It’s not the most detailed thing, but I just use a free account on cron-job.org to send a head request every two minutes to a few services that are reachable from the internet (either just their homepage or some ping endpoint in the API) and then used the status page functionality to have a simple second status page on a third party server.

You can do a bit more on their paid tier, but so far I didn’t need that.

On the other hand, you could try if a free tier/cheap small vps on one of the many cloud providers is sufficient for an uptime Kuma installation. Just don’t use the same cloud provider as all other of your services run in.

Have you watched Shrek?

Dragons and Nymphs don’t fuck around. Got it.

Or you can host your own instance quite easily. If you want just a new instance, pick one from the list above. Everyone who intends to run a public instance can enter it there and you’re sure, that this person intends that instance to be public.

CMG’s website addresses this with a section that starts “We know what you are thinking…”

“Is this legal? YES- it is totally legal for phones and devices to listen to you. That’s because consumers usually give consent when accepting terms and conditions of software updates or app downloads,” the website says.

Well, yes, but actually no. No idea how this might play out in other parts of the world than the US. But in most places, you’d usually need consent of all parties, that are involved. If my neighbor were to install an (infected) app like this, then carries his phone around and talks to me, I did not consent and it would be illegal to record me, even if he were not tricked into consenting, but did knowingly accept it. Worse yet, in the last scenario, he might be on the hook for legal consequences, too…

Besides that legal minefield, I thinks it’s a bluff. The tech is either way less accurate than they claim, or quite ressource intensive by either eating through your data plan on a mobile phone or draining your battery. My bet is on a PR stunt.

These are just screenshots of the data privacy section from the Apple AppStore of each of the apps. Afaik those are mandatory & self reported by the devs of the app.

Now with Mozilla VPN! Click here to connect and upgrade your account!

I don’t mind paying a fair fee for online services, if that means I get some/more privacy, because of no/less/non-tracking ads. I have a few donations set up for some services that I use regularly. I also made a paid account on some commercial services „just because they’re ad free“ even if their free tier would suffice for my usage.

But how are those ads gonna pay them ~16€/month/user on these services? It just to deter people from using this option. Heck I can get a decent vServer and self host several services for that price! No way Meta pays/earns that much per user!

I never looked at their campaign, but did just read over it for fun. I didn’t do any further research and just assume no lying in the parts that can be checked without having knowledge about their specific products / industry.

First things first: It’s kickstarter, not IGG. It’s not using flexible funding (as that’s only on IGG, if they still allow it). They have a working prototype. That’s nice!

Having won all these awards is nice, but without knowledge about the specific awards, this information is useless. They seem to have a contract with NASA which gives them access to materials and technology. That’s a plus. They also seem to have a real working prototype.

$25k as a target is very low for product development. But they may be an established company and may get extra funding from other sources, so it might be a campaign to check the market and do some PR. Remember how I said many Kickstarters are essentially preorders? They’re not quite there yet in the product development cycle, but this might explain it with other funding besides kickstarter. But this should be researched further before backing.

The whole campaign feels more PR and sales as I’ve seen with the last campaigns that I actually backed (or at least checked because of an interesting “product”). I can’t help but it somehow reminds me of something…

Also after all this talking about space technology, they say it wouldn’t work on earth and needs to be adapted (so no space technology anymore, but still space technology?). I get that they need to do this and that its a bit unfair to point at it, but did chuckle when I read that. Especially when they continued talking about space technology right after.

I was wondering the whole time, whether their tires really last “the whole lifetime of a bike”. I usually change tires, because they’re worn out and the profile is low. Modern tires are quite good at preventing a flat. So the upside of this tire for me would be… no checking if I need to refill some air. They prevent this by making this part of the tire exchangeable (and if it works, $10 is fine as it’s still cheaper than a regular new tire). But then… it lasts the lifetime of your bike, but not specific parts of the product.

How easily can you get access to these spare parts after the campaign? How much trash are they really saving? And as they’re saying their approach is more environmentally friendly - did they research all the new materials used and their production?

So, for me it’s a product I wouldn’t back on KS. It’s a product, that would require me to get spare parts to be used meaningfully. It needs to be established on the market for that. Otherwise it’s nice in the beginning and then it was a waste of money.

Oh, speaking of money - I didn’t check yet how much id have to pay for a ti… WHAT? $500 for two of them? 2 Full wheels are starting at $1,300 and can be up to $2,300 $5,000 depending on your choice of material?!

I can get a fully featured, brand new luxus eBike for that!🤯 Nah, not gonna happen. Talk about the environment as much as you like. A full set of good tires with anti-flat technology for my bike starts at around 40-50 bucks (non US, but shouldn’t be that different in the US?) and lasts a while. I can get 10 sets of tires for the price of this starter set and I’d probably get a few more when I have to pay for a few Tread replacements in between. Talk about the lifetime of a bike. LOL.

Tbf if it’s indigogo, it’s a scam. If its funding is flexible, you might as well just throw your credit card into the trash bin. If it’s on kickstarter, you might at least get some product an few years late (or it’s just a normal pre-order with some extra steps and more expensive)

Probably the law says they have to put in X, Y and Z and something of the required information is missing. Or maybe they need to provide some documentation that they’re acting on behalf of the original copyright owner, which is missing/implausible or it targets content that’s not even hosted by WordPress (e.g. a blog embedding a tweet and said tweet is violating copyright),…

I guess they neither want to educate those companies nor want to provide a lengthy list of errors.

“None of your business” (NOYB) is already on it and complained to the data protection authorities.

For context - NOYB is the organization with Max Schrems, the guy who is constantly fighting Meta (and slowly winning)

I’m going to reinstall and remove it again to prove you it was not a fluke.

taps a few times on the screen
shows app installing
shows fake lock screen
opens list of running apps

nothing on one, nothing on two, a fake app on three…

closes and uninstalls the app

Done! That’s everything I had for you today,…