How to run something you don’t trust without performance lost?

A virtual machine is generally your best choice. You build a little box around it and tell it to have fun inside that box.

It doesn’t work well for games (you can do it with games, but it’s generally not worth it), but for smaller programs, it is a very reliable choice with minimal performance impact.

Things with admin privilege have access to everything. If it is only user-privileged, it only has access to what that user was granted access to.

Well, that is fair. Those anti-cheats are in user-land on not-windows. Don’t think I have given admin permissions to any game, including those with Easy Anti-Cheat, etc.

I’m still surprised Microsoft allows those to exist. Particularly for something as mundane as games.

steam games for example are nearly impossible to run without admin

What steam game requires admin permissions? I’m not aware of any games that require admin permissions.

I’ve glanced over a project or two before. It’s usually less an audit, and more of a ‘what is going on in there?’ curiosity.

Though it does have the side-effect of being a low-intensity audit as well. :)

How do they pay for the service?

Free VPNs are simply a bad idea.

What are they getting from you that allows them to pay for the ‘free’ service? It certainly isn’t a monthly sub, and there is only one other thing you are sending them…your data.

I second your idea of going with Pi-Hole. It is purpose-made for this and easy to setup.

You could hit the page via Tor to anonymize your access, then use the Save Page As context menu item to save the page.

Your best bet is to pickup a new flash drive. Luckily, a quality 256 gb flash drive is like $25 now.

7zip also allows for higher compression levels than the built in Windows tool. Would check that out as well.

One Time Pads are nice, as they are the only mathematically proven way to encrypt something in a way that it cannot be decrypted without owning the key.

a 3rd partition formatted to FAT32

exFAT is also pretty solid for this purpose and doesn’t have the file size limitations that FAT32 has.

But it’s getting so hard nowadays

It’s a sliding scale; it isn’t just ‘full privacy’ or ‘no privacy’. Everyone makes compromises somewhere based on their personal preferences. Most people would agree posting their credit card number on a public forum is too far into the ‘no privacy’ band, for example.

how does privacy improve the world

It’s up to you, but I don’t like trusting my personal info with untrustworthy companies.

There are lots of random assholes on the internet. I like when they are forced to stay on the internet and not able to bring their asshollery into one’s real life.

If you have a username attached to a publicly posted comment, people will be able to see your history. The internet is forever. Publicly posted comments are, by definition, not private. Treating them as such, in any capacity, is a mistake.

The biggest thing is to not post personal details, or to even post accumulations of details over many comments that can narrow things down. The weather where you are at the time, what type of car you drive (or your lack of a car), what type of job you have, etc, etc, etc. On their own, each of these pieces of information don’t mean much, but you start putting them together and you can narrow things down considerably.

It is also not a bad idea to occasionally throw in some misinformation about yourself. Maybe you don’t drive a Corolla, but instead a Hilux.

Yep. Passcode unlocks are legally protected, unlike fingerprint unlocks. If you have any desire to keep the police out of your phone, you should not have fingerprint unlock enabled.

Best description of this I have seen is: the 5th Amendment protects compelled production what you know. It does not protect what you are (fingerprints, hair, etc).

It’s gross they were collecting them in the first place.

That entire idea is terrifying.

A notable way to protect against this is to use a VPN. Then the operator only knows you use a VPN.

Also need to be careful of what you write in comments (this is a public forum!). People sometimes write a surprising amount of detail about their life and it makes it much easier to narrow you down to a single individual the more you do it.

Framework absolutely makes PCs. Most notably in the laptop form factor.

For a laptop, Framework is absolutely peak for repair and upgradability. They even offer newer generation motherboards that continue to work with older generation framework laptops. Enabling you to upgrade the core components while not having to rebuy the chassis, monitor, etc.

For a desktop, either build one yourself or buy from one of the companies that assemble it for you. Companies like Maingear.

After you run out, hit the embed button, then watch the video as normal.

If it is full disk encryption or for file containers I plan to update regularly, VeraCrypt. It’s quite capable and has quite a number of encryption options.

For individual file or folder encryption, 7zip. It’s a very straightforward program that is worth having installed given how much good of an all-round zip program it is.

I use Protonmail as they offer quite a bit of privacy, offer lots of features, and are free. I particularly like that they protect from tracking pixels notifying the sender you read their email.

Brave is one of the more privacy-centric search engines. I don’t think it is the best on privacy, but it is pretty good.

Google to stop spying on basically everything if you have a default Android install.

When other people are at your house, why do you close the door to the bathroom when you are pooping?

“You can’t see anyone watching you” Why not just close your eyes, you won’t see your house guests watching you poop.

An iPhone SE might be a solid option. A new one is $429 and a used one is much, much cheaper.

Note: They come out with an SE every few years, so if you are buying used or reading reviews, pay attention to which generation it is.