Yeah, when Discord first became popular, the whole “server” terminology was massively confusing to me.

Which “once in a lifetime” market crash is your favorite so far?

Yes

Privacytools.io actively promotes VPN services that advertise heavilly on YouTube, and have no good track record, like NordVPN (which is at the top of their list of VPNs), which leads me to believe that they are paid by NordVPN to promote their service.

Mullvad (the most trustworthy VPN IMO in terms of track record) is at the bottom of their list.

At the top of their main website, they also have Incogni as a recommendation with what looks to be a referral link. They also have a referral link for Startmail, Internxt (whatever that is), and probably others as well.

On their front page: “Sponsors can be exempted from the criteria.”

Anyone trying to recommend privacy services who also accept sponsorships are not trustworthy.

Also, on their crypto page, they recommend both AgoraDesk and LocalMonero, both of which shut down last year, which leads me to believe that some of their information is also out of date.

When I look at PrivacyGuides, I see none of these issues, so I recommend PrivacyGuides over ptio. In fact, on their VPN page, not only do they recommend relatively trustworthy VPNs, but they also have a big red warning about VPN usage and what to expect in terms of privacy that ptio does not have.

microG is an open source, reverse engineered replacement for Google Play Services on Android. It still connects to Google servers, though.

GrapheneOS doesn’t use it because they came up with an effective Sandboxing solution, and microG requires spoofing the signature to make applications believe that the service was signed by Google, which introduces a potential attack vector.

Only if it’s illegal to begin with. We need to abolish copyright, as with the internet and digital media in general, the concept has become outdated as scarcity isn’t really a thing anymore. This also applies to anything that can be digitized.

The original creator can still sell their work and people can still choose to buy it, and people will if it is convenient enough. If it is inconvenient or too expensive, people will pirate it instead, regardless of the law.

Jim Keller is now working on one. I kind of doubt it will be FOSS, though.

I’ve been using GMail in K-9 Mail for years. Maybe you’re thinking of OAUTH 2 support?

Because GNU dd-rescue exists

Spying on their citizens and bureaucracy?

Shizuku would absolutely work. I can use adb either wirelessly or through a USB A to USB A cable with the 5 volt line cut (which is also how I interact witth fastboot). Activating developer settings is as simple as tapping build number 7 times, like on every Android device.

Rooting can help you replace built in apks. For example, there is a Magisk module that lets you replace the system’s WebView with an alternative, like the one from GrapheneOS, for instance. App signing is the problem here, so that’s what that specific module helps bypass.

Modules work on top of an OverlayFS, which essentially lets you write to /system without actually writing to /system, similar to rwfus on the Steam Deck.

Also your current TV app is one made by TCL and not a stock Android app. I wonder if it can be substituted with a different one from a different vendor, or maybe an older version of the TCL app. The only issue I forsee is if the app attempts to communicate with hardware in a non-standard way. Alternatively, I wonder if you block internet to the TV app using a firewall if the TV functionality would still work without showing ads. There is AFWall+ if you’re rooted and DNS/Android VPN based firewalls if not. There is also DNSNet, which is a DNS based ad blocker that uses Android’s DNS service.

Mine doesn’t have a custom ROM either because Hisense refuses to release the kernel source for my device. Didn’t stop me from rooting anyway. Magisk/KernelSU modules can also do a lot of heavy lifting for replacing things.

I was able to unlock the bootloader and root my Hisense Android TV just fine. I think you can also root TCLs, but I’d check xda first.

I didn’t even need to enable OEM unlocking first to unlock the bootloader. Dumping the boot.img was a different story. Someone did it for me for my model, since my model’s UBoot firmware is missing a lot of functionality. You may have better luck dumping through UBoot using the UART interface, or maybe there’s an alternative. If your TV is a GKI device and you can boot a generic kernel, yhen you can use KernelSU without needing to first dump the stock boot.img (or init_boot.img), then you might be able to upgrade and dump the stock one from the other partition before rebooting

I couldn’t figure out how to get into BROM mode on my TV.

Make sure there is a reliable way to reflash the firmware in case of a brick. Hisense provides firmware packages that can be flashed from the bootloader without needing to boot an OS.

Existed since 2011

I’ve been using Tuta for damn near a decade, and it’s been great for me.

Is it possible to self-host a server? Is the server code open source?

There’s also an F-Droid repo

The maintainer of IronFox and Phoenix.js are the same person.

See this git history: https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/commits/dev?ref_type=HEADS

Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah, I don’t like that at all.

I use Tubular (Newpipe with Sponsorblock) from polymorphicshade, though lol.

Been a NewPipe user since the very first alpha

Yeah, but at least it’s source available :P

Non-commercial clause, for those who are curious.