Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings.

This willingness to let billionaires offer for-profit tech solutions to social problems is a sickness, and this is the clearest example yet.

The forums suggest there are quite a lot of bugs and the device is slow. I hope Sailfish OS continues to improve but for a daily driver I’m leaning towards Graphene OS as the best option for now.

Side loading will still be possible but the apps themselves will need to be signed by the developer through Google, so Google ultimately still controls what can be installed. Maybe someone will crack it.

It actually looks decent, and their C2 phone looks reasonable though not premium (8GB RAM, 4G LTE, a 1600x720 screen and no fingerprint reader are not brilliant specs, though they’ll do the job and it’s a nice looking phone). The OS subscription might put some people off though: you get one year of updates and then have to pay about €5 per month.

For my next phone it will be between a used Pixel with Graphene OS and the Fairphone 6 with the de-Googled e/OS option. A modern Pixel would be a little better for CPU, camera and RAM, but the Fairphone has decent hardware specs and tries to be more ethical about the environment and its suppliers, and it has a replaceable battery. The Fairphone is expensive in the USA though.

https://shop.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6-e-operating-system

https://www.wired.com/review/fairphone-gen-6/

Edit: After reading this thread I would lean towards Graphene OS:

https://lemmy.ca/post/50750274

Then you will still find MAS useful.

The fact that they haven’t gone for this approach that delivers age verification without disclosing ID, when it’s a common and well known pattern in IT services, very strongly suggests that age verification was never the goal. The goal is to associate your real identity with all the information data brokers have on you, and make that available to state security services and law enforcement. And to do this they will gradually make it impossible to use the internet until they have your ID.

We really need to move community-run sites behind Tor or into i2p or something similar. We need networks where these laws just can’t practically be enforced and information can continue to circulate openly.

The other day my kid wanted me to tweak the parental settings on their Roblox account. I tried to do so and was confronted by a demand for my government-issued ID and a selfie to prove my age. So I went to look at the privacy policy of the company behind it, Persona. Here’s the policy, and it’s without a doubt the worst I’ve ever seen. It basically says they’ll take every last bit of information about you and sell it to everyone, including governments.

https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-policy

So I explained to my kid that I wasn’t willing to do this. This is a taste of how everything will be soon.

Then what would make them Republicans? Just the bigotry?

There are at least two generations of us who are disappointed at the contrast between tech’s possibilities as envisioned decades ago and the corporate surveillance crap we have to put up with today.

I moved to pCloud + Cryptomator for general cloud file storage and Cryptpad for online document editing. These cover some of the main functions of Google Drive.

Syncthing is good if you just want files to show up on more than one machine, with no cloud services involved.

I actually installed WordPerfect 6 for DOS and MS Word for DOS recently. They’re very relaxing for writing and fast too. Then I use LibreOffice to convert the documents to more modern formats if needed.

There are other ways, if you have to use it but don’t want to give Microsoft money. One way is just not to activate it. Almost everything still works. There are also ways to get cheap keys or activate it for free.

A better way is not to use Windows, but not everyone can avoid it all the time.

Just did a couple of tests and Qobuz seems to play gaplessly on my phone.

It’ll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.

Ad it’s just another data point for corporations and governments to be able to tie all your tech activities to your real identity. Great for surveillance!

Qobuz too. High-res audio, full CD booklets, metadata with full credits, pays the artists more, European but not run by Daniel Ek.

“The AI listens to every conversation you have and uses that knowledge to tell you what to say … kinda like IRL Cluely,” Ardayfio told TechCrunch, referring to the startup that claims to help users “cheat” on everything from job interviews to school exams.

“If somebody says a complex word or asks you a question, like, ‘What’s 37 to the third power?’ or something like that, then it’ll pop up on the glasses,” Ardayfio added.

The product sounds like just another shitty AI assistant but on your face. The problem might fix itself when only 5 idiots buy them.

I would. They’re making an entirely unoriginal product with an entirely unoriginal sales pitch and, presumably, an unoriginal surveillance-based business model.

My Apple-using friends seem split on this when I ask them whether Macs are stable these days. I’ve heard from several people that their reputation for stability is a hangover from the past, and updates in recent years have been somewhat unreliable. But it would be hard to get good comparative data given that the companies won’t be eager to share the numbers.

They have the Windows Insider program, which is basically beta testing - and maybe sometimes alpha testing these days.