Give it a few years.

I use sway in tabbed monocle mode, i.e. no windows at all, just one thing at a time like on mobile. Never going back to mousey Windowsy 1980s-style computing.

Tiling window manager plus a terminal.

Hmm, say what? No, it looks GREAT.

What’s GTK?

Black terminal FTW.

to open PDFs

mupdf

for selecting the text and stuff

This is what is slowing things down.

In 20 years of using Linux my partition scheme has always been to say yes to whatever the OS suggests.

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

French fries, shorly.

There is nothing inherent about technology that means it must be used for evil.

Sure. In theory. But there are things we know about humans and their weaknesses, and these things are not going to change overnight (except perhaps in the fever dreams of some Marxists, of whom you might be one). Technology of this power did not exist before, and now it does. So technology is indeed the proximate problem.

While this is essentially true, IMO it’s become a bit of a distraction. The immediate problem we face today is technology.

In the 90s, people believed technology (i.e. the internet) would protect liberty against power (or “security”). We thought that removing the barriers to information would put our rulers in a goldfish bowl where we could keep an eye on them. It was a reasonable expectation. But it turns out to be us in the goldfish bowl.

It seems those with power simply have more time and resources available for surveillance. And now the technology is reaching a point where rulers will soon have awesome tools at their disposal, and they’re sure gonna be tempted to use them.

Our problem is technology. Not sure how to put a positive spin on this. Technology itself will provide some solutions. But IMO it’s more important than ever to get involved in politics. In any appropriate way.

First, there’s often no choice, it’s SMS 2FA or no 2FA. Personally I would prefer no 2FA at all because, as mentioned, I’m doing this all on desktop. The attacker would need physical access to my encrypted computer. Not happening.

This is the most solid solution IMO. I use Linphone on desktop with a Twilio phone number over SIP.

It works. Not that I get to try it often: I consider phone calls a barbaric relic of the past and get by fine without them. I use the number to receive 2FA SMS mostly.

That’s not what I advised at all.

Lots of self-important, irrational, hand-wavy responses to this question as usual.

Assuming you are the only user (sounds like it) and you secure your client device properly, then no, there is no reason not to do what you propose. Go ahead and do it, you’ll save yourself lots of redundant typing and clicking.

Others here can keep performing their security theater to ward off the evil spirits.

weasyprint will convert it to PDF. I use it in a script to make my emails readable offline.

Since this can be easily pulled off from the laptop, I want it to be encrypted

And the laptop can be easily pulled off the desk so you might want that encrypted too.

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.

Sarcasm: 9/10 for effort

seperately

*separately

seperate

*separate

seperate

*separate

seperate

*separate

The valid answer is that the Chinese police state has no authority over individuals in the West and is unlikely to share information with Western law enforcement given the geopolitical situation. In narrow terms, that makes for an inadvertent privacy win for individuals in the West.

But the problem you describe is certainly real (whatever other seem to think here) for countries in China’s sphere of influence, in Asia, Africa, Latin America. For them, China is already selling off-the-peg solutions for mass surveillance. If your country’s homegrown dictator gets his hands on this stuff, it’s going to be harder than ever to get rid of him.

For us the problem is rather that China is pioneering and normalizing practices that will certainly be adopted and copied one day by our own police forces with our own technology.