That’s why I put that term in quotes, and was specific about default networking interfaces. I didn’t go into detail because that confuses a lot of people.

Source: working with wireless networks professionally for pretty much the last quarter century.

Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.

Oh, c’mon. it is trivial to make an SSID “hidden” for any networking tech that you have administrative control over. That way, only those “in the know” will know the SSID name to type in, in order to access said wireless network. It would not be “discoverable” by standard wireless-connectivity gear such as the default wifi interface in mobile phones.

Any brands protected by American law must be independently-owned, with full transfer of all branding, patents, trade secrets, intellectual assets and physical assets.

So, for example, for even a single bottle of Perrier to be sold in America, it needs to have been made by a company registered with the brand name of Perrier, with exclusive use of that name within the country, independently owned and under zero control by Nestle, being manufactured using the exact same process with the exact same ingredients, and having control of the exact same patents and American-side infrastructure.

America is such a large marketplace that it would be impossible to split a company like this. Patents alone would prevent this, forcing Nestle to divest themselves of each individual subsidiary.

Separate the search engine from anything that stinks of advertising so it can return to what it’s supposed to do: return the most relevant results.

Because even appending udm=14 only gets rid of promoted links and in-page advertising, it does f**k-all to correct manipulated search results.

I only ever used Authy as a single-item TOTP vault for BitWarden, but I moved off of it long before they ever mentioned the Windows app shutdown due to dissatisfaction with the UI. I just didn’t like their “card-like” interface, and they never offered a super-compact list-like interface. The card interface just wasted too much screen real estate, even on a desktop, and it just got immeasurably worse under mobile.

What makes the built-in database easier to attack than a separate one?

For performance reasons, early versions weren’t even encrypted, and later versions were encrypted with easily-cracked encryption. Most malware broke the encryption on the password DB using the user’s own hardware resources before it was even uploaded to the mothership. And not everyone has skookum GPUs, so that bit was particularly damning.

Plus, the built-in password managers operated within the context of the browser to do things like auto-fill, which meant only the browser needed to be compromised in order to expose the password DB.

Modern password managers like BitWarden can be configured with truly crazy levels of encryption, such that it would be very difficult for even nation-states to break into a backed-up or offline vault.

Use ButWarden myself for a login-only subset of my KeePass content. I absolutely recommend it every chance I get, but some people prefer 1Password because reasons. And 1Password is pretty much the best closed-source option out there, which is why I do so… anything to give people options that keep them away from clusterf**ks like LastPass.

I have that as an offline DB. Holds 100% of all creds that can go offline (no 2FA, unfortunately) and a bunch of extra stuff that most other managers aren’t flexible enough to do.

No-one should be using any password manager built into any browser, neither Chromium-based nor Firefox-based. Browser password databases are almost trivially easy for malware to harvest.

Go with something external, BitWarden or 1Password, or if you are entirely within the Apple ecosystem their new password system built into iOS 18 is apparently really good.

running it in an ssd is it can speed it up

Let me be absolutely clear: due to the finite write capabilities of solid-state technology, using SpinRite on an SSD is materially harmful to that SSD, and WILL shorten it’s operational lifespan by a non-trivial amount.

This is why SSDs have wear-levelling technology: to limit the number of writes that any one data cell will receive. By using a program that conducts intensive read/write operations on sectors, you are wearing your SSD out at a much higher rate than normal, dramatically speeding up any failures in the future.

I don’t care about living longer. I see no point in doing so when beset with dementia or unable to even walk, much less run.

Give me full vitality in body and mind until my last day, and I’ll be satisfied even if it’s only 80 or 75 years.

SpinRite is only meant for traditional “spinning-rust” mechanical drives.

SpinRite IS NOT meant for SSDs. The existence of TRIM makes SpinRite useless on any sort of solid state storage.

And since almost all laptops sold within the last half a decade use SSDs almost exclusively, it is highly unlikely your advice will be useful.

Removed by mod

Well… looks like I’m going to have to find a new payment platform to use.

Yet more evidence that CloudFlare is inherently damaging and hostile to the Internet.

I just want a small […] phone that fits in one hand.

How bloody small are your hands??

Mine are just average for a man’s, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is eminently usable with just one hand.

Most dumb phones aren’t.

Dumb, that is. Virtually all of them have some version of Android or KaiOS or some other full-fat OS cosplaying as something “simple”. Litmus test: does your “dumb phone” come with a map app? A Facebook app? Can you install apps from an external source? If so, you don’t have a dumb phone.

The hallmark of a dumb phone is the lack of an OS that boots. You turn it on, and everything should be instantly and immediately available, loaded from ROM. No boot sequence, no waiting for anything to load.

The only truly “dumb phone” out there - as something “new” and not actually vintage - is the Rotary Un-Phone.

When the Parasite Class objects so vehemently to something that is impacting their obscene profits and sociopathic control, you know that something is being done correctly.

I used to take pride in that I could fully set up, configure, secure, minimally provision (with software) and neuter the more egregious aspects of Vista/7/8/8.1 within a 16hr time frame.

With Windows 10 this increased to 20 hours, and with my own Windows 11 install I am currently clocking in at 24hrs - three whole work days. The last day of which is spent in the Registry and doing multiple reboots to ensure the new UI fuckery has been appropriately castrated.

I have a handful of programs, both current and vintage, that are either inadequately or completely unable to be serviced by Wine. With that said, I am now down to only two rigs on Windows, the remainder being various flavours of Linux or BSD.

While I can understand the need for wifi in places where it is next to impossible to run a physical hardline (renting a house or extensive renos needed), I fully agree. Absolutely nothing can beat a hardline.