Sorry if I offended you, and my perspective is skewed. I am privileged to live in a country such as Canada where slums aren’t very common.
I'm in Canada too ;p Welcome to shitScatchewan...
My condolences. 
Zactly! I've been shot at in New Orleans and shanked in Regina...my life has been lived and I've seen a lot of chit...
Proof positive that wherever you go always be aware if someones behind you, or be sure to get a table with your back to the wall in any bar.
Indeed. It's also indicative that everywhere you go it's the same. There are posh and poverty. Often times the posh is as violent or at risk as the povery. I mean if I break into a home in the hood what am I going to get? A crappy old CRT TV? - but if I break into that posh place JACKPOT! Criminals don't give a crap, they want what they want and go for it, i.e. encryption be it for securing our drives/data. web traffic or communications is important. Against scammers, governments, advertisers, anyone we don't know, which is the majority of the planet. 
Here is a fun analogy, think of drive encryption as the lock on your bathroom. I mean your front and back doors have locks, they are locked...why do you need another lock on your crapper? BECAUSE THAT'S WHY! heh Also a fan, you need a fan!
... yet again, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. 
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Is absolutely encrypt if I worked down on Wall Street. Especially after dark, it turns into a Favela of a box city. And just don’t go too far uptown on the east. And certainly, don’t cross the river into the Bronx.
Oh how I miss the Bronx though. We used to drive in and hit up the White Castle down on Boston Road. We had to order mini burgers thru a bullet proof glass wall and ask to be buzzed into a caged off bathroom. Sometimes I miss those days.
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Hey, no undermining my point, dang it! 
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You're right. Everybody has to be from somewhere. Where you go is up to you though.
I'm sorry, I'm not very serious most of the time.
Everyone should take whatever level of precautions they want. If my laptop went missing, everything seriously important is locked with biwarden. I don't actually know any of my passwords anymore besides that one and can change it if my computer was lost.
They can keep the Taylor Swift music and photos of my dog. I'm just a regular Joe. I don't have any money to take even if they found access to it.
I was kidding. Your point had validity, but I knew you were ribbing me, I responded in kind. 
It is amusing to witness the "Ahh crap, now I feel guilty", rather than being the one experiencing it, for a change.
More better to stand at the bar or elsewhere. It’s easier to judge your state of intoxication.
A life-lesson taught me by an old blasting (dynamite) engineer who spent years working in Africa.
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Hard disk encryption helps in several ways all of which involve physical loss
- The most obvious is your device is lost or stolen.
- When you device is disposed of. You would be amazed at how many people are compromised this way when they recycle or trash an old PC/hard drive.
- The least likely way is when a drive is damaged and can’t be wiped but still holds data.
Each one of use has to decide what risks are appropriate for our own situations but the changing world we live in should be considered. In my opinion, almost everyone should consider full disk encryption. The performance cost and inconveniences are minimal compared to the potential benefit.
This is plainly and simply not true.
There is all kinds of data on your device that an attacker can use. Cached data in your browser or old temp files, left over tokens, compromising less secure accounts to use to attack your more secure accounts, etc, etc.
If an attacker who knows what they are doing gets a hold of an unencrypted device, there are a host of things they can do. The problem is that while once there weren’t that many people like this, now there are lots. Even if they aren’t the original thieves, they are often the ones getting a hold of stolen devices after the fact.
It increasingly difficult to stop your passwords from being stored. Especially when you have no idea of knowing what is caching your password and what isn’t.
Believing your computer is safe because it doesn’t leave your house is a fallacy for many in the current world. I live in a suburb that is widely considered “safe”. There are break-ins on a regular basis here now. Three years ago, that would have been unthinkable. It is just an unfortunate reality. I know many other parts of the world are facing the same challenges.
Basically the same. The btrfs data is still sitting in a luks container. Grub unlocks the luks container(s) and then the boot is normal from there. When you boot off a snapshot all that is changing is the subvol= part of the options line. Since a snapshot is a subvolume, you are just booting off of one subvolume instead of another.
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This is why when I was in the U.S. Army, it was the Army’s policy to dispose of hard drives with a sledgehammer.
That is my drive disposal method as well. Sending a functional drive to be recycled is taking a genuine risk IMO because you are simply making things too easy for the slimers of the world.
As I never use a laptop, in all likelihood I will never use full disk encryption. While I rarely ever disagree with anything @dalto says in this case I feel he is being overly cautious with regards to desktop computers in a secure single person dwelling. While I don’t deny that it is still possible for any home anywhere to be broken into, I still feel that home computers are not a high theft target in these sort of crimes. IMO most thieves are looking for items of high value that are easy to carry. Most desktop computers just don’t fit into this category IMO, and that is why I have no worries about my computer walking away from my home.
The other issue that no one on the pro encryption side has mentioned is data recovery. While that may be a positive for a portable device I feel it is a huge negative for a desktop computer. Full disk encryption could make data recovery very difficult if you experience drive corruption or failure. I’ve used data recovery software many times in the past and I feel that is a good option to have (if needed). I do make backups, but I still like to have the recovery option available to me.
In the end each user must do whatever they feel is necessary to protect themselves given the likelihood of their hardware falling into the wrong hands.
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I used to teach a class on safe computing practices and encryption basics when I was a Director at EIG.
If you use safe computing practices the need for encryption is minimized. However, the work that I do as a contractor now, and my stupid million dollar errors and omissions insurance, say that I must use encryption as I do store client data.
I also think that no one needs to be snooping on my private data. It doesn't matter if its a coloring book i've done in paint.
I use my desktop for gaming and i don't have much on it that needs crypt. Biggest issue with laptops is ease of theft.
So I have my notebook encrypted, because it goes with me everywhere just in case I have to do work when I'm out and about. I've never "lost" a notebook but I have had friends get them stolen or lose them in luggage.
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I also claw hammer/sledge old (defunct) drives and my lord you should see how many UNUSED UNOPENED hard drives the RCMP sends to the crusher…flipping sad.
one of my clients sends me all their drives to clean before resale. they dont smash them anymore.
Well it is a government entity so of course they waste money like that...lol. I just always remember the hard drive thing because I was in AIT and I got put on a detail that was doing just that. I was like, "I get to do what to government property?" But in all fairness I was in finance in the army, so our computers were used for dealing with soldiers socials, and other personal info, or for accounting for the army(where you get to see just what the army waste taxpayer money on BS) so they needed to be smashed. That being said, the army does that for all hard drives, even if the only thing that was done was some bored soldier playing solitar on CQ(sit at a desk to answer phones at night.)