Frustrates me as well, but the reason is quite simple that people search for “$device cable”, and sellers need to list all of them so the search engine of choice lands the user there.

They should still list the specs though.

Yeah what I also saw in the terms was that they reserve the right to sell their company without informing users other than through an update in the terms & conditions, and based on play store reviews, they terminate lifetime accounts if they find that you upload copyright protected files, even if you don’t share them with anyone.

Indexing my stuff and comparing it against external databases is a big no no for me.

So far I’m quite happy with sync.com, been using them for well over a decade. Data is fully encrypted during upload, so no matter if the server is ever breached, they wouldn’t get anything useful out of it.

I also got my own nextcloud instance up and running, but it’s with a shared hosting provider where I don’t feel as secure.

pCloud, under business terms fairly towards the end:

Term & Termination

This Agreement may be terminated by either party at any time, for any reason. This Agreement will remain in effect until Customer’s subscription to the Services expires or until the Agreement is terminated. In the event of termination by the Customer, the Customer will remain responsible for payment of all fees and charges applicable to the period during which the Agreement was in effect.

What exactly do you think happened with slaves too old to fulfill their duties?

Anytime! You could also check some blogs like nomad capitalist and others, they offer solutions like incorporating a ltd. company in Georgia (the country) or Belize and stuff, but that also comes with a host of other requirements, reporting and otherwise.

Depending on your assets, there are also some countries like Grenada for example that come with a citizenship by investment program, where you get a passport if you invest either into government bonds or buy a property that you must hold for a certain number of years. If you’d be a citizen from there and casually forget to tick the box for US citizenship when opening your Hong Kong account, you might just get away with it. (Strictly not legal, though).

Outside of the immediate reach requires you to open an offshore brokerage account; however thanks to FATCA reporting requirements, most banks don’t want to deal with you unless you have significant assets under management.

Back when FATCA was first introduced I was working in private wealth management for a bank in Luxembourg, and we decided to terminate all but 3 accounts held by US citizens, all of whom had assets above 700k USD. I believe 500k was the internally communicated cutoff.

Banks in Switzerland now typically require 1M CHF to open new accounts for anyone who isn’t onshore (Swiss citizen or resident), Hong Kong, Singapore and Panama also require minimum amounts between 500k to 1M USD. I think Bahamas, Bermudas, Virgin Islands, Caymans and all the other money islands ask for even higher deposits now.

One thing you could consider are the British channel islands (Jersey and Guernsey in particular), since Brexit they’ve had a bit of an offshore renaissance. HSBC Jersey for example only requires 100k GBP to open offshore accounts (though I didn’t check about FATCA requirements since I’m not a US citizen myself).

If all you want is keep smaller amounts outside of the US, you could look into wise.com, revolut and other money transfer services, they allow you to hold different currencies in physical accounts domiciled in other jurisdictions. Read: If you deposit USD and convert it to GBP, AUD or EUR, those funds will be physically stored in UK, Australia and Belgium respectively. Since wise is a British company (revolut as well btw), the US government at least won’t have immediate access.

If there are any online brokers that accept US customers with casual portfolio sizes, no idea.

Crypto of course is also an option, but I don’t trust it enough as long term asset storage solution.

You bet I would.

Not tipping is not giving my money away for nothing.

Tipping culture creates unwarranted expectations and removes obligations from employers.

I’ve stopped tipping decades ago and won’t look back.

In Luxembourg it’s actual Portuguese, not Brazilians.

There are some Brazilian instances, pretty sure they speak Portuguese as well. And it’s the largest minority in Luxembourg, so chances are that you’ll find someone on their instance as well. There’s at least one, but I forgot the name.

Private mode has all trackers disabled, so they might be able to trace the IP to my router, but not to a specific device (assuming you have random hardware ID activated). With kagi it’s traced to a specific account regardless.

And while I’m running a VPN by default, kagi will still be able to identify me, so that’s an absolute no-go.

I’m using kagi on and off, but haven’t reached the point where I’m confident that paid search is the answer. Especially since that ties results to accounts even in privat mode, so they can claim no log policies as much as they want, I don’t trust it.

DDG doesn’t deliver the same quality as google, bing is garbage for anything but porn, and Yandex works surprisingly well, but whether I want my data in Russia is another story. In private mode I use it occasionally.

Nope, you can’t disable it at all, this is the only workaround that currently gets rid of their crap.

In your browser settings under search configure a new custom search with the following string:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%25s&udm=14

That attaches the string udm=14 to every search in the browser toolbar, which omits all AI features.

The downside is that if you’re searching for translation or currency conversion it won’t show you those as google features on top of the search results either, but only as separate links.

I use amazon to buy ebooks, and order stuff to my parents or friends back home if they are coming over, when there’s something I can’t get locally.

Taobao is the same garbage as Aliexpress, Temu would be Pinduoduo (which is so riddled with poor knockoffs that locals avoid it and crack jokes about the stupid foreigners thinking it’s hot shit).

The only somewhat trusted platform is JD.com (jindong) or official brand shops on Taobao. Tmall belongs to Taobao, that’s just their own shop (as opposed to third party sellers), but there’s no guarantee you actually buy authentic products either.

Wow, where I’m at you can book them 3-5 days in advance, no stress.

Remote in what sense? I’m in China.

I don’t want to deal with their abysmal costumer service, and I’m not giving my address and phone number to some Chinese data center if I can help it.

There are ebooks listed for exactly 1 cent.

I thought that’s building code, literally never seen any other outlets in the UK, as well as in Malaysia where they adopted the system. Though why it is or became code, I’ve no idea.