In the rare case where you are actually not a troll, let me put it simply.

Your previous post was blocked for the behaviors of certain individuals in the comments, including you and the topic itself which was as good as spouting: “Why not use Google drive for sharing media? It’s free and there is way less hassle than what all of you have been doing for decades. I am right you are wrong.” .

It is indeed somewhat frustrating not to be “able” to share the whole adventure for the sake of privacy but that’s just another part of the lonely journey that is personal privacy in itself.

I think what most people lack is a roadmap or a goal. From your post, you achieved you goal and that’s great. More often than not, people spend years looking at all the horror stories and all that they can put in place without sitting down and looking for a goal they themselves wish to get to.

I like this. I think it may be one of the only post I have ever seen that shows where a privacy minded folk came from and their journey to end up in a place they’re comfortable at. Way too often stories about one’s privacy journey is them being in the pit of despair (understandable) or those crazy stories of how someone who spent years researching privacy and hardening their device ended up picking windows and all their old habits from all those years ago because it was too much for them.

On that note, great job. I’m happy for you and wish you a good time on your regular (perhaps minimal) maintenance.

The link to Z-Library itself is one of the legitimate ones from what I know so I wouldn’t worry on that side too much.

PDFs have a few exploits that could infect a system. However they are rare and not efficient especially if the intent is to infect as much machines as possible.

If you don’t have much technical knowledge to analyze the files yourself, I would recommend you open the PDFs in Virtual Machines without any acess to the internet or opening the files only when you have disconected your device from any acess to the internet.

Tools like the one mentionned by someone else in the comments would be good to prevent from having to worry about a potentially malicious PDF. Various tools are around to convert a malicious file lile PDFs into regular “trusted” PDFs (said tools flattens everything making it impossible to select text or click any URIs included). I would look up the trustworthiness of some of those tools first (to not try and avoid malwares by installing one).

That was way too long of a comment but I hope it could ease some of your worries.

Yes, as long as you practice good OPSec.

The first mistake you made was to ask about it. While logical to ask since you probably didn’t know, you now have an increased risk of linkability. Is the risk enough of a threat? Your threat model and OPSec will determine that.

If your goal is wanting to avoid being identified, planning starts before doing any prior actions.

Can probably play Doom

Those that think they’ve seen it all and think they’re “immune” or used to it make the dangerous mistake of sometimes searching for NSFL content that are sometimes mentionned on those types of questions just to test themselves.

I’ve seen a lot, way too much for my own good, it is never a good idea to search something like that up.

Truly hope your sibling as well as yourself aren’t too scared of what it was you saw. Some of the content seen can sometime leave pretty heavy or permanent marks.

Any type of NSFL content mentionned could be a very bad thing for anyone involved.

I get that you are curious and that’s fine but it could cause more harm than you might imagine.

Every time there is a new version available for the most part.

I go to the changelog of the app or software to see what has changed, since I only use FOSS I also have a broad glance at the code. If I know that what I am updating won’t cause trouble for what I am currently doing (ie. A depency update that is used during a time I need to compile a big project), I go ahead and update.

In the case of new features I am not keen on, I usually keep the current version I have (and make any self-update impossible for said app/software), see if there is any reputable forks or fork it myself to remove said features.

I have a minimal amount of apps and software and I handpicked all of them specifically so that they follow what I want them to do. If for whatever reason they stray and become something I’d rather not use at all, I remove/purge them.

Security is also very important (to me at least). Not updating because a feature is unpleasant is fine as long as the app is fairly recent and has no way of communicating to any other apps or have any internet access.

Indeed quite something…

Also, no need to be sorry, you did nothing wrong.

In your case, you added something, it was a salad with pepper and salt during a time where you were craving something in particular.

What was crazy to me about the story I told was the poor tomato and carrots were unseasoned, bland, resting in the saddest plate I’ve yet to encounter, while the person eating it was considering what was in front of them a meal.

(Not sure why someone would downvote you for your comment by the way)

The whole thing was so surreal that I never bothered to ask about it.

Wasn’t on a diet. Thankfully, they ate more during lunch and didn’t have any health issues due to eating weirdly but those “meals” were something else…

Don’t ask me why. Even I was speechless.

I knew someone who would eat a tomato for dinner with a few slices of carrots. Nothing baked, just a plain uncut tomato and slices of carrots.

I’m talking a functionnal human being, knowing the concept of cooking and the ability to walk to their kitchen with such a “dish” as they would call it. Not vegetarian either. They did like meat and whatnot. Saddest “meal” I’ve ever had the horror to lay my eyes upon.

Your wise words blind me Internet person

I made a rough guide of my setup for someone wanting to download videos from their browser. Since Seal uses yt-dlp, it will work with Youtube as well.

Hope this can help you out

In the case of your laptop and microphone together while being on the go, a “small” microphone and somewhat cheap would indeed be best like I said previously. If you’re outside, I wouldn’t bring some equipment that attracks too much attention to you for sure.

As for in-ear earbuds, the only good options I’m aware of do not offer any microphones. The cheapest and only ones that I can think of are the old (now retired) apple standard earbuds. However the mic isn’t that “good” per say and I doubt many places still have a stock of them.

It is a solution. I prefer to know exactly how my software is doing things and prefer to set every settings myself. While that isn’t something I recommend most do due to time constraint, I also forgot that those tools are implemented in a lot of big applications making use of video/audio calls. If it suits your needs and find no issue using them, go for it. It will indeed help tremendously. The tips to dampen the noise in the room you are in still applies. Noise cancelling tools like so need to distort the audio the more ambiant sounds there are and the volume they’re at. The louder an environment is, the more your audio will be distorted and the worst the quality will get. Nowadays, we are at a point where it shouldn’t matter too much because of how well those tools processes the audio so it should be fine. Just keep it in mind.

In the end that wasn’t all that useful but I hope you’ll manage to have good calls with an audio that fits your needs and liking.

While browsing a few years back, I found myself buying the Blue Snowball. While many headsets now include good microphones, I chose this one because it was (and still is) cheap and of good enough quality for regular use.

As for the input settings, that might be tough if you have no experience with it. Depending on your laptop’s OS and the wide range of software it might be tough.

Before any audio settings in place, test out your audio with:

• a microphone,
• a physical filter (some uses socks, its not recommended but it’s just to give you an idea of what it is),
• a room with as much noise reduction as possible (thick curtains/room with a good amount of furniture/sound absorbant panels, all of those can help).

Chances are, the noise will still be too much and you will want some artificial changes from softwares afterwards, but the more you dampen the noise, the less tweaks you will have to do in the software making it easier while also not ruining the audio too much with software filters.

If you’re willing to tell me what OS you will use with that laptop I can try and see what could potentially work on there without just telling you xyz software and giving you random values you have no informations on. Sometimes, simple OS audio configurations can do as much as some advertised software.