Yeah, that was kinda my point… I’m so used to being mistreated that when I saw the headline, I thought I wouldn’t be given the choice to participate. But giving me the choice builds trust in the people. It’s a move that supports their community in a time where such policies are rare. I love it.

I was all set to be pissed off at this, then I read that it was opt in. Home Assistant is f’n awesome!

I remember reading a thread like this a while back and saw Home Assistant. I thought I don’t need that.

It’s probably the most used self hosted app we have.

Mullvad VPN works well on Android and has some DNS based ad blockers & content filters in the VPN app (though off by default iirc). Mullvad browser is not ported to Android.

That said, it’s important to understand that VPNs don’t provide privacy in any absolute sense. They can (maybe) obscure data about your browsing habits from your ISP. But they won’t stop all the other, more effective tracking exists nearly everywhere else on the web.

Gradually, the migration to new platforms will take place

I’m not sure that will (or should) happen. Mainstream social media has an awful lot of shit that wouldn’t exist (or wouldn’t exist in the same way) on federated social media. For things that are purely commercial (which is a lot) the effort is higher and the payoff is smaller in a federated system. There’s a lot of social media that thrives only because it’s fundamentally commercial. That segment would never embrace federated social media willingly.

Then of course there’s the trigger-reward cycle you talk about. People might know it’s unhealthy, but they still do it. Not having that as part of the user experience a big adjustment coming to federated social media.

I’d say the fascist coup is well,underway. Also, a meaningful opposition response (let alone scorched earth) requires an organized opposition. We’re pretty far from that existing, and you’re right, it absolutely won’t come from within the ranks of Democrats.

The formation of an opposition will be dramatically more challenging too because of the pervasiveness of the surveillance-capitalism apparatus that’s fueling ICE’s campaign. A key step toward a meaningful resistance would be punishing the companies that comprise the surveilance capitalism regime, but most of the people who would like this regime to go away don’t have the will to stop using TikTok, Feacebook, X, and Insta.

Dems lost in '16 and '24 because they did not hold primaries and just hoped that there were enough people opposed to Trump

2020, yes, but 2016 wasn’t about Trump. The Dem establishment had already decided “it’s her turn” well before Trump even won being taken seriously, and before his first primary win in NH. The Democratic Party eliminated the democratic process from its primaries and is baffled why people are mad at that.

The APU and taxi rules would likely help a lot, but would likely require a lot of change to infrastructure and airline and ATC SOPs. The electrification bit is beginning to happen where it makes sense, but that part will likely be slow to make a difference, and a small difference at that.

I agree that having transportation alternatives like rail could help reduce demand for commercial air transport, but we would be a generation away from useful intrastate rail service if we were serious about building it now, which we’re not. So there’s no good reason to not do these things while we faff about on “high speed” rail.

Yeah, that’s been true for a while. I have a Tesla model 3 and it’s the first American car I’ve bought in 30 years. If it weren’t for the surveillance capitalism, I’d say it’s an an exceptional car.

The whole car world has changed though. Honda used to be great, but they’re kinda shit now. Toyota and Lexus are still pretty great for long term reliability. Comfort is great, but driving dynamics are mid. BMW and Mercedes (some of them anyway) drive very nice, but you don’t want to own them out of warranty. Most American cars are somewhere in the middle. They’ve improved a lot since the 80s and 90s, but so has everything else.

Surround sound receiver that works via optical or HDMI. That’s what I would recommend

Those are both digital outputs, not analog. Maybe you’re confusing digital with internet connected?

I’m not advocating internet-connected audio gear, but plenty of people like the utility of networked audio for automation, in-home streaming, and multi-room setups. But again, those can be isolated from the internet.

Encrypted apps like Signal work encrypt messages in a way that only you and the recipient can decrypt and read. Not even Signal can decrypt them. However it has always been the case that another person could look over your shoulder and read the messages you send, who you’re sending them to, and so on. Pretty obvious, right?

What the author and Signal are calling out here is that all major commercial OSes are now building in features that “look over your shoulder.” But it’s worse than that because they also record every other device sensor’s data.

Windows Recall is the easiest to understand. It is a tool build into windows (and enabled by default) that takes a screenshot a few times per second. This effectively capture a stream of everything you do while using windows; what you browse, who you chat with, the pron you watch, the games you play, where you travel, and who you travel with or near. If you use “private” message tools like Signal, they’ll be able to see who you are messaging and read the conversations, just as if they were looking over your shoulder, permanently.

They claim that for an AI agent to serve you well, it needs to know everything it can about you. They also make dubious claims that they’ll never use any of this against you, but they also acknowledge that they comply with court orders and government requests (to varying degrees). So… if you trust all of these companies and every government in the world, there’s nothing to worry about.

What security concerns do you find are most overlooked in anarchist circles? What about overdone?

I’m not in those circles, so I can’t say, but I’ll pretend for a bit…

keep hair very tightly concealed and to wear gloves for the purpose of avoidance of leaving behind DNA

I’d bring extra DNA with me and pollute the scene with it.

Of course this won’t help when your highest levels of organization are fully compromised. But that’s another problem. You have to expect that your adversaries are inside the castle walls and continually plan and test for that.

If OP wants surround, Atmos, etc., this isn’t gonna work. Analog outputs can’t handle ambisonics, and TVs don’t have discrete 6 channel outputs. If you want 2.1, 5.1, Atmos, MPEG-H or whatever, you’ll need a digital output to your sink device (AVR/soundbar, etc.). Digital doesn’t mean internet connected. And there’s no real benefit to forcing an analog output from your TV. It’s DAC probably isn’t better than the DAC in an AVR or soundbar.

Is this more about the formality of having a plan than the plan having any impact? The bit about including air and sea transport in the greenhouse emissions targets makes sense, and symbolically is a win, but even if they eliminated all greenhouse emissions on the island, it’s gotta be way too small a reduction to make a material difference in weather and climate patterns. I guess, at the end of the day though, even small wins are wins.

Test it. Seriously.

There are likely roadblocks you haven’t seen. For example, it is increasingly true that login & password aren’t good enough to access most commercial systems. So many businesses rely on active session cookies to determine identity, and if that’s missing, they’ll fallback to email or SMS based one-time passwords. And if they don’t have access to your laptop or phone, it might be impossible for them to gain access.

I do, and it’s probably the main reason I started self hosting.

Managing parents estate made me want to get my shit in order for my own kids in the event I die. There’s a good chance that if I die, my cell phone is gonna die with me. And commercial services from Apple, Google, banks, and other institutions are increasingly tied to a single cell phone as “identity.” If you try to login on a device with no session cookies, they treat it as hostile, and do all sorts of oddball stuff that almost always requires the cellphone to access. And if you don’t have that phone, it’s incredibly hard.

By self hosting, I can choose to make access to that most of that data much easier for my family if I die and my cellphone dies with me. I don’t expect them to continue self-hosting, but I do want them to have easy access to files so they can move them to some system they are comfortable with.

Yeah, off grid might work, but the expense of adding batteries is pretty big, and the system meets most of his demand currently. So it’s a bit of a hard sell. A lot of money for a small improvement. Their shitty rules have taken the simple easy upgrade off the table.

Exhibit 1: California, Ronald Reagan.

And neither party has taken their foot off the gas since.

Harris did pretty bad during the Primary back in 2020

Harris actually dropped out months before the primaries in 2020. She was something like 16th most popular candidate at the time she withdrew. She was a pretty unpopular AG in California at the time and likely would not have even won her own state primary.

couldn’t get my small group of gamer friends to switch

The hardest part of any change right there.