I am IP-blocked by a lot of things. At some point a large percentage of population just gets used to the fact that VPNs/proxies are now just a mandatory part of the internet usage.

Fennec right now, switched before Ironfox was out and now switching would be painful as there is no export, so all manual…

I just use a Firefox derivative there as well, because of Ublock. Tried Vanadium but the adblocking was just not good.

The overwhelming majority of my library is actually not digital-native - rather, pdf or djvu scans. I should really contribute to Libgen by scanning some of my library.

Or DRMless digital. But yeah, they need to coexist with paper ones.

I got Conduit working relatively easily. However, it had constant issues with encryption in groups. I never even considered Synapse because it’s too heavy for my minimal, cheap VPS.

Self-hosted XMPP is much easier tho, and it “just works”.

Bur what about servers that are not based in the UK? They are not officiallly doing business there, they just happen to be accessible from there. And with Fediverse, you can specifically choose a server that suits your jurisdiction needs.

I still don’t have an understanding whether this meaningfully downgrades Tor’s security. Because if there was no extra harm, it would be helpful when bridges are blocked frequently, but some VPN services (or just your own VPS setup) have a better obfuscation.

Host a Tor node or bridge right now if it is safe for you))

Also, not everyone has a parking spot with electricity. How are you supposed to charge if you’re parking on a random place on the street, like most people do? I’d joke about “lower a chain of extension cords from your 20th floor”, but that would be assuming you can park next to your home at all. My building’s parking, for example, had all its spots sold out by now, while the very few ones for sale in the neighborhood cost a fortune. Apparently, they were affordable if you bought the apartment new, but on a secondary market - no.

You can ban big hosting providers, but even here they’re cautious with measures like that because it would break WAY too much. Not to mention that you could just use a lesser-known one, even if it doesn’t operate in the country legally.

I am experiencing such banning of providers right now. It is a whack-a-mole, seems futile. Not to mention that most people use sketchy free noname VPNs that are just too numerous. Or apparently some people set up basic XRay/VLESS/whatever and sell it via a Telegram bot…

Interestingly, I am now going through some album series that are not on Youtube, but are on Spotify. It is frustrating because I can’t use Spotify on my phone (browser is incompatible), but I can Youtube, so music discovery is desktop-only. Good thing all of them are on Soulseek, though.

I wish I could do the same. I prefer paper books, we have a massive library and mostly read in our language on paper (except uni textbooks, I wouldn’t want to buy them and the library doesn’t have enough). However, that stopped being feasible when most of my non-fiction reading switched to English. Since English books are mostly not sold locally, I would have gone bankrupt on delivery costs alone. So thanks Libgen for my education.

I do order from online stores quite a bit, but at least I minimize what data they have on me. For example, even before I started caring about privacy, I just happened to always receive the goods in the store’s physical office and pay in cash (the former - because delivery to your door cost extra, the latter - because I was and still am uncomfortable using a card, especially online). That actually excludes the biggest Amazon-like marketplaces (we don’t have Amazon itself, but have several similar ones), since they require prepaying for the order.

Recently I also started ordering without even interacting with the site - I just ask the cashier to order for me into this particular office, and decline when they ask for a phone number for the notification, saying I remember when to come and pick it up.

Which is weird, because where I am, most banks don’t rely on Google services at all for this precise reason (and as a side effect my bank works perfectly on Graphene). Not all budget Chinese phones lack Google services of course, but Huawei and such are still a big chunk of the market.

On Windows, Rufus is just as easy to use tho. And on Linux, there is Gnome Disks.

I just use Gnome Disks for convenience over dd.

I understand that only if you’re into collecting. Personally I am not, and while I am nostalgic for the “scarcity” disks gave, I just don’t see a reason to go back to a physical library. As for ownership - no one can take it away as well, since there is no DRM.

At least my non-techy relatives don’t even know that what they’re doing is called “pirating”, lol. For them, it is just “getting media”.

I only learned that some people paid for digital media when I became fluent in English and got exposed to American social media.