“Ah yes, but think about how much faster they shipped that code with Copilot doing all the heavy lifting.”

• Some Microsoft exec, probably

I’ll go in a slightly different direction but one that any CISO will tell you is just as important as locking down SSH, etc. Have a good backup plan

Especially for a home server, is your biggest threat vector someone launching 0-days against it or the SD card it boots off of crapping out? Even production servers, when someone misconfigures sshd_config and locks everyone out (ask me how I know) or you get a crypto-locker run because all the configs in the world can’t save you from a supply chain attack. You’ll be glad you have backups on-site, off-site, a general DR strategy, etc.

Short version, add this to your Quadlet file (with whatever your service your gluetun Quadlet starts):

[Unit]
Requires=gluetun.service
After=gluetun.service

An article I found helpful when starting with Quadlets, which can even replace Docker compose. https://mo8it.com/blog/quadlet/

Hey now, the US has its own low-cost drone reverse engineered from an Iranian one-way attack drone.

Does that mean they’ll stop building Tomahawks? Of course not, now two companies can benefit instead of one. That’s 2x the military-industrial complex baby!

In the US, I largely agree with you. Or use a website from a mobile browser. Different story in different countries where a smartphone might be the only compute the average person has, or where state services are tied to a mobile ID or bank app.

Not saying that should be the case, but if the choice is between running niche FOSS apps and removing yourself from societal benefits structures, I know what most people will pick. That’s the real danger of allowing one company to own an entire ecosystem and have enough power that they have conversations directly with governments about their people instead of with their people.

Some VPNs can block trackers in a very narrow sense. If they are set up to prevent DNS leaks and provide an internal DNS service, that can blackhole ads and trackers just like PiHole, Adguard Home, et al.

There’s still a bunch of other ways to fingerprint people online, but I wouldn’t say using a VPN at home offers no benefits.

Well I’ll be got-damned, looks like Search Party is a feature native to the Ring Neighbors platform and separate from the whole Flock partnership. https://www.cnet.com/home/security/what-does-rings-search-party-ai-pet-tracking-do-to-your-privacy-i-got-the-details/

Specifically, this feature appears opt-out, so if someone does have a Ring camera, good idea to take a spin through the settings. Or, the easiest remediation was my original suggestion, chuck it in the bin (or responsibly dispose of it, if you can).

FWIW, Ring announced they were canceling their partnership with Flock a few days ago following the Superbowl ad where they were universally dragged. https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-and-flock-cancel-partnership/

Do I think Ring is still running some sort of analytics on video feeds? Probably. Should you put anything from Amazon directly in the trash? Absolutely.

Silver lining I guess is that public pressure still works at least a little when companies try to go straight dystopian.