TheProtagonist

You could add a printed ad with adhesive tape to the front door of your fridge to have a similar experience like all those “smart” things…

In the past, the typical example for a “smart device” was a refrigerator, that would automatically buy milk online once it’s empty, but I’m not sure if that really works (or makes any sense). But at least you can now see ads together with weather and news on your refrigerator door.

Depending on your setup, you will always have an offline copy, too.

If you mind that Word documents are stored in the cloud by default, you need to modify the default setting

…or just use some other app for your private documents and Word only for work-related stuff or such. I use Word/Office at work and have absolutely no issue with all the documentation being saved in the cloud. But for private stuff I would have to think twice if I want this.

Oh yes, I had this too. Templates filled with random content from various team members. Now we switched to dotx templates to avoid this kind of situation.

No, thanks! ;-)

Actually I work a lot with Office Documents on SharePoint in my job and for each of them “automatic saving” is on, so you never have to worry about anything. Just close the application when you’re done and your work is always up-to-date.

Isn’t everything being saved automatically anyway, when you work in the cloud (i.e. SharePoint)?

Maybe not if you are thirteen years old…

Recently mobile phone operators introduced a “fair use policy”, so it’s not really a”roam like at home” anymore, but data volumes can be limited to a fraction of what you are entitled to in your home country.

This is a point where WiFi might get more important again when traveling.

Their ads mostly carry a political message, like the one opposing chat control during an EU summit in Sweden…

Mullvad VPN - an interview with the Swedish mole

These are all valid and important questions that need to be discussed… ;-)

Hey Folks, we have “AI” for you and you will use it, whether you want it or not…

Which Distro would you recommend for a relative newcomer? My PC was once “high-end” but is already a bit older (2016/17?). Still quite powerful, I guess.

OK, thanks for the information, that sounds really interesting. I was playing Doom Eternal and Metro Exodus some time ago, but I made a bread and didn‘t pick it up anymore due to a lack of time. Many years ago I was also trying a bit of Linux on a Netbook (small notebook). By then it was really a different world than Windows.

However, I am not sure how easy that is to manage with getting the right Linux distribution, then Wine, then Proton and then getting all tricks and tweaks right… - I am not a tech expert, so leaving a system that works out of the box is a bit of a hurdle for me.

What would be the best Linux „Distro“ (I guess that‘s how it is called) to start with? I would prefer if I would not have to deal with command line stuff… ;-)

What is “Proton” in this context?

I have a custom built PC running on Windows 10, which has no TPM and therefore cannot update to Win11. I might consider Linux as an alternative on some regular laptop, but I’m afraid that my games might no longer be running if I switch the OS from Windows to Linux.

even a scathing rant about surveillance capitalism becomes fodder for the machine, as you can clearly see with the ads on this page.

Ads? I can see no ads…

Never been happier to see some cookies (I can delete or block).

Okay, Orangeman! Now it’s getting personal…

This has nothing to do with privacy! Criminals have their techniques and methods to protect themselves and their “businesses” from discovery, both in the real world and in the online world. Even in a complete absence of privacy they would find a way to hide their stuff from the police - at least for a while.

In the real world, criminals (e.g. drug dealers) also use cars, so you could argue, that druck trafficking is a side effect of people having cars…

I think you are mixing here two different aspects of this and of similar past cases. I the past there was often a problem with takedowns of such sites, because german prosecutors did not regard themselves as being in charge of takedowns, if the servers were somewhere overseas. Their main focus was to get the admins and users of those sites and to get them into jail.

In this specific case they were observing this platform (together with prosecutors from other countries in an orchestrated operation) to gather as much data as possible about the structure, the payment flows, the admins and the users of this before moving into action and getting them arrested. The site was taken down meanwhile.

If you blow up and delete)such a darknet service immediately upon discovery, you may get rid of it (temporarily) but you might not catch many of the people behind it.