Hmm. OK, I’ve been using AdAway (not AdGuard) as DNS and/or VPN, experimenting with both) under Pixel 9 stock OS, and it mostly works… but some apps and websites still get ads through.

LineageOS w/Adaway root /etc/hosts blocklists was 100% perfect on my older phone… that’s my main quibble with trying LineageOS vs. GrapheneOS.

I know some people recommend against rooting, but I’ve never had security issues doing it and it seemed to offer more bulletproof ad-blocking.

Can you tell me how the ad experience is with GrapheneOS? As in, do apps which try to insert ads in screen transitions (or anywhere) still do so? Or websites which put in AdSense popups?

GrapheneOS doesn’t recommend AdAway or other adblocking solutions, so does it do so itself?

As of today at least, I can still download video/audio from YT on my android phone with NewPipe…

Search for v2.79 (if memory serves) on oldversion.com for the last ‘good’ version of classic winamp, and the streamripper plugin is still floating around somewhere on the 'net…

An absolutely ancient tool I used to use was WinAmp (v2.x) with the Streamripper plugin. It would save out each song from a shoutcast or icecast station to a file with the artist/album/title/track like a champ. Maybe not quite what you want (won’t do youtube) but there are a ton of great indie stations on the vorbis icecast network…

Is… is vibe cat still with us?

Use a straw if available…

I feel your frustration… though a decent phone w/o locked Android shouldn’t require global thermonuclear war I hope!

I stress about what phone, if any, I’ll be able to install a non-bloatware, rooted, vanila OS on once the models my wife & I have become too ‘obsolete’. (OnePlus 5T with LineageOS).

Ah, hashcash. Wish that had taken off, it was a good idea …

Yes, and they used the name first, not google. Arseholes.

if jobs had living wages

But but billionaires would be slightly less obscenely rich then, oh no!

They shouldn’t cluster so closely together, it’s a risk. Not that I’m suggesting anything.

Thank you.

If you’ve ensured your home network’s firewall is sane first, there’s no big issue.

If you dual-boot to Windows occasionally to run that one stupid program that can’t run under Linux, and you aren’t downloading stuff willy-nilly from the wild internet, and you haven’t previously installed all sorts of dodgy call-home programs, you can still be safe running while you’re in Windows. Hell, I have a Windows 7 box that runs just fine from my home network to the internet, thankyouverymuch. I even download stuff from there gasp, but I check the files first! Imagine that.

Most people aren’t knowledgeable enough to maintain proper security however so I guess I should just stop commenting on posts like this, as I always get flak from people stating it’s impossible to run an OS more than 2 weeks old on the Internet without being instantly hacked :p.

But still… as others say, I totally agree – move to Linux if you can.

Just block W11 updates entirely.

https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-8/

It’s mostly bullshit that one absolutely needs the latest Windows updates; if you use uBlock Origin in your browser and don’t download/run random .EXE/.MSI shit from the internet you’ll be fine. Keep Windows Defender up to date once a month just in case as well.

But really the best option is to switch to Linux.

Palantir, which the US gov is now (let’s not kid ourselves, has been for some time illegally) contracting, probably already has your face either from street cams, security cams in various company buildings, or from social media at this point, so letting you ‘opt out’ is probably just theatre to avoid angering people at airports.

Oh, I’ve been killed by a quokka too many times to count…

There’s a dedicated tool named sshguard which works nicely.

Madagascar’s always the hardest to wipe out in that Pandemic game, if that helps :P

If you go to New Zealand, you’ll have to deal with the shithead billionaires there who will have moved there a few days ahead of you, (since they’ll get extra warning of course), who will have moved already into the fortress-bunkers they’ve been making for a decade or so there.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/billionaires-are-building-luxury-bunkers-to-escape-doomsday/

https://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/articles/9ifugmdie5ofe1utd1bgsw4zascn61

It should be a life mission of anyone in New Zealand, when the time comes, to find out where their air systems reach the surface and throw a few grenades down the ducts. For the good of humanity (whatever’s left).

I had not heard of Jackett and to be honest haven’t really looked into aggregators. Will look into it, thank you.