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Paid Proton VPN or Mullvad: what made you move in either direction?

The serious-choice framing usually means "published audits and minimal account data", both of which are legitimate criteria. Read the actual audit scope rather than the badge on the homepage though, because some cover the apps, some cover the infrastructure, and some cover the no-logs claim, and those are very different assurances.

134 · in/privacy-tools ·

Side sleeper whose arm goes numb every night, which pillow finally got the height right?

Broad shoulders, side sleeper, and what worked for me after years of this was a latex pillow with a stepped profile, taller edge under the neck and lower centre. It is unforgiving, no adjustment at all, you either bought the right height or you did not: but it does not compress overnight, which was my complaint with everything else. If you go this way, measure from the edge of your shoulder to the side of your neck and buy to that number.

139 · in/sleep-setup ·

Which free VPN tiers are usable, and which ones are quietly selling me?

Rule of thumb that has never failed me: if a free VPN advertises on video platforms, it is not free. The infrastructure cost of carrying your traffic is real and somebody pays it, so ask what they sell. Several of the store-front free apps have been caught injecting or logging over the years, and the permission requests you noticed are exactly the smell you should trust.

189 · in/privacy-tools ·

Has anyone stuck with tofu litter past the first bag, or did it go soggy on you?

Two and a half years on tofu here, one cat, and the honest summary is that the clump is firmer than paper and gummier than clay. It does not shatter when you lift it, which I prefer, but it will smear if you leave it more than about 36 hours in a humid covered box. Scoop daily and it is genuinely excellent. Scoop every other day in summer and you will hate it.

174 · in/pet-supplies ·

Is paying for a VPN worth it if I'm only ever on my own home wifi?

This was true around 2010 and it has been steadily less true since. Browsers now refuse plain HTTP by default on most sites, banking apps pin certificates, and the coffee-shop packet-sniffing attack that everyone still describes needs the site to be unencrypted to work. There are real reasons to use a VPN on a hostile network, mostly around hiding which services you use and dodging captive-portal nonsense, but reading your bank password out of the air is not one of them any more.

231 · in/privacy-tools ·

Open-source password manager that a non-technical partner will actually use?

Whatever you pick, write the recovery story down before you need it. Where is the master password if you are hit by a bus, who can get at the shared folder, and does the emergency access feature you are relying on require a paid tier. I have watched two families lock themselves out permanently and in both cases the software was fine and the plan was missing.

158 · in/privacy-tools ·

Putting every password in one vault still feels insane. What made it click for you?

The breach you are thinking of is worth learning from rather than being frightened by, because the lesson is specific. Encrypted vault contents were taken, but the metadata around them was not encrypted, and vaults protected by weak master passwords or old low iteration settings were the ones actually at risk of being cracked offline. So: long unique master passphrase, current settings, and do not assume the URLs and filenames in your vault are secret. That is a checklist, not a reason to go back to sticky notes.

276 · in/privacy-tools ·

Why does my worker pool hang on shutdown even after I cancel the context

Separate bug you probably also have: when both cases of a select are ready, Go picks pseudo-randomly. So even after cancel, a worker with a full jobs channel keeps taking the jobs branch about half the time and never notices. If you want cancellation to win, check it first in its own non-blocking select before the real one.

174 · in/go-dev ·