Andreas

Wow, I didn’t know that LineageOS has such long-term support! The original Pixel is still supported?! I’m using GrapheneOS and they offer support for the same lifetime as the official Google updates, so I assumed that the rest of the alternative OSes are the same.

I considered buying the P3 or P4 because they’re said to have the best cameras and battery performance, but the end of security updates after 2022 and 2023 respectively turned me off and I got a P6A instead. What are you going to do with your P4A after the support for it ends this year?

To where, if the big instance that everyone centralized on goes to shit? The internet itself is decentralized. Anyone can run a website, but no matter how enshittified corporate websites become, people are “somehow” still stuck on Google, Meta, Microsoft etc. websites and services.

I like anything that pulls users away from big instances and onto smaller ones. Guys, it’s not a DECENTRALIZED system if you’re all centralizing on one massive instance.

Yes, it started from this terminology change at Twitter in 2020. They’re the reason that version control systems call the primary branch ‘main’ instead of ‘master’ by default, because ‘master’ comes from the master/slave terminology that is used in electronics hardware design.

There’s a comment here saying that master/slave in hardware design is being replaced by primary/secondary because of the software trend, which I think is stupid. Master/slave works much better in that context because the master device controls the slave device. Primary/secondary implies that the slave device is a fallback of the master device.

It’s great that they’re going back to traditional, self-hosted forums instead of corporate social media for support and discussions, but damn, I don’t miss having to manage hundreds of accounts with unique logins for each forum. I understand that they want more control over forum moderation and the Fediverse’s “anyone can post there” system makes it troublesome. It would be great if there was more widespread adoption of decentralized, “one login to access everything” systems.

This instance is hosted in Germany, one of the countries with the strictest anti-piracy laws? Seems like a very risky decision (I’m aware that a lot of the good and affordable hosting providers are German).

The article or the thread? The article is just a list of who’s demanding payment from Twitter and how much Twitter owes each company. The thread explains why Twitter has a confusing system of multiple offices and a brand new expensive building (that they are not paying rent on).

USB-A is one-sided, unlike USB-C, so you can’t do direct data transfers between two devices with USB-A ports. It’s much slower too. Electronic waste is not ideal but it has to happen for a large-scale hardware upgrade. I try to reduce it by recycling my USB-A bricks and cables.

I also cannot understand why, unless you use Apple devices exclusively, you would be happy that one company’s series of devices has to use a completely unique charging system from every other device in the world. I don’t care if Lightning is better when it’s proprietary. If Apple “sticks two fingers up” and doesn’t integrate USB-C charging into the iPhone 15, I won’t be buying another device from them, because I’m tired of having to carry two different cables around - one USB-C for my laptop, Android phone, power bank, speaker and other devices, and one Lightning charger for nothing else but the damn iPhone.

Seeing the community get destroyed is hard, but seeing the whole company the community relies on being taken over by someone who doesn’t care about is okay?! These unpaid janitors seriously need to re-evaluate their priorities.

PiHole, Adguard Home and the like can’t block ads on smart TVs? Or is it something like the TV refusing to start if it contacts the ad server and doesn’t get a response?

Sounds like the problem here is that your colleagues are your only social circle outside of family rather than remote work being isolating. I think it’s unhealthy to have work relationships take up a significant part of your social contacts in general, because you’ll have a less rational perspective on your job when you associate it with friends. You might be reluctant to leave a job with poor compensation and hours because all of your friends are there, for example. My commute to work and back takes over 2 hours a day and it’s much easier to be peer-pressured into working overtime when you can see everyone else doing so. All of this only benefits the employer. I’d rather work remotely and spend the saved time with people I choose to be with.

Meta’s main income stream is data mining and they will take advantage of federation to collect data (not metadata, but human-generated content is still very valuable for AI model training) of users on federated instances. Any content that federates over to this instance will be cached on Meta servers where they can do whatever they like with it. There is no legal data protection framework for content retrieved from federated networks and Meta’s lawyers will try to argue that federating with this platform counts as giving consent to the platform’s TOS. Meta platforms introduce lots of advertising and bots to the network. Don’t just ignore this platform, give them the Gab treatment.

Given the number of bots on the internet trying to crack captchas, this is already happening. I don’t think captchas are being used for AI training that much, since hCaptcha uses AI-generated images with prompts like “Select the images with a hamster eating a watermelon” for its tests. All of the reCaptcha road captchas I receive also have answer validation and won’t let me pass if I answer incorrectly because of a misclick.

When you’re in power, the fascists are the “morons with a pulse” who don’t get guns, but when they’re in power, YOU’RE the moron with a pulse who loses your ability to defend yourself. The point is to remove the ability of the authorities to decide who gets the right to own weapons, because it can easily be turned against you. Besides, morons obtain weapons illegally all the time. Firearms ownership is illegal in my country (except for licensed use like hunting) but we still have problems with gun violence because of weapons trafficking.

Yeah no, this “America Bad and backwards 3rd world country while us Europeans are so enlightened” circlejerk isn’t constructive either. The American political system is terrible but a lot of European countries, mine included, are copying their “celebrity drama show” attitude towards politics because of extreme American cultural influence. We shouldn’t deny our own problems.

Surely that already happened in the Code of Conduct drama a few years back? Or the “Linus is rude and difficult to work with” callout even before that?

He has American citizenship and lives in America, he’s talking about America here. And I promise you that other countries, yes even those in the magical fantasy land of Europe, also have lots of political drama despite having more than two parties in the government (They tend to form alliances based on left/right and split into two blocks anyway).

@Viktorian@beehaw.org has a good in-depth answer, but the TL;DR non-technical answer is that when you connect to a website, your browser requests the website data from the server the website is running on, which allows you to get information about this server like its location and service provider. This way, you can find out the identity of a website’s owner. With port forwarding, the website admin can pass the website data through Mullvad’s servers instead, so the it looks like the server running the website is Mullvad’s and the true identity of the host server is unknown. Law enforcement was pressuring Mullvad to reveal the information about the hosts of illegal websites, which Mullvad refused to give, so they decided to shut down this service instead.

Gloating? Complaining? I thought the FOSS community has matured past “creator’s views = views of everyone who uses their creation”, honestly. And isn’t Linus supporting the Democratic party already well known?