Plan 9 From Outer Space is the classic worst movie ever made, and that’s why it’s entertaining.

“current gov allows us to do anything so we don’t care anymore because that’s cheaper”

Somewhat related, there’s also a fun Nazi-killing movie called Sisu. (But only part 1, part 2 is against Soviets)

It’s completely over the top and unrealistic action, but fun.

It’s not just Russian propaganda anymore. It got adopted more widely in an effort to establish oligarchies in the West as well.

It’s useful for the super-rich because staying on the path of democracy and regulation hurts their profits, and it’s useful for Putin because it destabilizes Europe when European countries turn more isolated and separated with right-wing nationalist leaderships.

Yes, it’s great if you like immersive horror style games with great atmosphere. And with beautiful graphics.

There’s also the very valid situation of a game you previously liked becoming noticeably worse after some update or addon, which might cause a previous recommendation and engagement to flip.

An over-fixation on “manliness” and “heroism” in the military is also standard fascism playbook. Everyone’s made up to be a hero for their country, no matter if true or not. This sort of propaganda-fueled glorification of soldiers and war maybe helps recruitment of future soldiers for whatever future war the fascists are going to start. That’s probably the only upside.

I was a bit disappointed with desktop Linux during the late 90s and early 00s because many applications within the typical ecosystem weren’t great or mature yet (I still shudder when thinking about the amount of time I spent trying to get audio to work nicely across OSS, alsa, artsd, esound, … this was before pulseaudio or pipewire, obviously), and then I temporarily switched back to Windows as a primary OS just because of gaming compatibility. But since the mid-10s or so, Linux grew to become very capable for at least casual gaming as well. So there was no need for Windows anymore and I just wiped it off of every device, leaving Linux as the only OS. This was also during a time where Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and later 11 showed up and this really showed to me that Windows was doomed to die a long-winded death. The last decent version of Windows was 7.

It was funny (and untrue) when desktop Linux was constantly at ~1% market share. But now with desktop Linux slowly but constantly rising, it’s actually true!

Generally, a Samsung phone isn’t great for privacy. Consider getting a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. Much better Android baseline. More secure as well.

Any connection to Samsung’s servers is likely non-essential, but do check that OS updates work.

Google Play Services is Google’s main surveillance stack on every commercial Android distribution. It transmits a lot of unique device info to Google, every 20 minutes or so. The minimum data being transmitted is:

Phone #
SIM #
IMEI (world-wide unique device ID)
S/N of your device
WIFI MAC address
Android ID
Mail Address of your logged in Google account
IP address

However, this app might be required for Google Play to function. And also for some other apps. So check those dependency issues. In general, you should prefer using open source apps or any apps which don’t have such stupid dependencies. Some apps merely complain when you don’t have the Play Services app running (by displaying a popup) but still work.

There’s also the issue with Google’s DRM called “Play Integrity”. Some apps use Google’s Play Integrity API to “verify” that the device is an “officially sanctioned Android” and then act like any other Android is “unsafe” and then refuse to work. If you encounter this, be sure to complain to the app developers about this.

If you need the Google Play store but want to block network access for the Play Services app (which you should do), you should probably use the third-party Aurora store app.

About the Ironfox connections: not sure, but the “firefox-settings” hosts from Mozilla sound related to the Firefox Sync feature which syncs your settings/bookmarks/… with Mozilla. If that’s the case it’s also non-essential and can be blocked.

Used to prefer GOG over Steam. GOG did nothing for Linux gamers though, they didn’t even release their Galaxy client for Linux. Will prefer GOG over Steam again when this changes (they said recently they want to change this, but only after Valve has already invested a lot into making Linux gaming a real thing with almost zero friction). That’s also basically the best thing that Valve has done - they really did help to make Linux gaming a reality, and Linux gaming is an important step towards toppling Windows’ dominance. They deserve a lot of credit for that. But there are also plenty of other things that you can criticize about Steam.

If you’re on Windows though, you should definitely always prefer GOG over Steam because it’s DRM-free (you buy it, you own it). Of course, there are many more games only available on Steam, so it might not be possible all the time, but at least you should prioritize your choices.

We also have plenty of other monopoly problems, one of the biggest is YouTube.

I use Arch since approximately 2006 or so. I like its stability (yes!), performance, rapid updates and technical simplicity. It never stands in my way and it’s fairly simple to understand, administer and modify. It’s probably the most convenient OS I’ve ever used - sure it takes time/effort to set it up but once you’re past that it’s smooth sailing. It also doesn’t change dramatically over the years (it doesn’t need to) so it’s easy to keep up with its development. Plus, I have a custom setup script for it that installs and sets up all of the basics, so if I ever need to reinstall, I’m not starting from zero.

I am eyeing NixOS as “the next step” but didn’t yet experiment with it too much. Arch is just too comfy to use and the advantages that NixOS brings aren’t yet significant enough for me to make any kind of switch to it, but I consider NIxOS (as well as its related technologies like the Nix package manager) to be the most interesting and most advanced things in the Linux world currently.

If you’re reading this as a newbie Linux user: probably don’t use any of the two mentioned above (yet). They’re not considered entry-level stuff, unless you’re interested in learning low-level (as in: highly technical) Linux stuff from the start already. NixOS/Nix in particular is fairly complex and can be a challenge even for veteran Linux admins/users to fully understand and utilize well. Start your journey with more common desktop distros like Mint, Fedora, Kubuntu.