If you JUST want to read pirated ebooks? Kobo is probably the best bang for your buck. But you can also pretty easily sideload ebooks to any kindle via the email interface (which I believe Calibre can utilize).

That said? I have a mix of ebooks I got from legal and less than legal sources. And some of those legal sources include amazon kindle because the prices are REALLY good.

So I like my Onyx Boox. Yeah… it is jank as hell and it allegedly comes with a free 5g modem so be wary of what personal info you put on there. But it works well as I can use the kindle app (which also syncs with my phone) for amazon stuff and the native ereader for any epub files. And because I use a webdav to sync my notes, grabbing new books is as simple as remembering to scp a folder to my nextcloud periodically.

Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.

It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But… think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.

Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a “free” vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.

Just to expand on the phone thing because it amuses me:

In a past life myself and a few others had access to cell tower records for a specific company. As a research project, we applied what we would now call AI/ML concepts to sanitized data (basically all customer IDs were mapped to a different ID set and then the mapping was thrown away).

For poops and giggles I checked the tower nearest the local happy ending massage place. And, lo and behold, we were able to immediately get a list of everyone who turned their phone off for 30-60 minutes.

The fundamental issue is still giving people a false sense of security. It is why it is INCREDIBLY important to be very very specific about what you do and don’t get from various actions. Otherwise you have the same problem as all those people in countries where being LGBTQ was criminalized who realized elon musk owned their DMs.

Also: Putting your phone in a farraday bag half a mile from a protest doesn’t take much effort to detect.

1. So how ai generated is wired these days?
2. NEVER trust any guide that is about “protecting yourself from government surveillance”. Anyone who has an idea of what risk mitigation is viable will NEVER phrase it that way for obvious reasons

From a quick skimming, it looks like their genius guides boil down to

• SIgnal: Signal is only as secure as every user in the chat. Yes, it is MUCH better than using something like imessage. But if they are beating your buddy with a baseball bat it doesn’t really matter if your message expired or not
• FDE: Yes, that is a good idea. But understand that “oh, I forgot my password” doesn’t work when you have been declared to have no civil rights because you look foreign.
• Get a NAS: A good idea, in general. But maybe understand that means you have a big ol’ box of incriminating info in your house that is available to whoever has a crowbar.
• Use Tor: HA! First, it is only a matter of time until Tor is attacked and likely large numbers of users are brought up on CSAM charges. But also? Understand what a compromised endpoint is and maybe look up what governments tend to be associated with those.
• Get a VPN and turn off your GPS: Yeah. it is a real good thing that our devices don’t all connect to cell towers where they can easily be tracked from.
• Get certain crypto but carry a lot of cash: Yeah… how AI generated was this article?

If you actually care about your vulnerability, look what ACTUAL journalists on the run from a government or megacorporation do (dedicated hardware that can’t even power up within a few city blocks of your other devices, for one). And understand that most of those boil down to “They know it is me and they are hunting me but I can live off the grid long enough to get this story out and then maybe they won’t kill me afterward”.