A lot of these types use ‘perfect being the enemy of good’ as their attack vector. If it’s not private and anonymous why bother? If you can’t cut out all big tech companies, if you can’t stop buying any American goods, if you can’t feed all the poor or house all the homeless, etc. It’s an effective way to attack progression by making people believe they should just stop fighting, they’ll never win. You nailed it, Signal is private, it doesn’t claim to be anything else.

Same here! I’ve been moving away from all-in-one tech to devices that only do one thing and do it well, usually with wires lol. Wired headphones in a DAP (Hi-Fi Walker) that I also plug into the car, old Sony e-reader that still holds a battery charge for a month, analogue watches, disconnected TVs, pen and paper notebooks, etc. I plug in when I can and avoid bluetooth.

It’s interesting, I’ve since changed my behaviour from buying the flashiest, coolest-looking items to focus on how well they work over how they look. Function over form. Sure, my things are less flashy and uglier, but I see a real charm to them now. It’s also driven me to retro-tech and loving using things that get worn looking and used.

Privacy and anonymity are two different things. Proton doesn’t market themselves as anonymous, they market as a privacy service, as you said. And as for the info given to gov’ts, they were legally required to do so. No company, including Mullvad, will break the law for you. Mullvad/IVPN/AirVPN, etc, will all abide by law and give up info if required.

Awesome that’s what I thought, thanks. I’m gonna start with something basic to learn the ropes but your mention of celestial coordinate systems has already piqued my interest so I expect that’ll be something in my near future lol.

There’s not much in my area for used but I did find a once-used Celestron NexStar 90SLT which retails around $830 CAD. Not sure I want to drop $600-700 on my first telescope tho lol. Might just check to see what he wants for it first just in case tho.

Yeah I’m already looking for similarly priced telescopes without smart connection features. I didn’t even think of second hand, I’ll check out my area!

Will most new telescopes will be able to connect to a laptop though? Looks like Stellarium has an option to display directly from a scope and I see most scopes make mention of software so I’m guessing they all pretty much have a connection option?

Will do! I’ll be taking my time on this to research and save up, there’s so much info and technical specs with telescopes!

I’m very much a tactile person so I’m thinking of going this route.

Yeah that’s where I’m leaning. It’s a situation where I can’t see how smart features would be a benefit, and could just be something extra to break. That said, I don’t know much about telescopes yet so I wanted to get some real-world opinions.

Generally I would avoid any smart features if possible, just not sure if they’re actually a benefit for telescopes. I’m definitely leaning dumb

Never heard of Droidian, but I’ve been loooking into the status of Linux phones lately. Mind giving a run down of your experience with it?

I created a new account a year ago to lurk instead of comment, but you’re right, participation = growth. I’ll be joining in again.