I’ll second the recommendation for GrapheneOS. One of the available options I use is to keep mic, camera, and location off at all times until I need them. That simple toggle ability changes your privacy stance greatly.

Hotspots work well. They are hotspots though, so you have trade offs. For instance, you probably don’t want to leave it on all day (because it won’t last all day, probably 8 hours). You can set it to turn off if there’s no connected devices for x minutes to save battery. When you turn it on you need to wait for it to actually turn on and connect, then have your phone connect. It takes a while, relatively speaking (not long but longer than turning on your phone).

The Mifi X Pro also has an Ethernet port which is convenient for hard wiring a laptop.

The service is solid. Overall there’s no issues. I’ve had issues in hotels, but it’s a T-Mobile network so I’d presume a standard sim card would equally have issues.

Privacy is an interesting take. I’ll go ahead and trust them to not share my data (which you can sign up anonymously if you wish). The number is still trackable though, and I’d suspect stands out more because it’s in a specific spectrum range. But the sim isn’t in your phone, so it’s not technically tracking your phone (and a side benefit is you can’t get sim jacked) and I use a VPN to connect to it as well. I don’t think the sim card tracks the same way because there’s no GPS in the hotspot, but of course it still calls out to cell towers. I don’t know if it does this when off like a phone does (I’ve always presumed it does).

Overall my experience has been a positive one. Choosing a phone service has been a harder issue for me. But that’s another story.

Absolutely. And particularly it was is “batches” especially as you get to Shadow.

Collecting stuff as you go along playing is fine (I mean, I’d argue not because it’s lazy game making but its normal). But going along and hitting a village that has 50 side quests in it just interrupts flow.

Plus, they made nested fetch quests so I felt trapped in a loop. OK I’ll just do this one quest…“hey, now that I see that you are good at fetching arbitrary items, I want you to go get this for me too”

You can, if you can. I think most people can’t do that though.

The better lesson would be to teach compound interest. Somebody that invests $2k every year for 10 years and then stops will have more money than somebody who starts in year 11 and does so for the rest of their life.

I was thinking more along the lines of:

We were woken up to check out this signal.

Shine that, let’s go home and get paid.

But you know, we’re required by law to do so or we forfeit our payment.

OK, so what’s the story we all say?

Yeah, nothing there. Must have been a glitch.

OK, let’s go home.

I mean, I’m sure you’re right but it’s buggy as shit on Windows too.

Yeah, other than freezing credit, there’s not much you can do. It’s a toothpaste out of the tube scenario. It’s basically too late. The offerings always suck and are basically only there so they can say they’re doing something for you.

Other than that, harden your privacy in general. Yeah, it doesn’t help for breaches like this because you can’t hide from your doctors, but simple things like having an alternate email address makes it a tiny bit better.

Yeah, that’s the one that came up in my initial search. The recommended app Tuner is pretty damn good.

Thanks for the rec. I tried it last night and am very happy with it, better than what I expected.

I actually own a chromatic tuner, and it stays at home with my guitar. Sometimes I’m elsewhere and need a tuner. Which for the record the recommended Tuner app is phenomenal, and very accurate.

Thanks. I wholeheartedly agree. I was just looking for recommendations from the community based on experience.

Thank you. I’m going to check it out.

I can’t comment on their privacy, but I thought of Nine when I read your post. I used it back before the Outlook app supported folders. I think it was a great alternative and worked better than anything out there… Mind you, it was years ago.

Also, have you thought about using a different user profile for just work? I know you’re asking about apps but you can gain some privacy from segregation too.

Have you read Means of Control (Byron Tau)? He tracks the evolution of all of this and how we got to where we are today. Yes, 9/11 fast-tracked it but there’s so much more to it. Highly recommended.

They advertise way too much and way too aggressively.

I understand your feeling, but I think massive advertising is needed. This is high level marketing, basically telling the general public there is another way other than big tech. Most people don’t know this to know there are options to choose…so they don’t.

The problem with YouTube is there isn’t an alternative.

Anytime I think it’s morphed to a state where people will leave for the next great thing, they don’t.

The content is there, and alternatives don’t have that backing them so it’s too inconvenient to move on. Once people have that pain point, they go back.

The problem is that YouTube music is vastly inferior to google play music.

I’m not a fan of services that make themselves worse and then charge you for it.

The paid experience is a decent one, but it isn’t the same as service that I want. I want to control what I watch and not be fed what they think I want to watch.

But I don’t disagree that paying for a good service is worth it.

They are very much in sync. Even though each game and story is independent, characters have history and the games are part of that.

Enjoy! It’s a great series

I get that. I am mostly there too, but people go where the people are. I’ve tried Rumble and Odysee but there needs to be an exodus from YT by creators. I thought that would happen, but people stick with what they know (fear of the unknown).

Hell, it took me a long time to jump to Lemmy. But the Reddit train went too far so I’m gone. But even now the #1 sub I was in is not represented in the fediverse so I’m SOL. Kind of a tangent, but you get what I mean.

I appreciate this list. Half of them I’ve never heard of, so it’s a treasure trove to me.