I'm guessing his/her point involves the location of its incorporation. Any company in the "five eyes" zone can be forced to release details about its users to any member state. One must evaluate whether NordVPN keeps anything more than a few hours - days tops - to decide if it is "safe enough". I was worried enough about this particular point that I chose a VPN that is not in any way beholden to five eyes or the fourteen eyes, which is a similar agreement.

Proton caught heat because of its release of information to the local law enforcement recently. While Switzerland is not part of the five eyes, it does have its own laws requiring a reveal in certain circumstances. I forgot the details, but I think they had an IP address that had not yet been wiped from cache, and that was enough to pinpoint the hackers being sought.

In truth, there's no sure way to be sure. One still must trust the organization is both honest and competent enough to properly wipe any residual information. No matter who it is, some amount of information has to be in cache for some time in order to be able to deliver the service, and there also needs something tracking the workings of the system to ensure it isn't overloaded or to find opportunities to improve it.

Yeah, i know. See my other reply from moments ago. I've never heard the term "ugly Canadian" or railing against their imperialist culture abroad. I've seen some latent sense of superiority over them (especially wrt frankophones) but not outright hatred. They aren't treated like a threat, from my limited experience, and that was before our government went Fascist.

This. This, this, this, this!

My linux computers are rooted. I can get root any time i need it and nobody is refusing to offer their sevices on linux because it is vulnerable.

Nobody ever points out that when any app wants root, you get a dialog to ask if it can have it. If you don't know why it's asking, say no. It ain't rocket science.

Now, if you are going through customs and you don't want them to copy your phone and read all your personal documents, that is a different situation. Lock your bootloader unrooted and encryped to the nines. Preferably use a phone with almost nothing on it.

This is what i motivates me, too, though you go in more than i. I love having my degoogled pixel 2xl on Android 14 and running almost as snappy as my pixel 6.

I finally gave up on my moto x 2013 about 2 years ago, but i still have it. It's like holding a river stone that perfectly firs my hand.

I don't know how well it scales, but I find Metro to be rather good. Find it of f-droid. I like that it randomizes the playlist rather than gets the list of songs and applies randomization to the play order. It also shows lyrics at a touch, if they're in the metadata, and apparently recognizes lyric synchronization if it is there.

Depends on if someone uploaded the data for the target area, and the lookup is not intuitive for North Americans.

Can you counter those for those of us who are spectators?

By this logic, any untrained citizen who interrupts a robbery by shooting the robber in the head from behind should not only be absolved of the crime but should be lauded for it.

Yep, i agree that it's ludicrous that manufacturers literally removed features over time and simultaneously raised prices.

I like to have music, pics, etc., local, too. However I'm not going to take a subpar device just to have SD, so I compromise.

I rotate my music selection. I offload older camera media to my NAS at home, etc. Since where I am, I get WiFi almost every where I go, I can remote connect to my NAS. I rarely do because I have to deactivate my protective VPN to use my personal VPN for my link (safety first). So I'm effectively in the same situation.

When Google first announced that external cards were "evil", I knew instantly that was because they want us to store our data in their cloud. Various articles, marketing flat out pushed that solution.

Am I the only one here who uses backintime? It is easy to use and supports incremental backups.

Sure. Let's see... There's this: Tech Layoffs Likely Pose No Deterrent to Record H-1B Visa Demand

Continued growth in H-1B registrations despite mass layoffs undermines the idea that the demand is based on labor shortages, said Ron Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University.

Tech workers willing to rake lower pay

This illustrates how widespread these layoffs are: More than 219,000 global tech workers have lost their jobs this year

In every other industry, hiring continues to be robust, yet pretty much the entire tech industry is in a depression. Why? Even the companies having "weak" earnings last quarter continue to do well financially.

Outsourcing hubs like India to bag 30% to 40% of jobs lost to tech layoffs

Big tech doubles down on union busting as labor movement intensifies

https://opensupermaps.com/

They have maps with USA style addresses, updated monthly. They cover pretty much everything. So that would solve your address search Problem in OsmAnd.

There is also a google traffic overlay.