Scott

Having done both, Tae Kwon Do is almost identical to Shotokan Karate. Karate can also involve weapons, depending on the school.

You just need to remember there are multiple “styles” of Karate much like there are different styles of Kung Fu.

All of them are excellent for fitness, self-confidence and discipline.

You can’t go wrong with any of them, to be honest.

Yes.

Thank God “ahoy ahoy” never took off.

Combine that with Bitwarden running as the SSH Agent [1] and you’ve got yourself a decent, secure way to sign commits, etc.

[1] https://bitwarden.com/help/ssh-agent/

You 100% should.

I bought a second-hand Pixel, installed GrapheneOS the moment it arrived and never looked back.

I recently installed Curve for contactless NFC payments. Their support is terrible but, after some teething issues, it works without any problems.

I would probably start here: https://xdaforums.com/f/samsung-galaxy-a54-5g.12705/

Hosted on GCP?

There is a FOSS alternative. ntfy.

I’ve been running it for a couple of years, if not longer. Works extremely well. The downside, of course, is getting the apps to support it.

The ones I care about already do.

I get what you’re saying. However, their entire business model is predicated on them being impartial. If it turned out that they were biased, their business would collapse.

Ground News

*tonne

Well, duh.

1. Muck about with Netbird (oops, wait, that wasn’t on the list!)
2. Walk the dog.
3. Tidy the garden.
4. Replace the shower curtain.
5. Clean and lubricate the bean-to-cup coffee machine.
6. Book holiday flights.

With a toaster.

Do you mean Patrick Stewart or from the description of the character?

Element is UK and EU-based, not US-based.

Poor Annie.

By default a retention policy isn’t set but, if it is set, it’s on a per-room basis. You have to remember Matrix is federated so things are not so clear cut as centralised services.

See, https://github.com/element-hq/synapse/blob/develop/docs/message_retention_policies.md

Effectively, forever.

I run a complete, self-hosted Matrix stack including bridges to WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram and Signal as well as Element Call (Livekit) and MAS (the new authentication system).

I don’t think there’s any shortcuts. You just need to install them and work through any issues, one-by-one. Start with just the homeserver (Synapse, don’t bother with anything else yet) and add one component at a time and get it working before moving to the next.

I will say that having a decent knowledge of reverse proxies, networking, DNS and certificates will help you greatly. Having a solid understanding of Docker (if you’re using Docker) would be of great benefit too.

It should be much easier today than it was five/six-odd years ago when I started; things are more polished now than they were then.