LAN parties weren't amazing. They still are amazing. My friends and me still have LAN-parties the whole night on weekends. We play classic games like Warcraft, Starcraft, CS GO and 1.6, but also play "newer" (needs ro run on every machine) games like Borderlands.
My girlfriend also regulary have LAN-parties playing Stardew Valley with her friends all together in a room like in the good old times.
All of us are 20-30 years old. Some take their laptop with them, some their tower + keyboard and mouse. The only difference is that we can play over Wifi (still works better over LAN) and have fast Internet for all these annoying updates.
LAN-parties aren't a relic of the past. They are still totally awesome and no online-game can compete with good friends playing computer games all night. ;)
CloudFlare again..
Offering their service to crime forums, credit card fraud shops and phishing websites, while making usage of Tor and VPNs nearly impossible or atleast a pain.
Coupled with the hypocrisy of an open web and freedom of speech, it makes CloudFlare arguably one of the worst threats to the web as we know it.
Whereas the freedom of speech ala Cloudflare stops as soon as it can generate cheap PR, because then a website is quickly blocked after a few media reports.. or in case of Piped as soon as the content mafia is complaining.
There is nothing in Cloudflare that blocks anything like that by default. Site owners decides what to block. The problem with VPNs and TOR is that there is a lot of rouge traffic from these services. Also, there is no feature that blocks VPNs in CF. Some get blocked for not coming from consuming ISPs but more commonly whole ASNs are blocked if the majority of the traffic is bad.
I take privacy pretty seriously and to protect my privacy I do the following:
* Use GrapheneOS on my smartphone with nearly no third-party apps
* Use a VPN, because I don't trust my ISP
* Use NoScript & uBlock
* Use several ProtonMail addresses I change on a regular basis and use one-way trash mails. I also try to be on as few services as possible. If an email is leaked (didn't happened yet) delete it and create a new one.
* Use Qubes + Whonix with FDE on a seperate laptop for things, which should stay private. I classify every other data from other devices as public.
* Regulary check my home network traffic on my firewall. Especially when I do nothing on my devices or got a new device.
* Destroy every camera and microphone in devices which can only be bought "smart" like every new TV.
* Be aware that if I use an online service my data gets collected and act like someone is looking over my shoulder. Its not so bad, if you are aware of that.
* Glueing my finger domes on a regular basis
* Scan my house regulary for new WIFI and bluetooth devices in range
* Use GrapheneOS on my smartphone with nearly no third-party apps
* Use a VPN, because I don't trust my ISP
* Use NoScript & uBlock
* Use several ProtonMail addresses I change on a regular basis and use one-way trash mails. I also try to be on as few services as possible. If an email is leaked (didn't happened yet) delete it and create a new one.
* Use Qubes + Whonix with FDE on a seperate laptop for things, which should stay private. I classify every other data from other devices as public.
* Regulary check my home network traffic on my firewall. Especially when I do nothing on my devices or got a new device.
* Destroy every camera and microphone in devices which can only be bought "smart" like every new TV.
* Be aware that if I use an online service my data gets collected and act like someone is looking over my shoulder. Its not so bad, if you are aware of that. * Glueing my finger domes on a regular basis
* Scan my house regulary for new WIFI and bluetooth devices in range
I use NewPipe daily. It works pretty stable and the developers are working on it very active. As soon as Youtube breaks it (once every 1-2 months), the developers release a new version mostly next day.
Personally I would've just been fine with them saying that it's feature creep and maintenance burden they don't want, I'm sure newpipe is already more than enough work to keep up with in it's current state, but there you go.
I'm with NewPipe on this one. Although I've never seen any sponsor-pauses relevant to me. And despite the fact that they consume my time and traffic. Sponsor mentions are OK because they don't invade my privcy (ok, there's the rewind/skip forward stat histogram). But there's one exception I've seen a few times: concealed advertisement. And that is what I really hate. While video catches your attention the advertised material keeps creeping into your mind, and by the time you realize it, it's too late. I'd just blacklist such youtubers on the spot.
Piracy is the smallest problem of Cloudflare.
I run multiple honeypots and trash mail addresses for collecting spam and phishing mails and there is a huge number of phishing and scam websites which are protected by CloudFlare.. but that's only a small part: I did some research and found many ponzi-shemes, markets for stolen CreditCards and general crime forums which are all protected by CloudFlare for months or even years.
CloudFlare is pretty much the worst company I can think of. Blocking harmless Tor and VPN users through unsolvable captchas on every website they "protect", while talking about an open Internet and freedom of speech.
These hypocrites only block websites if they get some cheap PR, in reality they give a shit offering their services to criminals.
My girlfriend also regulary have LAN-parties playing Stardew Valley with her friends all together in a room like in the good old times.
All of us are 20-30 years old. Some take their laptop with them, some their tower + keyboard and mouse. The only difference is that we can play over Wifi (still works better over LAN) and have fast Internet for all these annoying updates.
LAN-parties aren't a relic of the past. They are still totally awesome and no online-game can compete with good friends playing computer games all night. ;)