The line between helpful tech and quiet surveillance is blurring — and our devices no longer feel fully under our control.
Big Tech keeps building smarter devices
Smarter or just louder?
Laughs in every computer I own is Linux and my mobile is GrapheneOS
Cries a little for everyone else
Our devices are no longer fully under our control, it’s not a “feeling”.
Sure, I might own the hardware
Not for long. The goal seems to be to make RAM, flash memory, and GPU’s so expensive that most consumers will need to purchase low-powered client devices and subscribe to cloud computing business models. It’s a handful of companies who are cornering the markets, controlling the supply, and seeking rents.
I don’t really see that happen. It would mean developers (or crappy AI code generators) would have to write efficient code for the low-powered client devices. The web is basically already other people’s computers and look how memory hungry browsers are, or maybe more specifically the websites/apps that run in the browsers.
I bet it’ll be more like a subscription for an LLM upgrade, since they’re shoving “AI” into the OS, it’ll need a bit of local processing power but then you pay to connect it to a beefier server
We well make some new companies
I watched something on Netflix the other day.
It immediately then showed an ad for that same movie I’d just watched, telling me the last day to watch is in a few days.
The other day my spouse was trying to watch a movie on prime I think it was, it started by playing an advertisement for the movie she chose to watch. I told her a copy was on the jellyfin server. She said I pay for this so I want to use it. It hit a 2 min 40 second ad break a little later and I saw her glare at me out of the corner of my eye, I chose to pretend to watch the commercial and not look at her, didn’t want that conversation.
The more Windows tries to manage my files for me the less I’m able to find where anything is.
I wish Windows 2000 still ran modern games.
What’s so hard about C:\users\skisnow, it’s pretty intuitive. Also I don’t think that has changed for almost 2 decades now. (XP was last I remember it being different).
Unless your talking about OneDrive or some shit.
Linux does. Not all, but a lot, and more every day.
It’s been years now, and it still hits me sometimes how insanely nice it is that my computers now work the way I want them to.
Yeah, that was an unexpected nice thing about switching to Linux, though also the whole point. Like I knew that I wanted to take control back over my computer and OS, but I was surprised at just how much nicer it is when defaults are set without any profit incentive. There just wasn’t “spend time disabling MS attempts to get me to use their other software” or “dig deep for how to change a setting MS would really rather you don’t change” periods and it made me realize that that was where I’d spend a majority of the “computer maintenance” time on windows.
remind me about the odds on whether a specific distro will work with my gpu or cpu
odds are pretty good these days, and if you’re worried dont switch now, but next time you buy hardware buy it with the intention that you may switch and opt for some Linux friendly hardware, which is pretty simple - avoid nvidia and realtek (avoid realtek on windows too if I’m being honest), make sure things are compatible with standards.
Odds?
Just look it up, or tell me what you have.
Regardless of what you have, the “odds” are good.
If you have something unusual that causes problems, that’s too bad, but it doesn’t stop the rest of us from having a good time. And now that I’m on linux, I can make sure something will work before I buy it, and if it doesn’t, I can return it.
It’s only at the time of when you switch you need to think about whether your existing hardware will work.
Repost: The power and influence of billionaire tech companies over the government is enormous. Ofcourse workers/users don’t get any (privacy) rights in america, none is lobbying for them lol, nobody in Washington is fighting for us
- A measure you would normally impose on convicted criminals or terrorist leaders is now being used by the U.S. against these three people:
- former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for European legislation including on social media;
- Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, who researches online hate, A US judge has temporarily blocked the detention of this British social media campaigner Imran Ahmed, who took legal action against the US government over having his visa removed. Mr Ahmed, a US permanent resident, had warned that being detained and possibly deported would tear him away from his American wife and child. 😳;
- and Clare Melford, who maps disinformation with her organization.
- Trumps inauguration lmao
their power and influence wont stop 100 million people breaking down their gates, grabbing them out of their beds, and throwing them into woodchippers.
I’m holding my breath, do it quickly.
- A measure you would normally impose on convicted criminals or terrorist leaders is now being used by the U.S. against these three people:
The more this shit goes on, the more I find myself aligning with the villains in James Bond films. Burn this whole system to the fucking ground!
The irl villains we’re dealing with took inspiration from Bond… or vise versa.
Seriously, Tomorrow Never Dies and Quantum of Solace have pretty obvious real world examples.
Maybe Golden Eye would be nice, but only because they wanted to destroy the banks while robbing them.
Moves hands up thighs Oh Mr. Bond
No no absolutely not Big Tech built a large spy network and now all of your lives are hot linked to every CEO across the planet.
It’s no coincidence that when I let the screen of my windos box turn off, it sounds like it’s mining Bitcoin!
Because soulless ghouls can only pretend to be human.
The poor user experience is intentional. Compare FireTV to AppleTV. Everything about FireTV is carefully designed to coerce you into spending money. Easy access to the content you already have doesn’t make money, so the UX serves Amazon, not you. Apple does it, too, but with a more subtlety.
It’s all the same UX to me; I start up Stremio then check what torrent to stream from.
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I installed Lubuntu on my Microsoft Surface 2 and my custom PC from 2014 that couldn’t get upgraded to windows 11 due to lack of a tpm chip. We don’t need better hardware, we need better operating systems. We need more Linux.
We need more real Linux – GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing – not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.
Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. – all technically Linux, but you wouldn’t know it because they’ve systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users’ freedom).
Tizen is actually pretty fun to hack tbh
Can you actually install your hacked version on your TV, or is it DRM’d to prevent it? That’s the only thing that matters.
What’s the point of being so pedantic?, they were obviously not advocating for more Roku installs.
Because the distinction matters. The corporate raping of Linux has to stop being tolerated or else nothing is solved. The technical details of the kernel don’t actually matter; the licensing and openness is what matters. Hell, if the Windows NT kernel got magically relicensed to AGPLv3 tomorrow it would instantly become the superior option just because of that.
Linux doesn’t fucking matter. Copyleft matters.
Sigh. This kind of nonsense is why so many people get scared away from even trying linux. Who cares which distro you use, as long as it is linux it is a step in the right direction, and a whole lot of people (including myself) have taken that step very recently, despite some arrogant linux bros doing their best to gatekeep us away from even trying.
do you seriously think roku, tizen, amazon fire are a step in the right direction?
Yes. Kinda.
How do you think Linux devs get paid? The devices are locked down, sure, but there are strong incentives to upstream code and fund further development upstream. Linux ”won” because of this. You can’t build and develop Linux for such a wide audience and hardware flora with a bunch of hobbyists.
As Linus himself said plenty of times - GPL2 was the correct choice. Roku, Tizen, Chromebooks and Amazon garbage are absolutely within what the developers intended, and the devs are doing the work after all.
From a consumer standpoint, I absolutely agree with you, open everything is wonderful. However - commercial interests currently fund most OSS development. Without those funds, development stops and developers must take other paying jobs (probably closed source). Would be nice to change this, but then we need to completely pivot our funding model. You need to pay devs, either directly or indirectly (taxes, foundations, etc).
So far, the open source community hasn’t been very good at figuring out funding models for consumer products. It usually ends with the development team needing to put food on the table, so they add a subscription and close down parts of the project. About two seconds later, the project has ten forks and the original author can’t buy groceries.
”Buy me a beer” simply isn’t s viable mechanism to fund open source. How should we do it?
Personal preference: Slowly move the public sector towards open source, and require them to provide financial aid to products they use. Not perfect, but something that could happen gradually, without shocking the system.
tl;dr: yes, but also no.
Do you think anyone, anywhere think of roku and amazon fire when they hear “you should try linux”?
read this thread again, please, because you completely missed the point. but you know what, I’ll help:
grue said:
We need more real Linux – GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing – not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.
Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. – all technically Linux, but you wouldn’t know it because they’ve systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users’ freedom).
Rothe said:
… Who cares which distro you use, as long as it is linux it is a step in the right direction, …
roku, amazon fire, tizen and co are all “linux based” operating systems. the topic was not about people recommending linux to each other, but about corporations misusing the foundations of it to further their greed. point being, something runs linux does not make it good. and that’s where grue’s call for real linux on these devices gets relevant.
No they arnt, but also using terminology like rape is a huge problem. He’s entirely right, the avg vocal Linux user is fucking insane. And a big reason there’s still much misinformation and fud around Linux for your avg user.
The worse thing for Linux is unironically it’s fucking vocal users.
Sure, because caring about users’ rights is “insane.” Because caring about societal effects of (lack of) antitrust and consumer protection law is “insane.” Because having an ounce of goddamn self-respect and not wanting to be abused is “insane.”
No, I don’t think I’m insane at all, actually. I think the people incomprehensibly arguing against me in this thread can fuck all the way off with their corporatist simping!
What the fuck? I said I don’t even actually care if the kernel is Linux or NT (or anything else) as long as it’s genuinely open so the user can modify it, and you somehow try to twist that as quibbling over distros?! Way to miss the point by a goddamn mile!
People just need to install lubuntu or some Linux distribution on their pc. Tech companies for years have forced consumer upgrades for average pc users when it wasn’t necessary.
I have a photo company in my town that still ruins dos off of windows 95 and has internet for email on windows 2000s for their point of sale machines is all dos. Even dot matrix printers. I was born in 1984 and remember this. Shows you don’t need the latest tech
The CNC machines I run at work run from windows xp. IT disconnected them from the network, so I have to get.dxf files from my engineer on a thumb drive to program machining paths from. Ain’t that progress? No it’s lazy.
That’s great for the folks who have access to decades-old pre-enshittification technology and the means to maintain it, but what about everybody else?
Continuing my smart TV OS analogy, your answer is like saying just to use a dumb TV instead. There aren’t any dumb TVs anymore! The TV manufacturer cartel colluded to quit making them!
“Just go live in the fucking woods like the goddamn Unabomber, eschewing modern technology” is not a valid solution for normal people! The law must be changed to protect them from predatory abusive corporations.
You aren’t wrong but you sound unhinged. That’s coming from someone who lives in the woods and runs Mint.
i use my tv as secondary display on my desktop and run anything i want to watch from it.
A modern tv without internet connection is a dump tv.
It really isn’t, though. It will still have a shitty UI that tries to shove the “smart” features in your face, it’ll probably shove some bullshit EULA in your face on first startup, and engage in other dark patterns.
Continuing my smart TV OS analogy, your answer is like saying just to use a dumb TV instead. There aren’t any dumb TVs anymore! The TV manufacturer cartel colluded to quit making them!
Yes there are, every smart tv becomes dumb as soon as you disconnect it from the internet. Just use it the same way you would use a monitor for your computer.
Eh, the printers should be swapped for laserjet to save money and ears. I don’t even know where one could buy paper for dot matrix printers either.
people are experiencing innovation fatigue
What innovation? The user experience hasn’t undergone significant innovation (improvement) in the last decade
The user experience hasn’t undergone significant innovation (improvement) in the last decade
B-b-b-but thinner bezels!!! Slimmer phones!!!
It’s enshittification fatigue, not innovation.
Innovative data collection for the shareholders so the line goes up!
Don’t forget all the innovative ways they’ve found to make it harder to repair “your” device.
Exactly. I almost feel like many are hungry for something new and different. So much so, that you give them something completely useless like an Ai widget, and they are willing to accept it to scratch an innovation itch.
There’s kind of been an increase in things being more accessible and usable by the standard user where previously they would need to be quite savvy or know a language.
But, yeah, I can’t think of much else. Not user-based tech anyway. Just the usual insignificant increases and a bunch of bullshit no one asked for and actually ends up using, but has to pay for.
I think smartphones are an excellent example. Most people wouldn’t notice the differences between a second-hand $150 Samsung Galaxy from five years ago, and the latest flagship for 10× the price. The innovation is almost entirely unnoticeable.
In many cases that accessibility is a full-on neutered replacement for a previous system that offered more user control and customizability, removing options from power users, so one man’s progress is another man’s step backwards.
As someone with a second hand Galaxy from seven years ago, yeah there’s not really much difference. Newer phones are slightly more annoying to use, actually.
Only difference is lack of updates for security and latest android, turns phones into ewaste long before the end of the hardware useful life.
Forced ‘innovation’ see-
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Windows 8/10/11
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Gnome 3
If you want to keep using Gnome 2 there are a million forks that are actively maintained, or idk you could just use another desktop. Nobody is forcing you to use gnome but you aren’t entitled to having a project do things the way you specifically want.
There’s no forced Gnome 3 (and it’s not been called that for a long time either), because you choose to install it, have the freedom to install anything else you want, and can customise it infinitely if you so choose.
Besides, Gnome is great. Maybe you don’t like it, but it seems odd to say that the way Linus Torvalds uses Linux is the “wrong” way to use Linux.
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I’ve been considering using my phone only for tethering, and doing anything on the go on a ultraportable Linux laptop. If anyone is doing this already, I’d love to hear about your experience.
I haven’t committed to doing it full time, but I’ve had a GPD Win Max 2 for a few months now. A little 10 inch laptop that actually has solid new AMD internals. Love it so far
I tether my GOS tablet. I currenly don’t use a notebook privately, only a desktop.
You need a generous data plan, or never install system updates but on WiFi.
I’m working towards something like that. I’m hoping to ultimately drop the smartphone altogether, and I’ve set my current phone’s end of life (2027ish?) as the goal.
I think the other thing that’s necessary to keep the same sense of connectedness is a device to receive notifications, and I have an open source smartwatch I want to program for that. I’ve been working on a notification server too (kind of like Gotify), but at the moment it’s a work in progressDo any cell phone plans allow for unlimited Hotspot data? That’s my largest issue with doing that, I use more than 50GB every single month.
Huh
Maybe it’s different in other countries, but why would there be a different allowance for tethered/hotspot data?
Surely unlimited means unlimited and it makes no difference whether the ones and zeros go to a phone or something connected to it?
I’ve never had any problems
I think the logic would be that it’s easier to use more data on a computer and while using multiple devices. On my phone I sometimes get full speeds while tethered, and sometimes get half a Mbps.
Yes but they’re like $60 a month
I’m no tech expert and I haven’t done this for a while so don’t know if that change but they were more packet loss/errors (not sure proper terms, not English native). For most files this isn’t an issue but was for more sensitive ones like programs/iso…
Battery also suffered more from this used, keeping phone charged while tethering wasn’t good due to battery management system. But things could have changed.
Last point is that bad weather does affect cellphone reception.
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