Search is where I’m stuck

Run/self host Searxng on a cheapass VPS. I picked up one for testing before production a long time ago, runs me $25/year. Spin up Docker, Portainer, and Searxng in an hour or less. Add your Searxng instance to Firefox search engine and make it default. Secure the VPS with UFW, Fail2Ban, and if you're the only user, make use of the host.allow and host.deny files to pretty much weed out the baddies. Jack's a doughnut, Bob's your uncle.

I don't hear a lot of noise about self hosting here in the Privacy chan, but if you're looking to cut out corporate services from your repertoire, self hosting is a great way.

For context, I’m well into 50s

That's cute.....I just turned 71 recently. LOL Just givin' ya the piss bro. But I understand your conundrum. I've had a computer in front of me since about the mid 70s and the Altair, and it's not that I have some impressive repository of intellect, I've just screwed up enough along to way to learn a thing or two. Do, screw it up, nope that's not it. #@#$ Do it again, hey that works, write that shit down!

Getting into self hosting did drive home the enormity of traffic on the tubes. You are kind of aware of the amount of traffic, but not really first hand until you open your first port and watch as a vast horde of bots pull a train on your little server relentlessly. They are like piranha and can smell an open port 22 from half way around the world.

There is a competent self hosting chan here: lemmy.world/c/selfhosted. Good guys there ready to help. Like I said, I possess no great wealth of intelligence, but if you ever want somebody to bounce a few ideas off of, I'm always down to help in any way.

That’s cute…..I just turned 71 recently. LOL Just givin’ ya the piss bro.

😀

Thx a lot for the link (and for the help offer!), I will have a look.

Yeah, I’m used to GPT and Claude for code, so Duck.ai just pales in comparison, as much as I appreciate that it might be more private.

Edit:

Actually, seems you can get access to more advanced models if you give them $10 / month.

Except, if we were to read the article, things are materially worse than when he took office:

Milei had predicted a V-like recovery with the creation of new jobs in a more prosperous and stable economy. Instead, the economy stalled out, declining in the second quarter compared with the previous three months. Unemployment is at 7.6%, up from 5.7% when Milei took office. And Argentina has about 200,000 fewer jobs since he took office, government data shows.

I get what you're saying and agree with the basic premise, "economies are extremely complicated and it's hard to ascribe x caused y, when so many other things can go sideways". It drives me nuts when people think the US president controls oil prices, if they did it would just be perpetually free!

Where I wholeheartedly disagree with your message is because Milei promised quick and easy solutions to Argentina's economy. He sold the story that 100 years of economic turmoil was due to corruption and gross incompetence. He promised he was not corrupt (which was a lie), and applying some basic economic principals would lead to a roaring economy (which never materialized and never will because economists already know the policies he's proposing don't work in the long run).

Yes his austerity measures led to inflation going down which his foreign apologists immediately point to, but the exchange rate skyrocketed offsetting any gains for a typical Argentine (most everything financial in Argentina is measured in USD, even ironically government fees).

If today you go ask typical Argentines "are you better off financially now than 3 years ago" the answer is going to usually be no.

In the before times (Trump, COVID, Harambe) Libertarians believed in the Non Aggression Principal or NAP as it was commonly referred to.

After the tea party and preperheads co-opted the libertarian imagery, it seems to have long since been forgotten.

But initially, that ideology was one of not using coercion to rule. Not restricting behavior or actions as long as NAP is not violated. Yes excess taxes are bad but also stay out of my bedroom and my non-binary neighbors garden. You want a coal plant cool, BUT if it is spewing crap into the air that we breath, it violates NAP and not allowed to operate.

Personally, I believe some of the ideals have merit but they require people to not be shit and that seems way too hard an ask. There are other ways to govern and maintain personal freedom not at the expense of others.

As a fun read Dr. Jo Jorgensen (she/her) was an interesting libertarian candidate years ago and huge contrast to what we see in the pork chop sideburns guy from Argentina. A long way from what could have been. They forgot her faster than the NAP.

You want a coal plant cool, BUT if it is spewing crap into the air that we breath, it violates NAP and not allowed to operate.

Most of the libertarians I've met don't seem to believe that sort of thing. They might accept that punching someone is bad, but something complex like pollution they don't accept.

"I should be free to dump my garbage on my property! It's mine!"

"Yeah, but then you pollute the river and everyone down stream suffers"

"...it's my property!"

The other end of the spectrum isn't really present in USA, the most left wing that is popular is Social Democrat, and that's actually quite moderate, and is 100% about regulated but free markets, and works on a balance between economy and protecting workers.

Balance is not extreme opposed to the extreme capitalism Republicans represent, on the contrary it is extremely sensible unless you are a complete sociopath.
The social democratic model is very successful in the Scandinavian countries. That have good economies, higher freedom ratings than USA, and way way happier populations.

For instance somehow people aren't angry about having free healthcare and education and 5 week holidays, and being able to live on a minimum salary!