You could try using a relay somewhere in your process; while I was on a travel gig I had to do some finicky work with a travel router (though this may not work, since you need a VPN for your work, but maybe it’ll give you an idea: https://ideatrash.net/2022/05/howto-secure-and-share-your-internet-on-free-wireless-wifi.html

Also if you have your DNS resolvers manually put in, you may not encounter their portal. Had that problem when on hotel wifi as well.

All that said, I ended up using phone data a lot.

Flatpak can sometimes complain when there’s a symlink (Steam, in particular, does this) so you can use the symlink, but have to update XDG-USER-DIRS to point to the actual location. I wrote it up here: https://ideatrash.net/2024/07/howto-update-xdg-user-dirs-to-avoid-symlink-issues-with-flatpak.html

I get this argument… but I keep seeing folks talk about Threads as if it’s somehow an existential threat to Mastodon rather than “big crappy instance with asshats on it,” and I don’t quite understand how it’s more than that… at least at a level that users and instance admins have any influence over. Can someone ELI5?

Unlike? I think you mean they’re JEALOUS of TikTok’s appeal to minors…

Oh, neat! Thanks for pointing out the USA centrist viewpoint I had there! My bad indeed!

For what it’s worth, if you post a story (for example) to the open internet – your blog, social media – and there is NOT a paywall or explicitly restricted access, many (if not all) publishers will consider that material previously published. That doesn’t mean it’s public domain at all, but it does recognize that the work is not private. Likewise, I’d consider any social media post being akin to posting a sign in my front yard. If someone does the work of driving by and taking pictures of the signs in my front lawn, that’s their right – unless I’m in a closed, gated community.

Then again, i see people thinking that they somehow “own” their Facebook feed, so …