I have a Google Alert set up, so I get notified in case my name pops up on the web. A month after I joined a new company, I got an alert - turned out that their internal directory page was exposed to the public web. I was pretty livid - all this time I was proud of maintaining good anonymity, looking up my name never returned anything meaningful on Google. So I complained to my boss about this, and he said it was actually a bug/misconfiguration - which they were already aware of, but didn’t bother fixing it because no one complained. I was super pissed and made it very clear that it was a violation of my privacy and I wanted it taken down ASAP. Thankfully my boss was understanding and got it fixed. Then I had to report the page to Google. It took a while, but it was finally gone from the search results.

… for now. They’ve already replaced the old Notepad with a bloated UWP version, so it probably won’t be long before it starts sending telemetry as well.

IT guy here, the NFC thing isn’t really a concern (NFC doesn’t work that way) or for that matter, any other wireless technology, as it’ll need to authenticate with your phone somehow. If you can somehow simply scan data from a phone without any form of authentication, that would be a massive security hole - something that would be patched by the vendors real quick. Also, if something like that were possible then the TSA/FBI wouldn’t have any issues pulling data from locked phones. Think of all the times you’ve had to put your phone thru the xray machines at the airports. Also see the case of FBI vs Apple for instance.

The other issues you’ve mentioned are valid though. Heck my Galaxy Fold won’t even fit in that slot.

Have you tried installing MTGO using Lutris? Apparently it works fine, but you’ll need some tweaks. The key is to use windowed mode, disable music and card animations:

Runner options: -Use the latest version of lutri-proton if it’s not the default. -Use windowed (virtual desktop) mode and the display resolution of whatever device you are playing on. This was the biggest fix of most problems for me with stuff related to proper rendering of windows. -All else is default from Lutris install

System options: -Uncheck restrict number of cores -Disable desktop effects -All else is default from Lutris install

In-game options: -Disable or silence music and Uncheck play client startup music -Disable card animations(summoning sickness and foil treatment)

I’ve also found that it is always better to close the program using the Stop button on Lutris, there’s a bug where sometimes if you close out of the game via the Close button in the window, it will not properly stop the game, and will prevent starting the game back up again. I also tend to start the game in Lutris instead of via a desktop shortcut.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/101262d/psa_mtgo_on_steam_deck/j9bqck9/

Well, if you’re using Mullvad’s malware/ad filters etc there’s really no need for a PiHole in the first place (unless you’re doing some funky custom filtering).

Mullvad’s DNS. It’s available for non-subscribers as well, and their privacy policy explicitly claims they do not log DNS requests in any way. https://mullvad.net/en/help/no-logging-data-policy/

They support both DoT and DoH, and also have various servers for blocking ads, trackers etc (if you wish to use them): https://github.com/mullvad/dns-blocklists

I that case, check out Fedora CoreOS.

https://www.talos.dev/

It runs entirely in RAM, administration is super simple, no ssh, easy to update/and upgrade, immutable, minimal distro designed specifically for secure container usage.

That looks like a fun mix of analog and digital, done right. I might have to pop into to our local pinball place and see if they’ve got anything similar.

What do those season 1/2/3 panels do btw?

How about Gogs? The whole thing is < 30 MB, and is lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi. You can even get a native binary package if you want to run it without the overhead of Docker.

The enshittification actually began several years ago, back when FB bought WhatsApp. That was the moment you gave up on privacy, the moment that was a clear sign that it was all going to go downhill from there. If y’all didn’t quit WhatsApp at that time, then you bought it upon yourselves. The truth is, you’ve been using a shitty service for a long time and whoring your data to Meta and making Zuckerberg richer, so this latest feature bloat or w/e isn’t the least bit interesting.

Yep

#Roombas, roll out!

But fear not, the Swat Kats are on their way to save the day!

Cue Swat Kats theme

Yep, just use the rectangular selection from the edge panel and you can save it as a screenshot or extract the text.

Native Alpha is an opensource alternative.

That was a hilarious read. Thanks for sharing!

Probably Oblivion and Skyrim. Depends on the controls though, some PC games require a mouse and keyboard to play (like Age of Empires), so it would be interesting to see how they handle button mapping and mouse drags/gestures.

Here’s my take:

May need a bit of tweaking though to suit your tastes, especially light mode. The current color options are a bit limited.

{
  "monet_override_light_secondary_text_color": "#93A1A1",
  "monet_override_light_primary_text_color": "#657B83",
  "monet_override_light_link_color": "#073642",
  "monet_boost_light_color": false,
  "monet_override_dark_secondary_text_color": "#657B83",
  "monet_override_dark_primary_text_color": "#93A1A1",
  "monet_override_dark_link_color": "#B58900",
  "monet_boost_dark_color": true,
  "monet_color_intensity": 0.6,
  "monet_manual_theme_color": "#002B36",
  "monet_system": false
}

{
  "monet_override_light_secondary_text_color": "#93A1A1",
  "monet_override_light_primary_text_color": "#657B83",
  "monet_override_light_link_color": "#073642",
  "monet_boost_light_color": false,
  "monet_override_dark_secondary_text_color": "#657B83",
  "monet_override_dark_primary_text_color": "#93A1A1",
  "monet_override_dark_link_color": "#B58900",
  "monet_boost_dark_color": true,
  "monet_color_intensity": 0.6,
  "monet_manual_theme_color": "#002B36",
  "monet_system": false
} 

You’d know if you need one if you’ve got unknown/unidentified devices in the Device Manager. But these days, you should be able to get most of your drivers directly from Windows Update. Since you’ve got your WiFi working already, you should just run a Windows Update and install any optional updates. You can also go to the Device Manager > Right click on any unknown device > Install Driver and select Windows Update as the source.

Also, ideally it’s best to install drivers from the laptop manufacturer’s website, as it’ll be a better match for your hardware. Only install from Intel etc if the system manufacturer’s driver is quite oudated (usually the case if the laptop is a few years old and out of support), or if there’s a critical vulnerability in the driver which justifies doing the update.