Wait until you write code that is self-hosting!

Weird. I used to do video games and I used to run around in the forest building tree houses or, at the rare occasion, snatch a few bag of potato chips from our local potato chips factory. The Legend of Zelda, tree houses and potato chips. What a great life. This only changed when I was finally admitted to a musical school at the age of 15. 🎹 Today, at the age of 37, I can only game for an hour before my back starts aching. That’s when I go outside and touch grass for a couple of hours.

Noice.🦊

It’s late and I need to sleep so I’ll just paste some links for now, but you are talking about such a wide variety of issues that’s it kind of hard to give a short, succinct answer.

Some privacy tips that I follow, by Naomi Brockwell: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt3zZ-N423gXV-0pdxnRn-nw0WzVKh4NY

Same, but by Rob Braxman: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKqVMfkpsufHUWAwU9nnkHnhSRH1TBgF3

I would recommend formulating your threat model before doing anything else. There is a lot of materials on the topic on the world wide web, but for starters, ask yourself and answer the question, what information about yourself would you like to keep secret and why.

Again, before anything else, subscribe to an email alias service - maybe there are free ones out there too, I don’t know. This way, you don’t have to share your real email address and you can turn off or even delete that attack vector at anytime.*

Finally, regarding Bandcamp, I have never uses it myself so my understanding of your situation is poor to say the least, but are not able to simply save the links in a text file? Again, I’m not trying to play down the situation, I just don’t understand it.

*This is basically what I do with almost all my services that need registration: I give them an email alias, a randomly generated cyberpunk name and create a 30 characters long password with a password manager. The only services where this doesn’t anonymize you are those that require your payment information, which is often tied to your real identity. Had I been living in the US, I would have used those anonymous prepaid debit cards that work like email aliases, but for your debit or credit cards.

Personally, I don’t hate this book:

https://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/intro-linux.pdf

It’s somewhat outdated, for instance, it still assumes that your first process is init while most of us have transitioned to systemd, but I still find to book very educational in terms of… “Linux mentality”? Give it a try! :)

UPDATE! Got an email from my ISP saying “the fiber owner has resolved your issue, we are closing the ticket.” I immediately called my ISP out of curiosity, since they earlier had told me that they need to change my ONT for me to get my full speed. Well, it turns out, the fiber owner (don’t know the English word for them) can manage speed per port on the ONT. Sic. So for some reason, they had limited the speed to 100 Mbps.

Yep, that is my conclusion as it stands. For switching between devices, you need MAC addressss. For routing you need IP addresses (and MAC addresses?). For inter process communication, you need port numbers. Although, I do have to read up on where and how the VPN draws the line between what to encrypt and what not to encrypt in a packet.

At the very least, it requires an informed choice.

No judgment at all. I mean, I work for a government agency and - while resisting unlawful or immoral directives maybe somewhat harder for me (?) - I do try to stay humane and at times blatantly go against policies or orders that violate certain human rights.

Then, if I understand it correctly, the data portion of the packet is encrypted but there are unencrypted headers or whatevers necessary for inter device communication? MAC to MAC, IP to IP, port to port, etc., that stay unencrypted even when they go through the VPN interface? Which in turn is how the VPN interface or software or protocol is programmed?

I see. Well, now I understand why I see vendor names of connected hosts in my AP’s GUI. The vendor name of my robot vacuum, I will never be able to pronounce… (Something Chinese.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwJbRq3-rM

Also, there is nothing noobie about Linux Mint. Everything that you can do on, say, Arch Linux, you can do on Linux Mint, with some minor adjustments. That’s what’s Linux is all about. :D

Amazing! I had no idea that you can grab the vendor off of the first three octets. I shall try to refrain from - for academic purposes, of course - identifying devices and their vendors around me next time I’m at the coffee shop…

Thank you for such a detailed answer! I learned a lot! :D this inspired me to do some research on the capabilities of the new ONT that they are providing soon. Assuming that those probing capabilities that you spoke of are built into the ONT and not some peripheral add-on equipment?

I second this! While I’m unsure how I would do this on Linux, when I was using Windows, I even gained performance from undervolting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqpfYTi43TE

Holy sh*t 300 ohms?! How do you drive these things xD That’s awesome though! Yeah, I actively stay away from anything marketed as “gaming”.

Sweet! My closed headphones isolate even the sound of the doorbell, so people kind of need to text me if they plan to visit while I’m gaming xD

Which model/maker of the 3080 do you have? I have the Asus TUF Gaming OC version and while it sounds like an inspired fan, it’s not quite a jet engine… But then again, I only game at 1080p (but with ultra settings) because with my 24 inch monitor I kind of have a good pixel density anyway ^^

Holy crap that’s one big package! The immersion must be great with the surround! :D

Sweet! Didn’t even know Logitech makes speakers! Wireless sound has come a long way, in my opinion. I don’t think one would notice any difference playing games anyway. Really wish I could try gaming with a subwoofer! :)

What an experience, to be chased by a Guardian, listening with a subwoofer!