x3 for backups.

Come for the memes, stay for the very good relationship advice.

I’m not surprised. It seems like only the unethical companies have growth and turnover these days.

whereupon they cold-called me to ask why i was so frustrated despite apparently being in the 95th percentile of all applicants

LOL, “despite.” You were frustrated because you were in the 95th percentile of applicants! Only the shittiest of the incompetents would put up with that nonsense.

a very low-paid job because the work is not for an unethical purpose

Are you hiring?

The main difference I had in mind is that Google devices let you root and erase them to run stuff like Lineage OS or Graphene OS, and Samsung devices don’t.

(Samsung also puts ads on their TVs and deliberately and blatantly designes their appliances to fail just outside warranty. I will never buy anything from that company again, with the possible exception of components like RAM ICs that get incorporated into some other brand’s product. But even then I’ll try to check for and avoid it because that’s the level of petty revenge Samsung deserves!)

The ironic thing is that Samsung is even worse than Google for users’ rights, and has been for a long time.

I like it! It neatly models the variability of arrows being recoverable and unbroken.

This was posted in another thread yesterday, and I found it particularly persuasive: https://thompson2026.com/blog/deviancy-signal/

There’s a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, “I have nothing to hide.” It’s not the gentle pity you’d have for the naive. It’s the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren’t just surrendering their own liberty. They’re instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it’s time they were told so.

…

On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state’s pool, making any ripple of dissent … any deviation … starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.

I’ve been looking for a similar thing (actually I don’t even really care about the “smart” part; I just want fitness tracking sensors), but have yet to find anything suitable.

Wait, isn’t INT the primary stat for an artificer? Rolling that low seems like really bad luck.

At least the AI-related videos of his I’ve seen were about running models locally, and for relatively legitimate use cases (training text-to-speech voices and commanding Home Assistant), so it could be worse.

If the price is free, you are the product

This is anti-Free Software propaganda. Some things really are free without catches, and we shouldn’t impugn them just because other things are fraudulent.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) “everlasting,” eh?

Is metasearch really the best we can do? What about YaCy, or something else more like that?

fine imprison

FTFY

Inb4 “Awesome²”

I mean, I still buy (used) Pixels even after knowing Google is evil, because they’re still the least-bad option because of things like Graphene OS.

Also, re: “unlikely to pivot to Linux phones:” that’s not because of any sort of “large investment in Android;” it’s because Linux phones either suck or are expensive (or maybe both). I say that as a desktop Linux user exclusively for almost a decade and owner of a Pinephone. I want to be using a Linux phone, but they just aren’t there yet.

I’m on, I think, my 3rd Pixel. All of them were chosen because of the possibility of putting a third-party firmware on them, but my current one is the first I’ve actually done it to.

If you want something more portable, you may be able to get your hands on a Walmart onn. TV Box 4K (2021) and install Lineage OS on it

I got a couple of those after the LTT video about them, but still haven’t gotten around to rooting them/setting them up. Now, because I procrastinated so long, I can use LineageOS instead of the rooted stock ROM (I think?) that was being used at the time.

Thanks, kind Internet stranger!