what they basically say is that (and this is only valid for people using tor or mullvad browser with stock settings) if everyone has the same fingerprint, and if you dont sign in to anything else, they basically look same to the websites, so you dont have to use some privacy frontend, it is ot adding in any benefit. However, these conditions deffenitely are not that easy to meet for day to day use.

context please, I am an uneducated delinquent

on my first read, i definitely got that some guy bill is proposing

I have recentlly created a data directory in my home dir, and moved almost everything I need to it. Even configs and program data are in it somewhere I find ok, and symlinked to the xdg dirs (I know i can make my new location the xdg dir for config and data, but this way I selectively add stuff to my now main config, so it remains more pristine)

In case you want to look at my config https://lemmings.world/post/21375035/13799657

https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=66c7a6f6dc

I have basically the same machine (7730u instead of 7735u) - works great (go into bios and set power saving mode (default is smart cool, which is not that great, I had higher power consumption at idle) and disable psp)

AMD vs Intel - does not really matter - try to find performance/price ratio and pick better one. Also, go on lenovo configurator site, yoou maybe able to find (or spec up) the same laptop for even cheaper (I got mine for about $400)

I would reccomend the current configuration that I am running, It is a customised lenovo laptop that I got for little less than $390 (Not us citizen, and we have mid-high taxes, but i got roughly 5% off as student discount and another 5% for credit card payment, and you also apply the CUSTOMOFF coupon for rougly 5% more) - It is lenovo v14 G4 (you can also try to get 16 inch if you prefer that, differnce is roughly $10-20) - 2 things to note - I did not select a ram or storage upgrade - it comes with 8GiB soldered, but there is one slot free, and I added 16GiB which I already had, also I had my 512 GiB SSD, which i swapped with its 256 GiB one. If you would like to, you can get both of these upgraded for about $50 USD. Also you can choose between a 3 cell battery, or a 2 cell and a harddrive (this choice is only available in 16 inch one though).

List of upgrades that I did

Processor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7730U Processor (2.00 GHz up to 4.50 GHz) selected upgrade Display 35.56cms (14) FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 45Wh selected upgrade

Here is a link for configurator (not affiliated or anything else)

https://www.lenovo.com/in/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=82YXCTO1WWIN1

I checked this config not available in US

i got that, but i am trying to understand how, i have slept on 1 after playing, and i am tall. not against homeless persons, but was weirded out seeing armrests and spikes in the same line

I am sorry, but why is having armrests that bad, most benches i have seen with armrest have them on the ends, and yes a tall person would not fit in, but it is not that bad.

If you want set it and forget, you can try immutable distros like fedora silverblue, if you use bottles for running games, you can look at bazzite. If you want to tinker, then debian/arch/fedora minimal installs and build what you want

i may be wrong here, but if i remember correctly, in ech, essentially our first communication is done with some central server (which as of now is mostly cloudflare) and then they make some connection with target server, and then a channel is established between us and target. my google-fu brought me this , which is basically this only

https://cf-assets.www.cloudflare.com/zkvhlag99gkb/3C9ceBTx5AQXu8tS0lgzdF/55ea89f5a56843db15296b2b47f7b1c2/image3-17.png (https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-client-hello/)

I am unfamiliar with QUIC, and quick search basically tells it is kinda like multilane highway for udp.

If I have to compare, (not a network engineer or a person who has studied networking, to me anything beyond the simple protocols seems magic), QUIC seems like a techt which is only used after you have made connection with target, so its implementation is google independent (they seem to be lead developers for this). Whereas in ECH, cloudflare are the primary devs, but also the holder for the public keys (someone else can also be the holder, but i dont know of any other provider currently, maybe my lack of knowledge here)

Essentially just an extension of your point that implementation is lacking

for me, currently the problem is over reliance on Cloudflare, which is yet another big tech company

the safety factor got me