No one has a right to secede illegally in a representative democracy. You don’t just go out and declare, with the full support of a invading force occupying another part of your country, independence.

No. It’s a tool. A sort of cudgel used to beat others with, in order to secure political power.

Take advice from doctors, not the internet, and most definitely not Lemmy.

I own. I’m absurdly frugal and my personal religion forbids usury. When I married we basically put our incomes together for seven years and came out of it with enough money to buy a nice home outright.

I cannot imagine buying in this market. We purchased just before it all blew up, and even then we considered it an asset bubble.

The whole thing is rigged against anyone and everyone sitting below the top 5%, especially in the southern hemisphere and especially in the USA.

We spend and put aside about 10% of our net income toward the home. Property taxes, utilities, and maintenance.

What is this writer even talking about? Apt, Pacman exist and have been the Big Feature of Linux distros since inception. What is easier than typing, “apt update/apt install XYZ?” It makes installing new toys so much darn easier than anything on Windows.

As a basic non-developer user of Linux for my desktop, the ease of Linux and Debian once installed and operational is at a Just Works level as is. It requires learning new computing habits, sure. You have to un-learn presumptions from Windows, but once you have that understanding you open up a world of ease and workflow simplicity that you couldn’t drag me away from if you paid me!!!

The community support is top notch. The developers are responsive more often than not to requests and advice than any Microsoft customer support line, and they know what they’re talking about because they made the damn tool to begin with!

I would have never divested my world of internet services if I hadn’t learned of Docker container apps that make divesting as easy as a yaml script and a few hours of curiosity.

Updates are handled by apt upgrade. It’s freaking two words.

I think this author needs to write on other subjects.

That’s a massive request. My suggestion is to start very small: download a program such as AdAway or DNS66 and use the VPN to draw up all the telemetry and analytic pings home into a black hole of denials.

That takes care of some of the phone-in’s from your apps. It has a minor drain on your battery, but it helps as a first step that nearly anyone can take on Android.

Take time to research alternative services to the proprietary software in your life. You already likely know this, given you’re here! Self host or find a cloud storage provider, run a Baikal server for your contacts, etc.

The privacy focused community is so confederated and siloed that there is no one size fits many solution. Many tools are developed by folks looking for a solution to a problem they are personally facing, and this leads to some-ninety apps or services that do the same or nearly the same thing, but in a different way.

It’s just on you to find your thing. 😐

I’m just incensed that the world at large couldn’t get a handle on this stupid virus within 6 months. It’s really turned me further inward, further into a cynic.

“Hey uh, I accidentally ‘rm -R /home’ under su and the computer didn’t stop me so how fix?..”