There is no cost associated with your disbelief.

Nobody is doing double the work. If you ask AI a question, it only gets a vibe check at best.

Hey there BluescreenOfDeath, sup. Good to meet you. My name is ‘Nobody’.

Wow! That’s quite a list. Thanks.

Just because I find an inaccurate search result does not mean DDG is useless. Never trust, always verify.

You’re welcome to buy in to the AI hype.

We’ve been using ‘AI’ for quite some time now, well before the advent of AI Rice Cookers. It’s really not that new.

I use AI when I master my audio tracks. I am clinically deaf and there are some frequency ranges that I can’t hear well enough to master. So I lean heavily on AI. I use AI for explaining unfamiliar code to me. Now, I don’t run and implement such code in a production environment. You have to do your due diligence. If you searched for the same info in a search engine, you still have to do your due diligence. Search engine results aren’t always authoritative. It’s just that Grok is much faster at searching and in fact, lists the sources it pulled the info from. Again, much faster than engaging a search engine and slogging through site after site.

I believe we are reading two different Hitchhiker’s Guide.

No wAy something popular and megacorp-embraced could be bad. Asbestos, lead pipes, 2-digit dates, NFTs, opiates, sub-prime lending, algorithmic content, pervasive surveillance, etc must have just been flukes.

All technology weilds a double edged sword.

In 70 years on this planet, I would have thought we’d put LGBTQ+ and racism to rest. I look forward to a day when being LGBTQ+ is as boring as being heterosexual. America could solve about 50% of it’s problems by using this one simple trick: Mind your own fuckin’ business. My sexual proclivities should only come into discussion if you’re sitting on my lap. Otherwise, piss off.

Thing is, I already have a standalone, whole network, pFsense firewall in place. I already run DNSCrypt as well as PIA VPN, & Tailscale on my servers. I run Windows Firewall Control on my Windows PC, which was bought out by MalwareBytes, for a couple things I like to have precise control of but only at certain times as needed. I really was just interested in someone’s personal perspective. I do have Portmaster bookmarked, as I’m not one to dismiss useful software off hand. Never know when I might just have a use case for it.

Multi-Level Tunneling Sounds interesting. Is that like choosing which layer you want to use in the OSI stack? I’d be all in if Portmaster could generate network noise for obfuscation. That’s what I’m trying to educate myself on currently.

Two things to remember:

• Prohibition has never been a deterant to consumption.
• For every technology, there exists an equal yet undoing technology.

Ain’t no normie ever gonna figure that out

We were all ‘normies’, to use your vernacular, at one point or another. Could it possibly be more complicated than building an Altair with less than supportive instruction manuals of the time?

Do you find Portmaster to be viable? I’ve seen it around and read a couple brief articles about it. I’ve just never found anyone who uses it. I use MalwareBytes Firewall Control from Binsoft (Alexandru Dicu - https://www.binisoft.org/). It’s fairly bare bones but it does the trick. I’m always looking for something better. I do have the whole network behind a standalone pFsense box. I just needed something local on the machine to silence chatty programs and services.

(Simple) DNSCrypt: https://www.dnscrypt.org/

Why did you choose China specifically over

This was my first foray into bringing an idea to fruition, patent it, and market it. I wasn’t looking to make a million dollars off the tool. If it happened, great, if not, no worries. It was a very simple tool to allow someone to easily put the spring coil back in your mower without cutting yourself to ribbons. If you’ve ever yanked the pull cord out of a chainsaw, mower, etc and tried to put it back in, you’ll understand. I wanted a product the average homeowner could purchase, have in their tool shed to use when needed. I found that the better marketing strategy was to market it to repair shops.

After reviewing production pricing, I ‘chose’ China quite begrudgingly. Like I mentioned, I really wanted this tool to be US made. I could have just decided to have it made in America, but I would have never recouped my initial investment and would have never made any profit. I at least wanted to break even. Despite Americans enthusiastically waiving the ‘America First’ flags during election years, when it gets down to brass tacks, they want cheap goods, and that usually means manufacturing outside of the US. The good ship ‘Made In The USA’ sailed in the 60s and it’s not coming back. It makes for good campaign fodder tho.

OP, I’m not going to castigate you for your Google usage. I am going to assume that you are aware of the privacy concerns when dealing with Google since you are posting here in a Privacy chan. Sometimes, people are required to use Google services and there is no way around that. If that were my situation, I’d use a sandbox, VPN, 7 diff proxies, and a hazmat suit. If this Google usage is not required by say an employer, I’d find something more private.

Google does have some pretty cool technology. Unfortunately most of it, if not all, is built off of data theft.

(like websites ask for captcha or don’t let you in)

Thank you for your comment. As far as captcha, the way I have my network set up, captcha’s are just part of the ‘way it is’. I would rather captchas than have my jimmy just hanging out exposed in the ether tho. I was just very curious about NYM because it sounds very promising. The reviews I’ve read from as recent as 01-25 place NYM in the beta range of development tho, so I’ll keep an eye on it.

First, congratulations on the new family member.

Not knowing exactly the nature of your entrepreneurial skills, I have found good success with meet n’ greet, press the flesh as it were. Some businesses need a lot of advertising, some don’t need any. Join your local Chamber of Commerce or Business Association. Keep your ears open. Treat every interaction as an opportunity to grow your business.

For example, I am getting along in years so farming 20 acres got to be a bit much for one old guy. I started leasing acreage to other local farmers mainly for growing silage. I was at one of our local farmer’s market one day and by chance overheard/eavesdropped a conversation a small group was having. They were talking about looking for small plots of land that they could all go in on together and have a communal garden. You help with the labor, you get a share of the grow type of thing.

So I approached them and listened to them talk and suggested that I may have the solution they were looking for. Long story short, I now have four, one acre plots that I lease to locals for their communal gardens. I provide the pipe stand for a water supply with bib to split off different watering troughs and I plow the plot for you. All you have to do is work the soil, grow your veggies, and profit.

So basically now, I have positive cash flow with moderate to minimal work. I still maintain a one acre plot for my personal grow but in all honesty it’s far to much for just one person to eat. I usually donate most of that to local food banks in town. Which is another good thought to keep in mind. We all get help along the way in life. No one is self made. Pay it forward. Give something back to the community local to you.

Governments like everything and everyone in their own little stack and in the government’s self established status quo. When Paula Protester comes along with her LGBTQ++ agenda, governments don’t like that. Paula Protester represents instability to the status quo established by the ruling class. Governments don’t like instability. Governments like everyone sorted, coallated, and stapled, all in their respective stacks, so dissidents and social change advocates are viewed as adversaries and are not welcome.

If it’s genuuinely ‘for the chirren’ then it would seem to me that making parents be parents and take responsibility for their child’s actions would go a very long way. However, we make laws with the lowest common denominator in mind. I don’t want your children involved in adult activities online. However, just like any education program, the success is determined by parental involvement in their child’s daily lives, and it starts at home.

It’s a lot easier to make government responsible for the child’s developement, than actually requiring parents to be parents. I hear parents say ‘I’m not technologically inclined.’ Well, get there. The safety and well being of your child hangs in the balance. Take a class, read some of the millions of step by step tutorials that exist all over the internet. Ask some questions in forums. The possibilities are endless. Protecting your child is work, just like rasing them is work, and therein lies the issue.

My main point is: you need to understand and play this game of tango.

Very true, and good point. The average technology consumer has no clue of what is going on behind the pretty pictures. I don’'t say that to denigrate them. It’s a lot to digest. If you hit the average Joe with a barrage of information and stuff he needs to stop doing right this minute, he’s going to think you’re a bit paranoid and perhaps a touch mental… message not received.

In my honest opinion, I don’t think companies really delete every last kb of your data. Your data probably still exists on a backup in some server farm.