"The problem I'm having is that I don't exist online when people try to look me up."

That's not a problem, that's a privilege very few people get to enjoy. Fuсk social media and fuсk Facebook in particular.

You can literally host your own vpn, nothing illegal about that. And, as someone else mentioned, work would be impossible for many companies, as almost any company that works with sensitive data uses vpn to some extent.

How many petabytes?

Use i3-wm with linux and it's gonna be the only key you use :p

Also it is useful in Windows. I find myself using it in combination with D (minimize all windows) and L (lock the screen), or just by itself to search for apps.

Also to add to bssid, it is possible (in the majority of cases) to get the exact (and i do mean exact) geolocation of the router whose bssid you have. See geomac by drygdryg on Github.

Can't say anything about China, but why do you think vpn's are illegal in Russia? Sure, the big vpn companies inside the country might be influenced by the government to limit your access to some banned websites. However, you can freely use a vpn if you wish.

Again, I remind you that you could always set up your own vpn server for personal use.

Cryptography. It just fascinates me and I constantly want to know more about it.

Idk if this is what you're looking for but might be worth taking a look

https://github.com/eth0izzle/Needl

"Your ISP is most likely tracking your browsing habits and selling them to marketing agencies (albeit anonymised). Or worse, making your browsing history available to law enforcement at the hint of a Subpoena. Needl will generate random Internet traffic in an attempt to conceal your legitimate traffic, essentially making your data the Needle in the haystack and thus harder to find. The goal is to make it harder for your ISP, government, etc to track your browsing history and habits."

But do you use Arch btw?

A few Theory11 playing card packs, because they're beautifully designed. Besides that, some Bicycle sets too.

I just recently learned that cryptography was heavily regulated, in the US at least. What I mean to say is that in the older days (80's - 90's) it was illegal to export any encryption system out of the country. This was mainly due to concerns about the potential for these technologies to be used by adversaries to encrypt communications that could not be intercepted by intelligence agencies.

Obviously, cryptography is valuable, however it was unexpected to read about all the regulations in place regarding this subject, though, now I think it makes sense.

Used to do this with my friend when I lived in a bigger city. It's relaxing to see new parts of the city while driving, especially if you have no where to got.

I found that Arch worked the best for me as my main OS, been using it for around 3 years. True that sometimes it's a pain to set things up, but once it's done, life's just so easy!! Though, I use debian on my server.

I don't think it's even possible to for anyone to stop someone from using a VPN. Sure, in theory, they could affect VPN providers' businesses, but you're always going to be able to connect to a VPN if you want to. They'd have to block or heavily limit internet access in order to stop users from connecting to some remote server.

Also yes, I do think lawmakers are aware that vpn's are not a threat to anything, thus there is absolutely no reason to ban them.

Edit: Someone else mentioned a good point. Even if we consider them blocking vpn as a possibility "The uproar would be enough to kill the bill before it gets out of committee."

still using my four year old redmi note 8 and yeah, the ir thing works well. I like xiaomi phones because they are so customizable, you can install custom OS and root it quite easily.