial in anything you want to alter for your needs down the road. Fedora’s Software center allows you to add flatpak and snap packages, so it’ll all be in one place. Fedora 40 makes NVIDIA drivers pretty easy to deal with too. But this is just my two cents, I’m curious to see what others recommend for you.

Using cash to buy a prepaid card is always a decent option. Makes it very difficult to associate the payment with the buyer. As far as a MySudo alternative, keep an eye on JMP.chat! They do work in the EU now, but they only provide US numbers. However, they are actively working on being able to provide EU numbers at least.

Aegis is my absolute favorite for 2FA’s, give it a try for sure. Pretty sure it’s only available on Android unfortunately though.

So Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and all the others who’ve redefined what data collection looks like and keep folks self centered is fine? The only reason the US is throwing this fit is because they can’t access the collected data like they can with US based data brokers, I mean social media. The key aspect of this ban revolves around freedom of speach more than anything else.

If you’re talking OpenWRT, then I totally agree. But something like Asus Merlin is a relatively easy change and still provides additional protection. While part of the Asus code is closed-source, most is open-sourced and Asus has implemented improvements developed by the Merlin team. This shows Merlin knows what they’re doing and are trustworthy too.

Running as much open-sourced privacy oriented software as possible. This includes on computers, routers, and phones. While this is 100% a marathon, not just a quick change, it’s well worth the time. Utilizing an encrypted DNS would be another solid move. NextDNS is a fantastic choice as it has a free option which still provides granular control of what is filtered online. A trusted VPN mixing your internet traffic with others is great, but like you said, it’s not a magic bullet whatsoever.

Viruses have always been both quite simple and intricate. Recent advances in lab tech has allowed for a more detailed understanding to be possible that wasn’t feasible before. Viruses have evolved to only posses the absolute basics as they mainly utilize the host’s machinery. Each virus family is more related to it’s host than to any other virus family. Meaning they all have a unique approach for infection and replication. This being the case, I find all research into viruses to be relevant as there’s still so much to learn.

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!

Fedora SecureBlue is hardened Fedora, and Fedora is also the base layer for Qubes as it’s all in all quite secure and private with some setting changes. I don’t know, but Qubes is top tier in my book. Tails OS could be another option if you’re that big on privacy and security though.

Qubes OS is Snowdens daily driver, Fedora SecureBlue is also designed with security and privacy in mind.

Best bet will be to purchase Monero (XMR) anonymously, it’s literally designed to be anonymous, then swap it into BTC. You’ll then want a hard wallet to keep it secure until you have a reason to transfer it. Ledger is a decent option for a hard wallet, just be sure it’s paid for in the XMR you bought anonymously or the BTC you swapped for XMR. NanoS is my recommendation for the specific wallet, but the tricky part will be getting it shipped to you anonymously as you CAN’T trust a used hard wallet.

I’m a microbiologist and immunologist with a love for helping others understand the microscopic world around them. The portion of the research paper quoted below highlights why big business should be quite interested, as they can increase their profits. This is because not only can it be grown from “waste” products, but it’s also super resilient. The biofilms it’s evolved to mimic can only be treated via excision when they form in the human body today. But there are current studies going on right now using gold coated in a specific sugar which biofilms have an affinity for, and then a laser is used to excite the gold particle resulting in heat and movement, ultimately destroying the biofilm 🤯.

“In carbon-rich media, these bacteria polymerize and secrete linear chains of glucose. These chains then self-assemble into a dense interconnected mesh of cellulose fibers. This cellulose mesh, called a pellicle, floats at the air–water interface and envelops and protects the growing cells, like a biofilm. Key to the industrial interest in bacterial cellulose (BC), it can be grown quickly, cheaply and sustainably—a BC pellicle can be grown in 7–14 days, in high yields (>10 g/L) and from waste feedstocks, such as rotten fruit juice, glycerol, and molasses. Additionally, BC has advanced material properties such as high tensile strength, high water-holding capacity and high purity. These features have led to interest in using BC in high-end acoustic devices, as a battery separator membrane, and in wound healing. The ease of growing BC has also led to BC becoming an attractive prototype biomaterial for some in design and fashion who seek to speculate on methods of sustainable textile production…We decided to engineer the biosynthesis of the dark melanin pigment, eumelanin, into K. rhaeticus [a specific bacterial species]. Eumelanin, a ubiquitous pigment found across biological kingdoms, is stable in high heat and over long time spans. Crucially, eumelanin has low water solubility, a property shared by many common dyes, such as indigo, that contributes to the color fastness of a pigment. Additionally, eumelanin also offers several other interesting properties, such as electrical conductivity, broadband light, and UV absorption and protection from ionizing radiation.”

Edit: Here’s a link to the paper if you’re curious as well https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41587-024-02194-3

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

Be sure to switch as soon as Fossify releases their fork of it, Simple Mobile sold out HARD! Thankfully the 2nd in command at Simple Mobile created Fossify and is releasing all the apps to keep everything open sourced.

This product is made by bacteria though, truly they just get a safe place to live and all the nutrients they want, which sounds pretty sweet! However, every time humans take a dump after drinking a cup of coffee, bacteria are excreted from the microbiota, which results in most of the bacteria dying. That’s unless they can withstand the aerobic environment, UV radiation, nutrient scarcity, adverse temperatures, as well as desiccation. So, while this new leather alt product allows bacteria to thrive, your morning duce is where bacteria are murdered regularly regardless of your diet!

While this is all news to me, the biggest difference seems to be that MarkNote allows for rich text notes. I’m curious to know what I’m missing, cause I’d think they could have just added this to KleverNotes.