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!

Neat, thanks!

I’m not thrilled about the camera quality (compared to a purpose-built surveillance cam with 4k and good low-light performance) and I wish it had PoE, but damn, can’t beat that price!

(Side note: does anybody else find it weird that PoE is so uncommon and/or adds so much to the cost of these IoT dev boards? I get that normal people don’t want the hassle of running cable, but it feels like the hole in the market is bigger than it should be.)

Tell me more about your homebrew esp32 cams, please!

How you gonna get the video feed off an IP cam and onto your NVR without connecting it to your network?

You’re not seriously suggesting using old analog cameras in 2025, are you?

The exceptions are things like my phone because it’s a necessary device these days and there aren’t a lot of options for something not locked down to all hell.

Graphene is good enough, IMO.

The real problem is that getting to 99% is damn near a full-time job and the capitalist cartel actively punishes it (by only offering owner control in ‘commercial-grade’ products at huge markup, or not manufacturing such things at all and forcing you to DIY).

It’s unreasonable to expect any but the most dedicated (read: stubborn) people like us to be able to handle it; the only viable solution for the masses is to wrestle back control of the government and end regulatory capture of the FTC etc.

Didn’t they already try that? I figured that’s why Amazon wanted to buy them.

There are no electric cars that don’t track you except for the really old NiMH Rangers and Rav4s and whatnot that they leased to fleets in California back in the day. Even the very first mass-market Nissan Leaf had unacceptable telemetry from day 1.

You’re fucked. Best you can do is ride a bike when possible, and keep driving old cars from the mid-2000s or earlier when necessary.

I’ve been noticing several new or new-ish accounts acting similarly. I need to go find an admin/mod discussion about what I (as a mod of another community) should be doing about it.