I’m absolutely with you on the typing, the problem is (as far as I’m concerned) that learning typing takes a ton of time that I don’t want to spend just on that, so I’ll instead provide them with resources on how to improve typing skills if they want to.

I planned on letting them build cheap, old desktops in groups so they are not as afraid of opening their devices (I find this to teach a different relationship to your devices in general) and so they don’t inherently see computers as a black box.

Thank you for your recommendations!

Especially the “don’t be afraid to break and how to troubleshoot” part seem very important to me, I will definitely do that. Thank you!

Yeah, I will generally do a lot of “how to use the web correctly”, from basic privacy stuff (no, you don’t have to have something to hide; why care; no, it’s not too late…), ad blocking, using search engines correctly, evaluating sources etc.

I will have to teach some explicit security consciousness as well, basic and maybe not so basic stuff, maybe even spice it up a notch and do an intro to opsec to interest people (probably not gonna fit for time reasons, but will do basic security in any case)?

Yeah, I will definitely start with scripting first, although I think Python scripting or similar is better for getting used to actual programming/loops and variables are just better and more intuitive than in scripting languages.

I actually only have programming on the list because I felt like I somehow needed to teach it, which is definitely true, but not at the very beginning.

You’re absolutely correct about the PATH thing, I think I should teach about how filesystems work in general (like, most people use devices that only have “apps” and have never used a file system/directory structure)

Honestly, I’d be more than happy if they just invented regular trains (even if their version would probably worse in ways not even imaginable as of now), because that would mean more money in train infrastructure.

So… yeah, you did it! You built something really cool and completely new! And don’t look over there, that’s just… copycats?

This is crazy. I’m in exactly the same situation and have been thinking about getting a mobile plan with a Pixel 8 (where I would install GrapheneOS on) as those are getting cheaper with the Pixel 9 out not.

I, too, don’t love the use of AWS/Cloudflare, while I get that you can simply replace AWS S3 with something else for backups, this server setup is innately based on using Cloudflare.

Wikipedia will keep running, even if you don’t donate. The Wikimedia foundation (which runs Wikipedia) gets a lot of donations and fund a ton of other stuff apart from Wikipedia, so you’re donation will rather have a chance to decide if these keep running.

This is not real, right? RIGHT?

Billy should really not support them, Ad Block Plus let’s advertisers pay for having their ads checked as “acceptable advertisements”, i.e. is selling out the core functionality of their product. Billy should use uBlock origin, which afaik does not accept donations, he could however support something like PiHole .

Interesting, that seems to be the reason for most. Under which circumstances if any would you upvote a perceived advertisement?

Would you upvote a well written advertisement that you think makes the company’s intention very clear to the reader? Would you do so if the intention not only sounded realistic, but also like they want to achieve something net-positive?

Or is it really just being an advertisement that makes you downvote?

Why are there so many downvotes on this?

From how they’re presenting themselves on their website, I would also guess their payment methods aren’t private /anonymous at all. It seems like you could even be forced to use the Apple/Google integration to pay for your subscription (which just means you can’t really pay privately).

Also, VPNs that have own apps and don’t allow access via OpenVPN are a red flag. You don’t know what their apps are doing and they don’t give you any reason to trust them either.

No, but as far as I can tell, it’s a private company in the US (which is pretty bad for a VPN). Also, all of its features are closed-source. The encryption seems to be closed source. That should make you question their motives and integrity. And trust them not much more than Google or Facebook. For everything not privacy related, as their virtual cards and in a sense also phone numbers and email addresses (those could be private, but not using this service), this service seems fine.