Raccoon thoughts:
Nooo muh grapes! D:
…
Well guess you really want some,
fine you can have that one.

Fork of FireFox,
with a focus on data privacy + security:
https://librewolf.net/

I’d also like to add IronFox,
similar to LibreWolf, but for mobile:
https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/

Hi OP, I do the same thing during winters.

For XMR,
you can increase the profits a bit with XmrVsBeast + Gupaxx

• https://xmrvsbeast.com/p2pool/
• https://github.com/Cyrix126/gupaxx

It’s on F-Droid,
but you’ve gotta add their repo:

fdroidrepos://fdroid.ironfoxoss.org/fdroid/repo?fingerprint=C5E291B5A571F9C8CD9A9799C2C94E02EC9703948893F2CA756D67B94204F904

That link can also be found on their Gitlab:

https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox#ironfox

YouTube has been cracking down on alternative frontends.

Vanilla Invidious currently doesn’t work well,
so most hosters paused and/or gave up.

Fijxu runs a fork of Invidious,
with their own modifications implemented to circumvent the blocks,
here’s the source code if you’re interested:
https://git.nadeko.net/Fijxu/invidious

I’ve got big respect for Fijxu,
he’s been doing a very good job of keeping Invidious alive + fighting against the YouTube crackdown lately, basically all on his own.

If you can please consider:

• Donating for their work/hosting
• Hosting their fork on your own
• Solving open issues with pull requests to their fork

All the above can help Fijxu,
since currently he’s mostly fighting a big tech giant all on his own.

And by continuing to use it,
it will stay that way.

Just don’t, plenty of other 2nd hand sites out there, with plenty of products available.

For those that don’t know:
It was a jump-scare flash game.

The goal was to navigate through the maze with your mouse, without touching the walls, which gets harder near the end, likely resulting in you getting closer to and concentrating hard on the screen.

Near the end they flashed a horror image and blasted a loud sound through your speakers.

Personally, it didn’t make me flinch much though,
but I guess it affected some others like OP.

If the fines regarding to it are in proportion with the revenue of the business, then it likely would make a lot of them think twice about doing so.

I agree that it’s hard to enforce the rules,
and that some would still ignore them.
However updating the rules give the abused people a chance of getting justice/consolidation for their stolen work, and diminishes the chance of companies breaking the rules.

It would not combat bit torrent (P2P) piracy.
But that’s also not that important imo.
Most pirates are rather poor folks,
just trying to watch/play some content which they can’t afford, they make up for a rather neglible amount of the profit that can be had.

However it would combat billion dollar companies that would use pirated content to train LLMs to sell further. All they need is x1 internal whistleblower about doing so, and they could be fined with an amount larger then the risk is worth.

No copyright law seems dangerous to me,
why create content if you can just steal it,
and earn on the back of the original creator without consequences?

I think I’d rather see it updated instead.
E.g. To hold AI companies and users accountable.
So they need explicit approval of copyright holders before they’re allowed to train upon / use their data.

Ahhh sad to hear, but thanks for your reply,
now I know that I can stop searching,
and start hoping for quick implementation of Wireguard config support for Netbird :)

Thanks for your suggestion, but after going through the Github issues,
I’m afraid that it’s not possible yet to connect to Netbird using a Wireguard config file:

• https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/2504
• https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/2627

I believe Briar currently is one of the best options out there, together with SimpleX.

However I lack usage experience with both.
Since no one I know makes use of them…

It was already hard enough to convince only a handful of my friends to start using Session and Matrix/Element (which are not the best options anymore), but I’m kinda doubtful about my success rate of making them switch once again…

My success with convincing people to use Telegram has been better though, since that’s the most commonly known, but nearly no one wants to install an app they never heard off before, just to chat with only me :P

Also “convincing people” lately goes smth like this for me:

• Do you have WhatsApp or Messenger so I can send you some pictures?
• No I don’t use apps that do not respect my privacy, but you can send em to me through SimpleX, Briar, Session, Matrix/Element, Telegram, Discord or email :P
• Upon which most choose Telegram or Discord as their means to contact me, sadly no one had Briar/SimpleX yet.

*Don’t Use Session,
if your threat profile includes government’s spending ±100k to crack your encryption, since their encryption is not the best out there.

Which they likely won’t for an average privacy conscious user, but they might for high ranking criminals.

It was a good read though,
I won’t invite new people to Session due to it.

But the title is a little click-baity,
“Session’s encryption is not the best”,
would be a more honest title.

deleted by creator

Been using VSCodium for a few years now, for loose file editing,
no complaints about it, imo it’s what VSCode should be.

uBlock Origin Filters to get rid of Copilot + AI feed bloat on Github
uBlock Origin => Open the Dashboard => My Filters => Add:

github.com##.copilotPreview__container
github.com##.AppHeader-CopilotChat
github.com##li.ActionListItem:has-text(Copilot)
github.com##li.ActionList-sectionDivider:has-text(Copilot)
github.com##li.TimelineItem:has-text(Copilot)
github.com##div.pb-4:has-text(Copilot)
github.com###copilot_free_global
github.com###copilot-button-container
github.com###blob-view-header-copilot-icon
github.com##a[href*="/resources/articles/ai"]
github.com##a[href*="/settings/copilot"]
github.com##a[href*="/features/copilot"]
github.blog##a[href*="/features/copilot"]
github.blog##a[href*="/ai-and-ml"]
github.blog##article.changelog-label-copilot
github.blog##article.changelog-label-models

github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(LLM)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(OpenAI)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(ChatGPT)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(GPT)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(Llama)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(Gemini)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(Grok)
github.com##article.js-feed-item-component:has-text(DeepSeek)

Also disable + block everything under: https://github.com/settings/copilot

Oh wow did not know that.

Well, if them spying on you and selling your data was not enough to make you switch to an alternative, then maybe/hopefully lack of search operators will be!

You can use the - (minus) sign,
which excludes pages that contain the word which has the - in front of them.

For example, currently I’m replaying GTA V single player, but when I search for content related to it, I’m often given articles about the online version.

To solve that I search:

GTA V <insert-topic-of-interest> -online

Which excludes all articles containing the word online.

I use SearXNG though,
but afaik this is implemented by most search engines.

My coping mechanism:
Block/filter out the news!
(Except for positive/uplifting news)

It does wonders for your mental health!

Most news sources are for-profit,
and they did some research,
apparently depressing news draws more attention / clicks, which results into more profit for them, but it isn’t good for your mental health.

Other news sources just drive an hidden agenda, and aim to manipulate you to believe whatever the rich guy that owns the news site wants.

Also, try to have fun while humanity is sliding down in the background!

Whether you’re depressed or acknowledge and then ignore the facts, will have zero impact on the final outcome which will apply to the whole world.

So might as well aim to be happy in the meantime :)

This is actually quite good news!
Hear me out though.

Encryption has been under attack by government instances for a while now.

They always aim to weaken / backdoor it,
so that they can spy on all their citizens.

China abused the backdoor implemented by the US government,
which sends a message across the world,
being: “Do not backdoor encryption to spy on your citizens, or other countries might abuse it”

Hopefully this will put a stop to governments attacking encryption, at least for a while,
since now they’re reminded of the risks which it brings! :)