“Infamous” just refers to newbies who sometimes call if statements “if loops”. I’ve heard this quite a bit.

As others have mentioned there are unfortunately issues in detail when using an inofficial version of VSCode and even more issues when using the original VSCode of course. I get that it’s currently the most popular code editor but it’s really not recommended to use it. It’s kind of painfully obvious that Microsoft is driving the development of VSCode, and MS is simply not your friend. Not even when it gives you a permissively-licensed open source tool. It’s still kind of poisoned albeit at a low dosage, making it hard to detect. The type of poison we’re talking here are opt-out (if you’re lucky) telemetry (of course!), features or extensions which are ONLY compatible with the OFFICIAL build of VSCode so you can’t 100% work around VSCode’s issues by “being smart” and using a better-preconfigured inofficial build, and as an Electron-based application it’s very bloated and prone to security issues. And, of course, Microsoft steers its development so it may at any point introduce additional anti-features (which is likely, since this is MS we’re talking about here) and also steer its users away from using inofficial builds which might in theory fix some of those anti-features. It smells, and it’s not a particularly smart long-term time investment option.

My recommendations are:

If you want another relatively easy option learn the Vim keybindings (not that hard) and then use Neovim or NVim or however it’s called officially. It can be made into a full-fledged IDE with tons of modern features including LSP and Treesitter quite quickly and painlessly. As a bonus you become familiar with Vim which is present on basically all Linux/Unix/*BSD based operating systems on the planet, so it’s useful to know its basics.

If you don’t mind the harder but more rewarding option, learn and configure Emacs (maybe start with Doom Emacs, it’s easier at the start and uses the Vim keybinds by default). Some other “starter kits” or “distributions” exist as well of course, e.g. Bedrock or Crafted Emacs. Emacs can do literally everything and more, it just needs a lot of time to tweak it, it uses a weird language, and the learning curve at the very start is basically a straight wall into the sky including an overhang. But once you’ve climbed that, it’s an amazing tool for life, going beyond just code editing. Emacs has been around ~40 years and is even growing stronger recently so it’s rock solid and highly dependable, a real tool for life. Also it’s community-maintained, GNU-backed FOSS without weird drawbacks. Since its default keybinds (as well as many other defaults) are ancient (terrible) you should either customize them in various possible ways or use evil-mode which allows you to use basically all of Vim’s keybinds inside Emacs as well.

There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.

The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume by default that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).

Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.

In that case, you probably have to:

• Use Tor respectively Tor Browser (without any additional extensions, and set the default security level to “Safer” if possible with Facebook) to create a completely new, anonymous account on Facebook. Don’t enter any data there that could be linked to your person, e.g. no real mail address (use an alias, ideally a completely new one), no real names, no real data, also no real billing or delivery address. Literally nothing that could be linked to your person. Only ever use Facebook’s site within the Tor Browser, to ensure that your real IP address and browser data aren’t leaked. Never use their apps, never use your regular browser for it, also don’t use PWAs because that’s similar to using a regular browser, which reveals your real current IP address to the site. Unless you use a VPN to have a different IP, but you’d have to minimize your VPN usage just for that app interaction. If you continue to use the same VPN IP for other stuff as well, you could de-anonymize yourself later on. Mullvad or Proton are commonly regarded as good choices for trustworthy VPNs which don’t log or sell any user data, or at least there are no known cases for it (yet).
• Don’t add any friends on the site, try to limit your interactions with the site so that it can’t create a big psychological profile from you and try to link that behavioral data to existing persons (the more you use the site the easier this method might become for them). Behave slightly differently than you would normally.
• When you buy something, remember that you’d have to conceal your real delivery and billing data/addresses as well. Which is hard to do when you actually want to buy and receive something. Your payment data and/or address data can EASILY and instantly de-anonymize you, also in front of Facebook. So my suggestion for something still practical would be to have a relative or friend buy it after you arrange that with them, have it delivered to their address, and you pay them for it and gather it from their place. So in essence you need a proxy person to do the receiving and paying for you. If you want to sell something, that’s more inconvenient of course, but you’d also have to do it similarly.

The most problematic de-anonymizing data about you is going to be your real current IP address (which is revealed when you use a regular browser, PWA or their app, all with a non-VPN or non-Tor IP address) as well as billing or address data. In case you’re using their app, they’ll be able to gather even more data to de-anonymize you more easily.

Normally, no.

You’d have to set up a completely new account which you only ever access via e.g. Tor, then use Tor Browser on iOS to log into that account and only ever use your account exactly like this or else you’ll leak your current IP address as well as related data about you or your device to Meta. Also you’d have to never give any kind of personally-identifiable info to them. Then you’d have an anonymous account, but the goal of Facebook is to connect to other people you know. Once you add and talk to friends on Facebook, they might already know who’s behind that account, especially if you already had a different account in the past which pretty much had the same set of friends already. Also, remember that many people use WhatsApp (also by Meta), and WhatsApp collects among other things the whole address book or contacts list from the phone of each user. And most normal users don’t use contact scopes or things like that to spoof their contacts to Meta, so they’ll most likely get the real contacts list. That means if let’s say you have 5 friends named A, B, C, D, and E, and those 5 friends all use WhatsApp and have each other and you saved as a contact in their address book, then it’s even easier for Meta to guess with high precision that you are this person that knows those 5 people and/or who is known by those 5 people. So there are even other factors to consider, some of which are outside of your own control, because all the persons you know and want to add to Facebook give a lot of data to Facebook themselves as well, and that data also might be used to identify you in various circumstances. So you’d also have to behave anonymously when using your anonymous account. Which kind of goes against the whole thing of social media like Facebook. Since they monitor every user’s interaction on their website or apps, it’s likely that they’ll be able to eventually identify you once they’ve gathered enough data about your usage patterns, visited links on Facebook, contacts you added or which have added you, messages to contacts or from contacts to you, and so on. Simply using Facebook means you’re actively giving tons of data based on your usage alone to Facebook. It’s even theoretically possible for them to guess who you are based on your usage patterns alone, e.g. what you look at, what you type, how fast you type, and so on.

So yes it’s possible to get an anonymous account on Facebook, but it’s inconvenient, and probably runs contrary to your goals on that platform. Which is why I recommend to not use such platforms at all, and instead keep in touch with your friends via secure and private open source based messengers like Signal or Threema (Libre?) or any Matrix client. After all, services like Facebook are mainly for Meta to sell data about their users, that’s their primary business model (they almost don’t sell any products or services, they almost solely sell data about their users, that is basically the only way they make (a lot of) money. Well, and ads of course, but that’s closely linked together because the ad industry wants personally targetable ads, so it needs user data to better place targeted ads). There also isn’t a real need for such platforms anymore, because you can connect to friends in other ways on various other platforms, the only hard part is getting your friends to stop being lazy and switch to something more secure or private. When Facebook got big, it might have been the only social network of its kind, but these days tons of other, better options exist. So get your friends and contacts to move to something else. Or if they don’t want to move with you, then maybe they aren’t that important to you to keep in contact with.

Using Facebook in any other way, shape or form (e.g., using their app, or using their website with your real IP address) is very likely not going to be anonymous to Meta. They’ll automatically receive your current IP address (which on its own might already be enough for them to establish a link to your person, since they also have trackers in place in lots of other apps and websites), and on top of that various information about your device or browser (which, again, can be a key factor to link your current usage data to your person), if you use their app (which you shouldn’t ever do) they get even more data on you (not just you, also your contact list, nearby devices, and things like that), because those apps require so many permissions and have so much tracking integrated that it’s a whole treasure trove of information that’s being sent about you and your device, and they’ll interconnect all that data with the other data they’ve gathered about you or your device(s) in the past (which, as a rule of thumb, will always be much more than you think they’d have). An app with integrated tracking is always more harmful to your privacy than using their service from within a web browser, because the app can read much more data about your device compared to the web browser. (But be mindful that some web browsers (especially the proprietary ones like Chrome, Edge and Opera) also have quite a lot of tracking capabilities inside them.) So using Facebook in a somewhat normal or convenient way and at the same time wanting to remain anonymous to them is basically impossible.

Also, you’ll never be anonymous to government-based mass surveillance (who are collecting almost all network traffic, constantly) when you use your real IP address online. Anywhere. Your real IP is always connectable to your real person for them (also in retrospect). Even if they can’t look into encrypted communication data, like the contents of chat messages or what you did on a specific website, they can see the metadata, among that is which hosts you contacted, and when, as well as more unencrypted details, and such metadata can already be very revealing. To quote the ex NSA chief “we kill based on metadata”. Protecting yourself against commercial-based surveillance by companies like Meta is more realistic to achive (at least partially), because it’s easier to avoid or evade commercial tracking (by blocking all or most of their tracking methods like app-integrated trackers, tracking Javascripts and cookies on countless of websites, and so on) than it is to evade someone who’s sitting directly at all relevant network cables AND buys additional data from companies. Lots of easy-to-use tools exist to counter or limit commercial surveillance, like ad/content blockers, blocking host lists, PiHole, ad-blocking DNS servers, open source software and operating systems (because they are almost always free of trackers and surveillance tech), and things like that. It all minimizes your exposure to these data hoarding companies. And the less data you transmit overall to such companies, the better. But if you also want to protect yourself against any government-based mass surveillance, you’ll have a much harder time than that. You’d need to always use different IP addresses (again, via Tor or VPN etc.) and avoid having anything leak out that can connect your other IP to your real IP. Which is hard.

MI is great, I played 1+2 when they were new (in the 90s), they were brilliant back then. These days, they’re probably still good point&click adventure games. There were some special editions or remasters which probably make them play well on modern machines. They belong to a long list of awesome LucasArts point&click adventures during the 90s and early 2000s. Most of these games are great. You should definitely try them out, especially if there are remasters available. But you can also play the originals using ScummVM most likely. Ron Gilbert is like the mastermind behind the series. He still creates adventure games to this day. And they’re all pretty good, but the genre is kind of niche these days. It wasn’t niche back then. It was just as big as action or soulslike games are today. The Monkey Island titles were probably the most successful or popular ones of the bunch. But there are some others which are equally good. Adventure games are rare these days but basically they are like puzzle games where you have to solve certain situations by combining items, finding items in the first place, trying different approaches, and so on. You kind of know once you’ve overcome a challenge when you were able to progress further in the game. There’s little to no handholding, but also little to no handholding needed. There’s one timing-based riddle in the original Monkey Island which I never liked that much, but it’s still a funny one. It’s not hard but it doesn’t really fit the genre well because nothing else is timing-based. It does fit the game’s art, setting and humor well though. The soundtrack is nice indeed. This is probably the most well-known track: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=FoT5qK6hpbw

Yes, but my post is for the people who DO care about privacy issues. I also don’t like the defeatist’s attitude. You can always start making things better. My post is for those who want to make a better informed decision, that’s all.

Yeah, you should use Linux regardless. ;-)

Reasons are the data transmissions happening by default and Mozilla’s questionable inclusion of add-on things like Pocket. See for example:

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mozilla-firefox-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil20/

vs.

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/librewolf-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil8/ and https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mullvad-browser-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil22/

You might need to translate the site to English. If you compare that, you can see why it’s easy to recommend the forks over the original. That said, you CAN configure Firefox to also behave well, but that takes an extra effort. It is far from there by default.

Well, they’re only doing what they announced already like 1-2 years ago. So we knew it was coming. This is also accompanied by Google making YouTube more restrictive when viewed with adblockers. Google is (somewhat late, to be honest) showing its teeth against users who block ads. I always expected it to happen but it took them quite some time. Probably they wanted to play the good guys for long enough until most users are dependent on their services, and now their proprietary trap is very effective.

On the desktop, you should switch to a good Firefox fork right now. Firefox can also be used but needs configuring before it’s good. The forks LibreWolf or Mullvad Browser are already very good out of the box. There’s the potential issue of the forks not being updated fast enough, but so far these two have been fast. Mullvad shares a lot of configuration with the Tor Browser, so using it may break some sites. LibreWolf might be “better” for the average user because of that, but otherwise I think Mullvad is the best Firefox fork overall.

On mobile, Firefox-based browsers aren’t recommended, because on Android, the sandboxing mechanism of Firefox is inferior to that of the Chromium-based browsers. And on iOS, all browsers (have to) run on Apple’s proprietary Webkit engine anyway, but well this is Apple we’re talking about so of course it’s all locked-down and restricted. It’s one of the reasons I don’t even like talking about Apple that much, just be aware that as an iOS user, your choice doesn’t mean as much when it comes to browsers, and your browser might not behave like you think it does on other platforms.

So on mobile, I’d suggest things like Brave, Cromite or Mull. Or Vanadium (GrapheneOS). If the browser doesn’t have built-in adblocking capability which sidesteps the MV3 restrictions, make sure to use an ad-blocking DNS server, so your browser doesn’t have to do it. But you still need it. Adblocking not only helps you retain your sanity when browsing the web in 2024, but it also proactively secures you against known and unknown security threats coming from ads. So adblocking is a security plus, a privacy plus, and a sanity plus. It’s absolutely mandatory. As long as the ad industry is as terrible as it is, you should continue using adblocks. All the time. On every device and on every browser.

The ad industry is itself to blame for this. There could in theory be such a thing like acceptable ads, but that would require ads to be static images/text, not fed by personal data, and not dynamically generated by random scripts which could compromise your security, and not overly annoying. Since that is probably never going to happen, you should never give up using adblockers. Since they basically fight you by reducing your security and privacy, you have a right to defend yourself via technical means.

While this does seem overly restrictive and out of place there, the result of this isn’t bad, because everyone should be at the most recent vesion at all times, period. If you aren’t, you’re exposed to more security holes and bugs. So it’s weird that that program forces you to do that, but it’s still not bad that you’re forced to do it. If you get what I mean. For some less-caring users who’d otherwise never install updates, forced updates are actually a net positive.

Clickbaity titles on videos or news sites is the new standard. I watched it. The point he’s making is basically that music was harder to make/produce some 50 years ago, so there was more incentive to “make it worth the effort”, compared to today. And the 2nd point he makes is that music consumption is now so easy as well (listen to whatever you want instantly) compared to when you could only listen to something when you bought the physical album, that there’s also less incentive for the listener to really get involved into some albums.

Personally I think these are valid points on the surface but they are not “the answer” to this kind of multi-faceted question. They’re at best a factor but we don’t know how big these factors are. Also I think one big reason he thinks that way is because he grew up in that environment and so he has a bias for “owning physical copies of albums”.

I also think music hasn’t gotten worse, the market is just simply over-saturated because there’s just way too much music, you’ll never be able to listen to it all. And there are absolutely hidden gems or really good bands/artists forming even today, it’s just much harder to find them. Generally a problem of today’s age: it’s likely that what you’re looking for already exists, you just have to find it within a whole ocean of content.

If you’re looking for innovative or non-standard stuff, you can always look at smaller artists or the indie scene, same is true for movies, games, music. The big producers always have a tendency to stick to what works and what’s proven to be popular so everything becomes similar. But smaller artists do not have to care about such things, they are ready to risk much more and in doing so, you might just create a real gem or something that was never or almost never tried before.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary funding evidence.”

True.

Well, ever since Win8 or Win10 I stopped having much sympathy with Windows users. They deserve things like that, when they still remain on that ship. Since these things are being introduced in small portions (salami tactics), the users will slowly become familiar with these things and just accept them because they can’t change anything anyway, thus slowly incorporating a defeatist’s attitude towards all the bloat, ads and spying. AKA, learned helplessness. In a couple of years, Windows will be absolutely horrible, but people will be used to it. I’ll just say this: Windows used to NOT have this kind of crap integrated.

Yes. Even though not using all this crap may sometimes feel like you’re missing out on certain stuff, it is still the right thing to do. I don’t support abusive behavior, bloatware and spyware, so companies doing that will not receive any money from me if I can help it.

We’re basically just one step ahead of the general population, who basically (still) eats up anything that’s being served by big tech corporations, without any second thoughts or hesitations. The general population IMHO is currently at the stage that nerds were like 25 years ago, in that they tend to be naively enthusiastic about every new piece of tech. But nowadays, tech can be abusive towards their users, and so it’s important to choose the right tech. The general population hasn’t made that realization yet (or they don’t care, which also must change).

The media is also partly to blame for this, for example almost every new review of any Samsung or Apple phone is usually very positive, usually just reporting about the advancements in hardware and UI, without even mentioning any of the downsides these have on the software side. And so when reviews don’t even mention downsides anymore, there’s a lack of information available.

And it’s not even that regular users don’t like the alternatives. For example I convinced a friend to move from a regular spyware-infested Samsung Galaxy phone (which he was using all the time, and he even wanted to buy a new one) to a Pixel with GrapheneOS. He’s not missing anything, even though his transition wasn’t super smooth, overall he’s happier now, and he mentioned that he likes the OS being so clean and unencumbered. He doesn’t particularly care about the privacy and security improvements which he now also enjoys, which is a bit sad, but at least he’s happy with the lean and unmodified Android (open source) experience.

So, as usual, information/knowledge is power. People need to know that alternatives exist and that some alternatives are actually really, really good. And they need to know what the problems are with the “default stuff everyone uses”, so that they can make better informed decisions in the future. They also need to become less dependent on big tech companies. The alternatives have little to no PR and thus little public visibility in comparison, except via word of mouth, so we need to make the most out of that.

Though the early game is hardly important, because it’s always easy. Like a tutorial area. In pretty much all games. Mid- and end-game proficiency is much more important.

Looks healthy. There was activity and new releases in 2021, 2022 and June 2023. Also, the app might be near feature complete, and if that’s the case there will only be sporadic work left like keeping it updated/compatible or fixing security ssues.

NetGuard Pro - Allows you to see and control traffic from all apps, so you can prevent data flows to 3rd party hosts like the ones from Google or Facebook. The pro edition is paid and necessary, but it’s all open source, just not gratis

Aegis Authenticator - open source 2FA authenticator

LibreTube - alternative, privacy-respecting, open source YouTube frontend using the Piped API

There seems to be a lack of good basic computer science education unfortunately. Schools and so on never caught up with the speed of technological advance. And back when I was in school, teachers taught things like “How do I use formulas in MS Excel” in computer science. It’s probably still that way, so it’s not neutral at all, instead you’re learning how to use specific software products (often, Microsoft’s). So relying on school education alone may be hopeless. But you can always learn for yourself or from others.