my_hat_stinks

Username and display name can be set independently, you should have a “Display name” field in settings. Their non-unique display name is “max” and their unique username is “@[email protected]”. If you check their profile you should see both.

If you don’t set a display name it will be the same as your username, if you set display name to the same as username (like I have) it’ll show your username without the instance even to people on other instances.

I’m not sure I follow that analogy, if you get a ride to a hospital you don’t expect it to lock off all other destinations. What happens in the hospital is irrelevant.

From reading the article, this is more like if you walk into a hotel and they burn down your house so you have no choice but to stay. I suppose in theory you could argue in very bad faith that this is a problem with the house since it’s the house that burned, but in reality the problem is the fact they’re the ones who started the fire.

Ads. Specifically, a popup served by the OS about chrome and switching to bing or edge or something like that. I didn’t even use chrome, just having it installed was enough for them. Any ads baked into the OS is unacceptable, but that’s just so far over the line that I find it insane anyone still uses Windows at all.

I contacted support to complain and their “solution” was to reinstall the OS, so I installed a better one instead.

I’m not really sure what you’re asking since your post is a but unfocused, but if your problem is that you have too many addresses with different providers you could simply redirect mail from alternate addresses to whichever one you actually check. When I switched to proton I didn’t delete my old gmail account, I simply imported my old emails and set up email forwarding (see here for Proton’s migration instructions from Gmail). If you want to completely de-Google you don’t need to do it all at once, just migrate accounts to your new addresses as needed.

If you want a separate account for your PC then this does of course require a separate account. There isn’t really a solution there since your problem is also your requirement. You could set up separate folders or aliases for your PC and phone but that might not have the same level of separation you want.

I’d recommend switching away from Chrome-based browsers entirely anyway due to Google forcing through questionable standards by throwing their near-monopoly around, but using one Google service doesn’t mean it’s pointless to switch away from others. You don’t need to do everything at once.

That’s an understatement, PayPal will pretty much always side with the buyer no matter how ridiculous and outlandish their claim. I even had one “dispute” where the scammer changed the dispute reason which caused PayPal to ignore what I’d already submitted and close it in their favour by default as “no response”. PayPal is very much pro-scammer, avoid if possible.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had to deal with clients directly, I don’t think I’ll ever miss it.

Because that would be the same quality. This is the internet, if an image is still recognisable after being shared five times you’re doing something wrong.

I feel like someone not releasing anything but squatting IP rights for 13 years is a poor argument for longer copyright terms.

Your security is only as good as the weakest link, which is usually people. If your password policy encourages users to stick a note to their screen then your weakest link is anyone in the office deciding to take a selfie or joining a call with their camera on. Best practices balance security with what users are actually willing to do.

Good luck remembering them all, also change them all every 30 days, so here are my secrets.

Password expiry hasn’t been considered best practice for a long time (must be at least a decade now?) largely because of the other points you mentioned; it leads to weak easily memorable passwords written somewhere easily accessible. Even when it was considered good 30 days would have been an unusually short time.

Current advice is to change passwords whenever there’s a chance it’s been compromised, not on a schedule.

It might not necessarily be that the instances are stricter, it could also simply be that those instances are targeted more often by hate/trolls so interact with those instances more often. Admins are less likely to defederate from an instance they’ve never seen or heard of. I see a lot of obviously LGBT-related names in this list which likely get more hate than average.

If someone said they were concerned about their sugar intake would you tell them to just stop eating entirely? It’s possible to take steps towards privacy-friendly services without cutting yourself off from the modern world in the same way as you can cut back on sugar and still eat food.

You absolutely do not need to “burn all your devices” to improve your privacy, suggesting so is unhelpful at best.

QR codes essentially just encode text, as long as you’re using a sensible QR code reader and check any URLs before opening them there’s minimal risk to scanning a QR code.

There’s definitely some issues that jump out to me on first read.

1. I’m not sure about “indivisible”. An area should be able to self-govern if desired. More detail needed.
2. Awful. Removing people’s voting rights in general is bad, and something as nebulous as “a criminal offence” is incredibly easy to abuse. Are people no longer citizens if they steal a loaf of bread? Also, voting age here is 16/18.
4. No. Guns are incredibly rare where I am. I’d rather not have one, and I’d prefer not to risk getting shot every time some asshole on the street gets mad.
7. Limiting land to a single use is generally not a great idea. What if for instance you have too much agricultural land and not enough housing?
10. A central state-owned bank isn’t a bad idea, but abolishing all non-state banks is iffy. Should the government really have so much direct control over everyone’s finances?
12. Your salary should not be based on the amount of unprotected sex you have. That’s just silly. Other support should be available for those who need it.

If you can’t read a licence plate at 20 metres you can’t safely drive. Being able to read a licence plate at 20 metres does not make you a safe driver. The test still matters.

There’s no discount there, you’re just accepting their marketing bullshit. That sounds to me like the company is double-dipping by shoving ads in your face and making the product objectively worse, then charging even more for a “premium” model where the only difference is they haven’t intentionally downgraded it.

with extras like […] no lockscreen ads

What the fuck? Why is that an extra not just the default? It’s great that this product isn’t riddled with ads, but that’s like saying it’s great a burger is not made of human shit; it’s crazy that anyone would tolerate a shit-burger in the first place.

Maybe ads are normal in the e-reader space for some reason, but that’s just insane to me.

I’m not sure that’s a completely accurate analogy either. When you’re using a VPN people can still see that you are sending traffic through your tunnel, they just can’t tell what it is that you’re sending. It’s like looking through frosted glass; there’s definitely something moving in there but you can’t tell what.

I suppose the best way to describe it is you send a locked box to a trusted friend; everyone handling it can see the box but can’t tell what’s inside. Inside the box is a letter, your friend posts it so it looks like it came from them. Your friend then gets a reply, puts it in a locked box, and send it back to you. Nobody between you and your friend can snoop on your mail but anyone between your friend and the final destination can.

There’s no need to be a dick about it, just because you know a something doesn’t mean everyone else must also know it. I can guarantee there’s common terms you aren’t familiar with. Especially when you consider that this is marketing jargon with common alternate terms (eg demo reel).

The article you linked is about brutal mistreatment and forced “disinfection” of people crossing a border. As horible as that is, do you truly believe that is the same scale of evil as systematic genocide?

I’m not American and that article doesn’t mention liberalism, so I’d appreciate it if you highlight the connection there too.

Just to clarify, you believe “American Liberal” is more extreme than Nazis?