Well—that is certainly a meticulous observation! 🔍

Someone else will continue selling RAM and making money.

TNG is also painfully old fashioned. Especially the fist two seasons are … hard to watch sometimes.

Honestly: I would start with VOY. It’s easy to watch, has a certain amount of action, and doesn’t lose it too much with society and politics.

Have we just become numb to ads?

Online I use multiple browser extensions and settings to avoid showing ads. In the offline world there is no way to avoid them but I think I pretty much can ignore them.

I also intentionally do not buy anything I remember seeing an ad for.

This is the only valid answer!

The URLs mentioned in their blog article all have a wrong certificate (different host name).

I am sure if they fix it Google’s system would reclassify the sites as safe.

Please go see a doctor if you think you have skin cancer.

So, they gave in to the AI hype, too?

I’ll always prefer physical media over streaming for things I like.

It’s mainly Bluray nowadays, but also some older DVDs.

Let me introduce you to UY Scuti.

FreeCAD: Pros: free, open source. Cons: workflow as rough as sandpaper, constantly crashes.

It has a learning curve (like all software), yes. But I cannot confirm the crashes.

If you have money to spend, look for a Microsoft Surface. It’s amazing how good they work with Linux, despite being a Microsoft device designed to run Windows.

Their build quality is really good, too.

• Mail with all the bells and whistles (been there, done that – but I just want this to work and not care about details).
• Dynamic DNS because I just need to tell someone my non-static IP so they can connect that with my domain name.

Thanks! I just prefer simple UIs.

Cross country running probably. Exploring new areas on different continents just for fun.

(Screenshots resized due to not wasting too much space.

Here’s a small one of how a website would look like.

Here’s a larger one of how my new tab page looks like (including multiple tabs to show how the tab bar looks like).

// Enable userChrome.css
user_pref('toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets', true);


// Warnings
user_pref('browser.aboutConfig.showWarning', false);


// Style
user_pref('browser.tabs.inTitlebar', 0);
user_pref('browser.theme.content-theme', 1);
user_pref('browser.theme.toolbar-theme', 1);


// Extensions
user_pref('extensions.activeThemeID', 'firefox-compact-light@mozilla.org');
user_pref('extensions.pocket.enabled', false);
user_pref('extensions.screenshots.disabled', true);
user_pref('extensions.getAddons.showPane', false);
user_pref('extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled', false);


// Zoom
user_pref('toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues', '.5,.3,1,1.2,1.3,1.5');
user_pref('devtools.toolbox.zoomValue', '1.4');
user_pref('browser.zoom.siteSpecific', false);


// Privacy
//
// Basically do not leak URLs, IPs, etc. to external services
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled', false);
user_pref('security.OCSP.enabled', 0);
user_pref('browser.contentblocking.category', 'custom');
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.urlbar.trending.featureGate', false);


// DoH explicitly off
user_pref('network.trr.mode', 5);
user_pref('network.trr.default_provider_uri', '');


// Cookies
user_pref('network.cookie.cookieBehavior', 2);


// AdBlock
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites', false);


// Remove weird URLS
user_pref('toolkit.shopping.ohttpConfigURL', '');
user_pref('toolkit.shopping.ohttpRelayURL', '');
user_pref('browser.partnerlink.attributionURL', '');
user_pref('browser.privatebrowsing.vpnpromourl', '');


// Do not track
user_pref('privacy.trackingprotection.enabled', false);
user_pref('privacy.trackingprotection.emailtracking.enabled', false);
user_pref('privacy.trackingprotection.socialtracking.enabled', false);
user_pref('privacy.trackingprotection.cryptomining.enabled', false);
user_pref('privacy.trackingprotection.fingerprinting.enabled', false);
user_pref('privacy.donottrackheader.enabled', true);


// Beahvior
user_pref('general.smoothScroll', false);
user_pref('signon.autofillForms', true);
user_pref('signon.firefoxRelay.feature', 'disabled');
user_pref('browser.download.manager.addToRecentDocs', false);
user_pref('security.tls.version.min', 1);
user_pref('browser.profiles.enabled', false);


// UI features
//
// https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/blob/main/user.js
user_pref('browser.discovery.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.userprefs.cfr.addons', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.userprefs.cfr.features', false);
user_pref('browser.preferences.moreFromMozilla', false);
user_pref('browser.tabs.tabmanager.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.aboutConfig.showWarning', false);
user_pref('browser.aboutwelcome.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.uidensity', 0);
user_pref('browser.urlbar.trimURLs', false);
user_pref('browser.urlbar.showSearchTerms.enabled', false);


// Telemetry
//
// https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/blob/main/user.js
user_pref('datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled', false);
user_pref('datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.unified', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.server', 'data:,');
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base', '');
user_pref('browser.ping-centre.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry', false);
user_pref('breakpad.reportURL', '');
user_pref('browser.tabs.crashReporting.sendReport', false);
user_pref('browser.crashReports.unsubmittedCheck.autoSubmit2', false);
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.api_url', '');


// Disable AI bullshit
//
user_pref('browser.ml.enable', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.shortcuts', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.sidebar', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableAltText', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableUpdatedAddImage', false);

and

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");


/* Tabs styling */

#TabsToolbar {
    background-color: #cccccc !important;
    --toolbarbutton-inner-padding: 0 !important;
}

.tabbrowser-tab {
    padding: 0 !important;
}

.tab-background {
    margin: 0 !important;
    border-radius: 0 !important;
    background-color: var(--toolbar-bgcolor) !important;
    box-shadow: none !important;
}

#alltabs-button {
    display: none !important;
}

#tabbrowser-tabs {
    min-height: unset !important;
}


/* secondary label indicators */

@font-face {
    /* copy font file to same directory as this CSS file */
    font-family: 'SymbolsNerdFont';
    src: url('SymbolsNerdFont.ttf') format('truetype');
}

.tab-secondary-label {
    display: none;
}

.tab-text::before {
    font-family: SymbolsNerdFont;
    padding-right: 0.25em;
}

.tabbrowser-tab[soundplaying] .tab-text::before { content: ''; }
.tabbrowser-tab[muted] .tab-text::before { content: '󰝟'; }
.tabbrowser-tab[activemedia-blocked] .tab-text::before { content: ''; }

/* unselected tabs */

.tab-background:not([selected]),
.tab-icon-image:not([selected]) {
    opacity: 0.4 !important;
}
.tab-text:not([selected]) {
    color: #555753 !important;
}

#tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox {
    min-height: var(--tab-min-height) !important;
    max-height: var(--tab-min-height) !important;
}

scrollbox[part="scrollbox"] {
    gap: 2px;
}

and

/* Style about:home and about:newtab */

@-moz-document url-prefix(about:home), url-prefix(about:newtab) {
    .logo-and-wordmark {
        background-image: url(REPLACE_ME_WITH_YOUR_FAVORITE_IMAGE.jpg);
        background-size: cover;
        background-position: center;
        aspect-ratio: 16/9;
        border-radius: 1em;
        position: relative;
        width: auto;
        height: auto;
        max-width: 80%;
        max-height: 60vh;
        margin: 0 auto;
    }

    .logo-and-wordmark .logo {
        display: none !important;
    }

    .logo-and-wordmark .wordmark {
        position: absolute;
        right: 2em;
        bottom: 0.5em;
        --newtab-wordmark-color: #eb8819;
    }
}

So … Basically just another preconfigured Firefox with extensions?

Getting a burner phone and account and only tun it on when you want to check the messages is a good start. Do not use any of your real information.

When I left FB a decade ago they didn’t force a phone number for the messenger, thy basically just requested all possible permissions.

Even after years of being used as a meme template, this stock photo is still as aesthetically pleasing as a Renaissance painting.