There's probably worse, but off the top of my head, a Sandisk Curzer Fit USB 3.0 drive. It would overheat about 15 seconds into a file transfer and throttle to well below USB 2.0 speeds, perhaps even USB 1.1. I tried to alleviate the issue by using it through a USB 2.0 extender (thereby ruining its entire appeal to compactness), but it developed bad sectors soon enough. It was satisfying smashing it to bits with a hammer though.

Happened to me with a laptop case. Made me nauseous and suspicious of anything made from neoprene since.

Limitations

• Debian with XFCE: I want all of my Linux machines, both older and newer, fast and slow, to be consistent, with the GUI customized to my taste. I accept that I will miss out on whatever security benefits Wayland or distros like secureblue may provide.

• Networking: In the grand scheme of things, I know jack shit about networking. OPNsense, Pi-Hole, VPN, etc. would probably help my cause but I have yet to implement many network-based measures.

• Corporate conveniences: There are colleagues I need to reach with Whatsapp or SMS and there is software for my job that requires Windows. I try to sequester all of this among my work devices.

All of my frequently-used computers on Linux have "hardened Debian"

• hardened to the best of my ability according to Madaidan, with compromises to avoid obstructing day-to-day work
• LUKS encryption
• MAC randomization
• Mullvad DNS
• Hyper-threading disabled
• Rootless Xorg
• Firewall defaulting to deny
• unattended-upgrades
• LibreWolf
• Passwords in KeePass

Personal devices

• Desktop: The usual software. Non-FOSS components are mostly gaming-related.

• Server: Jellyfin, NAS, Local LLM / Stable Diffusion, and secondary workstation, each hosted on LAN in their own VMs. SSH password authentication disabled. Would like to set up a VPN so I can access it away from home someday.

• Backups: weekly to server, which is pulled to an offline encrypted 8TB disk about monthly. Repeat for the off-site disk that I store in a drawer at work.

Phone:

• Pixel with GrapheneOS and FOSS apps only
• Messaging primarily using Molly (Signal client)
• Email from important work and family contacts forwarded to my inbox on PurelyMail
• Looking to get a non-KYC eSIM once I learn how to pay in Monero
• Mullvad DNS

The "DMZ"

• Tablet: Samsung Tab A7 Lite received as a gift. Installed an AOSP GSI ROM (no Google Play services or GApps), mostly used as a NewPipe and travel device.

• Laptop: ThinkPad X230 with Coreboot and soft-disabled Intel ME. Also hardened Debian with the usual software, nearly all FOSS components with the exception of intel-microcode and the VGA option BIOS. I say it's the DMZ since personal stuff resides here, but most of my work also ends up here. Logged in to work-related websites and email in a separate user profile for LibreWolf.

"Work" devices (for context, work has BYOD policy and does not provide devices for us to bring home)

• Laptop: can't be bothered anymore to fuss with Windows VMs or debloating that go stale twice a year, so I just bring a separate lightweight ThinkPad with full-fat Windows for everything that requires it. While some proprietary software packages support Linux, I'll also just throw the Windows versions on this laptop.

• Backup Phone (unused for now): Samsung XCover Pro with removable battery, waiting for the day I encounter apps that demand a stock version of Android. When not in use, the battery is removed.

• Occasional check of social media also takes place on one of these devices, though through the browser rather than an app.

Phone:

• Old Pixel with GrapheneOS
• Nothing I use really needs Google Play services
• One user profile for work apps, including proprietary 2FA and Slack
• Another user profile for various proprietary apps that aren't necessarily work-related, but that I'm not entirely comfortable having on my personal phone.

I would rather meet bona fide rightists than pot-stirrers like OP

Nothing yet. This came about before I learned to use email aliases, so I created a couple accounts in fear of being correlated across shopping sites and other services. Though at no point did I consume more than 500 MB across my accounts, the limit for one free account. Not that this exonerates me, but I'd imagine heavy use across free accounts would raise suspicions sooner.

If anyone at Proton is reading this, my apologies and many thanks for graciously providing these accounts for free the past several years. I'll stop leeching resources once I finish migrating to my new email provider.

Reusable water bottles, especially their lids. They build up microorganisms faster than a petri dish and the more complex the bottles are, the worse it is.

Worst offender are the ones with integrated straws. Sure, they look nice and are a good idea, but cleaning them thoroughly is a nightmare. Also, I don't know how people tolerate the ones with exposed straws or mouthpieces. Isn't that incredibly unsanitary?

More generally, why doesn't anyone except for Nalgene make reusable bottles without rubber gaskets? Gaskets get stinky, then you have to peel them out, scrub like mad, and then awkwardly stretch them back in. I've been looking for a metal water bottle without a gasket for ages. They literally just need to shove the Nalgene-type screw-on top into a metal body.

Bonus points if someone designs a gasket-less bottle that opens in the middle so I don't have to fiddle with a bottle brush every time I wash it.

Ungoogled Chromium flatpak

🤡

A few years ago, when I cared little about my privacy, I would fancy buying a new car. Thanks to privacy concerns, I became proud to have my old car, which also happens to be highly repairable.

School is where the passion for learning goes to die and the desire to cheat is born

In this day and age, hobbies are the last bastions of passion and curiosity. One who is engaged in a hobby is intrinsically motivated to learn and apply what has been learned in novel ways, just as the scholars of old have done. School, reviled by many a student, has earned its reputation by perverting the concept of learning and exploiting students' passions. The desire to cheat is most unnatural among students, a telltale sign that one's passion and curiosity for the topic at hand has been extinguished, replaced with a desire to rid oneself of a burden, the burden of learning only for the sake of becoming learned.

Makes me wonder how far the closest alternative, glim, could be upgraded to match Ventoy given the confines of GRUB.

Someone had mentioned that Fedora fails to verify when booting from Ventoy. Now I'm thinking if I could dd the media loaded via Ventoy and compare with an original copy to see what changed.

IMF: Imperialist Monetary Fund