The fact is that technology advances and makes other technology obsolete,

Yeah, it happens on both sides, it’s an arms race. It will swing the other way eventually - it always has and always will

The second thing you’re not addressing is how long the “ebb and flow” takes anyway

That was intentional. There’s no estimating a timeline, but with the development of technology it’s not unreasonable to expect a reversal even in a decade. Anyway, if you’re trying to ward off doomerism you’re not going to do it by only looking at what you stand to gain

Looking at the world rn, I dont think things have a tendency to get better on their own

This is called a recency bias (I think lol) - you’re looking at the world rn and assuming its trends must continue. When you look at history you see that there are ebbs and flows, and that stasis is rare. If you focus on certain things, you may certainly decide we’re in a downtrend. There will always be an uptrend afterward. And vice versa

Yeah, Linux is just not that accessible tbh. I know maaayyyybe a little more than average about computers, meaning I know how to follow tutorials lol.

I installed Ubuntu onto my laptop because it was getting old and slow. Overall, I’m very satisfied with the speed. My laptop is fast as it was new. But, doing some of the simplest things is a nightmare to me. I spent an hour last night just trying to install AirVPN. Why do I have to go into terminal? Why can’t I just right click and install? Then when I finally got it installed I realized there’s no UI, so idk how to use it lol.

Given, I could learn. Nothing wrong with that. But the opportunity cost is low - I’m really not willing to give up that much for ? benefit.

Thank heavens for the Ubuntu app store

Yeah I’m not subscribing to a whole service just so I can watch 3/4 of my team’s games and no others. I want a service I can subscribe to and see all my team’s games, and preferably all the games in one league. If it was multi-league that would be great, but I’d rather subscribe to one league at a time than subscribe to all leagues with randomly blacked out games.

Until then - and I know it’s unlikely to ever happen - I won’t be spending money on watching sports on tv

I always call it Magic Math. There’s so much of it when you start learning about investing/trading. “Buying calls has infinite potential for gains. Selling calls has infinite potential for losses.” Like, yeah, that’s mathematically true. But at the end of the day it’s not practically true, you’re just putting a lot of weight on what you could be getting instead of what you are getting.

I’d recommend deciding what you’re looking for in a VPN, then using r/VPN’s comparison guide to find which one suits your wants.

Is this the best method? Idk, but it’s what I did and I’m pretty satisfied. I decided that the most important factors to me were port-forwarding, price, speed, leak protection, and encryption - basically in that order. Using that criteria I settled on AirVPN, and I have no complaints so far (one month in).

Some people care more about ethics, or ownership, or what have you. So what you think is the best VPN will depend on your needs. There’s no perfect VPN anymore, imo

Edit: As others have pointed out, some VPNs also come in optional packages. Ones such as Proton. That’s something else to consider if you’re in the market for stuff like antivirus or secure email

Do you really? How do you go about proving that kind of thing?