(This didn't require me to workaround anything, it's just their bad — for them — setup.)

So, for around the past 8 months I've been using a cheap IoT SIM card from T-Mobile with some tiny high-speed data allowance and 64kbps unlimited.
The 64 kbps unlimited turned out to just stay high-speed unlimited, in 2 countries at least. Ironically, I had trouble even just activating (switching to — only sold as physical) the eSIM in the home country, so I couldn't test it there.
I've been using it mostly as a backup alongside another regularly paid plan at first, since it can connect via 3 MNOs in my country, but I also used it a bit more to save some money later after my main carrier increased the price by 30%. I've been trying to keep it up to around 20GB/month per SIM, since that is the theoretical limit with 24/7 64kbps, but this month I overshot it with 35GB.
Currently I switched to ad-supported low-speed eSIM instead since that's good enough for now.

I also have a second SIM in modem connected to my mini PC I wanted to play around with remotely, but I didn't really get to much.

wwan0  /  monthly

        month        rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
       2025-03    766,87 MiB |    9,46 GiB |   10,21 GiB |   32,74 kbit/s
       2025-04    753,07 MiB |    8,95 GiB |    9,68 GiB |   32,08 kbit/s
       2025-05      9,87 MiB |    1,73 MiB |   11,60 MiB |       36 bit/s
       2025-06     42,38 MiB |   15,13 MiB |   57,52 MiB |      186 bit/s
       2025-07      1,21 GiB |   24,45 MiB |    1,23 GiB |    4,06 kbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------

€1.60/month. Cheap enough even if I don't use it.

Other than that, I also try to always stay connected to MNOs under Deutsche Telekom umbrella, since I expect they're gonna have the lowest roaming fees there. It even appears to be the default, but sometimes I need to help it if the signal is worse.
The current EU cap is €1.30/GB for what the roaming partner can charge.
And actually, they can charge me up to this value when roaming permanently (+VAT), but they haven't yet done so (it's prepaid, so there won't be extra bills later).

But also, this is a service I couldn't otherwise get locally. As a young person (up to 28), I can get 300GB/month from Telekom for just €20.50, but there's no domestic roaming for better coverage like I am getting here.
The only carrier which used to offer it was O2, but they discontinued it because it apparently worsened their reputation. Apparently, the competition was telling their customers that they have domestic roaming due to "having to rely on other's networks", from what I've heard.

I know of other similar past glitches. Embeddedworks IoT SIM using the T-Mobile network used to have actual unlimited speed instead of 64kbps, but this has since been fixed.
15GB T-Mobile roaming pass could somehow be overshot, I've seen a screenshot saying "24GB out of 15GB" used.
Firsty free eSIM could do unlimited speed to google services like maps and YouTube (tested with 4k60 video), but since that's a smaller company offering free service, I've reported it to them, and it has been fixed since switch from KPN to Proximus.

Others in certain discussions also mentioned similar glitches with a few other unknown providers, but since too many people using those would get it fixed quickly, the specifics are usually not mentioned.

This morning I picked up my old smartphone with a notification saying not to remove SD card without ejecting.

Turns out it just died overnight.

I tried putting it into some other devices, and they also don't see anything. It did incorrectly show up as "127MB disk" on 2 different SD card readers when I sprayed it with liquid butane from air duster can, but that's just something like -1°C as far as I can find, so pretty lame.

Anyway, I can't find the backup anywhere, aside from a partial one from 2020. It's not worth spending money on, but perhaps some effort it would.

I seem to have all but 1 apks backed up on a DVD, a few photos from 2020, root/unroot zips and CWM recovery, and modified cacerts.bks with newer root certificates, so what's missing is Monte Gallery apk, and few unknown photos, and perhaps some app data.

Ideas?

Once again posting something for reference as I couldn't find it online

Symptoms

No issues after logging in.
After suspending (sleep) and resuming, screen takes 25 - 30 seconds to turn on.
Display settings in Plasma take a long time to load, sometimes don't show automatic rotation option.
Turning on screen after turning off (even without sleep) takes a long time.
No suspicious logs in Kernel and Journald (even after comparing post-fix).
Switching kernel makes no difference.
Logging out and back in temporarily fixes screen rotation and screen waking until next suspend.
Everything works in X11 session apart from screen rotation (appears unsupported).
Running monitor-sensor hangs when running after suspend
systemctl stop iio-sensor-proxy fixes slowdown issues

Workaround

Downgrading to iio-sensor-proxy 3.6-1 following Arch Linux package downgrade instructions.
In my case with a cached package

sudo pacman -U file:///var/cache/pacman/pkg/iio-sensor-proxy-3.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

and optionally adding it to IgnorePkg

IgnorePkg   = iio-sensor-proxy # Issues in Wayland after suspend

System info

OS: Arch Linux x64
Host: Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
Kernel: 6.12.35-1-lts
DE: Plasma 6.4.2 iio-sensor-proxy (broken version): 3.7-1
Last full system upgrade: 2025-07-06

Symptoms

Stylus taps are registered as well as button presses (on the last cursor position). Cursor doesn't change position.
"Test tablet" in "Drwaing Tablet" KDE settings only displays Stylus release events.
X11 works.
Finger touch still works.

Solution

Rename or delete ~/.config/kcminputrc, or remove config section related to "Pen" (not tested). Deleting the config resets other mouse pointer settings like speed, device enabled/disabled and calibrations.
Then log out and log back in.

Precursor

Testing pen in "Test tablet" section.

Other attempted fixes

Log out and back in - Fail
Reboot - Fail
Moving cursor on login screen and during login process - Fail
Insert and remove pen again - Fail
Shutdown and disconnect battery (in UEFI) - Fail
Removing kcminputrc after diffing with Timeshift snapshot and filtering for interesting files with grep - Pass

System info

OS: Arch Linux x64
Host: Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
Kernel: 6.12.30-1-lts
DE: Plasma 6.3.5
Libinput: 1.28.1-1
Last full system upgrade: 2025-05-28

TTL

The default TTL for Android is 64. Default for Linux is 64. Default for Windows is 128.

When a packet passes through the router, its TTL is decreased by 1. So a packet from your phone will have TTL of 64, while one from device on hotspot will get decremented to 63 when passing your phone, acting as a router.

Unless it starts with 65, then gets decremented to 64, the same as with your phone directly.

On Linux you can temporarily change this with

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl=65

as root.

If the carrier just checks the TTL, congrats.

I haven't played around with IPv6 hop limit.

HTTP proxy

If that doesn't work, you can try to proxy traffic through the phone. I like to use Tinyproxy in Termux.
The config is pretty simple, and also supports (unencrypted) authentication with username and password.

Another option is an all in one app like TetherFi. It creates WiFi Direct group (without direct internet access), and has a built-in HTTP proxy.

Both ways allow also using your phone's VPN.

The HTTP proxy can be easily configured in Firefox, for example. For Android, there is a pretty cool app called NekoBox which is a proxy client for many different protocols. It uses the VPN interface to pass everything through the proxy, thus giving you full device connectivity on the other device.

TinyProxy: https://tinyproxy.github.io/ (can simply be apt installed in Termux)

Termux: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux/ (terminal emulator for Android)

TetherFi: https://github.com/pyamsoft/tetherfi

NekoBox: https://github.com/MatsuriDayo/NekoBoxForAndroid

I worked the night in Budapest, and stayed longer. My father tried to call me thrice, twice of which did actually get to me (loss of signal), but I didn't pick it up. Apparently he also sent me a few messages, but I didn't retrieve those*.

When I got home, of course that was the first thing I heard of, along with the stupidest reason yet.
(approximate from memory) "Why don't you pick up phone or reply to messages? We were really worried about you. There's pride over there right now desbite Orbán banning it. It's full of LGBT perverts, anything could have happened to you."

And the first time I told them I'll work the night (I don't know if I can use "nightshift" when it isn't shift work ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯), they were very strong on disagreeing with that, stating that if I'll be outside at night, I could "get raped by a homosexual".

* Calls are forwarded to my current number, but that's not an option for SMS. I updated my current number where relevant, leaving out just my family, which is basically just my parents and aunts spamming me with christian stuff or telling me to tell my mom to call them (why?). Retrieving SMS thus refers to switching the SIM card for like 2 minutes (switched to eSIM for convenience).

Just because I can.
But it also proves 2G is still at least somewhat usable.

I would just switch my phone to 2G only and then continue the download in Termux using wget because that's most reliable way to download files.
I let it run overnight, then stop it when I needed my phone during the day, then let it run again at night when not needed anymore.

However, 2G is quite inefficient, so this actually drains the battery a lot.

I wonder if the carrier just sees a weird spike in 2G data usage.

Anyway, calculation time. Wikipedia Kiwix ZIM file is approximately 110GB. 109,886,078,976B to be precise. With average speed of say 21KB/s, it would take around 2 months to download the whole English Wikipedia with low res pictures over 2G EDGE.

But also EDGE is quite better than original GSM Data (CSD), which offered breathtaking 9600bps.

Better photo available here: https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/ukraine-begins-treating-soldier-scarred-with-glory-to-russia-phrase-from-russian-captivity-50522497.html

The words, written in Russian, were branded into the right side of the body alongside the letter "Z," a symbol of the full-scale invasion that many Ukrainians and critics of the war liken to the Nazi swastika.

According to the United Nations, more than 95% of freed Ukrainian POWs have said they were tortured during their captivity. Survivors have recounted harrowing treatment, including being brutally beaten, electrocuted, and forced to endure painful stress positions.
Many have faced mock executions, threats of rape or death, and were denied basic medical care. Some were left without food, locked in isolation for weeks, or permanently marked with burns or scars.

For Turkevych and his team, seeing the scars left by Russian captivity on Ukrainian POWs has become a routine part of their work.

[...] Turkevych and his team have treated several released defenders bearing swastika-shaped scars, some even on their foreheads [...]