The rule of thumb is that you want at least the same amount of ram that you have (plus a little more just in case) if you have a laptop or similar where you’re going to use hibernate, since that works by moving whatever is in the ram into the swap.

Also, note that swap is basically emergency (and slow) ram. You want enough to handle any emergencies. Although I think it gets used before ram fills up completely. There are a lot of uses of ram where swap works just as well. Like if you got a program and/or browser tabs open in the background that you’re not presently using, it needs somewhere to store that data. And don’t forget about all the programs you may use that handle or process large files. Typically that gets loaded into ram (or direct to swap if fast access isn’t needed), and if ram can’t hold it, something that is used less is moved to swap.

But if there is no room, it keeps trying any way and it all freezes up like what op describes.

So… since people often have 16 gigs of ram in their machines, no, that isn’t a huge amount of swap to have. Even on my desktops I generally have at least 32 gigs swap just because I often do things that fill up a lot of ram. One of them has 64 gigs ram, and it can fill a good chunk of the swap as well if I try to render something heavy in Blender. Add on to that, I may have a vm open as well. That often uses swap along with filling ram. And of course general web use where it is normal to keep several tabs constantly open.

I want to make sure I have more swap than will ever be used. Because if it does get used, then that means it and ram is full and the computer will freeze.

Is your swap big enough? Some installers default to only 1gig. That isn’t big enough normally.

If it fills the ram and the swap, it will cause what you are seeing. Typically the suggestion is a little more than however much ram you have. Personally I set it at either 16 or 32gigs or more. Depending on the machine and what I intend on doing with it and how much drive space I have available.

You can keep a system monitor open (or top, htop etc) and keep an eye on it when you’re doing something ram hungry, like having a bunch of browser tabs open or whatever. If it freezes and you look over and see the ram usage pegged to the top, that will suggest that that is your problem.

I don’t know. I’d be interested in learning more about that as well.

I do like it better than element, though. It is more light weight.

I use librewolf for browsing (with the temporary containers addon), nheko for matrix, thunderbird (of course)… that has pgp functionality built in.

When it comes to web browsing I think it is a good idea to use more than one browser. For most general use stuff I use librewolf and already mentioned. I do all my work related stuff, banking and purchasing in chromium. Unfortunately we’re back in the days of internet explorer when a lot of mainstream sites are broken and only work well on one browser. But the uses I mentioned are not as important in regards to privacy so it works for me.

Crypto sites are also often to be built for a chromium base, but I like to keep those separate and use Brave for that.

Yes… and if it needs to be said, I am also directly implying that anonymity is a large and crucial part of privacy.

I do a lot of risky and dangerous shit on the internet.

well… this seems to be the bigger issue. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if it ain’t worth it, then it ain’t worth it. That seems to be what you are telling yourself.

If you’re ready to cut bait, then you just need to drop every connection that existed during that period. And start anew putting a solid line between before and now. Be the ringpop you want to be and act like old ringpop never happened. I suspect that guilt might be playing a part in your angst as well. The only way to fix that is to be a better man.

I doubt it is drugs that op is worrying about. The police need to catch you with that in possession. That doesn’t sound like what op is talking about. Sounds more like he is paranoid about getting caught for past actions.

If op is legitimately doing things that can get them serious legal time or worse, then the last thing they need to do is talk about it with someone who can identify them.

Ah… I guess I didn’t understand how services like encrypted webmail worked. I’ve only ever used local pgp with thunderbird or whatever. I was assuming (incorrectly) that those services operated in the same manner. Thanks for explaining it to me.

I’m not finding any definitions of “privacy” that suggest the term refers to control of something. Regardless of whether that something is within or outside of your reach.

You appear to be saying that like it is a bad thing, rather than a good thing. Easily making multiple accounts is a crucial part of anonymity and privacy.

If it is tied to a phone number then any information connected to the phone account will be connected to the signal account identity. And any identifying information attached to the method used to pay for the phone account will be attached to the phone account and consequently the signal account.

Typically people pay using credit or debit cards, so the identifying information of those bank accounts become attached to your signal account.

Airvpn doesn’t require any personal information. I mean… I guess it asked for a name or whatever, but it doesn’t verify any of it. I certainly didn’t give it anything legitimate, and I paid with mixed crypto so it certainly has as little personal information on me as would be possible with a vpn.

What gives ivpn, mullvad and nym the advantage for the personal info section?

That and the need of an android or iphone in order to create an account… ;[

It is and isn’t.

I’d compare the people who use technologies like this to the internet users of the 90’s and those who use facebag, tweeker and insta to the AOL users back then.

Yes, we’re the minority, but that is how people have always been. Most people don’t want freedom. But those that do still have plenty of options. Don’t forget that “they” didn’t originally plan on us plebes having true encryption tech and privacy cryptos. It is possible that we are doing better than it looks.

But yea… his comment sounds more like something we would have said 20 years ago, rather than the present. I agree with your point.

Who you are specifically (name etc) and the same amount of information on everyone you have talked to on signal and when you talked. Basically everything except for the actual content of the messages.

This is disturbing that this comment is down voted to -11, at the time of my reading, on a service that is specifically designed for people who value privacy. Is it because of some government bot, or are enough people really that emotionally attached to this product that despite the clear logic they are reacting in discomfort?

I don’t know which option is more disturbing.

I get that a lot of people don’t really value privacy that much, and are only interested in making a half hearted attempt. That is fine. But why the gross amount of denial? Why not just be honest that they think it is good enough for them, and not worth changing.

Just the fact that signal can, and we can assume, does share all the other data outside of the actual message content is a big deal.

You’re just not going to go to the extra effort of requiring a phone number and storing that information if your business model isn’t dependent on selling that information to parties who would want it. That takes a lot more effort than just giving out username/password pairs.

And given their scale and length of time they have been around, it is guaranteed that they have been complying for some time.

It is so ironic that we run into so much cognitive dissonance on this issue. It is so weird that people have such an emotional attachment to this product.

I don’t know about lavabit specifically, but typically encrypted emails are encrypted on your client computer and decrypted on the recipient’s computer. It is conceptually the same thing as an “end to end encrypted chat app”… just in email form.