So we dont buy US military kit. It’s got kill switches and hard to keep running without their support. It’s increasing looking like they aren’t aligned with the free world.

The consumer can only really be expected to do so much. Fail of governments / regulators can’t really be fixed by consumer action. Realistically, you can’t get many to understand and care. We need to pressure governments to do their job. Now the problem isn’t academic. It’s national security and the tax money and control lost to American big tech is now a political problem. Be a lot easier if they hadn’t been a sleep on the job and ignoring digital rights and competition experts, but we are where we are.

Sounds like more reason to get off Microsoft/Apple/Google/Meta/Amazon/etc

It was never clever to allow such monopolies, but now it just geopolitically dangerous.

Canada should be trying to move as much to open source as it can, as fast as it can.

If they use means more funding to foundations & projects, this helps everyone. You can see a feedback loop were more and more things hit critical mass. This is a nightmare scenario for the big closed source houses.

Big US Corp is in bed with money and power. Right now, that means MAGA and that does mean fascism & Zionists. The tech itself can be ok. Though WhatsApp/Facebook isn’t.

Capitalism doesn’t have to be anti-collective. Under a working legal system, the “Tragedy of the Commons” can be stopped. No country has pure capitalism. Everywhere regulates it. Yes, some of it falls to regulatory capture, but not all, and that waxes and wanes.

Same here in UK. So many people think of it like email. A universal communication system. They can’t see the problem with it being a single, closed, for profit, provider. Now Meta feels people are locked in, they will be finding out. But they still won’t see the problem until it ratcheted to really bad. Like frogs in boiling water.

If you do use an SD card, use an official one rather than a random one. Not all SD card are the same and the official ones have been selected for this use.

This helps with wear and the power loss issue, which is the biggest issue with them.

When SD write, they shuffle which block is which to share out the writes. If power is lost in the middle of this shuffle, you get a new type of corruption no file system can handle. This is why you must shutdown anything running from an SD card, not just yank the power.

I’ve been using it for over a decade. I use it to auto upload all my family photos from family phones. I use the calendars to organize. I use Notes on my phone all the time and pick them up my laptop. I use Passwords for all my passwords. I use Contacts to sync my contacts from my phone and Thunderbird. Then I nightly remote backup it to a machine I leave at my parent’s. It’s great.

And those tiny number of edges cases need to be highlighted to show it does indeed happen. With biology, there is rarely ever truely binary. Biology is too mushy.

Just leaving this here : https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

This is battle they can’t win and it just makes everything stupid trying.

If the US falls apart, it will be a bloody civil war. The only winner will be competing world powers. Of which, only the EU is really a beacon of light of enlightened values. In no way is that a good outcome for US citizens or the world. What is needed is a concerted effort to evolve the US from where it is. Two parties is not really a functional democracy. Law is bought and sold, and there is massive inequality.

Right to repair, and openness, is absolute must for devices being put into peoples bodies. The fight seams to not even started yet. Most people are completely asleep to issues right now.

Karen Sandler did a great talk on closed source software medical devices many years ago.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1h1s_ojpM

This even more the case if it’s your brain! It probably won’t work for decades, but we should get house in order long before it does.

Locked down means a power imbalance. The users are then just serf and will be abused. I want users empowered and the right to repair, repurposed and upgrade. Locked down devices mean short lived disposable devices, built as ewaste, that hoover up user data when used. It’s dystopian.

Let alone where are tomorrow’s developers coming from when they are growing up in such nutrient poor environment.

I rage against this dark serfdom future, but it’s on law makers to regulate to keep consumers/user free. So I’ve monthly donated to OpenRightsGroup for over a decade and always telling people to read some Cory Doctorow.

The only one with a different web browser engine? The only one that is actural competition?

Oh it may well get worse. FPTP could give them power. Rarely does the power in party have a majority of the population support. Labour need to ditch FPTP for good of the country. But they won’t because they could win again, and it’s party before country.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/half-britons-believe-brexit-has-been-mostly-failure-so-far

Still a lot of fascist idiots. Generally they are old, but that still a lot of people. Poll have changed more because Leavers are aging out, rather minds changing.

This didn’t work out well for the US last time.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4

Literally his own words. About his only words that got to my feeds. I keep my feeds clear as I can of Nazi/MAGA/misogyny/toxic stuff.