utopiah

Because

• it works (pretty fundamental!),
• popular alternatives are pretty much evil.

So, I know you think the 2nd point is a hyperbole. That truly I'm exaggerating. Well, actually no, I'm not. I genuinely believe that closed source OSes are one of the biggest epistemological trauma Mankind ever experienced. It's right behind fake as an organized political tool. Sure troll farms and political advertising take the cake... but honestly a locked down OS is very very close. Why? Well because it forces people who use a computer to assume the computer is a black box. It's a thing they can use a certain way. That certain way might be good, lucky them, or bad but regardless they must find a way to make their entire life, professional and private, fit within that very small black box. They are trained, day after day, interaction after interaction, as a lifetime of servitude. The personal computer was supposed to be a "bicycle for the mind" but truly, between closed source OS and the "cloud" (someone else computer, for profit) Mankind has been trained to accept and use a computer as they have been told.

This is an absolute disgrace and should never be accepted. This was bad in the 70s... but nowadays everything around you is a computer. Your computer is a computer (duh) but your phone is a computer, your console is a computer, your headphones are tiny computers, your e-bike is a computer, your doorbell is a computer, your printer is a computer, your washing machine is a computer, heck a light bulb or a button on your wall might be computers!

So... when your entire life is surrounded by small black boxes you are taught never to challenge, your life is miserable.

That's why I switched to Linux.

people still believe that VPN is a safe option

What does that sentence even mean without context?

Safe against whom? I'm pretty convinced a VPN is safe against :

• your boss or manager if you somehow browse on your corporate network
• your flatmates or family member if you browse at home and do not necessary trust them or whomever setup the router
• your school
• the manager of the cafe you are using WiFi on

I'm pretty convinced might be safe against larger scale surveillance :

• your ISP if it is not doing deep packet inspection (and that's pretty much per country basis AFAICT)

I'm pretty convinced might NOT be safe against professional individual surveillance :

• state level professionals using exploits and actually knowing your name, not your nickname
• your VPN provider or the cloud provider you rely on to install the backend side of Wireguard or OpenVPN

So... no I don't think anyone can make your VPN pointless. Clearly the random person sitting next to me in a cafe can not. Only few people with the technical expertise or power can do that. None of that matters though if you already volunteer your information elsewhere publicly on private platforms like Instagram or YouTube though.

For my own project I'm looking for a way to be protocol agnostic and support either, and ideally more. If you have ideas https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/biggu_s_gate/issues/24 please let me know.

I wish... and I did try. You can see my post history but basically PinePhone and PinePhone Pro sitting neatly on the shelf.

They work. Sure, but between battery life or rather power management, lack of camera on the Pro, lack of MIPS on the base model to use Android apps via Waydroid, I had a lot of fun tinkering, but for me these are not daily drives.

For now I'm stuck with deGoogle Android thanks to /e/OS pre-installed by Murena on a CMF Nothing 1. It's neat thanks to F-Droid, Termux, KDE Connect, GadgetBridge, etc but overall I'd much rather be on Linux proper. If there is a path please do share.

If I understood correctly "they" here means Google and Apple because they are corporations that sell products, advertisement brokerage, SaaS, physical devices, etc in the EU. They have to comply otherwise they wouldn't be able to make money if one of the most profitable markets. They solely chose to comply because it puts their baseline at risk, not solely because of regional laws.

It's just the beginning of the fun :P then it's years, decades, a life time of tinkering together! Enjoy and thanks for helping her.

Neat, glad you managed.

2 quick tips :

• yes, going upstream if it's maintained is usually the best choice
• hardware is a problem only once, when you transition. Once it's done you will only buy hardware that you know will work. So yes it's annoying but it gets easier.

Canary coal mine kind of signal (pardon the pun)

Edit: they also obviously do not have a choice. If they legally must weaken their work and the core of their work is that it's not weak... then they have no work. So they can't accept it.

banned from EU app stores

What even is that? Aren't the 2 app official app stores American anyway?

Not sure for others brands but for Logi(tech) there is now https://github.com/PixlOne/logiops and few other utils.

When did you realize your gf was actually a robot? /s & kudos

Optional registration with a bright visible yellow sticker in Belgium https://mybike.belgium.be/

Does it work? Who knows but at least signals to anybody who might want to still your bike that you went the extra mile to prevent theft and you will consequently be annoying enough to signal it at stolen wherever you can. Sure it can be removed somehow (Dremel I guess) but it's extra work that will look very suspicious on a "normal" sale.

FWIW it's also free, you just request the sticker on their Website and receive it by mail few days after.