Ah, yes, here come the “just use your old car because EVs are worse for the environment than the Exxon Valdez or something” posts

That is a myth thoroughly debunked by just a little bit of research and data collection into the making and driving of EVs, as that assumption ran off an old study that used guesstimated worst-case scenario numbers and don’t really reflect what the actual numbers are.

If you want to avoid being tracked, you will have to disconnect the data modem somehow - it is part of your radio antenna. If it gets no power, it gets no connection. Either disconnect from the telematics unit, or at the antenna. Also, you can disconnect your telematics unit itself - the “black box” that lives under the dash and records your driving. Some aftermarket makers have “dummy plug” connectors which will trick the car into thinking it is connected. These are often used with aftermarket head units.

Beware that some cars are tracked by your financial lender, and they don’t like it when this happens. Some other cars actually have to be cloud connected once in a while or they stop working - which is the worst thing modern cars can do.

disconnect telematics units and/or radio modems.

The lack of VoLTE in Linux OS phones is a dealbreaker for me, but otherwise, I’ve run pmOS with Posh and it works reasonably well now as of 25.06

Glad me and family are not on social media.

Is there something you absolutely need root for? Or can you get away with not having root? It is always better to not have root capability, as that is a huge attack vector.

Privacy =/= Security. Windows XP might have good privacy (I would argue Windows 2000 is better for that, as it doesn’t have Product Activation), but security is nonexistant in 2025 in either case. For malware, it’s free real estate.

Graphene isn’t dead. They just have slowed down a bit. They’ve already released their first Alpha for 16

VoLTE isn’t yet supported in Linux because no one has yet completed writing an open source implementation. Unfortunately, phone manufacturers, chip manufacturers, and cell carriers all hold these cards very close to their chests, so drivers have to be written from scratch by reverse engineering the protocols, which are encrypted on top of being completely nebulous. Support is coming, eventually, but it takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort to do this, which nobody has time to do.

https://grapheneos.org/

Only for Google Pixel phones. The install process is right there. You just need a chromium-based browser (chrome, edge, vivaldi, opera, brave, etc.), an Unlocked Pixel, and the usb cable.

Also, back up your stuff. Flash Unlocking your phone to install a different OS erases everything on it (for security reasons).

Phone carriers don’t want people “churning” (leaving their network for another) so they enforce the phone’s locking, especially if you buy the phone from the cell carrier, as they often advertise free phone or cheap phone on a payment plan, and use that to enforce people staying on their network.

Depends. Do you want the possibility of an AI model being able to fork over some private details in your convos? The potential for someone that doesn’t like what you believe in to subpoena google for this data?

As for bricking, it won’t, and the whole process is on the website, using a chrome-based browser and usb cable (it detects which pixel you have and does all the hard stuff) but you do have to back up your stuff as it will erase when it gets graphened.

If you don’t want this stuff on your phone, lemme point you to:

GrapheneOS (Pixels only, has Most Security at Tinfoil Hat level while also providing compatibility for Google Play (optional, sandboxed) and SafetyNet)

CalyxOS (Pixels, Some Moto G 5G, Fairphone 5, 4, SHIFTphone 8, less Security than GrapheneOS but has Security)

LineageOS (Many older devices, runs unlocked boot so least Security but still can run sans google)

Specifically, it is Fedora Flatpaks, as there have been several problems with Fedora Flatpaks being broken where the official Flatpaks are not.

So, I assume your greatest competitor is TempleOS…

However, allowing ads means allowing tracking. You got corelation with the ads being served from ad brokers, who can now see what sites you been on and have a record of where you’ve been.

Don’t use your Tor session to sign in. Also banks will probably not let you sign in via Tor.

Yes, turning off adblocker is worse. You should be using Tor browser with default configuration to browse privately, and never sign in to anything to further avoid getting tracked.

Browser fingerprinting takes measurement of things the browser exposes. If a browser exposes installed extensions, this can be used to corelate information. If awebsite checks if the browser loaded something or not, that also can be used to corelate.

Example, you (ip address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) visited this website (trackingsite.xyz), with a screen resolution of 1920x1080, using a (Mozilla/firefox) browser. The three trigger pixels did not load, meaning you’re using an adblocker, and the remote font loaded from localhost, not google. Your canvas, microphone, and camera are all blocked. Your browser also responded to an api ping for (useful extension). Interesting. This same configuration was also on (othertrackingsite.xyz) and (definitelyalegalsite.xyz), both of which a browser with the same info navigated to for at least 5 minutes, so we know it wasn’t a mistype. This same browser configuration was seen regularly browsing these sites on [days of the week] at [time of day], indicating a regular habit.

We know who you are and where you have gone.

How about running an Opnsense VLAN routed through the VPN, so your PC doesn’t have to have a client side VPN app and just assumes by normal router function its WAN IP is the VPN IP, and being in an isolated VLAN it is a device that lives solo on its own little network.

Everywhere except in the USA’s Republican states. It’s an unforgiveable sin to be seen with a mask on there for stupid reasons.

TRIM is a command / instruction for solid state storage to release a block of data, so it is blanked and ready to be written again.

So now we know, iPhones and iPads don’t TRIM their storage memory.

Debian LXDE goat

Lowest memory usage desktop that is at least functionally complete and doesn’t require relearning how to everything.

Second this. Mint is a “just works”, has support for nvidia and dual graphics, and it also does secure boot as well, which all distros should be doing by now… Arch

Correct. After a certain year.

Win 11 Pro lets you skip MS Account Creation - 11 non-pro does not