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.

Well, cool it anyway 'cause it makes people think you’re a bot.

Yep!

I hesitate to mention this because I don’t want the ebay seller to sell out before I decide if I want one, but…

Craft Computing has a recent video about a used Supermicro “Microcloud” server that holds 8 Intel socket R nodes in 3U and costs $400 (apparently including CPUs but not RAM). Seems like an excellent way to get cheap redundancy, albeit at the cost of probably not great power consumption because it’s so obsolete.

Everything in owner because I don’t understand the implications well enough to do otherwise (so thanks for the thread).

How critical success ability checks should work:

DM: “Nat-20? The dragon is amused by your insane audacity and merely punts you out of his chamber instead of turning you into a smoking cinder on the spot. Roll for fall damage.”

Instead of having your online accounts registered directly to your @tuta.io address (or your gmail address, or any webmail address), buy a domain name and have the accounts registered to that and then set the DNS to forward all mail from that domain to your webmail account of choice. That way, if the webmail service fucks up, the worst-case scenario is that you change the forwarding again and you’ve only lost the contents of the previous emails sent, not access to receive future ones.

(Caveat: when you send an email it’ll by default be coming from your webmail provider address, not your custom domain address, and I’m not sure how to fix that – I’ve only recently started switching to the scheme myself – but if your main issue is receiving 2FA emails and such that’s not a big deal.)

“Would you like them in a store?
Would you let us build some more?”

“I would not like them in a store.
I will not let you build some more.
I don’t want you to track my van.
I do not like them, Sam-Alt-man!”

I’m not a DM, but I think the common advice is “randomly roll dice for no reason occasionally so the players can’t rely on dice rolls being significant.”

I have an Asus KGPE-D16 that I bought years ago specifically for Libreboot compatibility. I swear, one of these days I’ll finally get around to installing it.