And yet, Russians will still rather fire up a VPN to use Telegram than using the state-sponsored MAX. Moreover, one of the most vocal groups denouncing what Russia does to Telegram are soldiers in Ukraine, which the government usually relies on for support and which define Russian government legitimacy.

Tor is relatively slow and bridges are regularly blocked. It’s a high-effort, low-bandwith option, so most people still prefer more traditional VPNs.

As before, keep on coming up with more sophisticated ways to trick the automatic detection.

Russia got extremely good at deep packet inspection and determining all sorts of protocols.

Most existing protocols are now blocked for connections outside the country

Via bridges, yes

Even though they were considered repairable, they are now better than ever at that, and they require as little expense as possible to replace certain parts.

I don’t know what’s so hard about that. They had it good, they made it better.

These particular models are about to be released, hitting the market. With all renown Lenovo got for good long-term support, this is their most repairable product as of yet.

One thing to highlight: T-series Lenovo laptops are mainstream business products shipped at a huge scale.

This is not a small-scale experimental product for the tinkerers. This may define the biggest laptop segment if it works out well. It might be the first time in a while that something like this hits such a huge market.

I’m kinda sad that netbooks mostly died off as a device class. I’d love to explore newer options.

Self-hosting is cool! But having played around with it myself, I just found thin clients to be not so useful in a single-user environment. At most, it could be useful if you want high battery life and the ability to run something heavy from time to time. But being tied to a high quality network connection even for something that could be 100% local gets annoying very quickly.

Still, as a printing machine + occasionally connecting to the server for something more, it does deliver.

Recently got OpenSUSE Tumbleweed installed on an old 32-bit Eee PC.

The thing was an absolute ultra-budget potato 14 years ago when it was released, and yet, it still works just fine if all you need is editing some documents in LibreOffice. And, it lasts 6 hours on a single charge! (Originally 10-12 hours)

Running something meaningful on a $20 hardware is a pleasure like no other

As far as I know, it is still reliant on the whims of Google through shenanigans with AOSP, and of course having to use a Pixel.

Linux offers a more solid and independent foundation, and while it is less polished yet, to me it’s the only real way out in the long run.

Still, GrapheneOS is a big step in the right direction - hope it wouldn’t come across as me being against the project.

Made me wonder if they introduced CSAM detection to fill their collection…

Yeah, not the most impressive hardware, but it is what we have

Solid option

Sure, but I can’t single-handedly create an entire knowledge base on doing everything with X, so it’s a real and big limitation.

I’d say the main bad part of systemd is how it’s used and now expected everywhere.

If you search for some Linux guides or install something complicated or whatnot, they always expect you to have systemd. Otherwise, you’re on your own figuring how things work on your system.

This shouldn’t really happen. Otherwise, yes, it’s great, it integrates neatly, and is least pain to use.

Beginners will always gravitate to what is easier.

The upstream tools (Docker in this case) must orient themselves more towards the newbies, not only the pros, if we want to see the progress here.

Personally, as a non-IT guy, I find myself fighting uphill battles every time I want to do something seemingly simple, because the basic tools we’re offered are not made with common folk in mind. And I’m sort of an enthusiast - most people just won’t bother if it’s not plug&play, they don’t have time and energy to figure everything out.