https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-should-i-care-about-my-privacy-f488281b8f1d

His router is tri-band though meaning it has 2 5ghz transceivers.

Unfortunately, for many models - like the Linksys WRT 3200ACM - that second antenna (technically the third one if you include the 2.4Ghz one) doesn’t function at all without the manufacturer’s firmware. It’s a dead stick with any third-party firmware, and is 100% software-enabled.

I have found this fact to be reliable whether it is DD-WRT or OpenWRT, and across several different manufacturers including Asus and D-Link.

Thunderbird is acquiring Exchange features.

They haven’t turned them on just yet owing to a little last-minute work, but your ability to sync calendars and address books with an ActiveSync/Exchange-compatible eMail server is coming soon.

Link to the program?

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=win10privacy

Win+e doesn’t even open to a panel that lets me open the c drive without clicking other shit and waiting for it to appear first.

I have been seriously considering creating a “graphical registry editor” that would be feature-focused and could be both portable (for one-off application) and installable (for constant on-login resetting of any changed preferences). Just open it up, browse the offerings, select the feature mods you want, apply and restart.

There is a lot of File Explorer shit that you can do to mod it back to WinXP days. Had to do this to a Win11 install for my Octogenarian father who has become very intolerant of unexpected changes, and while it needs regular maintenance to “keep”, it has worked out well for him.

Or you just use Rufus to create your USB installer. It provides the ability to add that option to the installer just before the burning process. Mouse clicks only, no CLI needed.

You can use Win10Privacy to bodily castrate nearly all built-in spyware and telemetry.

Downside is that it’s a damn powerful program, with few guardrails, so if you don’t have good knowledge of Windows internals you run a non-trivial risk of accidentally lobotomizing an important feature of your install by enabling the wrong setting. I mean, all settings can be easily reversed, but you gotta know which specific one did the nerfing in order to undo the oopsie.

For example, even the midrange firewall settings are mostly safe, except… a single one of them completely kills Microsoft Office Click-To-Run. It won’t install, and it won’t launch even if you installed it before you applied Win10Privacy. So if Microsoft Office is an essential (Access or Excel absolutely needed, for example), be careful.

That makes a lot more sense for your setup, then.

Fail2ban bans after 1 attempt for a year.

Fail2ban yes; one year, however, is IMO a bit excessive.

Most ISP IP assignments do tend to linger - even with DHCP the same IP will be re-assigned to the same gateway router for quite a number of sequential times - but most IPs do eventually change within a few months. I personally use 3 months as a happy medium for any blacklist I run. Most dynamic IPs don’t last this long, almost all attackers will rotate through IPs pretty quickly anyhow, and if you run a public service (website, etc.), blocking for an entire year may inadvertently catch legitimate visitors.

Plus, you also have to consider the load such a large blocklist will have on your system, if most entries no longer represent legitimate threat actors, you’ll only bog down your system by keeping them in there.

Fail2ban can be configured to allow initial issues to cycle back out quicker, while blocking known repeat offenders for a much longer time period. This is useful in keeping block lists shorter and less resource-intensive to parse.

A lot of vehicles prior to 2005 will not have a black box that records everything (and for which you will not have the encryption key for), nor will it phone home in any capacity.

Pretty much 100% of vehicles prior to 1995 will definitely lack these features.

If you want a vehicle that you control 100%, get a vintage vehicle.

Opera in particular is a dangerous browser to run these days, it’s owned by confirmed scammers and investment-scheme operators.

If you want something with the same ideological history as Opera, run Vivaldi, which was created by ex-Opera engineers.

But yes, for true openness, Librewolf, Waterfox, or Firefox is the way to go.

Do either of the options you mentioned provide custom nameservers? As in, the ability for ns01.yourdomain.com to resolve to your account on their DNS servers?

Wow. This is two shakes short of full-blown Fascism.