I use Adguard, vinegar and baking soda, but wasn’t aware of Wipr. I might give it a try as a replacement for Adguard. Glad you mentioned it.

I’m not an Apple apologist, but I feel there are some things Apple does that are privacy focused.

• The ability to E2EE encrypt iCloud is a very simple privacy feature that is accessible to the technical and non-technical alike.
• Private relay provides a double VPN architecture that doesn’t cause constant captcha hell and again just works for non-technical people.
• Hide my email, while not being perfect, is a pretty straightforward method to make throwaway email addresses.

The things I hate about Apple are generally not privacy related.

• They are a mega-corporation that stifles innovation
• They don’t allow other browsers
• They are puritanical about what is allowed in the App store

I really enjoy Apple products, but this is my biggest peeve. It’s not like I cannot manage without a different browser—certainly about half of americans primarily use Safari—but the flexibility and customization of Firefox or chromium would be very welcome.

I have Server 2022 with a GUI installed on my laptop because it lets me use all the server features, play Windows games that use DRM and not spend time messing around with getting linux to run on a laptop. I have Linux on the laptop, but running inside VMs.

I still don’t want copilot installed. I can confirm it is installed on my Windows Server 2022 laptop. I don’t see any entry points on the desktop or start menu. I haven’t checked Edge yet.

I wonder if copilot is released to all update channels or if it is only on a subset?

I don’t even see a link. Though I guess I should look inside Microsoft Edge.

Edit: I cannot find anyway to get to it in either the desktop or Edge. I do not have a signed in Microsoft account on this machine, so that may be why I don’t see it. I’m not willing to sign in to see.

This is a very nice piece that had so much information I did not know. Toward the top of the article I was wishing for footnotes, references or something that would indicate it was not just your opinion, but as I got further into the piece you provided so many great references. I thought the calculator manuals were particularly accessible and convincing. Thanks for a great read!

The city I live in has two big box stores. One has a retired plumber in the plumbing section. I’ll drive further to go to that one and wait patiently for his advice.

Well if you put it like that I just want it more…

Oof. I would buy more efficient hardware with those rates too!

Get a power measuring device if you don’t have one and consider the real cost of buying something new if you already have something. For instance, I have an older gaming laptop I am considering repurposing for my home automation stuff. While idling it draws about 10w which is amazing to me and a number I never would have guessed. For me that works out to (24 hours * 10w * 365 days* 1000w/Kw ) 87kwh per year. I pay about 10 cents per kwh so say $10 a year. Buying something to save a little power will never work out.

My current home server is an intel NUC from 2013! It can’t do some of the things I would like to add on, but it is a great media server and downloader. Powerful hardware isn’t really a necessity.

Damn, giving me flashbacks of slowly moving through ACLs then hitting domain groups, domain local groups, global groups, then eventually universal groups as AD moved forward in complex situations.

Got to admit it worked well though.

Can I use Proxmox on generic hardware that will run Linux? I was unfamiliar with it but I am intrigued once I went to the website.

Contemplated it, but dealing with infrastructure bores me. So I think I will just put up with the ad and the lowered expectations.

No. I got that too. I’m talking about:

“ Strictly confined Kubernetes makes edge and IoT secure. Learn how MicroK8s just raised the bar for easy, resilient and secure K8s cluster deployment. https://ubuntu.com/engage/secure-kubernetes-at-the-edge”

I just installed Ubuntu server on my little home server which has faithfully run Windows 10 Pro since it came out. I didn’t want to deal with the ads on Windows 11. I ssh into the Ubuntu install and there is an ad in the terminal!

I thought the government was tracking the serial numbers on larger bills that were dispensed through ATMs? I didn’t hear that from a reliable source, but it seems pretty simple from a number of transactions standpoint.

Honestly my google auto-type keyboard suggests that any time I post.

I’m fairly all-in though I do have a gaming laptop I use to play some games. For exceptions I find that I use Google Docs for shared notes with people who do not use Apple.

Another same reply. There is a catch-all now but there wasn’t originally.