Cambionn

Agree. There’s just something special about doing it the original way. Booting up that old console just like in the past, no matter if I had it back then or not.

That being said, I don’t get the hate on emulation either. To each their own.

No and no. It’s not too late, and just watching sitcons won’t teach you enough to start speaking. But if you just start actual studying and practicing you can learn it just fine. Watching TV can be used to practice listening, but on it’s own it’s not enough unless you’re a wonderkid.

You can try getting your hands on an AsteroidOS compatible watch and flash it with that. It’s basically Linux on your wrist. There is a health app here and the required sensor logging is here, which are in early development but work well in what it does, like step counting and heartbeat graph. Past days aren’t shown further than a week but they are logged, so you could probably get it by hand in terminal after accessing the watch with SSH if you need to until it’s implemented (I think it’s on the to do list).

It’s my daily watch for months now, sold my Galaxy Watch4 in favor for it. It works well, is completely FOSS, and works without internet, bluetooth, or phone. Altrough both can be enabled and phones can be connected with GadgetBridge or their own app. Both are in F-Droid. You won’t find a more privacy friendly smartwatch solution really.

There is an issues with the current nightlies tho, so downloads are taken offline for now. So you need to wait for that or see if anyone has old files from before the issue.

Devs are quite active on Matrix. If you have no patience you can ask there if anyone has the files. Any kind of support is also allowed there, no matter if it’s very noob or advanced level.

I think ActivityPup isn’t even integrated into Threads yet? On release they said soon, a week later they said it was long-time planning. Haven’t heard about it since.

Fcitx5 for Android has decent Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese. I don’t think it has handwriting tho. Otherwise you have Trime, which is Rime for Android but I’ve never got it to work properly (unlike Rime on Linux which works fine).

I mainly use simplified, so don’t pin me on traditional options. I use Florisboard for English.

Article says:

We’re also beginning the beta for our upcoming macOS desktop app for Proton Drive. […] Once the macOS app is released, we’ll also work on our planned Linux version.

Based on Proton’s trackrecord in development times I’ld say a far future, but I must admit they’ve been making meters lately when it comes to releasing stuff. It may be sooner than expected (or it might take years, we’d have to wait and see).

but I think Google will do more. They’ve been trying to break it for ages. It’s one of those never ending fights. Doubt it’ll end soon.

Even if it does, then we’re at a point that “just use a good browser and uBlock Origin” also won’t cut it. Honestly, those will break much sooner than dedicated projects that are much more sophisticated in getting around YT-stuff. As soon as they put a login requirement on the site, which is needed to break apps like NewPipe, the browser + uBlock idea already won’t cut it anymore, no matter if you got a VPN ot not.

As for Aurora, as long as Average Joe still uses Google Play without a care I’m not too worried about it. People use AdBlock for the ease, but using Aurora doesnt’t give ease. It’s only the tiny group of privacy people interested in it, which is a much smaller demographic that’ll be hard to convert to Google services. If they break Aurora, the amount of non-playstore requests to developers is going to to pump up and as long as stuff like APKMirror and apk downloads from vendors still exist people will download by hand over using the Play Store. It’s a lot of trouble that likely just leads people further away from Google.

NewPipe (on Piped technology) is working fine here? As long as YT isn’t behind a login they will keep working. If they do put it behind login, tbf they’ll likely find way around it again sooner or later.

I agree that front-ends are always in an endless fight against these Big Tech solutions. But for content not available on other platforms it’s an necesity and a better solution than simply an adblocker. And sadly it’ll take a long time before content moves away, Average Joe isn’t really worried about Google as much as they are about the cons of moving away from YT.

I actually used to have YT Premium because I’m a strong believer that nothing is free, so you either pay with data or money (on anything slightly commercial, not counting FOSS projects made as hobby or under foundations etc. as things get more complex then. But even then I pay/donate for some stuff in the same way of reasoning).

Yet I cancled the YT Premium subscription. Simply for one reason, privacy. I don’t mind paying, but then I don’t want just no adds, I also want no tracking. I pay with money, so I don’t want to pay with data as well having a whole profile made.

Switched to NewPipe with sponsorblock on phone and TV and FreeTube on PC. Got a redirect extension in FireFox automatically sending YT videos to either Invidious or Pipe.

Business software has very different requirements. It’s much harder to implement stuff for them without breaking those requirements. Think compliances like (ISO) norms and laws regarding commercial businesses, contracts, or even the software being made to work and be administrated on a whole different scale. You can’t compare really…

While I agree it could go worse from here into a downwards spiral of enshitification, all I meant was that the title is a bit misleading into the other direction; making it sound like they would force telemetry onto users. If they wouldn’t say shit about this option, no one would sign up, even if they wouldn’t mind it. And basically, they’re explaining how they tried to make it as anonymous as possible and that’s it’s opt-in, which would also be a way to go if you legitimatly want to get data for improvement only. If that’s truly what they want, time will tell.

The moment it stops being optional I’m looking for a different password manager right away, I switched more complex and important things for similar reasons. But since my experience with them has been good, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Small nuance:
“Later this summer, you’ll see the option to participate in our telemetry system and help improve 1Password. You don’t need to take any action right now, and we won’t collect any usage data without your awareness and consent first. Participation will be optional for Individual and Family plan customers. And at this time, our telemetry system won’t be rolled out to any team or business using 1Password.”

Aka, it’s an opt-in that you can simply not opt-in to and if you don’t nothing changes and then it won’t be used on you.

I’m using FireFox on PC and Fennec on mobile. I refuse to use Chromium-based browsers because I refuse to coöperate with Google pushing to monopolise the making of internet standards. And to be honest, I haven’t had a single real issue yet from not using it.

I use Brave Search for searching because it has it’s on crawler, has pretty good results, and despite it saying it’s introducing adds, I haven’t seen any yet. I only don’t like that for images, it just opens Google or Bing with the querry forwarded, but at least they are clear about that they do that.

Browser and search engine choice is only a tiny part of browsing securely and privatly tho.

I guess Matrix would be your best option then. I use Schildichat as client, which is a fork of Element with some extras.

But if you can’t get a plan, why not get a prepaid burner SIM? You can buy a prepaid card for minimal amount and you generally keep the number at least for a year, and you put in 5~10 euro each year you can keep it active endlessly.

A lot of things require a phone number. Here, the goverment needs you to have one, but also most workplaces and even the DHL. Getting a cheap trow-away sim isn’t a bad option. Especially since pre-paid SIMs aren’t connected to your name like those on a plan are.

Because the threat isn’t getting your number stolen, it’s about the content of your messages. While the goverment cóuld ask your phone number, they likely already have it unless you got a prepaid trow away that you keep replacing regularily. And even then it cóuld be traced when used anywhere. What they can’t get, is your messages. At least not decrypted unless you give it to them yourself. And those are way more interesting. But it’s not even about the goverment per se, it’s for everything from data hungry companies to your old crazy ex.

Telegram sends everything plain text and stores that on their servers. One man-in-the-middle and we got everything you’ve said.

WhatsApp says they have E2EE but is propietary and non-checkable, and from Meta who has a rep for finding ways to secretly and unlawfully grab data. Even if you (foolishly) trust them, they do grab metadata from your messages.

Signal isn’t about it being FOSS, but about privacy. FOSS just means it’s checkable, which is good for security and privacy. They have E2EE not only on message content but also on metdata (unlike most alternatives who only do message contents), do external audits, and are part of a non-profit (which means showing how money is received and spend).

Well, while everything tarketed to Europeans (having EU domains is enough) should follow GDPR including the right to be forgotten, the whole issue is a bit more complex than most people seem to think.

For one, things not marketed to EU citizen don’t count. And the owner of a website, this case the hoster of an instance, is responsible for this. Not the software they use (Lemmy). I don’t think Lemmy tracks you specifically, as the code is open source and people likely would’ve noticed that by now. But servers could theoretically. That’s why you need to choose a server you trust, or host your own.

An instance aimed at USA people hosted in the USA doesn’t need to be GDPR compliant while a German one hosten in Germany would. An instance aimed at the world hosted in the USA also would, but likely breaks GDPR simply by being hosted in the USA. That’s part of why big social media need EU servers.

A federated system is not in one place, and another issue is that while deletion requests could be send (and Lemmy supports this accourding to their website), it can’t be as easily enforced to be followed by third parties. Of which, there are a lot in a decentral place.

Think of this: If I post something on Reddit, it get’s reposted to 4chan, then I remove my original post, then it’s still on 4chan. I could ask them to remove it, but that would likely be declined. Since 4chan has little to do with the EU and it’s citizen, and doesn’t actively market itself, they have little to do with the GDPR. At best you could make a copyright based claim, but that’ll change it into a whole other topic.

Federated systems similarily take eachothers content. It’s important to note that generally Federated networks don’t push their content to other instances. Instead, other instances grab them from each other. How often has federation not gone smoothly causing deleted Mastodon posts to still show up on otger instances because they grabbed the post but not the deletion request (I’ve seen it happen multiple times already).

The right to be forgotten forces them to make it anonymous and untracable upon request, but not to delete every word you ever typed. Anonymising your account and deleting traceble info only would be enough. That means, if the server you requested to deletes their part + send a request to third parties they deliberatly send info to themselves, they did their job as far as law is concerned.

Any third party that grabbed the info by themselves, would require you to send a new request to them. Considering federation works by grabbing other instances, not by pushing your instance to others, any federated post that still has your old info could still be up if changes or deletion requests haven’t been processed.

So is Lemmy bad for privacy by default? Not anymore than the rest of the web, as long as you understand that the whole point of decentral systems mean it’s not one place. Best to always keep in mind that everything on the internet is forever and public, even if you delete it or use filters on who can see it, as you can never ensure no one copies it and post it elsewhere.