I had luck with VNC, although it’s still worse than RDP. There’s also some RDP implementations on Linux that are apparently better, but VNC works well enough for me.
But there’s no sound, I don’t know if RDP has that. I’ve used VLC for sound forwarding. I also tried PulseAudio TCP module, but that didn’t quite work. With VLC I can do lossy compression.

What I wish would work better is X11 forwarding. That could be so awesome, just having the remote windows local-like. But from what I can find, in the past, programs used X11’s drawing features which would save a lot of bandwidth, while now they just draw pixel by pixel.

To give you some idea, I’ve tried it on LAN with gigabit ethernet, ping below 1ms. It would saturate the port and still be kinda slow.

I also found it OK-ish, at least after my usual disabling of BITS and SuperFetch (SysMain now, I think), and disabling auto-updates, I think in gpedit.msc, and using the provided BypassNRO.cmd to create local account.

Alright, maybe not that OK, but after the initial setup it ran fine even on officially unsupported computer made in 2007. Just had to modify the installer by merging W11 image into W10 installer.

Anyway, the Windows store or whatever isn’t that used, and I got tired of updating every random program coming from .exe files. But similarly I don’t like the large hops in versions like Windows 10 -> 11, or similarly with Linux Mint, so I went with Arch.

Anyway, I’ll be a smaller minority. I most liked Windows 8.1. It was really well optimized.

price for a domain name

Or host your own VPN on home network. Or use Tailscale VPN, that also works behind CG-NAT, and can usually get direct connection.

My closest attempt at pronouncing that:

echo 'šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm' | aplay -c 1 -f u8 -r 2000 -t raw -

Then it would be US only. But it works for example with Switzerland (non-EU).

Why the hell does the link just redirect me to their YouTube channel?

Edit: Seems to do that only with EU countries, other countries’ IPs work. Probably don’t want to deal with privacy protection.

Hey, hey, it’s average.

Look at the bottom with server count. Likely something screwed up there, and when those instances were suddenly returned, the user count was added back before being subtracted when they disappeared from the data.

It is improving search result, with filters. Ads, tracking, data deletion possibility, in-app purchases, license, etc…

At least some of these are already tracked.

Holy shit, that was unexpected.

Hard to tell, guesstimate €1,500.

I really only download music, mostly individual songs. I use sites like himovies.to for movies, and then if I like something enough, I buy a DVD, if available.
And some few “mod apks”, which yes, are a bit shady. I don’t know how to do that myself, so I just run them through VirusTotal and hope for the best if it’s all green (false negatives). Stuff like KineMaster because I am procrastinating to learn using Kdenlive, MLUSB Mounter and some games.

I haven’t purchased any media or software (excl. donations) that doesn’t come on a physical medium.

In the reply to Patreon they mentioned having some automated and manual ways of removing CSAM, plus “closely working with NCMEC”, but I have no idea what that means.
And these statistics of resolved reports: https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/cybertiplinedata2024/2024-notifications-by-ncmec-resulting-content-removal.pdf

Total number of reports of 128 resolved on average in 1.91 days. Less than half the time spent by Amazon, Google and Microsoft (for Bing).

“Youtube will begin showing 4 videos at once”

The average YouTube short:

Edit: It’s called “Sludge content”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge_content

Which reminds me of a certain part from Back to the future too. I’ll try to search for it, but my DVD drive is currently occupied

Edit 2:

Part 2 at 30:27 (at least on PAL edition)

Ah, yes

In my opinion the last great was Android 7. Just getting more locked down since.

But also it was kinda funny when manufacturers left over some of their software. I think it was ZTE which had a hidden menu to change the fucking IMEI.

Unless it’s quite shitty.

I’ve got Ulefone, and the default audio source (software) is dogshit quality. And that’s what the camera app uses, unless I use something like Open Camera where I can manually select “Unprocessed” rather than default.

For the idea
Default: https://files.catbox.moe/d2n7sg.flac
Unprocessed: https://files.catbox.moe/xf9ab8.flac

Very obvious, at least with earphones.

use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host

Now, why so expensive?
https://racknerdtracker.com/?sort=price
Disclaimer: I never used Racknerd (nor any other VPS).

(Yeah, yeah, I get it, a bit off-topic)

One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed.

Sorry, just some small note. Charging to 100% daily significantly shortens the battery lifespan. Staying between 20 - 80% is generally recommended.
But to be honest, if I still had a phone with user replaceable battery I’d just 100% it too. I mean, the battery for my Galaxy Ace is like €6.

Anyway, I’ve got some USB tester from AliExpress that also has a time limit. I can usually nail that near 80%. There’s also some physical Bluetooth charge limiters, though that of course requires their app.

Irrelevant if your phone has built-in charge limiter.

But yeah, anyway, how you did it sounds fine.

Edit: Although theoretically, it probably could be done without an app. Bluetooth can share battery charge info.

Well, realistically, things have changed. Without social media you get quite left out. Easily forgotten even.