ls -l ~/.config/pulse should tell you when it was created. If that was before you purged pulseaudio then you can just delete it (and presunably then rmdir ~/.config/pulse as well).

I was asked a similarly ambiguous question when I was at school:

Q: What is the commonest element?

I answered:
Hydrogen is the commonest element in the universe.
Oxygen is the commonest element on earth.

Both lines were ticked as correct.

Re post 23:
host deb.devuan.org will give you a list of addresses it maps to. Running traceroute against each address should let you find the nearest (although the smallest number of hops isn't always the fastest option/best).

Though you probably want to run host address to find what the apparently nearest mirror is.

The best way to introduce rust would be to wait until gcc rust support is ready for prime time. Then all that would be needed would be the gcc rust front end.

Doing something like dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb I would (starting without it plugged in):

lsblk
# Plug in the flash drive
lsblk
# Look for a device that has just appeared
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb 

Make SURE of=/dev/sdb points to the new device *before* pressing enter!

I've been burnt enough times to check, recheck and triple check dangerous commands.

Sometimes the command line is better.

Assuming the directory you want to copy is source and the USb drive is mounted on /media/dest

Open a command line window and try cp -rp source /media/dest (this assumes the window will open in /home).

Looking at your free -ht output you seem to have plenty of free memory, and swap space has not been used at all. So that wasn't the problem.

But that doesn't explain why the system suddenly started responding faster. Have you looked for log messages? Did any relevant-looking messages come out when it changed speed. Or start or stop coming out then?

Please give us a bit more info.
At least post output from the commands in my last post on the system as it is now.
Also what CPU is it (look in /proc/cpuinfo for model name, number of cores, etc).
How much RAM does it have? (Run free -ht and post output here.)
What sort of disk drive does it have?  <-- This is probably the most important thing since it's apparently been slowed down.

The real question is whether resampling will make any detectable difference. Try a blind test where you have two choices, one is raw data and one has been resampled (or otherwise processed). If you can't tell which choice was resampled you can assume no one else will be able to either (unless their hearing is much better than yours).

If you want to be really sure set up 3 choices, two raw and the other resampled (or the other way round). If you can't tell which choice is the odd one out then it *really* makes no difference.

This assumes the analog amplifier, speakers, etc are all good quality. They are often the limiting factor.

That said you should avoid repeatedly resampling or otherwise processing sound data. Done too often it would degrade the sound.

That is why any sensitive data should *always* be encrypted before being stored on any system you do not *fully* control. And *really* sensitive data should not even leave your systems, even encrypted, without a *good* reason.

Could you mitigate the scrapers by rate-limiting by IP address? Eg addresses making more that 10 requests per minute get responses delayed so they only get 10 responses per minute. That would not be too bad for a human, but hurt scrapers trying to train an AI system.

Sites that are obviously training an AI system should be fed AI generated drivel so they end up with an AI system that produces rubbish output.

I've nearly run out of ideas. I don't know much about networking.

Is there any pattern to which systems respond to ping from the laptop. Eg does it work for systems connected wirelessly but not ones with a wired connection? Do their IP addresses have any pattern (eg 192.168.1,* work but 192.168.0.* don't)?

Does the laptop respond to pings from other systems? If so does it respond to all the systems you can ping from?