u/unitedfan6191

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

As someone with a relatively moderately sized collection, this stuff with Sony the past several days has energized me and my belief that we shouldn’t take physical media for granted.

Before I was always hesitant to buy 4K releases that got mostly mediocre/bad reviews (especially if I didn’t like/hadn’t seen the movie), but i feel like especially if they’re on sale I should do it if it sends a message to these studios and shows solidarity among my fellow collectors.

Up until now, I‘ve generally only usually bought movies regularly reviewed at 4 stars or better by the prominent physical media review websites like Blu-ray.com and reading reviews on here and other places, but now I’m thinking of going for movies that I gave less thought to before and going even deeper into film preservation by increasing my variety rather than boxing myself into only buying the most widely recognized greatest 4K discs.

But then I know there’s movies like Terminator 2 with horrible 4K transfers making everyone look all waxy, so I may still avoid those to not encourage more of these, but I’m not sure.

Hi folks.

Hope you're doing well.

Another day, another "priority" email from Proton about their current sale. i get it, Proton, you have a sale going on. As if the red "summer sale" link above isn't enough. Or the other emails about this they've sent me.

I've been a loyal user for years now, but I'm honestly considering my options now with these spammy emails from them. This, plus all the recent controversy surrounding Proton.

I have read this on here a few times, so i guess it's not uncommon?

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

With all this controversy about Proton (overblown or not), it has made me more conscious of seeking out more ethical companies to support.

Now, I know in lots of things in life we can’t be too picky and if you look hard enough you can find unsavory things in almost anything, so I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt if a company has made a few mistakes, but I have my limits.

So, I’m not necessarily looking for companies that are ethically spotless, but are there companies you support (financially or not) in your degoogling that you feel good about? (And not just because they produce great products, block trackers, etc.)

For me, I’ve been impressed with Posteo, who prioritize sustainability as well as privacy and security and seem like s truly good little company.

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

As a complete beginner, I’ve recently been reading article after article and posts and all that, but while I know these routers are better than ISP ones, I‘m still not sure whether it’s a big leap in privacy buying one of these vs. any OpenWrt-equipped router?

My goals are just to have VPN installed on every device including ones that don’t support it and block tracking/ads on all devices and just overall have more control/freedom over my network and improve my wifi range performance and I’ve heard the Flint 2 is highly recommended, but is it so vastly superior to anything else if you’re a beginner?

Appreciate any advice on this.

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

So, as a relative newbie to these sorts of things, I’ve had both an ISP router and a TP-Link router for years, but the more I’ve learned about privacy the more I want only the best solutions in each category (ie most private E2EE zero knowledge cloud storage/email, private messenger, etc.), but I get the feeling that the router itself is surely the thing that enables the most privacy and security, right?

I mean, a bad router choice surely negates a lot of the benefits of having the most private this or that? I don’t know, as I said I’m very new to networking technology and stuff like this.

But I’m willing to learn and want to select the right router.

I want to be able to configure Wireguard on it and choose the settings that are recommended for maximum privacy/security.

I’ve researched different routers but most of them seem the same in terms of offering the core features I’m looking for, but with some obviously offering more powerful features and more range than others. I’ve learned that Asus and TP-Link are pretty popular.

So, is the GL.iNet Flint 2 a better option for a router than any Asus or TP-Link router if my goal is utmost privacy?

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

As an American who grew up on the Pierce Brosnan Bond, I felt his movies were so stylized and over the top with a certain sex appeal/suaveness and gadgets and cool action sequences, so I didn’t grow up with any kind of expectation or deep knowledge of Ian Fleming’s novels or even the previous movies.

But I know fellow Americans who believe strongly in the British roots of Bond.

But whether you’re a Bond fan who’s British, American or another nationality, do you have a preference/expectation for whether the Bond universe is strictly British (whatever that means to you) or has a certain Americanization to it or just seeing Halle Berry show up and kick butt or seeing Felix Leiter play a major role?

Hey.

Hope you’re doing well.

So it’s $12.99 per month and I pay a similar amount for one of the more popular VPNs with a no-logs policy + a few side benefits (like a password manager) and is one of the ones regularly recommended online by reviewing websites (that I won’t mention here).

However, the similar amount I pay is primarily for a VPN and I’ve been pleased with the performance in general, but I am thinking about moving away because of the reputation of the company and other things they do.

As far as Proton Unlimited goes, I probably wouldn’t use all its benefits, so the most useful features i’d use are the VPN, premium features of Proton Mail (as a current free user) & Drive and I’d make some use of the aliases. The other stuff I may try, but probably not daily.

So, if you’ve used it extensively, given my circumstances and use case, do you think the price being similar to what I already pay is worth it? It seems like it would be, given I would be going from paying for a mainly VPN to paying for a more complete suite of features, but what do you think?

Also, how do you pay? How fast/reliable is the VPN? Do you use all the features or only some? Do you subscribe more to support Proton‘s fight for privacy or to use the service?

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well today, fellow fans!

Let’s say we get approximately $115/£85 million in transfer fees for selling Hojlund, Rashford & Ugarte.

We also greatly reduce our wage bill from selling the aforementioned players and Casemiro and Sancho also leaving.

We also get money from Champions League qualification.

So, we may have a pretty sizable funds this season (despite still needing to make payments for recent arrivals).

Its pretty apparent we’ve been in the running for the likes of Elliot Anderson, Sandro Tonali, Aurelien Tchouameni and Carlos Baleba, but most of them (with the possible exception of Baleba) will cost in the region of $130 million+ (about £95 million).

Midfield should clearly be priority, but we can’t depend on Shaw at left-back forever and although we’ve got good numbers of quality players at CB, our recent injuries and suspensions have shown clear weaknesses here.

But besides new signings next season we should have Mainoo (obviously), Bruno and Mason Mount. Obviously, we also cannot rely on Mount being fit for extended periods.

But let’s say we buy two from Anderson, Tonali, Tchouameni & Baleba and the rest of our transfer budget is spent on getting replacements/cover at LB/CB, would two quality midfielders coming in be enough?

Let’s say Tchouameni and Baleba for a combined $165m (approximately £120m). That makes five established first team midfielders next season.

Or should we go all out for three quality midfielders? Spend another 100 million+ on Tonali? I mean, we did spend a similar amount of money improving our attack last summer.