Windscribe have a free product called control-d DNS which works like pihole but you don’t have to manage it yourself. Just set your router or PC DNS to point to the controld DNS server that suits what you want filtered.

Ohchr.org daily reports

I rent and have carpet everywhere. I have placed a disposable rug on top of the carpet around the eating/drinking area to catch all the mess.

Grub

Yes they work well. No batteries needed. They give clear indication of dry/moist/soggy. I was over-watering and killing plants before I bought one.

A soil moisture measuring device to tell when plants need watering. 2 for $10 on amazon.

I only use Thunderbird calendar for myself so I don’t know. Proton includes a calendar offering in their package but I have not tried it yet.

See above. Plus I use Thunderbird for calendar.

Proton for email and cloud storage. Graphenos on a pixel 7a for phone. Phone spps from aurora and fdroid. Kagi.com paid search engine too.

+1 for pixel. I just ordered a 7a for grapheneos.

Yes, dual boot. It is a Dell Optiplex. Windows re-enables devices disabled in device manager.

I do that as well. I just use dual boot windows for samsung disk tools and logitech software. Couldn’t get either to work in a vm.

Thanks for the list. I will try the mac address block on the router idea for windows and set a non default mac address when linux boots.

About 1% of what is needed.

I have to remember this for next winter. Going into summer here.

Proton plus here too. I use the vpn, 500gb drive for backups, and have set up my own domain name email. I tried their password manager but didnt like it at all. I dont think it is ready yet.

I have the OS (with docker) mirrored too. So no reinstalling, just disk or other parts swapping in case of a failure. I hope. A mothboard swap is the worst downtime. I have done this and needed to fiddle with network settings due to changed net interface name to get the server up again.

I put my dockers on mirrored zfs pool and have enough spare parts in case of breakdowns.

habit mostly. in case i need to recover from a bad kernel update or botched grub config. i jave never needed the backups.