pound_heap
Closest one for lower latency. However, the closest location happens to be in a major metro area and is banned by many financial organizations that I use, so usually I connect to the next closest.
I’m using pi-hole + uBlock origin.
Adblock DNS, Pi-Hole, hBlock - these three do essentially same thing but at different layers - blocking DNS requests based on blacklists. I’m not familiar with hBlock, but I assume blacklists on each of these 3 are very similar. Using all three doesn’t slow down your internet connection much, unless your pihole server is underpowered. You can drop pi-hole from the mix if you are not using it’s other features (statistics, local DNS, etc). hBlock looks nice, and should add zero latency, but works only for local machine. So you still need network-wide blocker. Make sure you set your DNS on router, so all devices would get protection.
uBlock Origin is smarter than simple DNS blocking, but protects only your browser sessions.
Just ignore Mironov and his party. There are no independent parties in Russia, it’s all just a facade for Putin and his administration.
You still may find naive young members in Social Democratic, Communist, and even United Russia (the ruling party) that got ideas tey can do something but they either adapt to party lines or drop out over time. Mironov is a leader of the party and naturally he will say what Putin’s administration let him or tell him to say or what he thinks they like him to say.
I think this is what home NAS systems evolved into already. It’s not a network storage anymore, it’s a server that has a bunch of available apps, both proprietary and free. And many of these little boxes have enough resources to actually run a few typical “home server” services for a family and maybe some friends. They are often even marketed as a “personal cloud” or something like that.
I gave maybe an oversimplified answer. I agree with you that a single person doesn’t control everything. But the government system is built to control what political entities are allowed to exist and express their views publicly. So, again naturally, the only parties that remain exist only because they follow president and party lines.
All independent parties have been stripped of the party registration or removed from all elected positions. Independent politicians get “foreign agent” status, forced to immigrate, get jailed or killed. Rigged elections don’t let almost anyone to be elected without government approval.
If we focus this discussion on LGBTQ topic, then I agree that many people in Russia are not “allies”, but as you mentioned yourself it might be caused by media (which is also far from being free) and the fact that there are laws in Russia making support of LGBTQ a crime. However, even with that, according to 2021 survey about a 1/3 of people there believed that LBGTQ people should have equal rights. Here is the link to that survey, they also have some details on trends of public opinion on the topic: https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/10/19/the-attitude-of-russians-to-the-lgbt-community/
Anyways, don’t judge people living in totalitarian state for the lack of progressive views.
This looks cool. Would be great if this technology will take a flight. Lockheed Martin is also developing a supersonic civil airplane, X-59 is scheduled for a test flight this year. Comparing both projects is hard given the scarce technical details, but the Chinese plane has much higher maximum speed.
There is Privacy.com that gives you virtual cards to use for purchases. Money go from your bank account to them. Destination is visible on payment description still, but it may fool bank’s algorithm. Or you can get paid plan from Privacy.com and mask destination completely.
