Reading this shocks me. This is my own Catholic mom exactly! The phrase she always throws around is “family first”, and I’ve had to help her so many times of which she shows appreciation. But when I turn her down, she throws guilt trips at me and sometimes goes as far to suggest I don’t care. Despite setting boundaries for many years, she’ll still test the waters.

Don’t forget to try their other games if you haven’t already! It Takes Two is wonderful, and the recently released Split Fiction is my favorite of them all.

I see Tales of Symphonia, I instantly upvote.

HTTPS with no VPN:

You trust the web site to encrypt your data if and only if the web site has properly implemented encryption along with encrypted DNS traffic. Sometimes you make a connection to HTTP before you’re redirected to HTTPS. Your ISP can see what web sites you visit, but the ISP can’t see what you’re doing because the traffic is encrypted so long as encryption is implemented correctly. ISP knows you went to https://www.website.com/.

Conclusion: Your ISP knows exactly what web sites you visit, but can’t see what you’re doing on the web site (if encryption is properly configured by the web site provider).

HTTP or HTTPS with trusted VPN (e.g., Mullvad):

You trust the VPN provider. Your connections are encrypted entirely. Your ISP can’t see what web sites you’re visiting nor can they interpret your traffic.

Conclusion: Your ISP is completely blind to what you’re doing and where you’re going.

ExpressVPN:

"HTTPS is essential for security, but it can only do so much. Don’t fall into a false sense of security—there are limitations to HTTPS protection:

• HTTPS doesn’t hide what websites you visit. Your ISP or network provider can still see which sites you access, even if they can’t view what you do on them.
• HTTPS won’t protect data stored on a website. If a site suffers a data breach, HTTPS won’t prevent hackers from accessing your saved information.
• HTTPS cannot encrypt all your internet traffic. It only secures connections between your browser and a site—not your entire internet activity.
• You have no control over HTTPS. The protocol is set by website owners, so if you visit a website without HTTPS protection, there is no way for you to enable it." Source: https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/https-vs-vpn/

PureVPN:

"HTTPS:

• Encrypts data between your browser and websites.
• Protects against eavesdropping on web transactions.
• Activated automatically with ‘https://’ VPN:
• Encrypts and routes all internet traffic, including from apps.
• Protects the entire internet connection. A VPN is used to establish an encrypted connection - also referred to as tunnel - between your device and unsecure network like the Internet. Since all your traffic goes through the VPN’s server rather than that of your ISP, nobody can find out what you’re up to online. What HTTPS Cannot Do?
• Hide Your IP Address: HTTPS doesn’t mask your IP address. Websites and your ISP can still see your IP and location, whereas a VPN hides your IP, making your online presence more anonymous.
• Encrypt All Internet Traffic: HTTPS only secures data between your browser and websites. A VPN encrypts all your internet traffic, including apps and services outside your browser.
• Prevent ISP Tracking: Your ISP can still see which sites you visit with HTTPS, they just can’t see the exact content. A VPN encrypts all your traffic, preventing ISPs from tracking your web activities. https://www.purevpn.com/blog/https-vs-vpn/

Here are more sources I won’t quote, but you can read:

• https://www.zdnet.com/article/reader-question-answered-if-i-have-https-do-i-need-a-vpn/
• https://nordvpn.com/blog/https-vs-vpn/
• Mullvad. This is more advanced as the article is targeted to technical users. However, it explains how they handle encrypted DNS in their services: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

Great input and you’re absolutely correct. Very important to safeguard backups.

Use of a VPN depends on your privacy threat model.

Using VPN at all times while using the internet like one normally does is beneficial only to the extent that you encrypt your traffic and prevent your ISP from spying on you… mostly. But if you’re logging into known accounts associated with you, then it’s a moot point. Your traffic is encrypted, but your use of services leaves an easy to follow cookie trail of where you’ve been.

If your privacy threat model is much more serious, then you wouldn’t login to any known accounts while on your VPN. You wouldn’t use services that can be pinpointed to you.

Hence, use a VPN to your discretion. If you generally don’t want your ISP spying on you, keeping it on is always best practice. If you have more things to hide, you’d want to use Tor while on VPN and of course don’t use any services that could be linked to you.

Nothing much you can do except make it harder for nefarious parties to get your information. If you’re in the U.S. most of your information is public. With two pieces of info about you, you’re one Google search away from your name, physical address, schools you went to, where you’re employed, etc. You can’t stop this, so just make it harder when your data does get leaked.

Here are my best practices:

• Own my email domain name and use it for generating unlimited random aliases.
• Update old accounts using a random alias.
• Generate random usernames using a proper username generator. Unique username per account.
• If an old account email can’t be updated, changed, or deleted, spoil the information in their system by using fake info and then abandon the account (Anon O’Moose, 1234 Fake Street, Beverly Hills, CA 90210).
• One email alias per account - never shared.
• Unique passwords via a password manager (e.g., passwords like ‘Obtuse4-Entangle-Matrix’).
• Enable TOTP multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
• For legacy security questions, always use a passphrase generator for the answer, and save both the question and answer into your password manager. “In what city did you go to school?”Answer: “Bandit4-Topic-Guardian”.
• Save recovery codes for your accounts into your password manager.
• Leverage virtual credit card numbers if your provider offers it. One virtual card per account - never shared.
• Create accounts only if you have no choice.
• Submit your formal request in Opt Out Prescreen to minimise the sale of your info.
• Delete all centralised social media accounts. Instruct people to text or call you.
• Switch to Linux completely if you can. Get off Windows and Mac where possible.
• Get off iOS if you can and try to run a proper trusted degoogled OS where possible. You can experiment with Linux phones in the future, but right now it’s not mature enough yet nor is it as secure as something like Graphene OS on Pixel phones.
• Get all your data on prem only. If you choose to backup some data for safeguarding online, encrypt it before you upload it.
• If your phone number has been leaked and you’re getting multi factor code requests, excessive spam, etc. consider setting up a new phone line with new number. Then update all your accounts, employer, government records, etc. to point to the new phone number. Let your contacts know. Once satisfied, deactivate your old phone number.
• Minimise posting any personal details about yourself online. Never identify physical locations. Make up fake details about yourself, your employment, etc. Make yourself a little more anonymous by providing fake information. One day you have a pet, another day you’ve never had pets, one day you’re divorced, another day you’re 18 years old, etc. Strive to be consistently inconsistent with the data you post about yourself online. Lots of things I’ve said on Lemmy about myself are untrue, while some things are true. It’s important to not reveal personal identifiers as it is trivial for a determined actor to correlate data and pinpoint who you are.
• Never, ever have any usernames, passwords, email addresses, or security questions that have any meaningful information related to you. ALWAYS use random generators. There is only one password you need to remember, and that is the one password to your password manager. Write it down on paper using pencil (graphite lasts longer than ink) and stick it in a safe.
• Use a VPN properly and with discretion, based on your privacy threat model.

Enjoy your coming Steam Deck! It’s incredible to have your PC library in your hands in a very comfortable device! Every now and then I fire up my old ROMs that I backed up back in the day, so I’ve been dabbling with X-Men Legends on GameCube.

+1 for Control. Played it a few years ago and had a wonderful time with it.

Archived article: https://archive.is/rDbgD

Already upgraded to Linux Mint - https://lemmy.world/post/24365609

It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.

Nice work! Glad you’ve sorted it out!

Yep we really do love them. Hopefully persons keep up the engagement on your posts. And also, hoping we’ll get some more to help create content in this exciting sphere. Thanks for what you do and glad you get a kick out of this! I’ll explore how I can try to help create some content too that inspires me. Something I can nerd out about as well!

Thank you so much for putting this together. I really do look forward to reading these! Must take so much work prepping and finding this, but man it’s just great.

Just a heads up that the Smart Cancer has already begun infecting PC monitors. Samsung makes Smart Monitors.

It won’t be long before there are no longer Dumb Monitors.

Thanks for the response! It was hard to gauge your level of technical ability as I was going off on the other comments and made a dumb assumption. :) My mistake and apologies if any offense as they were purely innocuous comments.

Since only the GPU is used in that build, thermalpaste was the way to go for sure. I assume you also cleaned it and inspected the thermal pads so rule out all that stuff. I never owned an rtx20 series (only gtx 10, rtx 30, and now i’m on AMD) so I don’t have firsthand experience with how they handle or if they run really hot all the time. Nothing else should be a factor here apart from getting rid of that top exhaust fan I talked about and moving your top exhaust fan further to the left.

GPU fan swap is always great - if you have no qualms with doing it, go for it and swap out to more performant fans that are less noisy. Undervolting is a free option. I only know how to undervolt on Windows since it’s stupid easy using MSI Afterburner, but I’m on Linux Mint now for a few months and I haven’t even explored that yet as a possibility for my RX 7900XTX.

For binding case fans to the GPU, some motherboards don’t come with that capability. I haven’t seen it in the one gigabyte board I’ve had, and I’m currently on an MSI X670e (I think that’s the model) and I don’t have that option to do it there. On Windows, you could download Fan Control and configure it in the app so the case fans will ramp up with the GPU load. On Linux, no idea - when I game, I just ramp up my case fans manually.

Something also popped in my head I didn’t think about. You may also want to benchmark your GPU and compare it to others in its class, this way you can get a rough idea of how the hardware is still performing.

Edit: fixed some typos as I’m on mobile

Two observations:

1. Your fan layout in your case is not optimal.
2. Your GPU idle is high, but not dangerous.

Fan layout in a PC is very straightforward - cold air in, hot air out. You want the airflow to be constantly moving and not choking. So first off, good on you for trying to balance the count of intake fans vs count of exhaust fans. I noticed in your observations that you’re wondering if your exhaust fan is detrimental - you are correct. The problem is that you are exhausting cold air before it even reaches your PC components. A common problem I see with inexperienced builders is that they try to fill as many slots as they can with fans. More fans doesn’t equal more cooling. Remove the top exhaust fan that is closest to the front intake (i.e., the top right exhaust fan as it is exhausting cold air). For your last top exhaust fan, move it as far left as you can (so it sits in the top left corner of your case, basically behind your CPU cooler). With this adjustment, cold air goes in and actually gets to reach your CPU cooler, and then all the hot waste air is optimally pulled out of the top left corner of your case (via both the rear case fan and the top exhaust fan).

For your GPU, based on reviewing your comments in this post, I assume you’re probably an inexperienced/new PC gamer. And that’s totally fine of course. Thermal Junction temperature of a GPU is generally certified by the manufacturer to reach 100-110 C. This of course is entirely dependent on the manufacturer, so check your GPU make/model, go to their web site, and look at the certified operating temperatures. Ideally, keep the hottest point of the card much colder than that. If your GPU is idling at 58, start by increasing your fan curves for your GPU. In general, you want more fan speed for higher load. Do your best to try to target ~70-75 F when doing heavy gaming (gpu temp 70-75 F, Tjunction and mem < 90 F) depending on the games you play.

My recommendations:

• Inspect your GPU for wear/issues.
• Clean your PC from dust. Blow canned air (or get a computer duster) through the GPU fans and heatsink and try to get rid of as much dust as possible. If you use a computer duster, make sure to hold the fans still as you blow through them, or else you can make them spin faster than the bearings can handle, which will damage the fans.
• Set a proper GPU fan curve to balance noise and cooling.
• It’s okay for your card to get hot as these cards can go up to 100 F, but it is ideal for longevity to keep it much cooler
• Optimise your case fans to have curves. Ideally, bind the case fans to the GPU so that when the GPU ramps up, the case fans ramp up too. If for any reason you can’t bind your case fans to the GPU, instead whenever you play an intensive game, just manually increase the fan speed to something like 1200 rpm just to bring more air in). Ideally for noise and airflow when doing general computing, your case fans don’t need to spin fast at all - I keep mine around 700 rpm.
• Balance your case fan speeds to match 1:1. In my above recommendation, you eliminate one exhaust fan so you are left with 2 exhaust and 3 intake. That’s okay. The ideal for case airflow is neutral air pressure (the same amount of air brought in will leave the case at the same rate), but the alternative less-ideal situation is positive air pressure (air comes in faster than you can exhaust it). However, be careful when balancing positive airpressure airflow. If you have way too much air coming in (e.g., 2000 rpm intake fans running at 100%) vs being exhausted (e.g., exhausting at 20% fan speed), you end up hurting airflow. What happens is you ram too much into the computer, and it has nowhere to go because the exhaust fans can’t keep up with how much is coming in. Eventually, the hot waste air from your PC components ends up getting mixed in with the cool air over time, and you end up with a hot box. Eliminate this problem by having the exhaust fans run at the same speed as your intake fans - always.
• And finally, make sure you have an airflow-friendly case. I don’t know what case you’re using, but as long as it’s not a bad case with filters or obstructions that choke airflow, you should be good. I’ve been using a Corsair 5000d airflow for several years now, but there are much newer cases that are better for airflow.

When you become more advanced:

• Do not do this part until you have experience and know-how!
• Disassemble your GPU, repaste it, and consider replacing the thermal pads if they’re worn.

Same strategy here. I’m in the U.S. and tariffs were my big concern. In December, I waited for the Sapphire Nitro+ 7900 XTX to go on sale and I paid less than MSRP for it brand new. Having experienced both the disasters of the previous two GPU gens, I had the foresight that the launch of the next gen cards would also be a disaster, and here we are.

PC Gaming has become a rich person’s hobby.

Buy current gen right before the next gen launches, and you’ll be set. I expect to get 10 years out of my card, with the incredible performance, build quality, and 24 GB VRAM.

Nah, you can still try Floorp. It’s very similar to Vivaldi (Chromium). I’m happy with it after using it for a few days to where I uninstalled Firefox. Shame for Firefox, been a user since 2003 or whenever.

It took me less than five minutes to easily migrate my data from Firefox to Floorp. If Floorp enshittifies in the future, it’ll be super simple to migrate to another Gecko browser, or possibly Ladybird or other engines.

No prob at all dude! I just wanted to add the additional context in case some other persons stumbled upon these comments, were confused, and so they can get some more information on different browser options out there. Candidly, I only learned about Mull vs Mullvad Browser this week when I was researching what non-chromium browser to switch to next.

Mull Browser != Mullvad Browser. Just to be clear. I’m adding this context because your reply was regarding a thread on Mullvad Browser, and you replied with details about Mull.

For anyone else reading this comment: Mull browser is from DivestOS and deprecated. Firefox fork. Mull was forked by the community into IronFox.

Mullvad Browser is still alive and kicking, developed by Mullvad the VPN provider. Developed in partnership with Tor Browser, also a fork of Firefox.