by not using meta services

I think Quad9 works as a VPN app, and you cannot use a VPN app and private DNS at the same time. You have to use one or the other.

Yep, with the security deposit system, the Monero buyer does not get the Monero until they have paid. And the security deposits mean people are less likely to try to run away from a trade and not pay. Zero deposit offers do exist, but the seller is the only ones who can create those. And so they can choose to not do those if they wish.

Getting a smaller quantity or using a higher risk payment method does generally mean a higher premium.

Tell your friend to post offers of their own. Somebody needs to start, and they could make a little money, acting as a start for the market.

In Switzerland, yes, you absolutely can walk into a grocery store and pay with Monero at the checkout counter. In the United States, you can buy an Instacart gift card and get the grocery store to deliver your food or go pick it up and pay with Monero.

There just aren’t many small peer-to-peer traders yet, but that will occur over time, and Kraken in the EU did have to stop selling Monero, but at least Kraken in the United States still does, although as I said I don’t expect that to last long. Don’t get me wrong, there are some small peer-to-peer traders on reto. Just not many.

Oh, fair enough. I guess it’s because I know the guy who created the platform and I know the developers.

I have been buying my groceries with Monero since January of 2023. And I’m still alive, so it must work. Otherwise I’d be long dead of starvation.

Edit: I have found that the absolute most difficult things to pay are the things that require a direct ACH transfer such as your car payment, credit card bill, or mortgage. If anything at all accepts a debit card, it can be paid for with crypto.

It may be because I’m blind and use a screen reader, but honestly, who cares if it works, which it does.

The biggest problem with doing it that way is you have to go from fiat into Bitcoin, and then you have to go from Bitcoin into Monero, which incurs Bitcoin’s network fees, which currently are not high, but can spike to ridiculous levels very quickly. Also, just as of yesterday RetoSwap has just done a higher monthly volume than bisq for the first time. I expect them to duke it out with each other over the next couple of months before RetoSwap comes out ahead all the time.

One of the very few KYC exchanges that has Monero is Kraken and I really don’t expect that to last all that long so you either have to buy something like a stablecoin on an exchange and then do an instant swap from that to Monero or you can just buy Monero directly with Fiat on https://retoswap.com/. That’s a software that you download to your computer that lets you exchange in a decentralized manner between Fiat and Monero.

What you do is you just allocate an amount per month that you use to buy Monero with. And you start using it as an actual currency. When you use it, you replace it, etc. If you wanted to, you could also earn it by selling goods or services for it, such as on https://xmrbazaar.com/

Lightning is a steaming pile of horse shit. Anyone who thinks lightning is peer-to-peer is totally fooling themselves.

To the best of my knowledge, that’s the only one they have.

Maybe something like the seeedstudio sensecap indicator?

You’re well on your way to making some really good choices. I also have to ask, are you using a password manager already? And if so, which one are you using? I use keepassxc on linux and keepassdx (from fdroid) on android and sync the database with a flash drive. I don’t trust any clouds, and so I don’t have any of my files on clouds. Also, are you using Monero yet?

What you can do is download the Aurora store from fdroid, which will give you access to Google Play apps without needing the Google Play store, and then go in and disable Google Play services. That way, if something breaks that you absolutely can’t live without, you can go turn it back on again. What you will find is that most apps will no longer send you notifications because most apps use what’s called Google FCM to provide you notifications which requires Google Play services. So in most cases apps will no longer send you notifications. Some apps will give you warnings to the effect of this app may not work properly without Google Play services and give you an OK button and in most cases they will work alright. And some few apps will just absolutely refuse to work. I know for a fact that Uber and Lyft will refuse to work without Google Play services enabled. With uber at least you can visit m.uber.com.

As the person mentioned above, using open source apps as much as you can is a great step in the right direction as they don’t phone home nearly as much. If at all. Make fdroid your new best friend and maybe add the izzyondroid repo to it.

Another category of apps you may have trouble with is mobile banking. I used to have a Neo bank called Chime, and their app worked fine without Google Play services, but I wanted to not need the Aurora store anymore, and I could not transfer between accounts with the Chime website, and so I ended up switching banks entirely.

https://delta.chat/en/

⚡️ Sign up to secure fast chatmail servers or use classic e-mail servers

That’s my understanding as well. It’s to keep people like the media from being able to determine upcoming functionality by looking at code snippets. So the development would go on in secret, and then once per year, all the final code would be pushed to AOSP. However, OP does make a good point because if you have to examine all the final code at once, you might miss something that would be privacy detrimental.

I use signal myself but I also use simple X. I can’t use delta chat because I use proton for my email and therefore can’t use delta.