If you're in the US and care about domain privacy, don't get a .us domain. .us domains are specifically forbidden from using domain privacy.

I use no@thankyou.com. Works like a charm.

Sweet reductio ad absurdum, bro. Chef's kiss.

Seconded! I've had them suggest cards only to be rejected. If you want to find out if you're pre-qualified you're better off going to the source with sites like this:

https://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/preapprove/

https://www.discovercard.com/application/preapproval/initial

https://web.secure.wellsfargo.com/credit-cards/yourinfo/

https://secure.bankofamerica.com/secure-offers/public/customizedOffers/

A little off topic from your DRM/open source query, but since so many people are praising brother, in my opinion they are ruining their printers due to the jacked up toner cost. It's not even just brother. Basically all the greedy printer manufacturers have all but ruined affordable laser printing. Years ago you could buy a brother printer for a reasonable cost that used toner that cost about a penny per page to print. They shrank the toner cartridges but didn't reduce the cost so it's not uncommon to speed a few cents a page on toner these days. Compare that with the current ink tank options and you'll find the cost is way lower at around $.002 per page. The biggest trade off in my opinion is that you have to print to them regularly or they clog up and they are slower, but they are definitely a better value.

TL DR: greedy printer manufacturers ruined laser printers. Buy an ink tank printer instead until they ruin inkjets again.

Are you using Route 53 for DNS? If so, would you mind sharing your monthly cost for that? Thanks again.

Thanks for the suggestion. Honestly one thing I don't like about AWS and a lot of the major cloud vendors these days is the pricing structure isn't very easy for me to wrap my head around and I'm never confident what I will be charged. I do have some services on AWS and so far I haven't had any surprises but I do always have that concern. I will give Route 53 another look though.

Thanks for the detailed response! I will definitely check out unbound. Sounds perfect. And 2 cores and 2 GB RAM is exactly what I was hoping would be enough, so I can keep costs down.

All great questions! It will be a Debian Linux hosted VPS. Thanks for the input!

Check out Professor Messer on YouTube. Super professional and comprehensive exam prep videos are available on his channel for free. I relied on his videos, a flash card app, and Mike Myers CompTIA A+ study guide when I was broke and trying to get A+ certified and into the IT field. It worked out for me. I owe Professor Messer a debt of gratitude.

I don't usually downvote on Lemmy, but this is a real test of willpower.

I stuck with Windows for the longest time because of gaming, but for my needs that's no longer necessary. If it's been a while since you tried Steam on Linux you might want to give it another try.