That’s kind of my thought as well. It’s certainly possible someone might go through the effort to find a single pirate downloading The Lion King, but that’s a lot of effort (read: money) to find just one person.

There’s certainly the possibility that an ISP could note that you connected to a VPN, but given that it’s not a remarkable event, since people connect to VPNs for all kinds of legal reasons, they aren’t likely to track your particular IP’s connection to a VPN apart from a court ordering them to care. They get paid their monthly internet plan price whether someone pirates or checks their email.

If someone was running the Pirate Bay from their home servers, however, more parties would likely be interested in finding that person, and that person’s threat model probably exceeds just using a logless VPN.

How so, specifically for logless VPNs?

Oh, nice! Might give it a try myself!

Look into:

• Bazzite (Fedora Atomic)
• Nobara (Fedora)
• ChimeraOS (Arch, AMD-only)
• Garuda (Arch)

All are preconfigured for gaming. Bazzite and Nobara use the fsync kernel, not sure what Chimera uses, and Garuda uses the zen kernel.

Otherwise, Arch is still the most popular choice for gaming if you look at the statistics.

I see someone every now and again on !pop_os@lemmy.world asking about random Cosmic bugs, which is why I’m hesitant to recommend it to someone green.

I know Cosmic is there, but it’s not even in beta. I can’t yet recommend it in good conscience, especially for OP, who is new enough not to know the difference between a distro and a DE.

(And if you’re reading this, OP, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.)

The word you’re looking for is Desktop Environment (DE). KDE Plasma is one such DE. Distro is the underlying system.

• i3 has been around forever and has lots of guides on how to customize it. Only downside is it’s X11-only, so as everyone moves to Wayland, X11 support will decrease.
• Sway is i3+Wayland, though it’s newer, so I dunno how much customization content is out there or whether the i3 tutorials are forward compatible.
• Hyprland is another popular choice, and it is Wayland-based. Only downside is the project lead is a toxic asshole, despite being a gifted dev.
• Cosmic is an upcoming DE, so if you’re in no hurry, keep an eye on that one.

To install any of them, search for the project and see if they have an installation guide for your distro. If not look up “how to install <DE> in Fedora.”

That’s very true. I think Bluefin might be a better choice. Good catch!

Maybe Aurora. It automatically updates, you can install everything via flatpak, and it’s pretty intuitive. Set up the admin account for you to do any maintenance, then set up a non-admin account for them to use.

It’s Atomic, though, so if you’re unfamiliar with ostree-based distros, it could be an admin headache for you when a problem arises.

That’s an interesting point, but I think the “if it’s high profile enough” is key. People torrenting files is probably low on their priorities. On the other hand, somebody organizing a terrorist cell is probably much higher.

Companies might have an interest in finding pirates, but it would not be as easy for them to get other companies to comply with their subpoenas.

Thanks, that’s awesome.

It’s great to see Linux projects getting some funding.

At least that’s a more reasonable answer than trying to imply the NSA has backdoors everywhere.

My position is that it all depends on your threat model. The government isn’t likely to go after someone who torrents files and is hidden by a VPN. The government might go after someone running a streaming site, on the other hand.

And even that might wind up with a dead end. AirVPN (for example) is Canada-based, has no logs, and accepts both crypto and anonymous cash payments.

Why?

The existence of the NSA and their activities is not proof that they have backdoors in VPNs. That’s bogeyman conspiracy theory shit—“they could be anywhere, therefore they’re everywhere!”

You still haven’t answered the question, and I’m beginning to think you are making shit up based on paranoia.

What evidence do you have that no-log VPNs are compromised by the NSA? What about VPNs based in other countries like Canada?

Are you suggesting that it’s pointless to use a VPN?

It’s fine. I understand why you would be skeptical. I studied metalsmithing in college, so I’m pulling from my knowledge of working with raw copper and applying/avoiding patinas. It has been my experience that raw copper items that touch your skin will develop oxides eventually.

Modern copper pipes don’t have that problem, because they’re often covered with a protective coating from the factory to protect against oxidation (which is why you have to sand joints before soldering, as I’m sure you’re familiar), and people rarely handle them after installation.

These buttons could be just fine and never develop a problematic patina, but I wouldn’t personally take that risk, because ≈$500 replacement cost is high for me. Even the example image shows the characteristic blue oxides, though that could be from an intentionally-induced patina for advertising purposes.

They don’t. Take a look at pennies. The problem is that your fingers aren’t only covered in oil. There’s also sweat, dirt, dead skin, and bacteria.

The other issue is that even if that was true, you’re not touching the entirety of the button. The sides and the underside are just exposed to air, and with enough ambient moisture, expect oxidation to show up eventually.

I like the color of copper, but managing cupric oxide would be a potential headache, especially if it flakes off into the electronics (which it is likely to do on a moving part, like buttons).

You could possibly mitigate this somewhat by running the buttons through a polishing tumbler with burnishing media, but it would give me too much stress knowing that even this isn’t 100% effective.

Doesn’t exist. You’d think that after several years of customers asking, they’d have one.