The line between helpful tech and quiet surveillance is blurring — and our devices no longer feel fully under our control.
I installed Lubuntu on my Microsoft Surface 2 and my custom PC from 2014 that couldn’t get upgraded to windows 11 due to lack of a tpm chip. We don’t need better hardware, we need better operating systems. We need more Linux.
We need more real Linux – GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing – not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.
Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. – all technically Linux, but you wouldn’t know it because they’ve systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users’ freedom).
What’s the point of being so pedantic?, they were obviously not advocating for more Roku installs.
Because the distinction matters. The corporate raping of Linux has to stop being tolerated or else nothing is solved. The technical details of the kernel don’t actually matter; the licensing and openness is what matters. Hell, if the Windows NT kernel got magically relicensed to AGPLv3 tomorrow it would instantly become the superior option just because of that.
Linux doesn’t fucking matter. Copyleft matters.
People just need to install lubuntu or some Linux distribution on their pc. Tech companies for years have forced consumer upgrades for average pc users when it wasn’t necessary.
I have a photo company in my town that still ruins dos off of windows 95 and has internet for email on windows 2000s for their point of sale machines is all dos. Even dot matrix printers. I was born in 1984 and remember this. Shows you don’t need the latest tech
That’s great for the folks who have access to decades-old pre-enshittification technology and the means to maintain it, but what about everybody else?
Continuing my smart TV OS analogy, your answer is like saying just to use a dumb TV instead. There aren’t any dumb TVs anymore! The TV manufacturer cartel colluded to quit making them!
“Just go live in the fucking woods like the goddamn Unabomber, eschewing modern technology” is not a valid solution for normal people! The law must be changed to protect them from predatory abusive corporations.
i use my tv as secondary display on my desktop and run anything i want to watch from it.
You aren’t wrong but you sound unhinged. That’s coming from someone who lives in the woods and runs Mint.
Eh, the printers should be swapped for laserjet to save money and ears. I don’t even know where one could buy paper for dot matrix printers either.
The poor user experience is intentional. Compare FireTV to AppleTV. Everything about FireTV is carefully designed to coerce you into spending money. Easy access to the content you already have doesn’t make money, so the UX serves Amazon, not you. Apple does it, too, but with a more subtlety.
It’s all the same UX to me; I start up Stremio then check what torrent to stream from.
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I have a computer capable of outputting video like 5 different ways: over the internet, near-field EM, HDMI, yadda
I just want a fucking standards compatible dumb screen
I heard a talk a few days ago, and the fella said that if you want a non-smart monitor, you’ll need to pay somewhat more for what he called an ‘industrial monitor’. He said the ‘smart TV’ is cheaper because of all the data it’ll collect, and they can sell that data to make the price-to-the-user lower. (Don’t know for myself, my old Samsung monitor’s only smarts were to send data out to one URL, and I was able to change that URL to a site that doesn’t exist.)
Pi hole is required internet safety
Oh yeah! But not so many people can handle that option.
There’s gotta be a market for taking cheap smart TVs, replacing the guts with dumb tv, and reselling it, right?
Absolutely … smart thinking! Each brand is likely to have different ways to lobotomize it, might take a while to decide which is easiest/best return, then start stocking up.
All monopolies should be split into different smaller companies which would then be given to the workers who would collectivize them.
I agree, big tech should be trust busted to oblivion
Laughs in every computer I own is Linux and my mobile is GrapheneOS
Cries a little for everyone else
I’m just starting that journey … Graphene is dope once you learn your way around
I switched to gOS and had to go back for NFC payments and auto.
It is great to see though, those are just necessities for me. Having gone back, I can say I hate pixel launcher and can’t even change keyboard
I’m genuinely curious, what makes NFC a necessity? And what do you mean by auto?
I don’t carry a wallet, and card contactless is limited to like 50. Can’t even do the weekly shop.
Android Auto for driving is difficult to get working, I see gOS can do it but I couldn’t get it to work.
Sure, I might own the hardware
Not for long. The goal seems to be to make RAM, flash memory, and GPU’s so expensive that most consumers will need to purchase low-powered client devices and subscribe to cloud computing business models. It’s a handful of companies who are cornering the markets, controlling the supply, and seeking rents.
I don’t really see that happen. It would mean developers (or crappy AI code generators) would have to write efficient code for the low-powered client devices. The web is basically already other people’s computers and look how memory hungry browsers are, or maybe more specifically the websites/apps that run in the browsers.
It is not user experience, it is user manipulation. We are so so far beyond Stallman’s warnings about enslavement through corporate software design.
I think that’s the reason why I always change the operating systems of my devices – Fedora Linux for my PCs and custom ROMs for my phone. The stock ones don’t feel “personal enough” to me anymore.
This is where the Linux and self hosting people chime in.
I’ve been considering using my phone only for tethering, and doing anything on the go on a ultraportable Linux laptop. If anyone is doing this already, I’d love to hear about your experience.
I tether my GOS tablet. I currenly don’t use a notebook privately, only a desktop.
You need a generous data plan, or never install system updates but on WiFi.
I’m working towards something like that. I’m hoping to ultimately drop the smartphone altogether, and I’ve set my current phone’s end of life (2027ish?) as the goal.
I think the other thing that’s necessary to keep the same sense of connectedness is a device to receive notifications, and I have an open source smartwatch I want to program for that. I’ve been working on a notification server too (kind of like Gotify), but at the moment it’s a work in progressHonestly I do this a lot. Not a bad experience overall. Phone planes for hotspots suck in the US IMHO. Calyx’s hotspot device was better, but I had device issues with them from time to time
They aren’t building things for our benefit, they’re building things for their benefit. All the idiots who gleefully bought devices with surveillance and tracking and data collection, normalized it. Now everyone has to use some of this shit or their life suffers. The masses showed them they can take from our private lives whatever they want and the masses of fucking morons will happily pay them to do it. Why the hell would they stop taking when the consumer market has lost any sense of caution?
I mean tech innovation has been stale for a long time, even with hardware remember how the CPU market was before Ryzen? Completely dead, Intel was sitting on it’s morals doing nothing because they were owning the market 10 to 1, but even now that I’ve got my i7-10700 I don’t see any point in upgrading.
Software side? It’s a mess companies will always be greedy, just today I wanted to upscale something with the cloud because my PC is great for 90% of the things I want to do, Upscaling is not one of those but guess what Topaz asks for credits in order to use their servers, yes CREDITS, so I said bye bye. I’ve also said bye bye to Adobe and moved on with Davinci Resolve.
Our devices are no longer fully under our control, it’s not a “feeling”.
Repost: The power and influence of billionaire tech companies over the government is enormous. Ofcourse workers/users don’t get any (privacy) rights in america, none is lobbying for them lol, nobody in Washington is fighting for us
- A measure you would normally impose on convicted criminals or terrorist leaders is now being used by the U.S. against these three people:
- former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for European legislation including on social media;
- Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, who researches online hate, A US judge has temporarily blocked the detention of this British social media campaigner Imran Ahmed, who took legal action against the US government over having his visa removed. Mr Ahmed, a US permanent resident, had warned that being detained and possibly deported would tear him away from his American wife and child. 😳;
- and Clare Melford, who maps disinformation with her organization.
- Trumps inauguration lmao
their power and influence wont stop 100 million people breaking down their gates, grabbing them out of their beds, and throwing them into woodchippers.
I’m holding my breath, do it quickly.
- A measure you would normally impose on convicted criminals or terrorist leaders is now being used by the U.S. against these three people:
Big Tech keeps building smarter devices
Smarter or just louder?
