I will be entering the US in October to work for about a year and half as a visiting researcher. I will be accompanied by my partner and his two children.

I am very scared on what to expect at the border because of all the stories I hear about detentions, refusals, etc.

My concerns are:

1. Do they ask everyone to unlock their phones and download EVERYTHING in there for later analysis?
2. Related to point 1., refusing to unlock and give access will make you suspect and they refuse entry?
3. Do they also ask you to unlock your laptop? I have stuff encrypted there as I often have to process sensitive patient data for a project I am working.
4. Do they do a complete biometric data collection of you and the kids?

Also, how do we conduct ourselves at the border entry to avoid getting absolutely shafted?

P.S.: I am not in a position to call off the trip. Visa is ready and tickets are brought.

I'm fairly certain this post might end up revealing my lack of knowledge on this topic rather than being a sound technical question, but here goes:

Why are most people keen on VPN services when TOR was present all along? Is it just because TOR is "slower" than VPNs or some other reason related to access?

Here are the points that confuse me:

1. Many services block TOR.

True, but that's the case with VPNs too. Netflix, Spotify, or some government website (won't specify which country) will give you a tough time when they detect VPN use.

2. Your ISP will know you used TOR.

Sure, but they also know that you used a VPN. Not sure why so many people use this argument. Besides, if you use TOR bridges, your ISP won't know it.

3. VPNs are super helpful when trying to circumvent CG-NAT.

And you'd be right there. Accessing clearnet to serve or host a service is much easier with a VPN. But then again, most people aren't trying to circumvent their CG-NAT to host service. They're trying to use the web more generally.

This post was inspired by my utter disillusionment of Mullvad.

These creams have some chemical that blocks the UV with some capacity, say a factor of 50. Why can't I apply two layers of this cream to now get a 100 factor equivalent protection?

I asked the chemist at the store and they said it's not how it works and that the highest protection factor they have is 75 (which was super expensive).

What gives?

Edit: Thank you for those super informative answers.

Look, maybe I am getting too old for the internet or my brain isn't what it used to be, but each time I see a Trump meme, I legit do not know if the meme is based on something that was really said, or something that the OP has made up.

It's one thing to laugh at absurdism where I read something like "Trump gifts Vance a new couch and causes marital troubles to the vice president" with a clearly photoshopped image of those two with furniture around.

But when I see Trump holding a placard with dumb comparisons (like a pool length versus heights of other building), I start questioning my sanity because that dude is totally capable of something absolutely mental.

Here's my request to posters making Trump memes, keep them flowing, but please kind of clarify if that bloke really did say / do something that absurd. Humor hits different when it comes from raw absurdism than from references with real world events.

I'm trying to understand the bot problem in the internet and finding more ways to defend myself. One thing that I can't seem to understand is why most bots, scrapers and crawlers seem to have residential IPs.

• Is it that ISPs are being paid by tech-bros to assign them these IPs?
• Is it that residential devices have been hacked /contain malware that does this?
• Is it trivial for companies to assign themselves residential IPs?
• Paid volunteers are doing this for AI companies?

Or is there is some other reason for this?

Obviously this is a problem because one can rotate / cycle through residential IPs and if I aggressively block each offender in my logs permanently, then the next person assigned this IP who may be a legitimate user will be unable to access my site.

So far, my self-hosting has been limited to Pi-Hole, and a static website. I now want to try out something new, an Immich server.

I have a static IP from my ISP, so I don’t need to rent out a VPS. However, given that this IS a home internet, I want to be extra sure that it is going to be secure.

In my existing website, I use Fail2Ban + BadBotBlocker + Anubis + Nginx rate limits to protect it from scrapers, bots and malicious users, and it works well. With photos (especially family photos) at stake, I just want to know more on how to protect my server.

Add: thanks for the helpful replies. I will be sharing the photos with family, many of whom live abroad.

According to my friend who comes from Pakistan, they have a slang for brown folks living abroad called "kuttae" which transliterates to "dog", but basically means "white man's lackey". She says most people hate them, but tolerate their antics because they generally have more money.

I know how badly immigrants from Africa and Asia have been treated in the US. What surprises me is that so many of the people working in the immigration office are descendants of immigrants. This got me thinking if one of the consequences of a US collapse (or even a major expulsion/exodus) would be these folks being forced to go back to the countries of their ancestors, and being treated horribly there out of spite / revenge.

My wife has a windows 10 laptop that works very well (hardware). However it seems that it won't support win11. Rather than trying to tinker and make it install Win11 without the TPM support, etc., I want to install Linux Mint.

There are three games she adores and wants them to work if I installed Linux:

1. Grandia 2 installed via Steam. Will proton support it?
2. Sims 3 installed via Steam. Willnproton support this as well?
3. Cesar 3 (which runs in a Win7 VM in windows setup by her tech savy friend). She has those files and the exe files etc. Can that be run on Linux? I'm reading about DOSBox, but not sure if that is the right tool.

I can rip out windows and go full Linux on her machine if there is support for running these three games. Any chance for me on this?