So, a bookmarks list basically.

Prediction: you’ll never actually read most of what ends up on this to-read list.

ITT: lots of generic VPN advice by people who have no experience with the specific problem.

This is the only answer you need to read. It’s a non-problem if you just do this, and there’s no reason not to do it.

Absolutely fair.

Interested in the answer too! Of course, you could get the same result from a 5-buck VPS with zero maintenance and rock-solid reliability (my solution). But sure, 5 bucks is 5 bucks. And also, encryption is optional if it’s your own device.

You could even try next going to back cloud.

If that’s the only reason, it’s not a great one. You could solve it by storing the password with your important documents.

is it’s usually not a one-click process

It is, these days. Ubuntu and Fedora, for example. But you still have to select it or it won’t happen. PopOS, being explicitly designed for laptops, has it by default.

If the government gets my drives I assume they’ll crack it in no time.

Depends on your passphrase. If you follow best practice and go with, say, a 25-character passphrase made up of obscure dictionary words, then no, even a state will not be cracking it quickly at all.

If a hacker gets into my PC or a virus I’m assuming it will run while the drive is in an unencrypted state anyway.

Exactly. This is the weak link of disk encryption. You usually need to turn off the machine, i.e. lose the key from memory, in order to get the full benefits. A couple of consolations: (1) In an emergency, you at least have the option of locking it down; just turn it off - even a hard shutdown will do. (2) As you say, only a sophisticated attacker, like the police, will have the skills to break open your screenlocked machine while avoiding any shutdown or reboot.

Another, less obvious, reason for encrypting: it means you can sell the drive, or laptop, without having to wipe it. Encrypted data is inaccessible, by definition.

Encryption of personal data should be the default everywhere. Period.

Absolutely. LUKS full disk encryption. Comes as an opt-in checkbox on Ubuntu, for example.

And I too cannot understand why this is not opt-out rather than opt-in. Apparently we’ve decided that only normies on corporate spyware OSs need security, and we don’t.

DeltaChat is an E2EE messaging app that runs over email infrastructure. But it’s a clever fix more than a real solution.

In theory, as I understand it, the anointed future solution to this whole conundrum is still Matrix.

That’s an original take. But it feels a bit forced. We’re already halfway thru Earth’s allotted quota of 9 billion years of habitability. Life has been here most of that time so it seems odd that nature would suddenly think up such an extreme version of life insurance. Not least because humans look likely to do a better destructive job than at least a couple of the previous mass extinctions.

Your condescension is reaching new levels! It’s not working, try something else.

With your insults and condescension, you’re just proving my point.

Leaving aside the absurd and juvenile “Nazi” slur (“fascist” is less of a stretch), I disagree with your analysis. I think it’s exactly the opposite. I think it’s because mainstream politicians have refused to address the reasonable aspects of people’s concerns (about immigration, in particular), and because progressive activists have gone off the leash in their wild accusations of racism at the slightest contradiction of their opinions, that we’ve ended up in this situation of the far right getting into power all over the place.

Once again: I do not vote for these parties. Anyway, we are now completely offtopic so let’s leave it there.

Ha. Except, jokes aside, I’m not sure it’s true. Obviously this is getting into dangerous territory but, as I understand it, people do tend to go for their own ethnic group disproportionately.

Then again, sexual attraction does seem to be qualitatively different. After all, that snow leopard would go straight to the friend zone if you know what I mean.

Excellent question! I was pondering exactly this conundrum just the other day while watching a snow leopard on BBC Earth. That thing would rip your face off but wow, what a gorgeous beast! I almost ache to pet it.

Actually my pondering went even further. Not only are cats and owls and bears cute, they are much cuter than than our cousins the primates. And it get worse! I for one find that monkeys are cuter than apes, and that our closest cousins the chimpanzees are really pretty fugly indeed. Even the babies. Maybe especially the babies.

What a weird world.

Well it’s either true or it’s not. Did you bother looking it up to check?

Sorry but I won’t participate in this juvenile trivializing of the word “Nazi”. Yes, I know that’s become almost a meaningless slur at this point, but personally I just will not take seriously anybody who throws it around like this. Perhaps because I’m European. Perhaps because I studied history. It’s not serious.

Fair enough. But this whole drama is still completely substance-free. The air of US-style thought-policing bothers me.