Sharing an idea I came across in this anti-zoom video- if someone sends you an invite to a zoom meeting, simply reply something along the lines of: "great let's talk here: [JITSI LINK]", and hopefully, the person will just use jitsi instead. The good thing about jitsi is that it runs in-browser (not sure how well it works on low to mid-end phones through the browser though)

..I just came back to say thanks for showing me this issue and saw you'd replied. I just deleted zoom off my phone and laptop, and will really try to avoid using it now. Thank you!

Use Jitsi

What's WEI?

Great! I had never actually seen it being played though I've listened to lots of gamelan played on Radio Seribatu: https://www.radioseribatu.com/radioseribatu

Thank you very much for the detailed info! This is interesting reading.

Australia? The island that's 80% desert and is hot as hell already? What's the reasoning behind that please?

Thanks for the other advice. During initial covid lockdowns I was stranded in a place with a strong agricultural sector and I felt like the rest of the world could go to shit but I could still buy food from down the road, so that's good advice, yes.

I live in South America but tbh I don't mind moving anywhere if it means I can have some semblance of a normal life and not have to worry about water. I wonder if moving to somewhere in the Amazon is a good move.

What sort of papers/info should I be reading in order to move somewhere where this stuff won't be an issue? (okay will be less of an issue..) I heard once a while back that you need somewhere with lots of lakes?

People don't care. I helped my friend set up a new laptop with Windows 11 and went to make a local account. I saw there was a dark pattern trying to force the user to login with a microsoft account. I told my friend, "oh, this is a dark pattern, they're trying to get you to.." and his eyes glazed over and when I finished talking he said "right.. well let's do the microsoft account"

I like this remix of it: https://soundcloud.com/vjjay/aquatic-ambience-vjj-juke-flip

Where in Latin America are you thinking about?

I went on a jungle trip once and tried explaining how mad the 2m long (!) giant river otters are to my guide.

"Imagine if I told you that on the other side of the planet there are dogs that are 3m long!!!"

He didn't quite get how astounded I was haha. The squeaky sounds giant river otters make to scare you off are something else.

Fair enough. I've heard good things about Mint.

Yes, and I understand the concern. However, we're talking about beginners here. I think that a beginner will typically care more about stability and ease of troubleshooting rather than the politics of snaps vs flatpak vs deb vs appimages vs...

A new ubuntu may eventually care to learn about the differences between packages, and may end up changing distro because of that. But until they reach that confortable stage I think that prioritizing convenience, app availability, and ease of troubleshooting is more important for a new user than getting into package politics.

Fair enough, and I'm sure that it does work right away. I just think that in the linux world so many people are keen to flex their independence and therefore don't recommend Ubuntu cos it's "uncool". Beginner linux users will then try another distro and will end up with these mad problems that are hard to troubleshoot.

I use Ubuntu because of the so-called "network effect". If I have some problem, odds are some other poor bugger will have had the problem beforehand and there will be some guide or forum post somewhere helping me to solve it. Oh, and I haven't had a game-changing error in Ubuntu for years now. It Just Works (for me).

Anyway, stay positive and I hope you fix your problem. At the very least you'll learn something new about Linux, I'm sure. Good luck!

Thanks, this looks promising. I'll look into it!

Yep, this is what happens when people recommend distros other than Ubuntu to beginners. (Saying this as an ubuntu-using beginner)

...embarrassingly enough, I hadn't considered that!

Since installing the addon months ago, I've slowly gotten used to what I suppose is a cookie-free existence - the same as deleting cookies when exiting firefox, yes. However, using this addon still keeps websites isolated from one another during the browsing. For instance, I can have one tab with youtube video A open, and another with youtube video B open, and youtube have no way of knowing that the same user is watching /both/ videos A and B.

With "delete cookies when exiting" and no addon installed, there can be unwanted cookie-sharing from site to site during the browsing, right? (even cross-sites, right? some sites track you across pages, like the facebook invisible pixel)

You've made me think. Perhaps I should just block cookies entirely? (except for a select few websites where I might want them stored, such as hexbear for instance) Thanks for your input.

From what I can gather, by default, Temporary Containers self-destruct when you close the tab. MACs keep the cookies in each container.

Temporary Containers is very hands off once installed and automatic mode enabled. MAC needs more user input. "Open in personal, open in work, open in shopping"