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/

I don’t have any bulbs from them, but I did just recently get a smart plug from third reality. And so far I like it, although I’ve only had it a couple of days.

I like it

That’s 22 minutes of my life. I’ll never get back. But at least it’s interesting that somebody that popular has decided to go to Linux. On second thought, it wasn’t 22 minutes. It was probably more like 10 because I always use 1.5 or 1.75x speed.

That’s the one. It just would not come to me in the moment. I don’t have GAPPS or MicroG installed on my device at all. My view is that if an app won’t run without it, then I didn’t need that app to start with.

Edit: Not having those is basically an immunization against crappy apps that want to steal your data and mine you for profit.

GAPPS have Google Play services and the other one that I can’t think of the name of right offhand mimics play services. I don’t need play services for anything since I run open source software on my device and have not had a Google account in over two years now.

I intend to go with Reolink. The recorder can support up to 8 cameras per recorder and it publishes an RTSP stream. The only downside appears as though you need the app to set it up originally, but I don’t think it requires any kind of cloud account from everything I can tell, which was my biggest requirement, but I think it is Chinese.

Please keep in mind that this is after tax incentives. So let’s just assume the tax incentives are zero and call it 27,000 just to be on the safe side.

I just started using it myself here very recently and so far I’ve only set up one automation but it is very useful. What I am truly excited to see is the Works with Home Assistant program badge. That way I can look at a device that I’m interested in and see whether or not I should spend my money on it. I don’t want anything to do with a device that I need a fucking cloud account for.

Oh, your computer is just a baby. I’m running a third generation Intel Core i7 in my laptop running Linux Mint. LOL.

As a screen reader user, I welcome new open source text to speech models.

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

This was an interesting read. Also, if you’re willing to put up with some sacrifices, disabling Google Play services on your Android phone, or installing Lineage OS without Google services at all, will make your phone both run faster and have way better battery life. As an example, I own the Oneplus Nord N20 5G, and when I pulled it out of the box, it was super laggy and awful. And by installing Lineage OS on it with no Google Play services, it works fabulous.

I do believe it does have a desktop client.

True. Matrix is more for that. Or possibly SimpleX.

Use Mastodon. You can use a server outside of your country. And even if your country attempts to find the operator, 10% of their global turnover of zero is still zero.

So the entire point of a password manager is to give each website a unique password so that if one password gets compromised, your passwords for every other site are not compromised. Based on current computing power, each password you have for an online service really should be about 20 characters and totally unique and random. And for a human, that’s basically impossible to accomplish. So what you do is have the password manager do that work for you and then you have one master password which accesses the password manager database. By doing so, you only have to remember two passwords. One password is to actually log into your system, such as your Linux login password, and the other is to log into your database on your password manager, which then has all of your other passwords. What I do for backing my password database up is that my primary computing device is my phone and so my password manager lives on my phone and once every three months I copy that password database to two separate flash drives in two separate physical locations. I then also copy it to my laptop. So I have two computing devices with the password manager file and two flash drives with the password manager file which are in separate locations. Even if someone were to steal the password manager database file off of one of my flash drives or something like that, they would still need the database password in order to access it. And I’ve made mine over 20 characters long, so no computer is going to be able to crack it unless it’s a quantum computer, which do not currently exist.

If you are able to manage online banking, then you will be able to manage Monero. The main difference between your online bank account and Monero is that if you lose your wallet seed phrase, it’s not recoverable. Unlike your bank account, where you can give them ID and your identification numbers and get your password reset. That is yet again another good reason to put your seed phrase in a password manager so that you can’t lose it. My personal suggestion would be the monero.com wallet made by cake wallet. Cake wallet offers multiple cryptos where monero.com only offers monero. Monero is digital cash. So you should get some and spend it on food and other such necessities and then get some more to replace it. Just like you would bills in your pocket. In terms of fiat currency, it will fluctuate because it is another currency. Just like how the euro will fluctuate in value against the US dollar, etc. In order to avoid that problem, it is best to fiat cost average where no matter what the current price says it is in your fiat currency, you’re always going to put X amount of fiat currency in it per month. So you might say, I’m always going to put $10 into it no matter what the price is. And that will help to smooth out the volatility compared to the fiat currency. You can also check out places like https://xmrbazaar.com/, which offer goods and services for Monero, or even my store at https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore where I sell items for Monero and keep the prices stable over long periods of time so that you know what to expect. I base my prices on the average and so therefore you might be able to find the same item cheaper elsewhere but at the price I charge I guarantee you will get the item and you will know what you’re going to pay for it. Since Monero fluctuates against fiat currency, most people only keep their prices stable for like 10 or 15 minutes at a time where I keep my prices stable for like three and four months at a time. So if you need to buy some toilet paper today and then you need to buy toilet paper three months from now, it’s going to be the same price so you know what to budget for.

As for buying Monero, governments don’t like it because they can’t trace it. So they purposely do their best to keep it off of centralized exchanges. So the best place to buy it is from https://retoswap.com/. It’s a piece of software you download on your Linux, Windows, or Mac computer. And it lets you access the RetoSwap decentralized exchange.

You can also work for it or sell items for it like I do on XMRBazaar. There are plumbers, electricians, therapists, etc. on XMRBazaar, who all earn Monero from their normal work by offering their services in exchange for Monero. You can also choose to be a proxy shopper where somebody wants an item and they will tell you the item they want and you purchase it and they will give you Monero or you can offer items yourself for Monero such as I do at my store front above. I don’t personally do proxy shopping where I will buy any item for you, but I try to have the basics such as razors, shaving cream, toilet paper, things that you would need in day-to-day life available for Monero.

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.