HeliBoard is a good foss option that has autocorrect and stuff! You can also give it swipe typing by supplying your own proprietary blob, so that’s neat. Better than using a non-foss keyboard!

QUIK is a more up-to-date version of QKSMS. Not the most important thing ever, since SMS/MMS are inherently insecure, but it’s just good to always make sure you have up-to-date versions of things.

It depends on what exactly you’re looking for in a messenger. If you are able to get people onto a specific platform, go with something like Signal, that’s your best case scenario.

If you’re unable to do that though, and need SMS/MMS, you have options. QUIK is an app I highly recommend for SMS and MMS. The big downside, however, is that RCS is seemingly exclusive to Google Messenger on Android. If you want to use RCS, you’re kind of stuck unfortunately.

To minimize needing to use it, you could buy an old iPhone, jailbreak it, and try and set up Beeper Mini on an android device. That’s what I do at least, which helps quite a bit. It’s finicky and just not perfect, but it’s better than just using SMS/MMS.

Hopefully this comment covers your use case and you’re able to get some useful info out of it.

Getting another number helps a lot in my opinion. If you’re getting another sim in the same phone, I suppose it would be possible for whatever cell carrier is providing the service to be able to link your two sim cards to your identity. However, for other companies, I don’t know of a way they could gather that your second sim phone number is linked to your first one. For instance, if you created two Discord accounts with your two phone numbers, you could theoretically be two completely different users that won’t be linked together. I would personally go for a second number.

Here’s a video covering basically all of NextDNS’ settings! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUG57ynLb8I

Have never had a problem using a VPN with programming.dev

I’m aware of a network that blocks Mullvad as well, but found a way around it. It went through just fine if I was using a custom DNS server. I used NextDNS for this, but I imagine it would work with Cloudflare or something as well (but I highly recommend NextDNS anyways). Hope this helps!

I’m unsure as to what info is sent other than your IP with Newpipe, but you’re correct that it will get a VPN address instead. Commenting to suggest a fork of Newpipe known as Tubular. Has SponsorBlock and Return YouTube Dislike functionality!

Mullvad is better imo, unless you need port forwarding. I’m currently using Proton since I pay for Unlimited for that encrypted drive space, and using their VPN saves me money since I just think of the payment as just for Proton Drive. This is a change I made just a few days ago though, for about a year I’ve paid for both Proton Unlimited and Mullvad, and I legitimately prefer Mullvad over Proton, it just made sense for me to switch money wise. Can’t really go wrong between the two imo.

This works for me! Thanks a bunch!

If buying new, I believe you can ask to have the modem removed from the vehicle, which wouldn’t allow your car to access the internet. Haven’t had the opportunity to try this myself yet, but very much plan on it for whatever vehicle I purchase new in the future.

Will check it out. Thanks for the suggestion!

I use Privacy Friendly versions of Sudoku and Minesweeper on the F-Droid store. I also really enjoy Nonograms (aka Picross), and haven’t found a good foss app for it, but the app “nonograms.com” has been a good experience for me. I paid like $5 for the ad free version and that’s been it, nothing else.

Did you read the post you replied to? They said financially liable. Read through the quote you responded with and tell us where they are held financially liable. They are (rightfully) mad that it’s the taxpayers that are effectively paying out the settlement instead of the police force.

Could you tell us what this command does?

I use Feeder which has been awesome so far for me