The simplest explanation is that OP doesn’t have good opsec, and got a few tracking cookies after deleting cookies, before setting up their proxy/VPN. Then, on the VPN, the advertiser recognized their VPN IP address, and chose to exclude that from generating location data, deferring instead to the location indicated in their existing tracking cookies.

Privacy is hard. The system is rigged against privacy. You have to do everything perfectly, because one simple mistake could leak your IP address.

It would be a more meaningful discussion if the government wasn’t controlled so much by large corporations and oligarchs.

I have self hosted my email since 2006. I gave up on self hosting outgoing mail in 2021, but I still keep the server up for incoming mail, and still set up throwaway accounts on there.

The hard part of hosting email is getting Google and Microsoft to accept outgoing mail. Tons of businesses that do not have visibly outlook .com or gmail .com addresses are still hosted by those servers.

I had SPF, DKIM, and a static datacenter IP address with no reputation problems. I still couldn’t get through to Microsoft, not even in people’s junk mail directory, until they manually whitelisted my address. Microsoft didn’t allow them to whitelist a whole domain. Google was a little easier, but they added new demands monthly.

In 2025, I can’t get reliable delivery to gmail .com addresses even sending from a hotmail .com address in the outlook .com web interface.

Not sure how much you’re paying for your VPN, but a virtual private server can be had for about $5 per month. You’ll get a real IPv4 address just for you, so you won’t have to use non-standard port numbers. (You can also use the VPS as a self-hosted VPN or proxy.)

$5 per month doesn’t get you much processing power, but it gets you plenty of bandwidth. You could self-host your server on your home computer, and reverse-proxy through your NAT using the VPS.

Cloudflare has IP banned me before for no reason (no proxy, no VPN, residential ISP with no bot traffic). They’ve switched their captcha system a few times, and some years it’s easy, some years it’s impossible.

Aluminum foil works. At least, I can’t receive calls or texts through it last I tried.

Get the heavy duty kind. It’s not any more conductive, but is more durable against tearing.

Note that a gap in your phone’s tracking data can look suspicious at times. Sometimes it’s less suspicious to leave your phone at home.

sgt-puzzles. Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle collection.

Contains a bunch of simple puzzles, of the minesweeper and sudoku style. Loopy is my favorite.

Available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, and anything with a web browser and a mouse. Packaged in Debian and F-droid, and probably many other places.

I like it for time wasting in lines at the DMV, for a low-stakes game when anxious, and for falling asleep.

This survey doesn’t distinguish between levels of cloud service provider, so I was a little confused.

Virtual private servers, cloud virtual servers (like AWS), cloud-based software where you provide code or a program and the cloud system runs it on a server of its choosing, and cloud-based systems where someone else provides the software (like Google Docs).

You’re just being condescendingly sarcastic without making a point. Do you think OP is lying about this or something?

Jellyfin depends on proprietary Microsoft .NET, even on Linux.

It’s still better than Plex and Emby, which are fully proprietary, and have no source code. But I will stick with sshfs with kodi, and nginx plus mpv for now.

Orion is a closed-source browser for MacOS and IOS only.

This article seems like a lot of FUD written from an anti-FOSS perspective. In their second point, they say that F-droid’s inclusion policy is “ridiculous” for requiring programs exclude proprietary software. I think the author is ridiculous for asking for this. This is what F-droid is for. I don’t want any proprietary apps or libraries on my phone. If developers only want to work on their proprietary software, they don’t get into F-droid. If they make a modified FOSS version and put it in F-droid, and let it bitrot and go unpatched when vulnerabilities are discovered, and F-droid issues a security advisory for that program, that’s not F-droid’s fault.

I think that wormhole.app page is different software from magic wormhole (and warp). It just has a similar name. wormhole.app does appear to be proprietary.

Thanks. I think I found its homepage, is it the same as this? That looks like part of Gnome, so should be open source too. (It’s maybe available in your operating system without needing a flatpak, if you would prefer it that way)

I’m not familiar with warp, and couldn’t find it with a search. But I did find magic wormhole, and it appears to be MIT licensed, so it is open source. I also searched packages.debian.org and found it, so definitely open source.

As for firewalls: it might only block incoming connections, or has an exception for LAN hosts. I’d have to see the configuration to say more.

Meanwhile on Openstreetmap:

name Golfo de México

name:en Gulf of Mexico

official_name:en_US Gulf of America

Showing just enough acknowledgement to confirm they’ve discussed the executive order, but they aren’t going to follow it.

No. Check my previous comment – this is about hosting on your home ISP, and turning that on or off directly affected the blocking. There is no way to host a webserver through any commercial VPN service.

It seems crazy to me too, but I tested it numerous times. Closing port 80 and 443 stopped the blocks, and re-opening them started the blocks again.

From several years of experiencing it in person. Datadome was the worst and most consistent. It stopped the moment I switched my webserver onto an exotic port number (above 10,000).

Datadome sent me captchas at every domain they firewalled. After correctly solving, I would always be completely blocked:

(not my screenshot)

Here is a page listing some system requirements for Peertube. It says 4 cores and 4GB RAM for 1000 viewers, which some Raspberry Pi systems have.