There is also last.fm. I would have suggested libre.fm but they are no longer open to registrations it seems

This would replace the “algorithmic” component of spotify, I would still suggest some other options (sharing stuff in your social circle, seeing who opens for your favourite groups etc.)

Some countries have a working vacation type of visa, but most of the jobs you’d get with that arent going to pay super well and are intended on covering your living expenses while travelling.

and it would put me on the path to a better life than I would have in America

If you’re intending on immigrating, many countries have pathways for taking higher education and getting permanent residency & a career after you graduate.

There’s also specific industries that countries may give you a work visa and a pathway to immigrate (e.g British Columbia, Canada is trying to acquire healthcare workers from the US).

Edit: There is also the option of remote work, however I think many companies are moving away from this as times change.

If you don’t mind clarifying, what do you mean by DoD?

Frankly the best solution i have seen is always a combination of things. At least in the city I live in, people can take bikes on buses and trains, many people walk, and for trips that require trunk space (e.g furniture, DIY supplies etc) there is a Car sharing service that is cheaper than owning a car, or using ride share / taxi.

I don’t think waymo is a better option than a combination of what’s above, I think it can perhaps compliment it but it should not be the sole last-kilometre solution.

I would like to see waymo-like tech provide better public transit for the disabled. As of now, people in my city with disabilities can book special routes which are serviced by specialized buses/ taxis, and existing lines are all wheelchair accessible as well.

Self driving cars give the opportunity for those people to have even more freedom in booking, since as of now they can’t do last minute booking for the custom routes. It wouldn’t really create a traffic problem and massively would increase quality of life for those who are sadly disadvantages in society

I’m pretty sure they still are a defence contractor in the US, they also are generally the option for biking computers. There are competitors but Garmin has a chokehold on that sector, with other options just feeling worse.

So while their smart watches are more niche than Apple, Samsung etc, they still have found a solid niche in the smart tracking sector.

I would also like to chime in regarding how the community is quite small, there are two (large-ish) Canadian instances but despite this there isn’t really a large francophone population here from what I’ve seen.

I think the western-anglo bias is in part because the community requires people to host the servers, for the community to even exist in the first place. Smaller regions (such as franco-canada, French speakers only making up ~24% of our population) will make up a smaller portion of the user base and likely found out about the App through other English-language resources.

Mastodon has a bit of a larger more diverse community, but it also has had the benefit of many more years of larger (but still niche) usage and arguably more severe issues with X formerly known as Twitter becoming a hell-hole.

For FreeMC Boot, would you put it on a secondary OEM Card? Or is it best to just use one card for everything.

Sadly I don’t live in Europe, and the chain game stores here don’t sell them anymore. But there is lots of local places here that have good return policies / testing of everything before putting it on shelves.

Thank you very much for your insight!

Do you have experience with the MemCard PRO? Would you say it’s a full replacement for older memory cards, or should it be used in tandem with an original memory card in slot two.

Frankly I would like to not use Apple CarPlay / Android Auto — however, the built in software needs to actually usable and continuously updated.

I particularly want to see better non-touch input. Rotary dial + buttons à la Mazda, and much better voice input. I live in a multilingual region, and it consequently renders most in-built navigation voice commands useless, as it won’t understand language switching. Even Google assitant has issues with this despite supporting multiple input languages, usually resulting in me saying the entire command in the same language as the address. (Or just giving up if the name and street are in two languages).

But with built in systems that only support one language at a time, I just can’t say some of the addresses since I don’t know how it wants me to mispronounce them in English.

I also have found media playback frustrating in any modern vehicle. This is likely a lot harder to solve, but the inability to switch playlists or change playback settings without my phone connected to Android Auto is frustrating when in vehicles without it.

I know this is very ranty and not that big of a deal, it’s just frustrating seeing so little progress in the past decade on this front — and in some aspects like human interface design of vehicles, they have frankly regressed. If I look at the voice input systems on cars from 15-20 years ago there has been huge improvement, but even 10 years ago to now it doesn’t feel that different. Maybe a few new commands, but the quality of recognition / utility of the system is lacking.

I will second the suggestion for a dash camera, they can record audio automatically without need for user intervention.

Another option is to just use a voice assistant, I usually quickly ask my watch to start a voice recording beforehand to ensure there is a record of the interaction.

I’m going to suggest an alternative to Samsung Internet or Firefox : https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Out of the options I’ve tried, it’s probably the best bet for reducing tracking, fingerprinting & increasing security without turning to Tor browser (which while it is more anonymous, is frustrating for general browsing)

For clearing cache, there are two options. There’s a dedicated clear browsing data button in the hamburger menu, it can also be configured to “sanitize on close” (similar to Firefox on desktop, or Brave on desktop / mobile) [In cromite, this can be found under Security > Clear the data at open]

I can’t recommend Firefox on Android in good faith, until site isolation (fission) is enabled on the platform. This is a major security regression compared to desktop Firefox, or chromium based browsers on Android

Edit: It seems like Iron Fox (continuation of Mull / fork of Firefox) has site isolation enabled - but it is still buggy and does not have all features enabled e.g no isolated process SELinux labels.

To be fair, even a skilled users may just not notice something like this. There are many things we do in our day to day life without paying enough attention, particularly when it’s routine / something we feel adept using.

I think there’s an element of prestige people are missing. At least in my country there were online options prior to the pandemic even, they however lacked the prestige / name recognition that other institutions had. Keeping mandatory in-person classes is another way to maintain this prestige, a differentiating factor, from the other institutions.

I also have to agree with most of the comments here. From an instructional point of view online classes are lacking, they can be less engaging, and pedagogically neutered. And in fields with lots of laboratory work, it’s frankly impossible to get rid of at least part of the in-person educational component. Even for the humanities, having access to a large on-campus library of scholarly resources is integral to research.

In my personal experience I’ve been quite grateful to have access to a large archival collection, items that could not be shipped to remote students because they are too old to leave a temperature & humidity controlled environment. An online experience would prevent someone like me from doing some manuscript / original publication related research.

Now, I do think online options are helpful. ESPECIALLY for summer classes, where students may wish to retake a class while also moving away for summer work. But I do not think they should become the default, they should be an option where possible, but not the new normal.

Normally I would say community forks have the power to continue the project. However, in this case I think chrome / safari would eventually add enough new features that Firefox forks can’t add quick enough. Mozilla at least has some power in pushing the direction of web-standards, which these forks would lack, as well as the larger development team and some corporate usage of the browser which Mozilla has. I also don’t see the smaller development community keeping up with security issues found in the browser, particularly pertinent for corporate marketshare and individuals with a stricter threat model (journalists, dissidents, etc.)

The only other factor, is whether Firefox dissapearing would officially create impetus for an anti-trust case against Google. I doubt so under the current American presidency, but I could see the EU being concerned (even if they lack the power the US has to force the company to split). If something were to happen here there would be substantial change in the browser market, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful of this happening.

I’m not surprised by the corporate network, it’s pretty common for those types of networks to severely block inter-device LAN communication. There are two solutions however, for one, KDEconnect has initial Bluetooth support. I think it only support Plasma and Android as of now, and could be documented better, but it does avoid the LAN access problems. The other solution is using a VPN, the easiest off the shelf solution being Tailscale, but I feel this is only worth it if you have multiple use cases for it (I use it for faster Syncthing transfers, Moonlight / Sunshine game streaming. And KDEconnect)

I really wish KDEConnect “just worked”, similar to how Apple’s devices connect to one another, but I guess this is the price you pay sometimes for an open source cross platform solution.

For sending things to devices I use KDE Connect. I realize it is a fundamentally different application, but it is what I use generally to send / receive links between devices, as well as documents, images etc. It also is good for notification mirroring, and really just integrating Android devices into Windows / Linux computers.

For passwords I used KeePass (and I sync them between devices with SyncThing), but I usually recommend Bitwarden (which is what I used to use). Both are open source, have apps for all platforms, can integrate into your browser if you choose. The main advantage of Bitwarden is that it is open source, all necessary features are free, and you can host the server yourself if you want. It also integrates into some services, notably email aliasing ones, to allow you to generate new emails every time you make a new account.

For bookmarks / history your best bet is the extension everyone else is recommending here!

What are your goals?

I would say it’s really a combination of the instances policies and their jurisdiction, and in terms of jurisdiction it also depends on where you live (e.g. you may have more protections under law if the instance is hosted in your country)

There’s also nothing stopping you from using multiple instances — siloing your interaction in different types of communities in different accounts on different instances. This may be useful if part of your privacy concerns are having all of your post / comment data on one account on one instance.

Edit: You can also use an email aliasing service to avoid even giving your email out. There are aliasing services such as Addy.io, Simplelogin (subsidiary of Proton AG), Firefox Relay (Mozilla), as well as some email providers which provide (iCloud, Proton, Mailbox.org to name a few)

Passwords I would recommend Bitwarden or KeePass (both of which are in the PrivacyGuides wiki, particularly usefull for KeePass where there are different clients depending on OS)

Email / contacts / calendar I am still struggling on to be quite honest. I am debating right now on Mailbox.org + EteSync OR just using Posteo.de (while it has some security regressions compared to Mailbox.org, it has encrypted contacts and calendar). To be quite honest though the options available in this space are quite frustrating, it is really hard to find a solution that allows for interoperability / data portability as well as E2EE / elevated security.

I would say the only potential “benefit” is if the account contains non-public facing personal information - you are reducing the chance it gets leaked via data breach (assuming, of course, they actually erase your data properly)

But I would say it is at least worth it to reduce that potential risk, but you should also go into it assuming that anything that was publicly accessible has been archived / saved by someone.

I for some reason recall at one point WhatsApp’s encryption was actually an audited implementation of Signal’s encryption. But that is so long ago that I doubt that holds much weight now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯