Whatever they’ve been doing the last decade hasn’t been right.

That depends on which side of the wealth gap you’re on, right?

The old guard has to die off or step aside first.

I don’t think “dieing off” or “stepping aside” is going to be the catalyst for change.

What will happen is that the old guards will groom the next generation in the playbook’s they’ve been (successfully) using and refining for the last decade. Those groomed players will then be their successors.

The only way we’ll get the “change and improvement” is if we (as a society) say “this is enough, you’ve gone too far”. However, given the levels of apathy and the recent election outcome, I’d say the American People will need to suffer more, before they’re shaken out of their apathetic stupor.

How about have the bot detect community crossposts and try to funnel the conversations into one post.

I fear, this “to be created” “sync feature” is going to create a lot of noise.

edit: a word

It’s more than needing a reminder: Let’s Encrypt Certs are valid for a maximum of 90 days before they need to be reissued. Doing this 4 times (or more) a year, for years on end will be tedious and error prone.

Most tools that request and install Let’s Encrypt Certs automatically do this without the need for human interaction (30 days prior to the expiration) . Actually, they work so well you don’t notice the “behind the scenes work” that’s happening.

The problem is when this renewal process “stop working”. I’d been using Let’s Encrypt for years w/o problems, but eventually the client I was using wasn’t updating and it was using a deprecated Let’s Encrypt API. Ultimately, the cert stopped updating, but I got the email reminder from Let’s Encrypt and I was able to fix it w/o a disruption.

Now, this was just a server for personal use. So if the SSL cert expired, it would not be the end of the world. Plus, I would have gotten a bunch of SSL errors the next time my client was trying to sync data, and I probably would have dropped everything to fix it. But the email reminder was a convenient feature, which allowed me to fix it whenever I had time.

That said, if Let’s Encrypt wants to save some money for their free service, I’m certainly not going to complain (although I will miss it).

Fantastic! Thank you for sharing this.

I have it installed, I’m curious how effective it will be.

Lately, I’ve been reporting AI generated cruft as “spam” to duckduckgo. In fact, it’s not really spam - as there are some nuggets of useful information, but so sparse, I’d rather of skipped the article/website entirely. I hope these kind of Blocklists will evolve to include this kind of quasi-spam.

Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Original, I thought “hey, everything will work”… but then I started to look into the details. For example, Revolut, it works, then it doesn’t work (due to attestation), then works (after people complain).

I really need to ask myself, if this is the kind of experience I want with my daily driver. On the other hand, I know this is just Google strong arming me into their walled garden. Man, I really hate this dystopian future.

If you do opt for OpenVPN, I believe UDP is generally better for performance. TCP support is mainly there for scenarios where UDP is blocked, or on dodgy connections where TCP’s more proactive handling of dropped packets can reduce the time before a lost packet gets retransmitted.

It’s great that you brought up TCP vs UDP. And you are totally right about TCP being a bit slower, higher overhead, but it’s there for situations where UDP is blocked.

I’ve used my VPN at all sorts of hotels, coffeeshops, etc. I’d say 1 in 10 places block UDP (or more likely don’t properly route UDP). If you’re using a SIM card, you won’t have any issues.

However, it’s worth mentioning that WireGuard is UDP only. There are some hacks/workarounds to have it work over TCP, but then you’re going to need to find WireGuard clients that also supports these hacks (which is possible on computers, but harder on cellphones/tablets).

If you want something that “just works” under all conditions, then you’re looking at OpenVPN. Bonus, if you want to marginally improve the chance that everything just works, even in the most restrictive places (like hotel wifi), have your VPN used port 443 for TCP and 53 for UDP. These are the most heavily used ports for web and DNS. Meaning you VPN traffic will just “blend in” with normal internet noise (disclaimer: yes, deep packet inspection exists, but rustic hotel wifi’s aren’t going to be using it ;)

Lemm.ee: It’s the Switzerland of the fediverse. ;)

The Operations Team are a stand-up group. Their focus is on delivering stability.

You’ll basically get access to all content (and all “features”, like up-vote and down-vote - I’m looking at you beehaw).

What I’ve heard from other people is that they want automagic curated content… so you won’t find that a lemm.ee, but for me - I’m happy to find the content that’s meaningful to me.

Can I install my bank app on it yet? I remember having problems with attestation in the past.

What about full application backups? I’ve got a few offline apps, I’d like to transfer the data to/from. However, I thought grapheneOS needed the application developer to “approved” this backup/restore method - or you needed root (which invalidated attestation)… I don’t recall which it was (but I really miss titanium backup).

There’s a great (and overly detailed, but interesting) breakdown of the problems with the hitboxes and other bugs for this level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHiFNWJXWgI

I’d definitely add a +1 to lemm.ee

The admin is open and honest, he’s got a clear set of goals, which is to make lemmy accessible - nothing more, nothing less.

Lemm.ee doesn’t participate in the whole “federate vs non-federate” drama or crippling features (ie: removing downvotes) because it goes against their ethos/mantra.

There are instances that lemm.ee defederates from, but they are usually due to extreme vore, cp, or other content that could expose lemm.ee to some legal problems.

I wanted to thank you for creating and promoting an agnostic platform, like lemm.ee.

I’d started exploring Lemmy on beehaw, but was confused and frustrated why I couldn’t do “simple things” like downvote (spammy) topics (especially, outside of beehaw channels) . Then beehaw started to do more and more defederations. Although, I respect the transparency the admins have in their communications, I’m not interested in their curated form of Lemmy. As an adult, I can make responsible decisions. Fortunately, the federated nature of Lemmy allows me to easy “pack-up my stuff” and go elsewhere.

Thank you for providing me with a place to go!

“… be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

One of your questions I didn’t see answered:

And after doing my research I found out americans file taxes every year. I haven’t done it the last 18 years of working. Should I just not file?

You have two choices:

1. Full Disclosure : you tell the IRS, you haven’t filled and ask them to help you rectify the situation. This could mean penalties and fines for filing late or based on your situation, they might let is slide (as it was an honest oversight). Once you’ve gone through this, then your back in the IRS’ good graces (assuming you still file your taxes and fbar annually)

2. A “stealth” disclosure : (there’s a better name but I forgot was it’s called) basically, you just start to file your 2023 taxes and pretend that nothing has happened during the last 18 years… if you do this for the next 5 years (or 7 years?) and the IRS does not say anything, then you’re back in the IRS good graces (they can only penalize you for x number of years) . But if the IRS decides to contact you, then they could throw the book at you (more than if you went with option 1).

Ultimately, it’s a gamble with a risk. However, if you’ve recently learned of your citizenship and got a passport. I think it’s quite plausible to get some lienency, both for the full disclosure and the stealth disclosure.

Well… there is also Eritrea, a small country in West Africa.

The U. S. Taxes is based on the country you’re living in. If there are double taxation treaties between the two countries (ie: Europe and the U. S.), then the IRS would tax you on the amount you’ve earned over a certain limit (it was 100k usd, but I think was increased). Meaning, if you earned 110k usd, you’d be taxes on the 10k. If you earn less then 100k, you’d pay no U. S. Taxes.

If there isn’t a treaty, which is often the case in countries that tax their citizens less than the U. S. , then you’d basically be charged taxes in the U. S. (based on your worldwide income) minus whatever you paid the country you’re living in.

OP read this, they’re absolutely right - lawyer up!

Cause in the U. S. if you want to renounce your U. S. citizenship, you must settle your debts - which includes filing your U. S. Taxes.

… and yes, as a U. S. Citizen you need to file U. S. Taxes *even if you’ve never set foot in the U. S. *.

Note: there are double taxation laws between the U. S. and Germany, which prevent you from needing to pay taxes in U. S. (up to 100k / year or so), but you still must file them.

Also, as a U. S. Citizen, you’ll need to file annually a FBAR with the IRS. This is basically a disclosure to the IRS that you have non-u.s. bank accounts (that exceed, in total, 20k usd / year).

The point being is that, in theory, there could be fines for not doing this, which (in theory) you would have to pay before being allowed to renounce your citizenship.

In practice, the IRS is pretty approachable - so you probably won’t have an issue, but you’ll definitely want decide if you want to keep the U. S. Citizenship (and the work associated with it: annual taxes and fbar) or renounce it.

The (only) upshot of filing U. S. taxes abroad if you have kids is that you qualify for a Child Tax Credit. Which amounts to 1000 usd / kid / year (I don’t know if the kids need to have U. S. Citizenship or not)

Ah, I see this is the predecessor to the Blue Shell in Mario Kart

Thanks for the write-up. I think Santa will be bringing me a Firestick Max for Xmas… and I’ve already got a real-Debrid subscription (which I highly recommend). I look forward in trying to plug them together.

I expect to have some website compatibility issues with Firefox/librewolf, as it does have a 3% share of the global browser market - so, website development energy is focused on the chrome/safari experience. However, 8+ years ago I felt I needed to use chrome at least every other day to view certain websites - it was frustrating.

I’m hoping (and willing to try it out) to see if this has improved.

Neato, I’ll check it out. I’m also trying out mull for android (as I’d like to keep my desktop/cellphone bookmarks/browser-history in sync)

Thanks for the comprehensive write-up. It convinced me to migrate back to Firefox.

I was on Firefox (8 years ago), moved to Chrome (I liked the non-admin/transparent update feature and Websites didn’t break like they did with ff), then moved to brave (basically chrome + more privacy), and now I’ll go back the Firefox (I hope I won’t encounter too many non-FF websites)