CedarA64

I normally don't read it but another poster sometimes shares some of their articles on World News and I don't think their world view exactly aligns with that of Axel Springer. Their articles sometimes can contain quite revealing information, so I think they should be read critically. I am running an ad blocker anyway so it is not like they are getting revenue from me.

Imagine if half of liberal America was prosecuted for calling Trump "orange cheeto" or saying he has small hands. WTF is this even.

How does Monero particularly help American money launderers as opposed to money launderers in general? Also, very strange to go look through someone's comment history so you can use that to make some unrelated remark...

I just did some quick research on Matrix and it is even worse than I thought LOL. It was literally developed by a company that was originally founded in Israel and suspected by two different non-allied governments of espionage for the Mossad. And that is just what I could find within a couple minutes on Wikipedia.

will continue until Russia goes home.

absolutely delusional. Even the head of Ukrainian military intelligence has said that Ukraine could cease to exist by summer if a change in course isn't made. But NAFO shills on the internet are still living in their bubble, I guess.

cash benefits money launderers as well. What kind of argument is this even? I guess the government should just be able to track all your transactions all the time? Reminder that the government that is in power at the time in a given country decides what is and isn't "illegal".

So just because people you don't like express concern about something means that it automatically must be false? This type of "logic" is very dangerous. And prosecution clearly does happen a lot. Literally 10 cases a day in one German state according to the article and only 0.5 of those cases actually result in conviction, which means that clearly this is used to intimidate and punish people generally rather than a sincere attempt to enforce the law.

The article focuses on Lower Saxony, which is in West Germany. These cases are not about inciting violence or denying a genocide but about saying something about a politician that that person doesn't like. Many American liberals would be prosecuted under these laws right now for the stuff that is said on e.g. Reddit, presumably BlueSky and Lemmy.world. Reminder that this sort of stuff also affects pro-Palestine activists and in fact from what I gather that is in fact the case in Germany today.

Switzerland is not in the EU.

Glad I am not banking with any of them.

But do they actually work with US carriers (VoLTE)?

Don't buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the "tech world" for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway...

You got some pretty decent responses already but hopefully I add some useful information. You don't have to study computer science theory at all to be private. You don't even have to learn how to code, let alone to develop software. And I say this as someone who learned how to code in high school and took some CS courses in college as well as the required calculus courses. It is simply overkill and frankly you are doing yourself a disservice if you are focusing on that stuff if your sole priority is to be private digitally. Maybe it could eventually be useful to learn some bash or Python/Ruby/Lua/JS scripting but you sure as hell do not have to start with learning C.

If you just want to have some privacy in general you can start with dealing with some of the worst offenders, but really the best thing to do is to threat model first. What that means is identifying what/who you are concerned about. Who is really your opposition? Is it a specific Big Tech company (maybe your "evil ex" works there), all/most of (American) Big Tech, a certain government (agency) (which government/country), some unhinged and tech savvy stalker, organized crime or an oligarch? Or some combination of the aforementioned? You really need to figure this out first to be effective. Don't get caught in the trap of trying to defend your privacy against everyone. And remember that privacy and (cyber)security are not the same thing. A Pixel with stock ROM or Chromebook is very secure but not private at all from Google. Conversely, you can have some 10 year old computer with original UEFI firmware running a Linux distribution that hasn't received security updates in 5 years with the best configuration and practices for privacy from Google. That would be very private from Google but absolutely not secure.

Also avoid the trap of simply adopting what someone else says is "the best". What is "the best" (assuming that that is even objectively true in that particular case) for one person may not be a good option for someone else at all. What is the best option depends on your threat model and what compromises you need/want to make.

I would recommend checking out Rob Braxman's channel (on YouTube, or preferably Rumble or Odysee). Not saying he is the end all be all but at the very least he can teach you about the importance of browser isolation. If you want to defend against (American) Big Tech (and/or their partners) you need to understand how their tracking works.

Regarding the Optiplex, I would check out the 3050 micro (it can be Libreboot'ed); they are pretty cheap on eBay. You don't necessarily have to buy a ThinkPad, there are a lot of options with good Linux compatibility (many business computers optionally came with Linux preinstalled even, not just ThinkPads or Lenovos). Just do not buy an HP (I used to like and own them) as you cannot permanently disable Absolute Persistence on them. Don't know about more niche brands but you can at least generally with Lenovo and Dell.