I don’t see that happening. The US puts large tariffs on imported cars to stifle competition. That’s why if you look at Japanese cars in Japan or German cars in Germany they’re often much cheaper and more powerful than their American counterparts.

Almost every car company does something similar and has as long as they’ve had on board computers.

VW/Audi/Porche are all the same company and generally share the same electronics. A lot of gauges and features are considered “premium” so they just disable them for VW branded vehicles. There’s also regional feature lockouts; IIRC North American VW’s can’t have their fog-lights and headlights on at the same time but you can enable it through VAGCOM.

There’s another launcher that I’m forgetting the name of that will launch Epic and GoG games. Following that proton guide should make NTFS (windows) drives usable for anything in Linux though. I can boot games downloaded from “alternate sites” if I add them to steam as “non steam games” regardless of how the drive is mounted.

If you use this guide to mount the Windows drives you can run it and Linux side by side. It works just as good as Windows these days for 90% of games. You can add games downloaded from unofficial sites to Steam as a “Non-steam game” and it works. Installing Nvidia drivers on Mint is easier than Windows, there’s a built in utility.

I have a 2001 VW TDi, the radio is a standard Double Din so I just replaced it with a touchscreen bluetooth receiver for around $150.

Emphasis on “you’ve encrypted.” If you don’t have the keys its not safe. Imessage has great encryption but Apple will just hand over the keys if asked so its useless.

They could just incorporate a gasket + screws. There are a ton of waterproof devices that have replaceable batteries.

Centurylink/Quest/Whatever it was before received something like a billion dollars from the Obama administration to “connect the entire nation” with modern phone service. They didn’t do that.

This was a decade ago, but when my mom signed up for Dish Network I asked the installer about getting the internet package. He laughed and said to avoid it like the plague. The guy claimed that at the time Direct Tv and Dish Network used the same satellites for internet, two of them to be exact. The rates for using the service went up with high server load and it was only really usable after midnight.

I ended up building a Cantenna from two Bush’s Baked Beans cans and $15 worth of radio equipment from radio shack and “borrowing” free Wi-Fi from a mansion about a mile away.

It sounds insane but you should look into building a rural ISP. This guy in Michigan did it and he can barely keep up with demand in his rural community.

I’ll do ya one better than that.
Because of existing telecom networks its nearly impossible for new fiber companies to do any work in large to medium cities in the US. Even Google couldn’t do it because Comcast/Spectrum/TW wouldn’t allow them to lay cable. In areas not already served by the big ISPs though there’s nearly no red tape. Sandy, Oregon (pop 12,000) laid a municipal fiber network for $30/month. This guy in Michigan said fuck it after he couldn’t get anything laid to his house and built his own ISP.

While I agree the right gets more of a pass, the capitol does actually have its own cell network and they did bust people whose phones were connected inside.

The major difference between January 6th and Portland was that on J 6 the police presence was minimal while Portland had paramilitary outfits roaming the streets.

They don’t. If you’re going to have a smart phone and don’t want them up in your shit get LineageOS or GrapheneOS.

During the 2020 protests in Portland, Or the US Marshalls flew a plane equipped cell phone snooping equipment over downtown for hours every day. The equipment acts as a mock cell tower so mobile phone traffic in the area gets routed through their tools before going to an actual tower. It also collects data from wifi in the area, in addition to whatever unknown abilities it has. This was around the time anonymous federal agents were picking up people off the streets in white vans and hiding in bushes shooting pepperballs at people walking by.