You’ll run into that on many distros,
not only Debian, since most of the distros use a specific python version for OS packages, its recommended to leave the python for your OS unchanged.

But VirtualBox is not a good idea either.

Instead use a venv (virtual environment),
which is the python way to develop/run under different python versions.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html

I’m also living in the EU,
however I notice a global push to such mass surveillance. The EU has been under attack by Denmark for years now e.g. by pushing through chat control (a government backdoor into encryption).

However there ain’t such thing as a backdoor only for the good guys, this can and will eventually be abused, either by extremist governments, which may not yet be in power, but might come some day, or external countries, hacking into the backdoor.

Privacy and technology experts have been warning against chat control and age verification for these reasons, however we do feel ignored, since the topics keep on coming back up.

I kinda doubt that most of the politicians graps these risks though, and kinda find it dissapointing and demotivating that our rights to privacy keep being put under scrutiny again and again.

However I’ll refuse to give up, since maintaining your rights is important, and gaining them back once lost is often very hard / nearly impossible.

Thank you for being open minded and up for hearing my arguments though! :)

I agree that big tech’s social media is like digital heroin, not only bad for kids.

But it should be up to the parent to protect their kids, you also don’t let them walk the park alone, why should you let them browse the web un-supervised.

There are parental tools to restrict your child’s internet access, those should be applied by the parent.

Not every citizen should be under surveillance by the government under the rouse that they’ll protect your kids, which they won’t.

The real goal here is to detect people who go against the government and block them. While kids & criminals slip through the cracks by finding sketchy un-surveilled sites and messaging channels.

And if you really think your government gives a damn about your kids safety, then I urge you to look in the epstein ph/f-iles

*France seeks to implement mass surveillance online by requesting age verification, but politicians wrap it in “we do it to protect the children” which is bullshit.

Protect your rights to privacy, stand up against such erosion of your rights.

By not accepting your time estimate,
requesting your reasoning why it takes that long, you explaining you calculated time in for refactoring, then rejecting your idea and granting you only time to implement the new thing, without granting time for refactoring.

And dw, my project manager is a pretty chill friend and fellow senior developer, who is reasonable and helps me with calculating in time for refactoring whenever possible/nessecary.

It’s only higher up, CEOs/management, who seek to cut corners, with rocks for brains, who don’t see that in the long run such practices are bad for business.

Which sadly is the case for most IT businesses. But at least in my workplace the project manager is not a rat & on the side of the developers.

Just increase your time estimate,
calculate in the time needed to refactor,
but don’t tell them you’re gonna refactor.

Works out most of the time.
Only when they ask why the estimate is so long, then you explain your reasoning behind it, and then they might reply with your statement and block your refactoring idea.

However, getting time to refactor most of the time, is aleady way better then never being allowed to do so.

For M$ no clue, for browsing,
AdNauseam comes to mind.

It’s a fork of uBlock Origin,
which instead of blocking all the ads,
hides all the ads + clicks on them all in the background, which:

• Costs advertisers a lot of money
• Poisens your data profile, since they can’t make up your actual interests anymore

It’s more protest-ware then privacy-ware though,
since you’ll be overflooding them with bs data,
instead of minimizing the data collected.

You can install ClassyShark3xodus,
which can de-compile apps and scan them for trackers on the fly to figure it out yourself.

Do let us know the results :)

I’d find it odd if a RPi4 can’t smoothly run a browser :o

You can use btop, to monitor if you have a bottleneck on your CPU or RAM, if Swap memory gets used, things will slow down, if your CPU is clocking @ 100%, same thing but not much you can do about that besides perhaps weeding out unnessecary processes that consume a lot, if there are any.

In case your RAM is @ 100%, you could:

• Use LibreWolf instead of FireFox,
  it’s an open source privacy focussed fork,
  which removes some of the FireFox bloaty stuff, which reduces RAM usage.
• Use uBlock Origin, to block advertisements, which will reduce RAM usage and increase page load speeds
• Use NoScript, to block JavaScript trackers, to further reduce RAM usage and increase page load speedd, beware, will block all JS by default, so sites will break, but can be manually fixed by re-enabling only the nessecary JS components on a site
• Switch to DietPi, a very light weight RAM/CPU friendly distro for SBCs like RPis, I’ve used it only headless (without GUI) but it only used 50Mb of RAM out of the box last time I monitorred it, which is impressively low.

Well, it ain’t just the EU :/

Our right to privacy is under attack basically globally (EU, USA, England, Australia, maybe more, but those I’m aware off).

Being wrapped into bullshit reasons “to protect the children” or “to fight crime”, which won’t help, since malicious actors and creative kids will find work arounds for such measures.

The truth is likely more to put a oppressive surveillance police state into place. Where opposition can more easily be tracked down and silenced.

Now it’s more important then ever before to protect your rights to privacy. Since rights are easily eroded by politicians, but very hard to re-gain afterwards.

E.g. look at Russia, where you accidentally slit your throat while shaving if you try to voice yourself against Putin.

You should, privacy is a human right which is being stripped away from us.

You’re basically saying I don’t really care about my human rights.

Without privacy, you’re one step closer to an authoritan regime, where mass surveillance helps prevent an uprising of the people against it.

E.g. Russia, where you “accidentally slit your throat while shaving” when you go against Putin.

DuckDuckGo has a “NoAI” subdomain:
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

Works like normal DDG,
except, you guessed it, no AI :)

Alien,
the original 1979 one.

Imo it really aged well,
recently rewatched it and was amazed by how good the special effects looked, especially for that time.

It’s also a really good movie,
scores 8.5/10 on IMDB,
kept me on the tip of my chair for the full 2 houra.

Hahahahaaa omg OP so funny I can’t stop laughing /s

For real though, I am aware of, understand and even stand behind a lot of your concerns.

However for my mental health I’ll be blocking you.

We already get pummled by enough depressing media since it generates more clicks and thus shareholder profit, and I already block most of that out.

When I’m scrolling through meme communities though, I just want to be humoured, not become depressed.

Huh, if your parents are the blocking factor,
how about trying to educate them a bit about F-Droid and data privacy?

Software from F-Droid really is much more privacy/battery/storage friendly. Just open source software, no spyware services bloating up the apps.

Perhaps after some convincing, they’ll at least allow you to use F-Droid and Aurora Store! :)

3xodus can help with convincing them:

• https://f-droid.org/packages/com.oF2pks.classyshark3xodus/
• https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

It shows known trackers (= spyware) in applications.

ClassyShark does it by de-compiling the apps and scanning them on the fly.
Their website shows reports by other users that scanned applications.

Nearly everything from the PlayStore contains trackers, while nearly nothing from F-Droid does.

Ufff sad to hear.

What you could do:

• Not recommened: Search on XDA for an un-official build of a custom rom for your device (stability may vary)
• Recommended: Be patient, until it’s time to buy a new phone, then first look for the OS you want, then choose a device from the list that the OS supports, that’s how I do it nowadays :)

Also interesting, but annoying that you can’t install apks from outside the PlayStore :/ No way to circumvent it?

Not really imo,
however doing good taking small steps OP! :)

Suggestions I’d make:

• Aim to use nothing/as little as possible from the Play Store (proprietary, often filled with trackers)
• Aim to use everything/as much as possible from F-Droid (open source, no or nearly no trackers)
• Switch GApps for MicroG (The open source implementation of the Google system apps to make things like notifications work, which removes spyware)
• Switch your Xiaomi OS (also spyware filled) for a more privacy friendly OS like LineageOS

I’d suggest LineageOS4MicroG:
https://lineage.microg.org/

It’s vanilla LineageOS,
with MicroG + F-Droid pre-included.

You’re very welcome! ^^

Afaik no alternatives yet,
but I can offer some de-googling friendly additions which I developed/contributed to :)

https://github.com/Rikj000/Android-Auto-XLauncher-Unlocked
^ Allows to use 3th party apps on Android Auto

https://github.com/sn-00-x/aa4mg
^ Allows to use Android Auto with MicroG (open source implementation of the GApps)

Check the changes,
they’re quite funny :P