Whenever people ask about ways to make their smartphones more private or which is the most privacy-respecting phone to get, there's always a few people confidently asserting "all smartphones are spy tools, get a dumbphone with no apps if you want to be private". Which is ridiculous advice for a few reasons
Dumbphones usually run either proprietary operating systems or outdated forks of Android. They're almost never encrypted. They rarely get security updates. They're a lot more vulnerable than even a regular Android phone
With dumbphones, you're usually limited to regular phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging. These are ancient communication standards with zero built-in privacy. Your ISP can read any text message you send and view metadata logs of any phone calls you make. In lots of places (like Australia where I live) ISPs are actually required to keep logs of your messages and phone calls
With even a regular Android phone you at least have access to encrypted messaging apps like Signal or Session so your conversations aren't fair game for anyone who wants to read them. Of course there are better options. iOS (not perfect but better than most bloatware-filled Android devices) and a pixel with GrapheneOS (probably the best imo) are much better options; but virtually anything out there is going to be better for privacy than a dumbphone
Edit: Thanks everyone for giving your thoughts. Some really good points I hadn't thought much about
You can make a smartphone (more) private, but out of the box and loaded with standard apps (eg Google), its a privacy nightmare. So I get where they are coming from. Sure using SMS isn't private, but dropping all that app addiction is.
It comes down to the hostile actor you are trying to defend against. If you are Jason Bourne and you have been burned by your agency so multiple nation-states are looking for you, then you have to go fully off-grid and live a quiet life without ever communicating with anyone in your prior life again. It doesn't matter if you are using Signal, or SMS, or even a dial-up BBS. If you are communicating with people that are also under heavy surveillance, you cannot hide.
If you want to reduce your "digital footprint," then not using google/facebook/other social media is the most worthwhile thing you can possibly do. Your phone doesn't matter. Use iOS, never install any of the social apps, use Safari in incognito mode, and you'll never be tracekd across websites again.
I think OP meant use Safari with the Apple's Privacy Relay thing that hides your IP and generalizes location data into a larger area, not just regular "private mode" that Safari has. Too bad it's subscription only on iCloud+, and who knows if it actually works as well as Apple claims it does.
This. A dumbphone is private in the sense that it's not collecting and transmitting a whole lot of data to Facebook, Google, etc., which is what most people are concerned about in this community.
If you also want encrypted communications, use something built for that purpose. But keep in mind, the other person will also have to have a compatible device, and probably isn't as concerned about maintaining hygiene.
It's the most private and secure phone OS you can get today. You have to have minimal trust in Apple that they won't change the terms, but that is miles better then using google who will explicitly use your data for anything they want.
Switching from a smartphone to a dumbphone is usually not about increasing privacy in the first place.
People tend to make the switch for mental health reasons, rather than privacy ones. When your phone goes back to being a direct communication tool rather than a passtime, you tend to realize just how much time you spend during a day doing basically nothing.
From my limited research it looks as though the Punkt mp02 is the best bet for a private dumbphone. It does use a propriety OS but at least it supports Signal.
Apostrophy provides secure smartphones and a private OS designed for true data ownership. Protect your digital identity from big tech, hackers, and surveillance.
I guess the idea is that you wont be able to do a lon with a dumbphone, so it's basically a paperweight that sometimes receives calls and with too much luck, an SMS. You have a tool for emergencies or specific events, but you don't have your life on it, so you keep most of your privacy from ever reaching it. That's my take, at least.
GrapheneOS or nothing. We have to support them whenever we can more than ever. The battle against mass surveillance will become increasingly difficult. Many countries are heading towards neo-fascism and will use all state power to end privacy at all costs
If you're willing to live with a dumb phone, you're willing to live with a Linux phone (Or an open ROM without Google apps). AFAIK they can call and text just fine without installing anything else so any Linux apps you like are just a bonus.
Good point. Linux phones, even in their current state, might be a good middle ground for people with low needs.
Although there's two things I'd mostly be worried about. 1. Battery life. Smartphones, including Linux ones, aren't exactly known for amazing battery life. A dumb phone would likely last several times longer on a single charge. 2. Physical durability. Even after all those years of structural improvements, smartphones remain fairly fragile. Usually I use high durability cases with my smartphones (ideally Otterbox Defender), though I don't think anything similar is even available for any Linux phones. And of course, we all know dumb phones are generally durable enough.
I remember the need to reload my old Nokia brick sometimes and that it had a better reception strengh than my current smartphone, apart of the bulletproof finish.
With dumbphones, you’re usually limited to regular phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging.
That's kind of the point.
Sure, you can't do much with them, but by that very fact you also won't have nearly as much data to be spied on.
Likewise, you can do much more with a smartphone, but that comes with a much higher surface of attack, and you also have to work a lot harder to keep all the data away from spying.
Yes, not so difficult to spy phone calls and SMS, but it's way less risky for privacy and security as in Smartphones, full of sensitive data on an OS and tons of apps which logs and spy on you, spreading the information not only to the ISP and govs, but also to private advertising companies and others, which is way worse. Phone lines are way less dangerous for privacy and security as the Internet, log data stored by the ISP are deleted after an max. of three month, data on the internet are forever and can't be deleted, because they are spreeded everywhere.
At least in my case, I don't use my Smartphone for other things as for calls, I don't use any messenger apps nor storing sensitive data on it, desconected GPS and localisation apps. For me smartphones as such are spyware by definition, more if the include AI like they are doing currently.
Yup, no phone is the way to go. Obviously not practical 100% of the time in the modern day, but if you're ever doing something you don't want linked to you, leave the phone at home.
Even a wireless handset landline or a deskphone with functions such as an address book and call history would have a basic firmware OS, but something like rotary phone wouldn't
A world where communication devices are limited to rotaries phones, CLI only terminals that only allow data transfer as SMTP, FTP and BBS traffic over dial-up using acoustic couplers connected to the rotaries handsets, would be a better world
even all old Nokias and flipphones and the like have an OS they're just in house developed proprietary embedded software/firmware not open sourceish like android
its how almost any sufficiently complicated device that uses PCBs works even modern washing machines and such run atleast what it basically a firmware os
You are conflating privacy and security. They're not unrelated, but generally speaking while a dumphone may be less secure than a smartphone, it's also certainly more private.
It produces significantly less data. It doesn't have all the apps you are being tracked by reporting on your every move.
It doesn't have faceid, and probably has a lot of exploits (less security), but the data it holds isn't worth securing and it doesn't provide a non-stop datamine (more privacy).
Basically, instead of having a large safe filled with gold, you have a duffel-bag with your old gym clothes. You don't need security for old gym clothes.
Someone once broke into my sister's car and stole her bag of gym clothes but I get what you're saying.
Personally I would love a dumbphone but I find a smartphone too useful (specifically map and transit apps). I wish I could have the same number for one of each and only bring the smartphone when necessary.
Your ISP can read any text message you send and view metadata logs of any phone calls you make. In lots of places (like Australia where I live) ISPs are actually required to keep logs of your messages and phone calls
Why would my Internet Service Provider have anything whatsoever to do with my dumb phone?
Yes, texts and calls aren't hidden from your mobile phone provider, they never were. I agree it's not great, and the government is likely spying on you as they have been for decades.
But alas, I don't see a solution without using a non dumb phone and encrypted apps, which will require the internet and at that point you've not got a dumb phone any more.
My Nokia 3310 still works great. Sure, the government could spy on me, but I don't discuss anything sensitive over the phone (traditionally one doesn't, for this very reason, wiretaps and the like). It's a tool for casually staying in touch and arranging to meet up ^_^
They provide internet to your device, which makes them an internet service provider. And if nothing else, they also offer fixed wireless, which makes them an internet service provider.
Sure, Comcast can't log your phone calls because they are a cable or fiber provider, but T-Mobile can absolutely log your calls, and they are still an ISP.
As others have mentioned, this is a matter of threat model. To be realistic, a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications, but companies like Facebook and Google can only access them if you give it to them willingly. On the other hand, if other people you communicate with do this by themselves, then you've gone through all that effort for nothing. It's also worth pointing out that it cannot be proven that a regular phone does not have corporate spyware installed, so this may be another way your information could leak to companies.
That said, it is pretty insulting that tech companies have decided that they're simply entitled to everyone's private communication data. That for me is probably the biggest motivator in trying to avoid their services as much as possible.
a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications
If you use encrypted messages and both people using the messages have a phone with disk encryption then there is literally no way for a government to gain access to your messages. That is assuming the government isn't going to torture you.
I would argue that phone that a phone that runs Android is not a dumb phone. Not having a Google account logged into your phone is a huge step towards privacy.
See: - Mudita Kompakt - Punkt MP02 - etc.
Also don't fall into the trap that privacy is a binary issue. There's a massive spectrum.
Exactly, taking away tools which enable you to enhance your digital privacy, or the ability to use such tools, is fundamentally a flawed way to enhance your privacy in the long term.
Same for security with rooting, and it's the same reason why the argument that "rooting makes your phone less secure" is a fundamentally flawed argument.
Yes! I hate that companies are trying to make people think thar rooting=unsafe. Then make it work safely. Root user is safe on Linux, then why it isn't on phone?
That's just boils down to user not giving root access to every app.
Ultimately rooting empowers users with control, and many company profit from users not having control, like Netflix, like Google with their ads, etc., so they love to make people think rooting is somehow unsafe lol
Because they don't know what could potentially be running with root access and they'd rather block everything they don't know.
Earlier this year my accountant asked me to install an app on my phone to give them access to some banking details and that app would not open the login screen without the gboard keyboard enabled, because they considered custom keyboard apps = bad. It also would not let me use password managers, so I was forced to put my banking details beyond a weaker password than any of my online accounts for random sites.
I figured that the point of using a dumb phone would be that there hopefully wouldn't be meaningful accounts, information, and communication to really get at. Regular calls and SMS were already fair game, and there is basically nothing else on there. Nothing for evil megacorps to siphon up, no social media, not much of anything.
I can't speak for everyone, but if I'm using a dumb phone, I'm not going to be doing any of the things that I'm worried about them hearing.
If ICE grabs my phone right now and beats me until I lock it. They're going to be looking through my lemmy history.
I'm not going to hold a long political dissertation over SMS or during a phone call.
What I really want to at this point is a pager, a cellular Wi-Fi access point, and an 8" tablet that can run Linux and sip power so I can just pretend I don't have a device.
What I really want to at this point is a pager, a cellular Wi-Fi access point, and an 8" tablet that can run Linux and sip power so I can just pretend I don’t have a device.
This is basically what I was thinking. Where can I find a fully functioning 8" Linux Tablet? I feel like the rest of it is easy peasy.
Edit: In my head, I am imagining a steam deck but with the side controller bits snapped off. Someone pls make this. lol
I keep hoping the Halium project will pick up support for some small tablet, but those are almost all bootloader-locked. I don't love Halium, but anything is better than what we have, I could deal with some UBPorts.
I even looked at DIY. There's no lack of 7" touchscreens, but Pi's are apparently bad on power. There are a couple of mini clone boards that might work, but they all have tradeoffs and red flags.
I feel like every time Halium comes up it comes with qualifying statements (like "I don't love Halium"). I don't really know enough about it to know why that is. What are the problems with Halium that people don't like? Is it what it does (or how it does it) that is the problem, or something else about the project?
I think the main problem is, that it solves a problem, that shouldn't exist in the first place. If OEMs would build (and ideally also upstream) proper drivers, then we wouldn't need a translation layer
The primary problem we have with putting Linux on phones is a lack of drivers. Hallium is basically fishing bits and pieces out of AOSP, then feeding that data into the Linux install. The upside is that we get pretty good power management and we get working cameras and working radios and all those creature comforts you really expect a phone to have.
The downside is that Google (and nearly every hardware manufacturer) is rather aggressively heading towards locking third parties and out of things. It's not hard to envision a world where a couple of back room deals are made and some firmware updates happen. And all of a sudden, hardware that is at any updates is not capable of running Halium.
Halium's core system partition is also read-only, so there's some lack of hacking ability there that we'd really like to see. You have to put the custom stuff you want into a separate container. Not impassable, though.
Halium is at the very least private and works fine right now. Will it continue to work? Once the eye of Sauron hits it, will it survive? Will it be sued into submission? Will it be sabotaged by Google or the hardware manufacturers?
It might very well be the crutch we need for now. But it also makes sense to get the hell off of it as soon as we can.
It's not about having a device that's secure, it's about having a device that you use less, to the point that it's not much of an attack surface for surveillance capitalism or (possibly) hostile governments.
It's much harder to profile someone if they aren't fed a steady stream of what you say and what you click upon.
I think you're conflating security with privacy. Not that they are unrelated, but something can be e.g. unencrypted but lack telemetry.
Not that dumbphones are inherently private, but I don't think they're less private either. They're just what you use if you have no need for all the smartphone functions.
Idk, being locked in to using only communication protocols that are known to be roughly wide open seems like kind of a privacy non-starter, right? Sort of fails the attempt before you even start, no?
Edit: a wiser person than me reads the rest of the thread before a comment like the above, but I'm not them sadly. (AKA, plenty of good points made by others)
I suppose that begs the question of whether or not privacy (as used by this community) inherently means private in the colloquial sense, like the way a diary is private. Because to me, a e.g. public static website with no kind of profiling of its users is privacy-respecting, but obviously not private in the colloquial sense—it's a public resource.
I do use SMS sometimes and I use it strictly for things that I'm happy to be basically public. Same for using other protocols like unencrypted email.
A stock smartphone is also locked in to mandatory telemetry, like a stock dumbphone. The practical difference is that there's a much smaller community for installing custom FOSS OSes onto dumbphones compared to smartphones.
If you have to connect to an intermediary to make a call, you can be heard and traced. GPRS is only marginally better if you and the one you call are on the same uncommon frequency
Yes, sim calls and sms are not private, both on dumb and smart phones. They also connect to cell towers so your location might be found. Anyway, I think the hardware and software of a smartphone is more capable of surveillance you than a dumbphone. The only realistic way is to leave the phone home and keep a paper list of your contacts at you. And call them from a stranger if you need to. I did this and the biggest inconvenience is that I can't take pictures or videos (I might buy a camera, I don't know if they have location system incorporated).
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments.
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments.
A judge in Idaho is blocking the release of graphic photos taken by investigators after Bryan Kohberger killed four University of Idaho students in 2022
Basically, Gen X got screwed by timing. They were the guinea pigs for the whole "take out massive federal loans for college" experiment. College costs quadrupled right as they were graduating high school, and the idea was that getting a degree was the way to get a good job. They've had these loans for over 20 years now, and the interest has been compounding into an absolute monster. A loan of 75k turning into 300k is a perfect example of how insane the interest accrual has been.
On top of that, as gen x were trying to buy houses and start families, they couldn't always make payments. Their loan servicers told them to just pause payments, but the interest kept piling up during that time. As more and interest kept getting piled on top of the principal, they end up paying interest on their interest. So the whole thing turned into a debt trap in disguise.
And the final nail was when Biden admin dangled loan forgiveness, telling everyone to consolidate their loans to qualify. So they did, but this officially rolled all that unpaid interest into their principal, making their total debt explode overnight. Then the forgiveness plan got killed by the courts, and the next administration came in with a pay up or else attitude. They followed the rules for a program that vanished, and now they're stuck with an even bigger bill as they head into retirement. It's a total cluster fuck.
Which is a really weird strategy given that the US is becoming less attractive to foreign talent that's traditionally been used to offset the need for making domestic education accessible.
Luxury home sales in the U.S. dropped 0.7% year-over-year for the three months ending August 31, marking the lowest level since 2013, according to Redfin.
Price growth also slowed: median luxury sale price rose 3.9%, down from 6.1% the previous year.
Economic uncertainty and volatile household wealth—especially after the April tariff shock—have made wealthy buyers more cautious.
Regional Trends
Dallas–Fort Worth: Prices returning to pre-pandemic norms; inventory rising; buyers rushing to purchase before interest-rate cuts drive prices up.
San Francisco Bay Area: August sales above $5 million fell 13% year-over-year.
Miami: Sales dropped 19.4%, despite a 9.8% rise in median luxury prices; low inventory is driving prices higher.
Tampa: Hurricane damage and rising inventory led to a 9.4% drop in sales and a 5.5% dip in prices.
Where Sales Are Rising
Indianapolis: Luxury sales rose 19.1%; inventory up 16.1%; homes selling quickly, including multimillion-dollar estates.
Fort Worth: Sales up 14%; listings jumped 25.7%; spec homes selling within days.
Buyer Behavior & Market Sentiment
Buyers in the $2.5M+ range are less rate-sensitive but more value-conscious.
Luxury prices, inflated during COVID, are now normalizing.
Life events (job changes, family growth, etc.) are pushing some sellers back into the market.
The Dekaif channel has 434 videos, but YouTube is only showing 275 to clients, whether logged in or not, whether yt-dlp or official access.
This isn't the first channel I've witnessed this, and weirder stuff, on. Another example is - it is accessible on Grayjay, yet not on YouTube, meaning (I think) that publicly shared videos are being deindexed, and yet they are still hosted.
You used to be able to take the video code from the URL (everything after '?v=' and before '&') and get the exact video in search results. Not now. The second YouTuber, Sparky, has 35 uploads, only 9 of which are visible. And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible. I don't even know how it came up using Grayjay but not YouTube or Revanced.
Basically, there's a TON of shady underhanded shit happening at YTHQ and everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee, Peertube or some platform that won't be clogged with AI. This is bad for everyone.
I'm posting it here mainly because I verified my findings with yt-dlp, and this new bs is successfully thwarting my attempts to archive.
3rd Oct edit: I am seeing massive differences in indexed videos versus archived videos. I am currently aggregating but the definitely affected videos range from 10% to 50%
All the stuff that doesn't make it to the main channel!
Contacts
Twitter: www.twitter.com/KaiffYT
Email: Kaif@saltraiders.com
For SR related emails: Partners@saltraiders.com
Website: saltraiders.com
YouTube is not doing good. I get flickering on Apple TV. On my Mac videos play without sound (computer isn’t muted) or they take way too long to load. Granted I don’t pay, but wow. Google is not doing so well.
I too see issues, but my clients are all some form of alternate app so I don't have a true baseline. On Grayjay some videos just stop loading halfway through, and I can't view it unless I switch to one of the other clients, and SmartTubeNext and YouTube with Sponsorblock both give me about a minute of black screen. NGL I prefer the black to unnecessarily invasive advertising
You shouldn't really have to pay, not when advertising is the way Google funds everything. Iirc advertising is 90% of their substantial income.
I am seeing more rules and system changes hurt creators, and more creators quit, complain about it, and/or actively recommend adblockers and Patreon donations.
and SmartTubeNext and YouTube with Sponsorblock both give me about a minute of black screen
I just read somewhere that it's because clients need to wait until the pre-roll ad ends. until that the servers will block requests to the actual video for your client
I'm not, but the sheer amount (nearly 50% in some cases) is suspicious. Save getting answers from the creators themselves, best I can do is keep collating data. Some of the affected channels' videos have no harmful content and millions of views per.. But I don't fully know yet.
Is there a reason you're not doing this? If I made income from you tube I'd want someone to draw my attention to this.
I'd think that a "hey, I noticed this weird thing, is that you delisting or is yt being shady?" type communication would be appreciated and help flesh out the picture.
I am not an established researcher, so I believe I have no legacy to justify a response from busy folk. I was referring less to myself not reaching out, and more to the unlikelihood of any responses. I am absolutely messaging creators who I see have a significant disparity between published and indexed videos.
Not sure these channels even are (they look like slop vids) , but YouTube is supposed to be taking the ban hammer to low effort and slop videos starting this month. A little housekeeping will be greatly appreciated, as the slop/low effort/"look at me bro!" videos have gotten out of hand.
It's ok: Google and all other ad-supported search is about to go the way of the dinosaur as soon as local AI search catches on. When your own PC runs a search for you, it basically googles on your behalf and you never see those ads.
Someone would have to pay for the API calls though. And that tends to mean either pay a subscription or view ads. There's no technical reason your local LLM couldn't call a search engine's API to give you an ad-free search experience, and in fact you don't need an LLM to run a local ad-free search frontend. But there is a commercial reason, namely that whoever runs the search engine API will want payment. It would be some progress to have an ad-free search subscription, but it wouldn't get around all the megacorp fuckery that decides what search results you get.
Not to mention that the scraped indexes can and should be shared. Unfortunately what OP is seeing may be a move to thwart this type of brute force scraping, and might resolve as dynamically assigned domain addresses, where the URL of a set object is temporarily assigned and streamed only to a single or group of IP addresses that request it within a given timeframe before being rotated out until found in search again and then reassigned a new URL, etc. This is a frankly stupid use of resources, but can effectively be used to prevent crowdsourced indexes from proliferating, and to punish IPs or even MAC addresses or browser fingerprints associated with downloading and reuploading videos which almost certainly have stegnographic fingerprinting embedded that associate with who the video was served up to at the time it was downloaded.
Also, you know what would make this all even worse? Laws requiring that people prove their identity in order to consume content or pull videos... just like age verification laws now being passed in several countries. What a coincidence.
It's not going to change everything. Why would you ever use an LLM for anything information related ever? I can make up wrong answers just as fast as it can.
I really hope that this is a joke and I'm making a fool of myself.
You're joking right? "making up answers" in the case of search results just means a dead link. If you get a good link 99% of the time and don't have to use an enshitified service, that's good enough for 99% of people. Try again is the worst case scenario.
Finding search terms is the one task I consistently use LLMs for. They did not say that though, they said replacing traditional search with LLMs, that traditional search is about to "go the way of the dinosaur". I dont trust any local LLM to accurately recall anything it read.
Not to mention that once we gain dependence on LLMs, which is something big tech is trying really hard to achieve right now, it will not be all that difficult for the creators to introduce biases that give us many of the same problems as search engines. Product placement, political censorship, etc. There would not be billions of dollars in investment if they thought they weren't going to get anything out of it.
(the best) Local LLMs are FOSS though, if bias is introduced it can be detected and the user base can shift away to another version, unlike centralized cloud LLMs that are private silos.
I also don't think LLMs of any kind will fully replace search engines, but I do think they will be one of a suite of ML tools that will enable running efficient local (or distributed) indexing and search of the web.
First of all, they are not FOSS. I know it seems tangential to the discussion, but it's important because biases cannot be reliably detected without the starting data. You should also not trust humans to see bias because humans themselves are quite biased and will generally assume that the LLM is behaving correctly if it aligns with their biases, which can be shifted in various ways over time, too.
Second, local LLMs don't have the benefit of free software where we can modify them freely or make forks if there are problems. Sure, there's fine tuning, but you don't get full control that way, and you need access to your own tuning data set. We would really just have the option to switch products, which doesn't put us much further ahead than using the closed off products available online.
I'm all for adding them to the arsenal of tools, but they are deceptively difficult to use correctly, which makes it so hard for me to be excited about them. I hardly see anyone using these tools for the purposes they are actually good for, and the things they are good for are also deceptively limited.
Google search: "scientific articles about (whatever)" Then you get tons of ads and irrelevant results.
LLM search: "Find me scientific articles about (whatever)" Then you get just the titles and links (with maybe a short summary).
It's 100% better and you don't have to worry about hallucinations since you it's wasn't actually trying to find an answer... Just helping you perform a search.
I agree with local search, but I prefer more of a traditional algorithm-based search to generative AI. A solution I've seen (that is far more attainable than building your own search engine) is hosting a metasearch engine, which collates results from search engines, based on your own preferences of results. Or perhaps using someone else's established server if their preferences align with yours. Localised (on-device) search will be a gamechanger in many ways, but I believe a meaningful version of that is far off and potentially impractical to implement.
youtube fucking sucks now. Seriously. All i ever used it for was NEWS/POLITICS and HISTORY/RELIGION and it asked me for my id. The only childish thing i can even imagine it flagged was frogger overwatch. Now, as im downloading stuff, a bunch of the political content i like is 'unavailable' and near impossible to download. Join peertub. Please.
Youtube seems to be blocking access to a seriously large amount of publicly listed videos
Creators can choose whether their videos should be accessible and whether they should be listed anywhere. Which you don't seem to have ruled out being the case here. So I'd say you're jumping the gun here.
I have seen channels which delisted (and later privated entirely) almost all their videos for legitimate reasons, so it's certainly possible.
And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible.
This one is almost certainly just delisted.
everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee
The fediverse has its own video platform (peertube).
PeerTube is a hard sell. Finding things to watch on there is a pain since most instances are trash. Only ones I can think of that are worth using are diode.zone and tilvids. Tilvids is nice but a lot of their material is uploaded from YouTube and the sponsorships are still embedded. If Sponsorblock was configured to work with it though it would be interesting.
You can always roll your own instance if you have the hardware to spare. I don't recommend hosting on a VPS as that defeats the purpose of self-hosting as you're hosting on someone else's computer at the end of the day and that's no different than signing up for an existing public instance and posting there, other than you're paying for that VPS.
I'm talking from a viewer's perspective. There is very little I can watch on PeerTube. Now, if I wanted to share videos on the internet as a hobby PeerTube would be the obvious choice. But as a platform to spend time in, it falls short.
It's not PeerTube's fault, it's just sadly Google can walk all over YouTubers all year long and they wouldn't even consider publishing on multiple platforms. It's quite telling that only YouTube competetor that got any traction at all is one with a video library mirroring tool so that the channel owner never has to touch it.
Unless you've got Google/Alphabet money, and a willingness to be in the red for years before maybe becoming profitable, it's essentially impossible to create a platform like YouTube.
I think it is possible, either by charging money, or by decentralizing like PeerTube. The thing is, it doesn't matter. YouTubers won't switch, they just don't care.
You also can't download them without JS, most alt front-ends are broken, and Google is pushing their own AI slop now.
How long before Widevine enters the picture and alt front-ends and downloaders are killed off entirely, you're forced to watch YT only through the official client on approved software/hardware if you want full quality (like Netflix), and even competing platforms are stamped out by the ability to mirror YT content over being taken away by that DRM if it's actually implemented?
I also wouldn't be surprised if Google straight-up made YT a paid service that you had to have Android-dev-style verification to create anything on, successfully turning it into the Netflix clone they so desperately want it to be.
Precisely. I know some creators (Sam Time, Legal Eagle) that dual upload to Odysee as a failsafe for YouTube's inevitable censorship, and Odysee being a decentralised space that prioritises freedom of speech means I see it as a good alternative, or stepping stone to Peertube.
Back in the day creators had their own blog websites for folk to access and subscribe. I believe this fragmentation is the best solution when aggregating sites like YouTube and Dailymotion become hostile.
Sadly Odysee being a place for freedom of speech in practise just means more hate speech, bigotry and fascism which is why we will never recommend it over peertube which is well moderated by actual people.
Low effort/slop videos are different than your right-wing mis/disinformation, conspiracy theory, white supremacy videos though. By all the platforms giving Trump back his accounts they have said they are OK with those again, it's just the low effort/slop they care about. However, if those circles cross, I'm sure AI slop spreading hate would be now OK.
True. I appreciate the call for free speech, but ever since the hateful have upped their public image significantly I learned that minimal tolerance moderation of said hateful folk would make for a much healthier society. I've also heard Odysee has been filling up with AI slop. Maybe there should be a dedicated switch for the user to decide if they want to see AI gen content. If we can't stop them, we can ignore them and close the door
Without disinformation, people will naturally work to improve democracy which will eventually expand it to the economy (socialism), so disinformation is arguably a necessary evil to protect the capital class from democracy
I tried Kodi with Libelec but it's still so jank. The Plex app is broken, there is no invidious or YouTube app I found that works. And sometimes it just "thinks" forever and I need to get up and unplug it.
I saw that Plasma Bigscreen was revived and it looks promising, but they don't have a release yet.
Lineageos I have several of these and they work great for the price. It is still android TV if that's an issue, but they run fine without Google services for jellyfin, kodi and smartube.
Amlogic GXL/GXM/G12*/SM1 Family Devices
- Your warranty is now void.
- You have been warned.
- Use at your own risk.
Introduction:
This is the Official Lineage OS thread for the Amlogic...
Oh cool, thanks, it works with hdmi-cec? Android is not an issue exactly, I basically just want something to replace my TV "apps" but without ads and more private.
EDIT: did not fully read the comment. I have a raspbnerry pi.
Thanks, I found a LineageOS build of Android TV I'm currently trying to get it up and running. CEC seems like it might be broken however which would sadly be a dealbreaker.
I use mythtv (FOSS) and it's fine as a PVR (schedule, record and playback broadcast TV) with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun network-attached tuner. It also has playback for downloaded files but I prefer to use mpv for that. Mine is still connected to the internet and I use firefox/transmission for youtube and other functions.
I wasn't going to reply, but when I thought about it, you can install wayland on top of linux. The kind of benefit you're getting out of this is better driver support (from the kernel) & less resource usage (lightweight distro + wayland on background = 2GB~ish ram usage). Also it'd be easier to get Gapps running (if you need it) on waydroid rather than rooting lineageOS TV to do so. I tried it once & it was more than enough for light gaming, IDK about plex but hardware acceleration is supported since there's no VM tech utilized (nividia isn't supported tho).
Most linux distros with wayland should be enough, but check Wayland install page just to be sure it's well supported (by distro), I see void-linux & ether configured labwc or KDE plasma should fit your needs better.
??? No? I said you can run way waydroid on a Wayland Desktop to natively run streaming apps on your RPI5. (Plex, Youtube, netflix or whatever service you're on) This has nothing to do with your TV remotes nor hdmi-cec. (reads description again) oh...
No, IR input support is now integrated into the linux kernel [BPF] & can be manually done with LIRC, Well I don't have a RPI to test this nor use my TV remote to control media, just for volume; Can't say for sure if Rasbarian supports most remotes ether, but LineageOS TV Does (Scroll),
Sorry, I can't help with that, however, a budget, 2.4GHz, wireless mouse was enough for me, maybe KDE Connect or Unified Remote (non-free) can help if you wanna use your phone instead.
CEC support is up to the (media) software &or OS you're using, waydroid is a container-like "runtime" to boot android on linux without virtualization, it's not a an OS that supports IR input or shutting your TV with your TV Remote, I don't think most desktop enviroment does support it nor must, KDE Bigscreen might but it's a DE tailored for such use...
Ah ok I got it thanks, yes the goal is to replace the apps on my TV as seamlessly as possible.
KDE bigscreen says it supports CEC but there is no official release yet. I still might give it a shot. I actually tried the Android TV you linked to (which also says it supports CEC) but it doesn't work. I know the hardware supports it because Libelec was seamless.
Came to PieFed.social from Lemm.ee about a month ago. Currently only using PieFed on my desktop because my brief Android client search gave me a non-working app.
I normally sort by Top 12 Hours and on my phone (Lemmy Connect logged into sh.itjust.works) I can see NSFW post once I get down to posts with less than 100 upvotes. Using PieFed.social on my desktop I don't see them. I checked settings but nothing popped out to me.
Yeah but you are using piefed.social which doesn't have any NSFW communities, so the only nsfw posts are occasional random things.
If you go to crust.piefed.social/auth/insta… and then filter by 'NSFW content available' you'll see the instances that allow NSFW communities. Of those feddit.online has been around the longest and will have the deepest back catalogue but any of them will be fine for casual browsing.
This is a staging area where we test out the latest PieFed code, before releasing it. Expect occasional breakages which will be more than compensated for by the exhilaration of living on the edge!
There really isn't a feature for it. I've been asking for this for a long time. I just want a box I can toggle with effectively 3 options: I don't want to see NSFW posts, I want to see NSFW posts when they occur, I want to see ONLY nsfw posts.
Reports coming in that the U.S. federal government has officially entered shutdown. Which services get hit first? How long does this drag out? Who blinks?
Mi è capitato, a caso, di trovare qualcosa di strano su YouTube stasera, del tipo… Jubilee, eccetto che non è una roba ragebait fatta per fare soldi a discapito della morale aumentando la polarizzazione politica per mezzo di “dibattiti” in malafede con conseguente peggioramento del mondo, ma tipo l’esatto opposto…! Non direi che è perfettissimo, […]
“Transgender: A Transitioned Woman and a MAGA Mama”
Mi è capitato, a caso, di trovare qualcosa di strano su YouTube stasera, del tipo… Jubilee, eccetto che non è una roba ragebait fatta per fare soldi a discapito della morale aumentando la polarizzazione politica per mezzo di “dibattiti” in malafede con conseguente peggioramento del mondo, ma tipo l’esatto opposto…!Non direi che è perfettissimo, ma certamente un’occhiata se la merita, in un contesto in cui l’unica alternativa sono la distruzione (“liberal destroyed!“), l’umiliazione (“conservative humiliated!“), e gira che ti rigira non c’è mai conversione di più gente verso il bene assoluto… 💔
(In questo caso sulla questione transgender, ma non è questo il punto che voglio fare.) A primo impatto pareva un altro di quei video che puzzano, ma, guardando meglio, vedendo che ruota attorno al fatto di “un modo diverso di fare politica“, effettivamente devo dire che non viene dal gabinetto, affatto. L’idea pare sia che, per argomenti che oggettivamente non sono politicamente dibattibili in buona coscienza — perché è buono dibattere sul sistema economico migliore, o sul sistema elettorale, o sull’urbanistica, o su tremila altre cose, ma mai e poi mai sulla natura delle persone o sui diritti o cose di quel tipo — appunto non si fa un dibattito, ma una conversazione basata su ascolto, immedesimazione, ed empatia (questa che negli Stati Uniti viene trattata come una parolaccia… e nel resto dell’occidente non a tal punto, ma comunque con disprezzo, siamo rovinati). 😿
Ora… un po’ di fetore comunque l’ho percepito, ma spero sia perché questi qui ancora devono prendere la mano (questo è il loro primo video, ne hanno anche altri più nuovi ma non li ho visti). Per dire, la signora nera, per i primi 20 minuti buoni, come si evince gravemente dal linguaggio del corpo, ha tenuto questo brutto atteggiamento di superiorità e distacco, che ovviamente è l’opposto dell’accettazione che si voleva raggiungere (e che si è raggiunta, menomale, per una buona volta) alla fine… e non penso che le si possa dare la colpa di questo perché, come si vede, è una persona normale, che è arrivata lì con purtroppo il cervello lavato da idee di odio da parte dei politici, però credo il moderatore avrebbe dovuto tentare di spegnerla un po’. (E poi, quando si è resa più alla pari dell’altra tizia, ha menzionato delle cose che paiono proprio false; di nuovo, non colpa sua, perché appare in buona fede, e dunque la vera colpa è di chi gli ha fatto credere le stronzate… però il fact-checking live ci potrebbe stare.) 🥱
Insomma… chi mai lo avrebbe detto che, forse, se si spera di rendere il mondo un posto migliore, e distruggere, eliminare, annichilire (in questo caso si, è lecito sperarlo proprio in questi termini) tutto ciò che rappresenta l’odio e la divisione umana, non bisogna rispondere al male con il male, ma con il bene… e quindi, con oggi abbiamo magicamente risolto la merda nel mondo??? 😳
…Purtroppo, a fine post, è il momento delle cose tristi: tutto ciò temo sia proprio utopia. Se è servita 1 (una) ora di conversazione per unire così due persone altrimenti radicalmente incomprese, temo sia impossibile risanare l’umanità intera; ed è un problema, perché questa sarebbe condizione necessaria se si spera di eradicare davvero il male… perché esso è come un virus latente che tutti portiamo dentro, e che in ogni momento può attecchire in noi o contagiare altri, e dunque se non lo si elimina in un solo colpo non lo si eliminerà mai. E purtroppo lo sappiamo bene: 2000 anni fa ci avrebbe provato Gesù Cristo, a salvare l’umanità, e lo hanno crocifisso… poi si può forse dire che ci ha provato Gandhi a suo modo, e lo hanno perseguitato… E ora io quindi sono estremamente triste, quindi buonanotte così. (Malanotte, cioè; spero davvero che nel sonno io mi trasformi in un gatto, così da non dover avere mai più a che fare con questa umanità intrinsecamente corrotta, di cui vorrei non essere parte anche io, perché mi rendo conto di avere anche io i miei difetti e non riuscire ad essere perfetta come vorrei tutti lo fossimo… 😭)
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
mysite.com points to a server which only opens port 443, and each connection will need to go through that and deal with Caddy reverse proxy.
I want to host more services on it.
Let's say I want to host an email service, the easiest thing would be using a subdomain such as mail.mysite.com and reverse proxy each connection to the internal port on which the service run.
Same with a chat service chat.mysite.com.
But for the sake of readability it would be much better to simply have username@mysite.com than username@mail.mysite.com or username@chat.mysite.com.
reverse proxying every request from a subdomain to the right port is pretty straightforward with Caddy, also if you use cloudflare you can proxy with cloudflare each subdomain and have auto SSL certificate without further set up, which is amazing!
But what if I do want my services to be accessed through mysite.com directly instead of a specific per-service subdomain?
Some federated services also have two separate ports for server requests and client requests, which further complicates the process..
Is this service specific and must configured individually for each service? Or there is a way to tell caddy that a specific request going through mysite.com should be redirected through port X.X.X.X? Is there a way Caddy can recognize where requests need to be directed?
You don't ssh in at ssh.mysite.com. Port 443 is form HTTPS traffic only. SMTP and IMAP traffic will require additional ports exposed that don't need to go through caddy. Only the web UIs for your email will be exposed on the subdomains via caddy.
Registering a mail domain is done through DNS records too not via caddy.
It can be done, but only if the service your trying to use makes all of its requests using a specific port. There's no way to do it with a reverse proxy to my knowledge though. I've got both my email and my blog at myname.tld, for example. I just had to configure both of them with DNS.
If what your trying to do is have all requests for one port be directed to another port... your out of luck. I've been trying for ages to have nginx forward all 443 traffic on proxy.mynane.tld to 30018 and 80 traffic on proxy.myname.tld to 30024 but no luck so far.
If you've been trying for a while and still haven't gotten it working, then I'm probably missing something regarding your requirements.
But at first glance, it seems like it would be solved with 2 server blocks, 1 for 80, 1 for 443, each with their own proxy config passing / to their respective target ports.
So, you want to have two services accessible via the same URL? How do you want that to work? Can you give a list of services and the URLs you would like to access them by?
At least for mail, its actually not too hard, because SMTP/POP etc are all on different ports, so you can host your mail at mysite.com, and still have a website at the same address.
But for the sake of readability it would be much better to simply have username@mysite.com than username@mail.mysite.com
That's kind of unrelated. You can configure a mail server at mail.mysite.com to handle mail to/from username@mysite.com. You don't need a proxy for that.
But what if I do want my services to be accessed through mysite.com directly instead of a specific per-service subdomain?
If they're all http(s) services, then that should be possible. I don't know anything about caddy, but with apache or nginx you can proxy based on path, so I'd assume you can with caddy also.
For example mysite.com/chat could route to your chat app, mysite.com/webmail route to your webmail app, etc. But this isn't necessarily plug-and-play, because depending on the app you might need to set up proxy rules for cookie rewriting, link rewriting, etc.
If you want to proxy non-http(s) traffic from 1 port to multiple destination apps, then it gets a LOT more complicated.
Doing the /service_name thing can get really messy if the web service has non-relative links. It gets very messy trying to do rewrite rules to fix that. Wouldnt recommend it.
Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
🌟 Community Highlights 🌟
!riotporn@slrpnk.net - Showcasing and celebrating resistance against regimes.
!sea@slrpnk.net - A community for Southeast Asia.
!firefly@slrpnk.net - A place to discuss the shiniest damn place in the 'Verse.
!outland@slrpnk.net - Community for the vintage comic strip Outland, a left-leaning comic for its era.
2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ Solarpunks!
We were so close, we nearly announced this last month, but since the instance's founding in March 2022, 2000 accounts have been created on this server. That number doesn't mean much beside being big and round, but it's still fun to celebrate.
The most important numerical statistic is active users, where we're coming up on 400/month. More important than all of that is the kind and quality of your activity on this server and across the Fediverse. We're extremely proud of the quality of posts and level of discourse members of this server are contributing to our shared and distributed social media experiment. Thanks so much for joining us on this adventure.
🧙♀️ Meta Post Image Breakdown: W.I.T.C.H. ✊
On October 29, 1969, officers of the court bound Black Panther leader Bobby Seale in rope, chained him to his defendant's chair, filled his mouth with gauze, and wrapped it tightly around his mouth and jaw. He had demanded his constitutional rights to speech and to be defended by a lawyer. The bigoted, racist, and fascist judge's order shocked the world, inspiring outrage and protest. That Halloween, women dressed as witches organized an impromptu act of guerilla theater:
Slowly, solemnly, the Witches filed around the Federal Building in Chicago's Loop, faces painted white, staring straight ahead, flowing black capes swirling around them. "Our sister justice lies chained and tied," they chanted. "We curse the ground on which she died."
This was one of the many hexes for which the ephemeral organization known as W.I.T.C.H. is famous. The post image is a frame from the Documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014), of a coven in Washington D.C. performing a hex on U.S. president Richard Nixon's inauguration on the steps of the United States Capitol building.
W.I.T.C.H. most often stands for "Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell," but could just as easily mean "Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History," or "Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays." This seasonal political theater has seen a recent resurgence, adding "Welcoming Immigrants & Their Children Here" to the auspicious name.
While white facepaint and black masks were integral to the theatre in the 60's and 70's, a thick black veil has become popular during recent events.
Our Monthly Meta posts are sometimes home to more in-depth sections written by our admins. Many of our newer members may not be familiar with some of the past guides, so for those interested, we've compiled a list below.
February 2025 - How to avoid Big Tech and maximize your digital security & privacy
June 2025 - A brief guide on Security Culture & Adopting FOSS as prefiguration
July 2025 - How to build community with fun projects!
💬 Open Discussion 💬
Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction 😀
SLRPNK Community Resources:
Community Wiki - Moderators, you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
::: spoiler ⬛ Union Resources 🟥 These are unions from around the world who can train you to become an effective organizer to form a grassroots union with your co-workers!
Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
This June, we'll be discussing Security Culture, as well as the importance of Free & Open-Source Software in building the world we want to live in. And let's give a shoutout to Pride Month of course! 🏳️🌈
🌟 Community Highlights 🌟
!Cooperatives@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - All things about democratic businesses that serve their communities first
!Zines@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - A place to share tiny, self-published texts (usually small printable magazines)
!Abc@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - News about incarcerated anarchists & resources for prisoner support.
🏳️🌈 The First Pride was a Riot ✊
The month of June is widely celebrated as Pride Month because of the Stonewall Inn riot on June 28, 1969. Just yesterday, videos are spreading across the internet of an ICE Raid on the Buona Forchetta restaurant was pushed back by a crowd of San Diego's South Park residents. It's important to reflect on the lasting systemic change that can be achieved through community cohesion and spontaneous revolt.
As transgender people are currently being specifically targeted by the current fascist wave, I'd like to draw attention to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera - two prominent participants in the Stonewall Riot that created Pride. Pride has always been and must always be trans-inclusive. Attacks on transgender people are an attack on our communities, and if the attacks succeed, other sections of the queer community will soon follow.
To all our fellow solarpunks, happy Pride!
🤐 Security Culture 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
Perhaps you, dear Solarpunk reader, could help boost that cycle by sharing your own examples of best practices, lessons learned, or traps to watch out for online in the comments below. Security culture is a collective effort, so our best defense is sharing our knowledge with others!
We'll start it off with some ::: spoiler General Advice * Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state * Be careful about who you meet online * Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN) * Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail * agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don't have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary. :::
But we're excited to see what ideas, suggestions and advice you may have for safer patterns of behavior to use online. 😀
💽 Free & Open-Source Software as Praxis 🖥️
I think it’s safe to assume most of us grew up surrounded by proprietary software, it was simply what software was. Normal. Cozy. Familiar.
Our current reality is anything but normal, with our lives dominated by , and much of it damned difficult to escape after dedicating years or even decades to committing it to muscle memory. But part of being a solarpunk is choosing to stare the failings of our society in the face and saying “No more. There has to be a better way.” Despite how difficult it may be to change our current habits.
Free & Open-Source Software (FOSS) is a candle in the dark, and luckily for us has never burned brighter than today. It gives us a pure example of mutual aid in action, built with the cooperation of tens of thousands of individuals who offer their work, often for free, to all who wish to use or build upon it. We won’t be able to achieve a solarpunk future without it, and any victory it achieves is a tangible step toward prefiguring the world toward our shared vision.
So how can we help it along its way? The first step is to use it! Let’s give some examples of alternatives to popular software you may use or even rely upon (click the spoiler below to expand it):
::: spoiler 🔽 FOSS Alternatives 🔽 | Proprietary 🚫 | FOSS ✅ | Links 🌐 | |:--- | :--- | ---:| | WIndows & MacOS | Linux - Perhaps the most essential piece of software to switch to to avoid extreme surveillance with the addition of Recall in Windows, making it a huge liability if you're are an activist of any kind, or even anyone you talk to who also uses Windows 11, as it'll be recording on their end as well. Linux Mint is the most beginner friendly version of Linux, and it's what I'll be recommending and link to. | Linux Mint Website & | | Google Android | GrapheneOS & LineageOS - GrapheneOS is only available for Google Pixel Phones, but it's the most secure option. LineageOS is available to a much wider variety of phones. | GrapheneOS Website & LineageOS Website & | | Google Maps | CoMaps - Currently in the process of forking from Organic Maps, but should become the premier alternative soon, so keep an eye out for its release | CoMaps Website | | Google Chrome | LibreWolf - A security and privacy focused version of Firefox. Can sometimes break websites, so have an install of Firefox too! | LibreWolf Website | | Adobe Photoshop | Krita - with the recent addition of the G’mic Toolset which adds powerful features like and Crop Assist, it can serve admirably as a Photoshop replacement, especially if you enable the Photoshop shortcuts! | Krita Website & | | Adobe Premiere | Kdenlive - not quite 1-to-1 in a professional sense, but with the use of Proxy Clips, should cover most people's needs. | Kdenlive Website & | | Adobe Illustrator | Inkscape - Excellent vector art editor that even does things Adobe Illustrator can't. | Inkscape Website & | | Paint.NET | Pinta | Pinta Website | | Obsidian Notes | TrilliumNext Notes | TrilliumNext Github & | | Scrivener | NovelWriter - A bit different since it uses Markdown instead of being a WYSIWYG editor, but mimics most of the functionality of Scrivener in other ways. Very stable and well made app. | NovelWriter Website & | :::
Alright, so now we're using some sweet FOSS stuff, but if we want the FOSS ecosystem to improve or gain more adoption even faster, here's what else we can do to help:
If you're financially able to, seriously consider donating to the projects you use! Most are almost entirely reliant on user contributions to support themselves, meaning you'd have a big impact even with a small donation!
Contribute to projects directly with your fancy skills: Most projects would be elated by volunteers capable of translating documentation or apps into different languages, contributing code, or even just providing good bug reports.
Spread the word! Show your circle how well these alternatives work, make cool stuff with it, and mention what you used if you share it around to help prove that it's a viable alternative.
We're likely at a critical crossroads in history as we tackle the polycrisis that's encroaching into our lives more each year. If we're to successfully tackle them and free ourselves from the grip that is our current system of exploitation and domination, we'll need to preconfigure as much of the world as we can, as quickly as we can. FOSS is a foundational component of that preparation, without which we expose ourselves to the likely possibility of our tools betraying us, derailing our attempts before they have a chance to gain a foothold.
If you're able to set aside an afternoon, I implore you to try out these alternatives with the hopes of switching over. There is nothing else they fear more.
🗣️ Open Discussion 🗪
Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction 😀
SLRPNK Community Resources:
Community Wiki - Moderators: you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
A well-written bug report is essential in software testing to facilitate effective communication between testers and developers, leading to improved program quality and user satisfaction.
Honestly, could be worse. Hydrogen is a greenwashing scam anyway.
The bad part is that funding for wind and solar projects is apparently being cancelled, too.
On an unrelated note, I had to read that article with some bullshit popup about ToS demanding binding arbitration and a class action waiver superimposed on it because I refused to tap "accept." Binding arbitration and a class-action waiver, just to read a damn web page! Fucking delusional.
On the contrary, hydrogen itself is fossil fuel propaganda. They sell it on its "potential" for being generated via electrolysis using renewable electricity ("green hydrogen"), but in practice the vast majority of it comes from cracking natural gas ("gray hydrogen"). And that "potential" will never come to fruition, because by the time it would battery electric vehicle ("BEV") tech and infrastructure will be so far ahead there won't be a point anymore.
We should just face facts: a hydrogen car is, in practice, a CNG car, except that you've converted the fuel into a form that makes it (even more of) a pain in the ass to handle for no good reason.
If anything, if we're really Hell-bent on non-BEV solutions then we should go the opposite way and work on synthesizing "green hydrogen" into hydrocarbon liquid fuel so that we can use it with the fueling infrastructure and internal-combustion vehicles we already have, making that stuff carbon-neutral.
Except that's total bullshit. In fact, it's literally same argument used against BEVs in the past. There was a time when any talk of BEVs were shouted down by people who kept insisting that the grid is being powered by coal or natural gas, and that BEVs were nothing more than "coal-powered cars" and the like. But now we know that's nonsense. Electricity can be made green, whereas fossil fuels cannot. Same is true of hydrogen.
The other point is that we are push hard towards the limits of BEVs can really achieve. We'll never see long-ranged airplanes powered by batteries, and same can be said of ocean-going ships. Many industries stand no chance of switching to batteries either. They either require a fire source, or need the chemistry provided by hydrogen. Nor will the grid reach zero emissions without long-duration energy storage, which will require hydrogen in most cases. So if you actually think this problem through, you'll realize that batteries alone are only going to solve a small part of the problem. Everything else will require hydrogen in some way.
E-fuels will require prodigious amounts of green hydrogen to exist at scale. They are produced by combining H2 with CO2. While I don't rule them out as a solution, it will require massive investments in hydrogen first. It is not an excuse to dismiss hydrogen.
E-fuels will require prodigious amounts of green hydrogen to exist at scale. They are produced by combining H2 with CO2. While I don’t rule them out as a solution, it will require massive investments in hydrogen first. It is not an excuse to dismiss hydrogen.
It doesn't require "massive investments in hydrogen," though! It just requires electrolyzing the hydrogen, and that's the easy part. It can be done right there in the same facility as the Fischer-Tropsch reactions, so the end product you're distributing everywhere is a convenient liquid and all you need to handle the hydrogen gas itself is a short chunk of pipe going between reaction vessels.
The "massive investments in hydrogen" for the "hydrogen economy" are all the absurd cryogenic or ludicrously high-pressure storage tanks to build out the entire distribution and fuel station network that we'd need to use actual H~2~ as an energy storage medium instead of just an intermediate step in an industrial process. None of it is necessary for synthetic liquid fuels.
Having enough electrolyzers for that is still a huge investment. Plenty of naysayers have said, and still are saying, that this alone is impossible. Also, if we can make the Fischer-Tropsch process cost-effective for making synthetic fuels, then green hydrogen would have already become really cheap by then.
No one is wedded to the idea of always using pure H2 for everything. The pro-H2 position is simply pointing out that green hydrogen is necessary for solving climate change, even if that means making synthetic fuels in the end. But it is worth saying that using pure H2 is not some huge challenge. Having to use cryogenic fuels or high pressure tanks are already possible in cars today.
Having enough electrolyzers for that is still a huge investment. Plenty of naysayers have said, and still are saying, that this alone is impossible.
Wat?
An electrolytic cell is just a couple of chunks of metal stuck in some water and hooked up to a voltage source, plus some tubes to collect the gases. It's so simple elementary school kids could build one in science class, and (unlike the proton exchange membrane in a fuel cell) requires no exotic materials or complicated-to-manufacture components.
No one is wedded to the idea of always using pure H2 for everything. The pro-H2 position is simply pointing out that green hydrogen is necessary for solving climate change, even if that means making synthetic fuels in the end.
If that's true, we've been talking past each other and don't disagree as much as it seemed. But I'm not convinced it is. Every time I've seen folks talking about the "hydrogen economy," it's in the context of building out a shitload of infrastructure for carting gaseous H~2~ around, with zero mention of making synthetic liquid fuels.
And that latter part is the point I care about: it's true that batteries are never gonna be viable for stuff like aviation, but gaseous H~2~ fuel cells won't be either. The real future for that stuff looks a lot like the present, except using non-fossil feedstocks to make the same sorts of fuels we're already using. That could mean fuel synthesized from hydrogen, or biofuel, or some mix of both -- it doesn't even matter as long as it performs the same as the Jet A or whatever you're trying to replace -- but it's definitely gonna be a liquid that's easy to handle with the infrastructure we already have and it's probably gonna be burned in the same sorts of combustion engines we're already using, not reacted in a fuel cell.
The goal is carbon-neutral fuel made from non-fossil sources, for those use-cases batteries aren't good for. Hydrogen is only part of one possible solution, and a pretty incidental part at that. Talking about the "hydrogen economy" is missing the point.
But it is worth saying that using pure H2 is not some huge challenge. Having to use cryogenic fuels or high pressure tanks are already possible in cars today.
It's "possible," sure, but at huge cost and complexity that means it's flat out dumb compared to using a liquid fuel. And that's never gonna change.
By the way, I'd like to get back to my original "greenwashing scam" point for a minute. Consider that there are two orthogonal issues here:
the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable "green" H~2~ or biofuels)
the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With "the hydrogen economy," a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we'll get to later, even though transitioning from "gray" to "green" hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn't trivial at all.
Meanwhile, with liquid fuels and combustion engines, the latter is a solved problem, so there's no excuse to direct less than full attention to the former.
So if you're an entity with a vested interest in fossil fuel extraction, what're you gonna do? You're gonna push for hydrogen, of course, because it provides a whole extra set of distracting issues for engjneers and tree-huggers to occupy themselves with that aren't getting down to the brass tacks of actually replacing the fossil feedstock with a sustainable one.
An electrolytic cell is just a couple of chunks of metal stuck in some water and hooked up to a voltage source, plus some tubes to collect the gases. It’s so simple elementary school kids could build one in science class, and (unlike the proton exchange membrane in a fuel cell) requires no exotic materials or complicated-to-manufacture components.
You and I might know that, but the loudest critics of hydrogen do not. They really think that this step is impossible.
If that’s true, we’ve been talking past each other and don’t disagree as much as it seemed. But I’m not convinced it is. Every time I’ve seen folks talking about the “hydrogen economy,” it’s in the context of building out a shitload of infrastructure for carting gaseous H2 around, with zero mention of making synthetic liquid fuels.
Just to be clear, green synthetic fuels are a huge ask. We will need direct air capture of CO2 before it is feasible at scale. It is a technology only now coming into view, and is still effectively impossible at this very moment.
And that latter part is the point I care about: it’s true that batteries are never gonna be viable for stuff like aviation, but gaseous H2 fuel cells won’t be either. The real future for that stuff looks a lot like the present, except using non-fossil feedstocks to make the same sorts of fuels we’re already using.
For aviation, the conversation was always centered around either SAF (either biofuels or synthetic fuels) or LH2.
The goal is carbon-neutral fuel made from non-fossil sources, for those use-cases batteries aren’t good for. Hydrogen is only part of one possible solution, and a pretty incidental part at that. Talking about the “hydrogen economy” is missing the point.
FYI, batteries are themselves never going to be truly green. You will always have a dirty supply chain for their production and mining. Today, that requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to be used. Even if you really believe batteries can solve most of transportation, there will still be a major reason to abandon BEVs in transportation at some point in the future.
It’s “possible,” sure, but at huge cost and complexity that means it’s flat out dumb compared to using a liquid fuel. And that’s never gonna change.
Then you are making a similar mistake that the critics of electrolyzers are making: Forgetting that this is just a series of pipes and tanks, and those are dirt cheap to scale up. Cheaper than expanding the grid BTW. If we have to use gaseous or liquid hydrogen, we could easily do it.
By the way, I’d like to get back to my original “greenwashing scam” point for a minute. Consider that there are two orthogonal issues here: - the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable “green” H2 or biofuels) - the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With “the hydrogen economy,” a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we’ll get to later, even though transitioning from “gray” to “green” hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn’t trivial at all.
Transitioning from gray to green hydrogen is trivial. It's literally the same process that the grid is going through now. Nothing changes for the end-user, since it is the same thing to them, just like green electricity. In fact, the reason why this conversation is happening at all is because pro-hydrogen people are certain this step is easily solved.
Meanwhile, with liquid fuels and combustion engines, the latter is a solved problem, so there’s no excuse to direct less than full attention to the former.
Actually making green hydrocarbon fuels in the quantities needed is not a trivial problem. It is likely just as difficult, if not more so, than figuring out how to distribute pure hydrogen. It needs to be mentioned that we can pipe hydrogen just like natural gas. The infrastructure for that is already largely built.
So if you’re an entity with a vested interest in fossil fuel extraction, what’re you gonna do? You’re gonna push for hydrogen, of course, because it provides a whole extra set of distracting issues for engjneers and tree-huggers to occupy themselves with that aren’t getting down to the brass tacks of actually replacing the fossil feedstock with a sustainable one.
Fossil fuel companies would strongly oppose any kind of green energy. It's a conspiracy theory to think that would support the lesser of two apocalyptic outcomes. At best, only the pipeline companies would accept a transition to green hydrogen. But that is the same situation as the utility companies, and we don't spread conspiracy theories about the BEVs being a trick by the utility companies.
Just to be clear, green synthetic fuels are a huge ask. We will need direct air capture of CO2 before it is feasible at scale.
Okay, good point. I was thinking about how we have all that point-source CO~2~ coming from our legacy fossil fuel power plants, but we'd still also need a separate source of clean electricity. If we built that, it would make more sense to replace the fossil fuel plant with it than to augment it. You'd have to refine the transportation fuel from petroleum the normal way, but that's more efficient than doing the hydrogen synthesis thing using dirty electricity.
FYI, batteries are themselves never going to be truly green. You will always have a dirty supply chain for their production and mining. Today, that requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to be used. Even if you really believe batteries can solve most of transportation, there will still be a major reason to abandon BEVs in transportation at some point in the future.
Hey now, I didn't say that! I was just talking about the relative merits of batteries vs. fuel cells vs. normal combustion engines running on synthetic or bio fuels.
The real way to "solve most of transportation" is zoning reform that results in cities with walkable density. Bicycles come in second, and rail transit a distant third. Cars of any type are really only suitable for the 20% of the population that's rural, service vehicles, contractors and delivery people that need to haul bigger loads than fit on a cargo bike, etc.
(Speaking of which, once you reduce the demand for vehicle fuel that much, stuff like biodiesel made from waste veggie oil starts to look plentiful enough to make a decent dent in the market. That, at least, has been a solved problem for decades, and I've got the '90s VW and B100 fuel receipts to prove it.)
Anyway, I'm still pretty skeptical about building out an entire "economy" around storage and distribution of a gas that's so famously difficult to store that it can leak straight through metal, and more bullish than you are on synthetic fuel processes that we've known how to do for a century but just haven't bothered commercializing/scaling up because fossil fuels have been too cheap, but I'm kinda running out of motivation to continue defending my position on it. Thanks for the interesting discussion!
(Speaking of which, once you reduce the demand for vehicle fuel that much, stuff like biodiesel made from waste veggie oil starts to look plentiful enough to make a decent dent in the market. That, at least, has been a solved problem for decades, and I’ve got the ‘90s VW and B100 fuel receipts to prove it.)
Not even close. Even if all cars were eliminated, there will still be enormous commercial need for fuels, such as commercial trucking, shipping, aviation, mining, construction, etc. Not to mention that growing crops for biodiesel require massive energy inputs in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, farm equipment, etc. And of course, the farmland needed will displace food production, which is its own major problem.
Which is why biofuels can never really be taken seriously as part of a green economy.
Mostly unnecessary; that's what freight trains are for. (Short-haul from freight depot to loading dock can be handled by battery electric trucks.)
shipping
Believe it or not, sails! Obviously you're not going to get a 100% reduction because modern shipping companies wouldn't tolerate being becalmed (and I'm not falling for that article's "up to 90%" claim either, BTW -- I only picked that one to link because it has a decent overview of multiple different technologies), but it can still make a big dent in the fuel requirements.
aviation
Not much you can do about how much fuel a given flight uses... but you can reduce the number of flights by shifting travelers to high-speed passenger rail instead.
mining, construction, etc.
In other words, stuff that doesn't actually go anywhere (instead just driving back and forth on a site that probably has good access to the grid or a generator), which means it's (comparatively) real easy to electrify.
growing crops for biodiesel
Who said anything about that? I was talking about waste veggie oil.
I'm not sure you fully appreciate how large a reduction in automobile/trucking/shipping/construction equipment fuel use I'm proposing. I'm saying we should electrify or modal-shift so much of the demand that biodiesel made from just the stuff thrown out by restaurants and meat-packing plants and whatnot -- without even growing bespoke crops for it -- could satisfy most of what remains.
Believe it or not, sails! Obviously you’re not going to get a 100% reduction because modern shipping companies wouldn’t tolerate being becalmed (and I’m not falling for that article’s “up to 90%” claim either, BTW – I only picked that one to link because it has a decent overview of multiple different technologies), but it can still make a big dent in the fuel requirements.
No. Absolutely not. Sorry, but I cannot this claim seriously at all. We are not going to switch to sail ships again. I don't think you grasp just how big modern shipping actually is, and how impossible such an idea really is.
I doubt you have any grasp of how massive the problem really is, and how tiny your proposed solutions are in comparison. For instance, you keep citing the possibility of using waste cooking oil for biofuels. Well, the world only makes 3.7 billion gallons of that per year: oilandenergyonline.com/article…
Converted to barrels of oil equivalence, that's around 100 million barrels. The problem? That's literally one day's worth of petroleum consumption: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…
So you are about 0.3% of the way of solving the problem with that idea. Even if we could radically reduce petroleum use in the way you are imagining, that's still going to be a negligible impact. And the world's GDP is still growing. There's still multiple billions of people that will want to live like the first world. So demand for energy will skyrocket in the coming decades, not decrease. The problem will only get exponentially larger and harder to solve.
Ultimately, this is eco-Ludditism, and is more about wishing away the problem than actually solving it. Worse, you enabling the worse stereotypes about environmentalists. Namely that they are crazy wackos who aren't willing to engage with reality. Any solution must take seriously the idea that there >8 billion people on Earth now, and they all want to live in convenience.
We are not going to switch to sail ships again. I don’t think you grasp just how big modern shipping actually is, and how impossible such an idea really is.
I'm hopeful for wind powered shipping. An abundant H2 supply would accelerate this youtu.be/HFIzcPBGGEQ (1.2mw high altitude turbine thethered to large ship) that can scale even higher.
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the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable “green” H2 or biofuels)
the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With “the hydrogen economy,” a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we’ll get to later, even though transitioning from “gray” to “green” hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn’t trivial at all.
e-fuels or bio fuels are only short term solutions that are greenwashing because in the short term there is insufficient green H2 abundance. Their only value is to keep using your existing machinery.
For new machinery/transportation, a fuel cell is 2x the efficiency of a combustion engine. It is a range extender for any battery electric machine/home, with usable waste heat. A green economy involves people eventually going back to buy fossil fuels from drug stores, because there eventually are so few machines that use them. It is greenwashing to say "we want to keep everything the same except just have very expensive gasoline".
It's simply ok to make new H2/Ammonia consuming machines that displace older machines even as people are not forced to upgrade until they are ready. In long term, H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels in addition to being 2x the energy value with far more flexible use.
can be done right there in the same facility as the Fischer-Tropsch reactions
That happens to be fossil fuel propaganda for e-fuels. The process is a heat based industrial scale, where fossil fuel supply chains are already developed, and H2 "extraction" is part of a continuous heat process, and ample CO (often co2 processed into CO) generation is part of the process. Furthermore these are net 0 fuels which are not good enough, or as good as green fuels. A reasonable carbon tax is $300/ton. Direct air capture can reach costs below this amount, and compete with green transition, but only if the CO2 is permanently sequestered or solidified. 0 credit would be given if e-fuels CO2/CO content comes from fossil fuels or air capture.
Again, H2 or Ammonia, are the right long term fuels. They can be synthesized without the heat-based industrial processes, or at least use H2 for the heat. H2 economy means smaller scale production distributed closer to customers.
That happens to be fossil fuel propaganda for e-fuels.
No, it doesn't, because it's my own original thought and I'm not a fossil fuel propaganist.
I'm not talking about fucking cracking natural gas; I'm talking about building an electrolysis plant running on renewable electricity next to a former refinery doing all the hydrocarbon chemistry that has been adaptively reused to make synthetic fuel. The hydrogen is not supposed to be coming from petroleum!
Furthermore these are net 0 fuels which are not good enough, or as good as green fuels.
On the contrary, carbon neutral is absolutely good enough. Why the hell wouldn't it be?!
Again, H2 or Ammonia, are the right long term fuels.
Again, you're wrong about H~2~ because throwing out all the liquid fuel infrastructure we already have to switch to the most difficult-to-handle choice short of something hypergolic is just fundamentally stupid.
I don't know anything about ammonia; maybe it really is the right solution. It's kind of a different topic, though. Do you want to start talking about that instead?
carbon neutral is absolutely good enough. Why the hell wouldn’t it be?!
H2 (or green electricity) is carbon negative when it displaces FF use. unnecessary and expensive efuels are not. DAC is/can be carbon negative. But sequestering the CO2 is less expense than combining it with H2 into an efuel that negates the capture value of DAC. A carbon tax and dividend is a better social mechanism for cost (including climate cost) reductions even when investing in DAC reduces the tax collections and dividends.
throwing out all the liquid fuel infrastructure
A misunderstanding, that stems from extreme volume of disinformation, is that energy transition means "first we have to nuke all infrastructure from orbit" strawman, that is used to protect the status quo. Instead, less then no new dead ender energy infrastructure investments should be made during transition, and then one day, fairly far away, old inefficient machinery will not be worth repairing, even though access to fuel will continue existing for a very long time, and no matter how inneficient it is, a machine will be sold for something greater than 0 to someone who needs it for backup, or because it is cheap.
Just because you can't hold H2 in your existing beer mug container doesn't mean H2 handling is not a largely solved problem. Ammonia is higher energy density than liquid H2 with propane container handling solutions.
On the contrary, hydrogen itself is fossil fuel propaganda.
Obviously, an H2 economy has to be green H2 based. Pure H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels, because the latter is more steps. An airplane costs 100x in lifetime fuel as its purchase price, and H2 will always be cheaper in addition to more range due to it being the highest energy density fuel.
Much anti-H2 propaganda has come from BEV stockholder base. H2 is not a threat to BEVs, and can help refuel them quicker/cheaper in public chargers, but in no way does it stop the people who understand batteries to make better batteries.
Obviously, an H2 economy has to be green H2 based.
It has to be that to be a good thing, but it doesn't have to be that to exist. There are plenty of people pushing for spending $$$$$$$$$ on fuel cell cars and hydrogen fuel stations even when they're just being used with cracked natural gas for no actual environmental benefit.
It's like pretending your diesel car is green even though you've never put a drop of B100 in it.
Pure H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels, because the latter is more steps.
At the point of production, sure. At the point of use, not so much, since hydrogen is so much more difficult/expensive to store and transport.
more range due to [H~2~] being the highest energy density fuel.
Energy density by weight, not by volume. It doesn't do much good to have longer range if you can't carry enough cargo because too much of the plane is taken up by fuel tanks.
It has to be that to be a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be that to exist.
It actually does. Making H2 from NG, for heat/transportation, is using NG with extra expensive steps. H2 already exists as a fundamental chemical (including Ammonia) for agriculture and rocket fuel. An H2 economy is for expanded use, and green H2 is only economic possible case.
It doesn’t do much good to have longer range if you can’t carry enough cargo because too much of the plane is taken up by fuel tanks.
There are both processes which need it to decarbonize like nitrate fertilizer manufacturing, and things like cars where you can get the same outcome more cheaply via other methods, leaving hydrogen based systems as greenwashing.
On the whole, this is not great.
And I'm unwilling to ditch Bloomberg; they're doing a meaningful chunk of the environmental tech reporting right now, and gift links like this one enable almost everyone to access it.
You should let go of your BEV obsession too. Hydrogen cars will be very cost effective once the technology get scaled up. FCEVs can be cheaper than ICE cars to make, and green hydrogen can get cheaper than fossil fuels. They will be valid options in the future.
We've already waited decades for BEVs to be ready. It's hypocritical to say we cannot wait for anything else. And besides, hydrogen cars are in production right now, so we don't have to wait much longer for it be mainstream.
And given that the BEV is simply not going to the universal solution, there will be many people that will have to wait anyways. So we should be open to other options regardless.
Yes, hydrogen cars exist in tiny numbers...but there is wildly inadequate fueling infrastructure, and no sign that it will be built out. Meanwhile, you can charge at home, and there is a massive buildout of fast chargers underway in most of the world. I don't expect hydrogen for ground surface transportation to be meaningful as a result.
That's closed-minded thinking. There is nothing stopping the rapid deployment of hydrogen cars. The obsession with only one type of green car is a major detriment to the green car movement. For many people, green transportation is a threat to their lifestyle, since they are not allowed to look at any option other than the BEV.
That is the exact opposite of reality. BEVs are heavily subsidized globally. Without enormous government support, the market for them would be very small.
The case for H2 is just to make it (electrolysis). The case for consumer FCEVs comes well after the production capacity is abundant, but then also after heavier transport refueling is deployed sufficiently.
Also to compress it, chill it, transport it, and store it, while avoiding leaks and fires. You're absolutely right though, first comes renewables (and a shit ton of batteries), hopefully in parallel some green steel and chemical processes, then heavy transit and the harder edge cases to electrify, assuming electrification hasn't already solved those issues by then. Talking about regular folks buying fuel cell cars is not realistic.
What are you actually advocating for here? Not electrifying and waiting another few decades for hydrogen? You come off as excessively defensive of the practically nonexistent H2 industry and excessively critical of electrification, which is basically the Shell and Exxon position. We don't have time wait for anything, we need to use the tech we have now to reduce warming. Where do we get the hydrogen in your world? Is it blue or green? Blue is just fossil fuels with extra steps and green doesn't make sense until we have significant excess renewables and already electrified the easy stuff (buildings) and then it might still make sense only for industry/shipping and niche stuff. H2 itself has a GWP of 11 or so, and we will leak quite a bit. So again, what are you actually arguing for? I can't buy hydrogen, period. I can't buy a hydrogen vehicle, or a hydrogen furnace, or a hydrogen anything. What do you actually think we plebs should be doing here? I already want green steel as much as you do.
The first point to make is that hydrogen is not decades off. Green hydrogen is happening now, and its production is rapidly expanding alongside the expansion of renewable energy production. Many sectors can rapidly adopt green hydrogen right away. This is similar to the conversation we we had about solar power about a decade ago. Critics of solar power back then were being Luddites (and sometimes secret fossil fuel industry stooges). They were convinced that solar could not be cost-effective or scale, based off of very outdated understandings of the issue, but they were wrong. This conversation is repeating with green hydrogen.
On a related note, pro-electrification crusaders are being hypocrites on this subject. They themselves are demanding that we wait decades for miracle batteries or multi-decadal long electrification programs. Because they want "perfect" solutions rather than "good" solutions. A good example is how they demand we fully electrify all rail, a process that will take decades, rather than doing something faster like switching diesel trains to hydrogen trains. In reality, adopting hydrogen now, alongside more reasonable forms of electrification, will be a faster path for reducing CO2 emissions.
Also note that most "fearmongering" types of argument against hydrogen originated from the fossil fuel industry. They are always spreading propaganda intended to undermine green energy projects, and make similar claims about all green technologies. Claims that hydrogen is dangerous, or a GHG, or will leak, etc., are all fear tactics created with minimal amounts of evidence. In reality, hydrogen has very few problems, and adopting it will drastically make transportation and industry safer and more green. It is unfortunate that many environmentalists have fallen for this tactic, but I suppose every green idea had to overcome it.
Finally, you can buy hydrogen and hydrogen-related products. Sure, we are still a bit early on the adoption curve, but that is true of every new idea. Someone can buy a hydrogen car, or a furnace, or whatever right now. Many more are also capable, but don't know it yet. So rather than demonizing something for not being able to basically time travel, environmentalists should promote green ideas in order to accelerate their adoption.
H2 is complimentary to batteries. You can discharge battery capacity that will recharge to full the next day. It's affordable enough to make already, and as a fuel, is tradeable/exportable power. Making H2 is needed to support more renewables so that surpluses aren't wasted.
Making H2 just doesn't stop you from using BEVs today or tomorrow. Faster charging for more range using a fuel that was made when, and priced because, it was conveniently sunny.
The world can get there without the US, and energy sabotage was always a GOP magnet. But anti-H2 sentiment, based on genuine disinformation, but ok perhaps overhyped Toyota prototypes prior to infrastructure maturity, has made adoption/progress slower, if only because renewables adoption has been slower than what was possible.
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Tim Berners-Lee may have the smallest fame-to-impact ratio of anyone living. Strangers hardly ever recognize his face; on “Jeopardy!,” his name usually goes for at least sixteen hundred dollars. Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, in 1989, but people informed of this often respond with a joke: Wasn’t that Al Gore? Still, his creation keeps growing, absorbing our reality in the process. If you’re reading this online, Berners-Lee wrote the hypertext markup language (HTML) that your browser is interpreting. He’s the necessary condition behind everything from Amazon to Wikipedia, and if A.I. brings about what Sam Altman recently called “the gentle singularity”—or else buries us in slop—that, too, will be an outgrowth of his global collective consciousness.
Somehow, the man responsible for all of this is a mild-mannered British Unitarian who loves model trains and folk music, and recently celebrated his seventieth birthday with a picnic on a Welsh mountain. An emeritus professor at Oxford and M.I.T., he divides his time between the U.K., Canada, and Concord, Massachusetts, where he and his wife, Rosemary Leith, live in a stout greige house older than the Republic. On the summer morning when I visited, geese honked and cicadas whined. Leith, an investor and a nonprofit director who co-founded a dot-com-era women’s portal called Flametree, greeted me at the door. “We’re basically guardians of the house,” she said, showing me its antique features. I almost missed Berners-Lee in the converted-barn kitchen, standing, expectantly, in a blue plaid shirt. He shook my hand, then glanced at Leith. “Are you a canoer?” she asked. Minutes later, he and I were gliding across a pond behind the house.
Berners-Lee is bronzed and wiry, with sharp cheekbones and faraway blue eyes, the right one underscored by an X-shaped wrinkle. There’s a recalcitrant blond tuft at the back of his balding head; in quiet moments, I could picture Ralph Fiennes playing him in a movie—the internet’s careworn steward, ruminating on some techno-political conundrum. A twitchier figure emerged when he spoke. He muttered and trailed off, eyes darting, or froze midsentence, as though to buffer, before delivering a verbal torrent. It was the arrhythmia of a disciplined demeanor struggling with a restless mind. “Tim has always been difficult to understand,” a former colleague of his told me. “He speaks in hypertext.”
He visibly relaxed as we paddled onto the water. Berners-Lee swims daily when it’s warm, and sometimes invites members of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to “pondithons,” or pond-based hackathons. “We have a joke that if you get any number of them on the island, then they form a quorum, and can make decisions,” he said, indicating a gazebo-size clump of foliage. He spoke of the web as though it were a small New England town and he one of the selectmen. Berners-Lee raised his two children in nearby Lexington, the cradle of the American Revolution, and rose early for the annual Patriots’ Day festivities. “We took them to the reënactment on the Battle Green,” he recalled, “and the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”
The Founding Fathers idolized Cincinnatus, who was appointed dictator to save the Roman Republic, then peacefully returned to his fields. Berners-Lee is admired in a similar spirit—not only for inventing the web but for refusing to patent it. Others wrung riches from the network; Berners-Lee assumed the mantle of moral authority, fighting to safeguard the web’s openness and promote equitable access. He’s been honored accordingly: a knighthood, in 2004; the million-dollar Turing Award, in 2016.
Now Sir Tim has written a memoir, “This Is for Everyone,” with the journalist Stephen Witt. It might have been a victory lap, but for the web’s dire situation—viral misinformation, addictive algorithms, the escalating disruptions of A.I. In such times, Berners-Lee can no longer be Cincinnatus. He has taken up the role of Paul Revere.
“They thought they were safe,” he said, as the boat startled a flock of geese. Platforms had lulled users into complacent dependency, then sealed off the exits, revealing themselves as extractive monopolies. Berners-Lee’s escape hatch is a project called the Solid Protocol, whose mission is to revolutionize the web by giving users control over their data. To accelerate its adoption, he launched a company, Inrupt, in 2017. “We can build a new world in which we get the functionality of things like Facebook and Instagram,” he told me. “And we don’t need to ask for permission.”
Berners-Lee knows that the obstacles are formidable. But he’s pulled off a miracle before. “Young people don’t understand what it took to make the web,” he said. “It took companies giving up their patent rights, it took individuals giving up their time and energy, it took bright people giving up their ideas for the sake of a common idea.” The dock slid into view just as he reached a crescendo. Smiling, he set down his paddle. “Shall I drop you here?”
v2.0.0 - Stable Release of Immich Watch the video Welcome Hello everyone, After: ~1,337 days, 271 releases, 78,000 stars on GitHub, 1,558 contributors, 31,500 members on Discord, 36,000 members on ...
v2.0.0 - Stable Release of Immich Watch the video Welcome Hello everyone, After: ~1,337 days, 271 releases, 78,000 stars on GitHub, 1,558 contributors, 31,500 members on Discord, 36,000 members on ...
In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.
Are these households in rural areas without many alternatives?
Starlink is available in the vast majority of the US. What is the cost difference though?
Mashable did an article on it, saying it wasn’t easy to find but $9.99/mo appeared to be the cost, still, after all this time. But it would only run on windows PCs.
Its not perfect to replace for all those rural households, but a 5G based internet 'gateway' is an affordable and viable option for people at least somewhere near a 5G tower.
Unlike that national fiber build out that never really happened to anywhere near the extent that was promised, its not that expensive to set up a 5G cell tower, and for users its eaaay cheaper than any satellite internet, including Starlink.
Weirdly, I'm seeing fiber in the most unlikely places. They're running it in my hood, which is on the bleeding edge of a small redneck town, nowhere downstream from here to feed for more money.
What really blew my mind, they're running fiber in the hood where my camp lies, 900 souls altogether, and that includes a fair-sized surrounding area. Can't be 50 homes anywhere near. And again, nothing downstream of that hood, it's just for us. And both places already had cable internet.
No idea how those two ISPs will ever earn their money back from so few customers, with maintenance stacked on top. Maybe running fiber is stupid cheap now? Haven't worked for an ISP for 20 years, who knows.
I am genuienly surprised to hear this... I mean... cool... I guess?
That... there's more fiber lines than I thought there... was?
But also yeah that doesn't make any business sense to me either.
Unless they're planning on building a data center there in the near future.
Then, that might make a lot of sense.
Oh well, I'm still pissed that we gave ISPs like half a trillion dollars or whatever to build out fiber around a decade ago, and because that law was written by lobbyists, well it was apparently legal for said ISPs to just throw most of that money at stock buybacks and C suite stock packages, and then there were never any consequences for that.
Either way, I'll take not blazing fast speeds and no datacap over... literally any plan with a data cap, anyday.
Less than a billion I think, but several hundred million? Anyway, you're right, they ate it all paying off investors in the form of stock buybacks. Rural folk got nada.
Yeah, very weird expansion. We don't even have much in the way of utilities at camp. We can get water, but certainly no sewer. Hell, you can't even build "permanent structures" on my land. And I assume the surrounding land is even worse for flooding and being protected wetlands.
Sounds like I can get a power pole for free! Still working on that.
The roads are private, anyone can travel them, no problem, but they're on us to maintain. Couple of dudes use tractors to level them and someone dropped loads of gravel and red clay to fix the slippery bits. (Shit like this is why country people think they don't need no goddamned gubermint. You'd have to live it to understand.)
This is a Cox Cable endeavour. Used to contract for them, finest ISP I ever heard of. Apparently the Cox family took it public, then bought it back, said fuck you to the stock market and ran it themselves again. Hard to describe to those not in the business, but their cable plant is head and shoulders above anything I've ever touched. I assume they're rich as hell and I wish them well, well deserved for once.
Okay but about the fiber shit, they covered 99.7% of my city and didn't cover my street and I'm within walking distance of city hall. I really wish there was a way I could compel them to give me fiber. One of the few things I dislike about my location.
You can get the roam plan for $50 a month. If you were doing fine with dial-up, then the 50GB data cap shouldn't be an issue. You could even use the standby mode for $5 a month for 11 months out of the year and will still be an order of magnitude faster than the dial-up connection.
There are other legacy satellite providers like hughesnet that are somehow still hanging on. They don't really hold a candle to starlink performance-wise, and they shit the bed in bad weather, but at least they're not Elon. There's going to be a lot of latency, but it'll feel blazing fast if you're coming from dialup.
There are other dialup providers still remaining as well, besides AOL. I know msn is still kicking at least. It's kind of funny to think about receiving dialup service when almost all POTS lines have gone away, and much of the modern web will be borderline unusable without lots of tweaking, but at least grandma who lives out in the sticks can check her email, use chat clients, download articles and books, etc.
Starlink actually sucks fat dick unless it's literally your only option.
Even in rural America, you still have access to Visible's unlimited data for $25/month. They use Verizon's network, which covers just about everywhere people live in the US.
I didn't realize Visible has unlimited hotspotting. ATT/TMO block/paywall that, though it's possible to bypass using custom ROMs or non carrier firmware in some cases
It was hard to find things even with a search engine, and it was full of scams and spyware, and obnoxious designs that got in the way of the real content, and the most popular chat rooms were run by power-tripping nerds with too much free time and an endless interest in CSAM and Nazi ideology.
I never had too much trouble finding my way around, and it was the real wild West. You could find all kinds of cool shit. Could just visit Jon Does website with a list of game roms and download them with no bs.
Nah, I don't miss forums and chat rooms enough to go back to those days again. I need my comments to be sorted by uovote count to preserve my sanity. I can't go back. People are assholes.
Anyone still using dial up as a back-channel solution? Never implemented that myself, but seemed a cheap and easy way to get into your remote network in case of fuck up or outage. Banks used to do it. Anyone know?
I'm sure it's doable. But a cellular pay-as-you-go data plan and router is pretty common.
I don't think telcos will even give you copper phone service any more, unless you happen to be in a covered area, or you want to pay an exorbitant amount. Most service is going to be VoIP or cellular with a desk phone.
I was a regular Plex user, until they had their mental breakdown recently. So I switched to jellyfin. I have only two problems with jellyfin so far. One of them is subtitles (the other is the "remote controller" doesn't always sync properly).
Plex had an integrated subtitle downloader. You could just start a show, see that it was lacking subtitles and Plex could isntantly download subtitles for you. That doesn't seem to work in Jellyfin.
Is there an option or a plugin somewhere that can do/fix this for jellyfin?
there's an opensubtitles plugin to search for subs and download them; you can also manually upload them by going to a library item, clicking the three dots, an selecting edit subtitles. you can search by clicking the magnifying glass or add your own by clicking the plus.
you can also just drop srts in the folder containing your item named like <name of media file>.en.srt.
haven't found a way to automatically download subs though :/
I'm old school, I just get the subs and integrate them with MkvToolNix. I was always super picky about my files, so I'd go in there and change around what the active/enabled/default streams were, give the streams better names (e.g. Stereo, Surround 5.1, whatever was appropriate — I never included the language, since the tag handled that). I'd even use en-us or en-gb if it was specifically one or the other (e.g. James Bond, Harry Potter for the latter). I even insisted my subtitles be in English for English movies, and American English for American English movies. So like, the word "honor" in a Harry Potter movie would not fly with me, it must say "honour" because... that's what the English specifically say. (Speaking of Harry Potter, no "Sorcerer's Stone" bullshit in my library, I have the "Philosopher's Stone" version because, of course I do. The first one was the only one with a regional title.)
So because of that, I can use Jellyfin and the subs work just fine.
I am familiar with Plex's auto sub downloader. Despite owning a lifetime Plex Pass, it would put ads in the subtitles. That may be on the site's end though, not Plex's.
Still a Plex user, and I'm on a Mac, but all this shit works whether you're a Windows user or a Mac user. Probably Linux, too. I tried Jellyfin recently. It's fine if your clients are running Android, but they are just not there on Apple devices yet. My computer (M2 Pro) is plenty powerful enough to run both servers (servers use very little resources when not serving) but I just don't see a need for Jellyfin in my rotation. I do root for the project though, I want it to succeed, so I'll try it every year or so.
Despite owning a lifetime Plex Pass, it would put ads in the subtitles. That may be on the site's end though, not Plex's.
You would be correct. Plex doesn't generate the subtitles at all - they are pulled from places like OpenSubtitles. The person/entity that made the subtitles and uploaded them to wherever Plex pulled it from is responsible for that. Absolutely zero to do with having a lifetime Plex Pass.
This plugin will allow your server to download subtitles from OpenSubtitles.com for any video file on your server. The plugin can be installed from the catalog page and once enabled you will need to enter your OpenSubtitles.
SubStation Alpha (SSA) is a subtitling / script format that supports text formatting, animation, graphics and karaoke.[1] It is also the name of the program that is able to read SSA files.
I've never downloaded a subtitle file since I started using it last year and all the videos I watch have subtitles 😅 I just thought that happened automatically 🙈
I use a plugin for Jellyfin (which I believe is available by default you just have to click the install option on the plugins page in your Dashboard) and manually download subtitles through the subtitles menu for an item if what I download doesn't include them.
*Also you can just select language(s) for which the subs are downloaded automatically when it perfectly matches the video media. It's under the dashboard>library>subtitle downloads
I might be late to this party but I recently noticed a VLsub option in VLC itself that makes manually adding subs way easier. It's not automatic like the other tools mentioned but it's still a huge time saver. Protip I noticed if you're struggling to find a movie with it, just drop the imdb tt code into the name search box.
Not sure if this gonna help but I read some user use kodi + jellyfin addon mainly for the transcode thing but also you can get subtitles easily with the a4ksubtitle addon or something similar. Hope this helps
I found myself dealing with various rough edges and questions around running Ollama on Fedora Silverblue for the past few months. These arise from the fact that there are a few different ways of in…
We are happy to see the patent non-aggression pledge published by BlueSky today. Software patents and related intellectual property can have a dampening effect on innovation in an entire application domain, such as distributed social networks. They make d
Software patents and related intellectual property can have a dampening effect on innovation in an entire application domain, such as distributed social networks. They make developers use complex, roundabout methods to do simple tasks, just to avoid the appearance of using a technique that may or may not be patented by another company now or in the future.
By offering this pledge, BlueSky makes it that much easier for everyone in this entire area — not just those working on ATProto or closely linked technologies — to more safely explore techniques without worrying about patent trolls pouncing on them or their users sometime in the future. It was a brave and generous step on their part.
The ActivityPub specifications, including Activity Streams, are covered by the W3C Patent Policy which gives good protection from patents by the specification creators and the W3C member organizations. Patent licensing is an important advantage of working in an open standards organization.
With the BlueSky patent pledge, another distributed social networking protocol and its related technologies are free to explore and re-use with less worry about paying royalties to a patent holder. It’s a good step forward in the ecosystem.
We hope companies and projects in other distributed social network ecosystems follow up on this step by releasing their own patent pledges, or developing their standards in an open standards organization like the W3C.
Google is replacing Google Assistant with Gemini on every Google Home and Nest speaker or display, bringing natural language, context, and new smart home features.
Launching October 1st, Gemini For Home is a suite of new AI-powered features for Google’s smart home hardware and software.
The biggest change: Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on all of Google’s smart speakers, all the way back to the original Google Home speaker. This LLM-powered upgrade, announced at Google I/O, will be available through an Early Access program at first, with a wider rollout planned for next year.
On smart speakers, Gemini brings an entirely new voice assistant that uses and understands natural language, can interpret context, and can pull in more real-time information. You still activate it with the wake words “hey Google,” but Google Assistant has been evicted.
“Gemini for Home is the intelligence for your entire home,” Anish Kattukaran, head of product at Google Home and Nest, tells The Verge. “It’s not going to just replace Assistant on speakers and displays, but it’s going to upgrade your other devices as well, your cameras and doorbells, where you interact with those devices, and bring those smarts collectively to your entire home.”
I'm not excited for Apple to invent smart homes after this, completing the duopoly of LLMs being in everyone's homes even harder than before.
Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.
As sad as it is to admit this, an American pope is the kind of ally that the world needs right now. I commend his stance to speak so clearly against the grain of his following and in-group, defending facts and science in the process of pursuing a better future to all of us.
Now, we know that the fake Christians of the Maga Cult in the U.S. will dodge this pope as a "woke compromised asset", but to a LOT of Christians and most catholics around the world this will act as a beacon that will make a diference.
As to if it will be enough of a difference? That remains to be seen.
The pessimist in me doesn't believe so. But I would love to be proven wrong. At least in minimising the foreseeable outcomes. Which is the game we've been playing for quite a while now.
I was speaking in relation to climate change and the possibility of changing the mindset of conservatives around the world, as Catholicism has a lot of convergence with it.
This is a community for discussions about climate.
I was not defending religion, and especially not Catholicism.
You are absolutely right. Last time I checked, 6% of all Catholic priests have engaged sexually with a minor. That makes them the institution with the higher incidence of pedophilia.
But I can't deny or claim that the pope speaking in defence of science on climate doesn't make any difference. We both know that it does. That is why I started my comment with "As sad as it is to admit"...
Because as sad as it is to admit, we need these blind followers that allow their children to be the most molested in the world to listen to him and commit to some changes to a more sustainable future.
Tell me about it. I would get rid of all religious groups if I could and that is even without pedophilia on top of it.
But we're on a tight schedule to a doomed world and these idiots might listen to their cult leader more than the scientific method. Do I like this fact? Hell no!! But I don't think we're going to dismantle religion institutions in time to actually solve anything we need to.
We surely can try to do both at the same time. But if you have any religious family members, which I do, and roman Catholic nonetheless, you know that they'll listen to this idiot on this matter before they listen to the rest of us battling for the awareness to this for decades. It's insane, infuriating and the sad reality we have to deal with.
A lot of the world only listens to the voices of their in-group. But religious people take that to another level entirely.
I think I might delete my comments, actually, but all I was trying to do is to try to find the silver lining in a shit storm.
This is an olive branch moment if we take it correctly.
What are you suggesting otherwise? Genocide them all?
Anyone in positions of power running an organization that touches children and protects the pedos needs to get shut down and arrested.
Literally hold every “owner” accountable for the actions of their cults and raid and lock their pedo asses up.
Maybe seeing every religious leader stand trial for the crimes committed under them might convince a few of the indoctrinated that they are the bad guys.
I agree. But who the hell is gonna enforce that? Especially right now? Are you seeing the people being elected around the world?
It's kinda scary when this man, the head of the Catholic Church is more of an ally than most nation leaders.
We need to do what you suggest to the heads of companies and conglomerates too. But again, who is gonna enforce it?
People now are using A.I. that burns more water than a cauldron and more electricity than some nations to spew what these corporate overlords want them to. Just today I read that Google is suppressing AI searches regarding Trump and dementia. I don't use Google. But most people do.
The odds and stakes are stacked against a just and fair or even livable future.
I'm gonna take what I can get to turn the tide on it. If I fail it will not be because I failed to try. Giving up is not an option.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Bud, they still protect child molesters, and they feather touch the control they have to save the world. Dude could straight up start a worldwide revolution against the ruling class…. But they will never do that
It's ultimately good news, but the framing is bizarre.
Who criticises global warming? Well, people like us, and pope Leo. As opposed to people who'd rather criticise us and claim that global warming is no biggie (or even not happening).
Similarly, who minimises climate change? Well, people who are actually doing something about it. People who are switching away from burning fossil fuels and taking other steps to minimise the impact of not only themselves, but others, by working in fields like renewable energy, transit, heat pumps, etc.
Even the other framing of "minimising the impact of climate change" means working with adaptation strategies.
I can only assume the framing is so weird because of choices the BBC made.
Nice I guess. I wonder how many people will change their mind due to this. My mom for example, has zero problems with simultaneously being ultra-catholic (explicitly pro-church, not just pro-religion) and at the same disagreeing with the pope whenever she feels like it.
My dad, very strong "Catholic". Pope says something, my dad, "ahh don't listen to him, he's an idiot"
My interpretation is he's not actually catholic just likes the church because sometime he can use it to justify his bigotry, when it's convenient for him and nobody has the energy to challenge the hypocrisy
Probably very few people will change their mind. It might sway a few Catholics who are on the fence about global climate change (somehow).
But what the Pope says will have an impact on young people from Catholic families who haven't learned much about climate change. Especially in places like the Philippines where climate change is quite literally lapping at their shores.
The idea that all Catholics have to do what the Pope says, or even agree with the Pope, is, frankly, anti-Catholic bullcrap - back when I was a very very small child, John Birch Society bigots were passing out pamphlets claiming JFK would be taking his orders from the Vatican.
But what the Pope does have is moral and persuasive authority. And when teenagers are growing up and learning about the world, and TikTok and right wing news are spewing all sorts of climate denial garbage at them, and they're being bombarded from all sides by the message that all politicians are liars and everybody's out to take your money and trying to change anything is hopeless - don't underestimate the influence of someone who's respected as not just a world leader but a good man.
La Global Sumud Flotilla è stata intercettata a circa 75 miglia dalla costa di Gaza, l’abbordaggio illegale di Israele è iniziato. Alle 20:25 locali (19:25 in Italia) è arrivato l’alt di Israele. Gli attivisti riferiscono che l’abbordaggio è iniziato sulla nave ammiraglia Alma, dove si registrano i primi fermi. A bordo è stato dichiarato lo stato di emergenza. In volo, per monitorare l’area, anche caccia inglesi decollati da Cipro.
Sometimes I wonder if the AI push is about firing people for being stupid about trusting any of its output.
Not to mention, this doesn't feel like actual coverage but rather a bit of the author fellating this new development.
You’ve probably heard of vibe coding — novices writing apps by creating a simple AI prompt — but now Microsoft wants to introduce a similar thing for its Office apps. The software maker is launching a new Agent Mode in Excel and Word that can generate complex spreadsheets and documents with just a prompt. A new Office Agent in Copilot chat, powered by Anthropic models, is also launching today that can create PowerPoint presentations and Word documents from a “vibe working” chatbot.
“Today we’re bringing vibe working to Microsoft 365 Copilot with Agent Mode in Office apps and Office Agent in Copilot chat,” says Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office Product Group. “In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development, the latest reasoning models in Copilot unlock agentic productivity for Office artifacts.”
Agent Model in Excel and Word is a more powerful version of the Copilot experience that Microsoft has added to its Office apps. It’s designed to make the complex parts of Excel more accessible to users that aren’t experts. “It’s not just simple assistive short answers, but board-ready presentations or documents,” Chauhan says. “It’s work, quite frankly, that a first-year consultant would do, delivered in minutes.”
Just a thought as I work through some bugs reported to NodeBB... would there be interest in ActivityPub.space hosting a "security" category for discussion around vulnerabilities, CVEs, and such that are related to ActivityPub?
For example, if NodeBB were to receive a bug bounty report and responsibly disclose the details, it would be ideal to have it archived in a place where it won't just disappear off the feed in a matter of minutes.
Based on current deployment rates, it is likely that solar will surpass wind as the third-largest source of electricity. And solar may soon topple coal in the number two spot.
Looking ahead, through July 2028, FERC expects no new coal capacity to come online based on its “high probability additions” forecast. Meanwhile 63 coal plants are expected to be retired, subtracting 25 GW from the 198 GW total, and landing at about 173 GW of coal capacity by 2028. Meanwhile, FERC forecasts 92.6 GW of “high probability additions” solar will come online through July 2028.
Solar and wind represent about 11% to 12% of the energy mix each, while coal sits just under 15%. Developers brought online 16 GW of solar out of a total 21.5 GW electric generation capacity cumula…
That's been the joke of Solar for a while. Engineers could have told you all the way back in the 1970s (really, the 1910s) that it costs less money to leave a big plate out in the bright sun than to drill a giant hole and hope there's enough spicy rocks at the bottom of it to justify the expense.
We should have crested this hill a lot sooner, but the heavy emphasis on subsidized fossil fuels during the 80s, 90s, and 00s kept these fuels artificially cheap. Meanwhile, fossil fuel firms actually did invest in Green Energy R&D but only for the purpose of erecting "patent thickets" that would hinder competitive growth of these alternatives.
This “patent thicket” can create barriers to innovative low-carbon technologies, particularly in markets requiring expensive licensing fees or with complex patent litigation (Cannuscio 2008). A strengthened IPRP can increase market concentration and reduce competition (Liu et al. 2018), with large corporations able to maintain market control in such environments through patents on key technologies. This control not only restricts the entry of emerging low-carbon technologies into the market but also perpetuates the reliance on existing high-carbon technologies.
This has lead to big surges in the development and deployment of Green Energy grids outside of the countries doing most of the cutting edge research. Americans are only now catching up.
You're really discounting that fossil fuels have hella bang for the buck, loads of power per gallon. tl;dr: Energy dense
I can run my little generator at camp all night long if there's as little as 3 gallons in there. Space heater or AC unit, lights, all that. I'd have to have many panels and batteries to compare to that output. My best battery is a huge LIPO4, trolling motor can't kill it, not even close. But leaving the LED lights on for a little over a day drained it dry.
We need way more solar infrastructure to get where we're going, and I'm all about it. But since since the GOP has decided to go back in time, China is going to smoke America, both in renewables and the associated economic benefits.
Did not know about the patent thing! Know any examples?
You’re really discounting that fossil fuels have hella bang for the buck, loads of power per gallon. tl;dr: Energy dense
Coal is generally the worst of the lot. Oil and gas burn cleaner and have more combustible by weight. Coal is energy dense but also heavy af and dirty as hell. It's also very common place and comparably safe to transport. And it is simpler to use.
Fine enough to warm your home or grill some meat. But you're not putting a rocket into orbit with coal.
My best battery is a huge LIPO4, trolling motor can’t kill it, not even close. But leaving the LED lights on for a little over a day drained it dry.
Sure. Broadly speaking you want to be hooked up to the grid to benefit from electricity. Anything portable is very ineffective for a litany of reasons.
Patents have a short life span. The patent wall keeps expiring and then everyone can use it no cost. the big improvements are long gone and all they can patent is small improvements you can do without (though you may not want to). They also run into those making things do their own r&d and have their own patents.
Years, depending on how it is used and renewed. But the point is that you've got a minefield of potential legal liabilities every time you try and launch a business. You don't know whether what you're doing is patented until you check. And if enough entrepreneurs have their businesses blown up early on, it delays how quickly alternative energy can be built out and deployed by at least as long as these patents survive.
When the government is in your corner, handing out subsidies, leaving environmental rules unenforced, securing new oil fields overseas through military force, and generally making your life as an energy tycoon easier, you're at a comparative advantage to the wind farm guy who has to argue with the Kennedys over hurting a bird or obstructing the Massachusetts Bay skyline.
It’s not actually cheap though, that’s the problem. Basically every country that is pushing “renewables” are having their power bills increase over and over and over with no sign of slowing down because it’s not cheap.
No one wants to build them without giant subsidies and guaranteed returns. Why do you think that is?
Solar panels crom China made it a lot cheaper than it used to be. There are also other major advatnages, such as increased independence. You just buy a bunch of solar panels and now you can indenepdently generate energy for the next 30 years.
The belief that Australia can decarbonise its economy by relying on the wind and the sun rests on a misplaced conviction about what the renewables rollout will entail.
This is an important point to consider. However, to me it seems somewhat separate from your previous comment.
Of course, no sane government should push for a country to rely solely on wind and solar. Ideally you have a mix of various energy sources, even potentially including some fossil fuels. Hitting that 20-30% sweetspot, as mentioned in the paper, looks to be fairly cheap and beneficial for everyone.
Solar panels are not the expensive part of using solar to power the country - the storage and transmission is.
Although having said that, the cost of regularly cleaning panels, replacing them, throwing them in landfill, and mining materials to make new ones every 15 years or so is also huge - and destructive to the planet. It’s just more of a slow burn cost that snowballs.
True, batteries are quite expensive and very much not environment-friendly when built on such a scale. Though it should be noted good solar panels last longer than 15 years. Even cheap panels can last 20 years.
They need regular cleaning otherwise they can very quickly drop to close to zero output, and storms - especially hail - can destroy entire solar farms at once.
Since I doubt you or anyone else will, I'll take some bits from it:
As you can see, as wind + solar generation share goes up, retail electricity prices go up. They never go down. They never even stay the same.
“As the proportion of weather-dependent energy in the grid grows, the costs and difficulties of integrating this energy also grow at an increasing rate.”
...
The paper found (as per the graph):
• Countries with less than 21% wind and solar generation have electricity prices of around US $0.15/kWh on average.
• Countries with between 21% and 33% wind and solar generation have electricity prices of around US $0.24/kWh on average.
• Countries that exceed 33% wind and solar generation, have electricity prices of around US $0.37/kWh on average.
...
The research notes, “No country has achieved penetrations higher than 60%, let alone 90%, without costs going up. A low-cost, wind-and-solar-dependent country simply does not exist.”
The belief that Australia can decarbonise its economy by relying on the wind and the sun rests on a misplaced conviction about what the renewables rollout will entail.
I'm not going to read propaganda from an Australian right wing think tank, you're right.
It’s not actually cheap though, that’s the problem. Basically every country that is pushing “renewables” are having their power bills increase over and over and over with no sign of slowing down because it’s not cheap.
I can't speak for every country, unlike you, but in Southern Europe the trend is exactly the opposite of what you're saying. bbvaresearch.com/en/publicacio…
The increased penetration of renewable energies in Spain, especially solar and wind, has reduced wholesale electricity prices by 20% in the last three years and could cut them by a further 20% by 2030 if the ambitious PNIEC targets are met.
“I’m not going to read your link cause it proves my ideology wrong. Here’s a link that proves mine right, and mine is much much much narrower in scope so as to not show the global trend”
All realistic plans for 100% renewable (or even 95% renewable, which is substantially easier) rely on a multipronged approach of wind, water, solar, and grid upgrades. Each one has upsides and downsides, but you can use the upsides of one to cover the downsides of another. Combined, you get a reliable grid based on intermittent but cheap sources.
Capitalism sees this plan and decides to deploy the one with the best immediate ROI. Which happens to be solar. Problem is that you can't just rely on solar. The grid is hitting limits where electrical production is sending prices to basically zero at certain times, but not able to provide enough the rest of the time. That will shift the economic incentives. Eventually.
It'll figure out what researchers have already written down, but it'll take too long to get there.
SoCal has a huge amount of wind and solar right now. Utility sized battery installations are going in to deal with the times those two aren't producing.
Even home battery solutions. We have solar panels & a Powerwall. Were part of a Virtual Power Plant along with around 1500 other Powerwall owners in the region. During peak usage in the summer all our PowerWalls feed back to the grid so that our utility provider doesn’t have to spin up expensive (and dirty) peaker plants. We get paid a premium for the power we provide during these events.
I saw articles here on Lemmy just a month or two ago that Tesla successfully tested a VPP in California that consisted of 100,000 PowerWalls.
The ones they've installed near us are Siemens and the only reason we even know they exist is we went by often during installation. The cabinets are now hidden behind a high wall. I'm guessing they're going in all over the place. Strange that I've never seen them mentioned in the news anywhere.
While your power company is taking your power from your battery, where does your power to power your house come from? How much do you pay for it, what are your daily charges etc?
Our house is still powered by the panels and/or battery as well. We typically use 1 to 5 kWh, and during these events the batteries are discharging up to 10 kWh. Whatever we don’t use goes to the grid. Last year we received a payout of $1450 for 45 hours worth of energy, probably in the neighborhood of 300-350 kWh.
Also not renewable, are incredibly environmentally destructive, and have short lifetimes - kinda the opposite of what the push for “renewables” is supposed to be about lol.
I think you are wrong then. First, even Li-ion batteries are recyclable to a huge amount, usually the problem is that different manufacturers pack them differently without any blueprint and then it's much harder to recycle them. Then there are a ton of different chemistries with ones really harmless (i.e. using sodium instead of lithium) but they come with less energy density. Which isn't that important when it comes to energy storage for the network purpose but it's important when it comes to cars and portable electronic devices. Also different chemistries have different lifetime, i.e. LFP batteries have better durability and are less fire prone than the standard li-ion.
Being “recyclable” doesn’t mean that they get recycled, because it’s often not economically feasible - like with solar panels. Are there lots and lots of recyclable materials in them? Absolutely. Does it cost more to extract them out than it does to buy a new one? Absolutely.
Most batteries, especially those used for home batteries, will never be recycled. They’ll end up in landfill, leaching toxic chemicals into the earth.
Also the materials used to make new batteries are not renewable. There are finite resources of them. They require mining. Mining equipment and trucks aren’t running on solar or batteries. As more and more are needed, more and more mining is needed.
The entire “renewables” push is based around endlessly manufacturing non recyclable things that end in landfill, using non-renewable materials, creating large amounts of toxic emissions - but the ones pushing it don’t care because the emissions happen somewhere else by someone else so they can claim to be carbon neutral.
You have some valid points. Yes, economical aspect is crap, countries should push laws demanding that producers guarantee recycling and/or state clear lifecycle of the battery (actually it should be applied to all products). Even still, there are companies that do recycle batteries for profit, so it's not that absurd. But you miss the whole other aspect with different chemistries, many even harmless to the environment. You are focused only on current li-ion it seems which are not very network storage friendly anyway.
I’m focused on current battery tech because that’s what we have. There is no grid storage level battery tech yet - entire countries are basing their economic livelihood on the promise that there will be soon. It’s looking like a bad bet. We still can’t make phones that last a week.
They can be distributed though. I Install solar, most of the systems we install with batteries end up selling back a significant portion of their charge to the grid (iirc our system wide average is 40% nightly resale)
So not only is each house with a battery not using grid power at night, its powering almost half of an equivalently sized house.
Granted, batteries are still on the expensive side, so these systems aren't coming enough ( I think we're at ~10% of our systems have a battery)
Yeah, that's a step in correct direction, but can you guarantee that everybody can be powered 24/7 through renewables/batteries, specially during winter? Unless that's the case you still need a shit-ton of non-renewable energy that's coming either from fossil fuels or nuclear. And if you want to avoid (co2) emissions, then you need nuclear to cover everybody, and if you have nuclear then it has to run 100% 24/7. OTOH if you don't have nuclear, you'll emit all sort or crap during those periods. And so on. Also, it's not just that batteries are sort of expensive, they are big. Also you are talking houses, but masses live in apartments where placing solar panels or batteries isn't possible (at least in quantity).
No one will ever have the idea of simply having more batteries right? It's all in capacity not quantity, because quantity would be to easy right? Got it.
Where do you have TWhs of batteries? As you said, both quantity and capacity matters, when lower capacity you need bigger battery which is harder to put somewhere.
Batteries are nice, but they're insanely expensive at this scale and ruin the entire point of helping the environment. Carbon emissions from huge batteries are unbelievable.
Wind turbines have to be constantly spinning due to inertia to get them started due to that they have big diesel engines that keep them going the minimum speed. I'm not trying to be inflammatory and am welcome to a fact check.
This is complete BS, I could find zero sources for that claim, and several debunking it.
The only tangentially related thing I could find was that in colder climates, they need heat to de-ice the wings, and at one point, the power supply to a Scottish wind farm was cut off, so they put in some temporary diesel generators on-site to power the de-icing system to get the turbines going again.
So, I do not believe that is a thing. Apparently there are some wind turbines with diesel generators attached somewhere, but it's not for that reason. Offshore wind seems to have them in case they get disconnected from the grid because they rely on some power to protect themselves from ocean air, and apparently a wind array in Scottland had some to keep the turbines from freezing over. Frankly though there just isn't room in the turbine's housing to keep a whole diesel engine, at least most of the time.
Edited my OG comment for future people. Thank you for correcting this Franky inexcusably ignorant miss comprehension. I appreciate your civilness in correct me.
I also always call him Dear Leader. We can't normalize these behaviors from a president, and using the "Dear Leader" title makes it unambiguously clear that his selfish actions are not presidential.
See, you can build coal plants in poor/black areas, so you don't have to see the pollution, nor your kids have to get cancer like those silly poors. And then you don't have to put up with woke shit like windmills. Sigh.
Hell. In Florida, FPL is the electric provider, and they are fighting tooth and nail to keep people from installing solar on houses.... In Florida, we would have almost free electric for everyone if all houses could install panels....
But FPL lobbied our GOP legislature and force anyone with solar to have a million dollar insurance policy payable to FPL in case something happens. Also got regulations passed to bar home windstorm insurance if any panels are bolted to the roof. So if you have panels, no hurricane insurance for you....and the mortgage holder gets to put their expensive policy on your home.
Bad phrasing. There are power walls for home use and FPL is still available.
My point is that Florida could use solar as 1 prong on the challenge to provide clean, green energy but FPL must deliver profit to it's shareholders and will fight that effort
As soon as solar panels and batteries are involved it’s not “clean, green energy” though. I have no idea how people ate that lie.
Solar panels don’t grow on trees. They’re not made from renewable sources. They require mass amounts of mining and coal/gas created energy to make, and they last 10-20 years max. They’re not recyclable either because it costs more to recycle them than it does to make a new one.
Widely distributed solar + nuclear produces a generation curve that matches demand better than any other combination, minimizing battery or dirty on-demand generation needs.
Nuclear + solar is the only way to truly make it work. Unfortunately the “nuclear bad” message that’s spread by the “renewables” people are going to put us trillions of dollars and decades behind in getting there.
My father ran a small construction company in Ontario, he was asked to manage building a few house for a client in Florida and at the time, the codes were a complete joke compared to Canada, closer to what we grade as seasonal cottages. This likely had recently changed, only because people can't even get storm insurance any more. Then there's the 5,400 trailer parks in Florida. Ontario has 14, seasonal use only.
Yes, FPL has done a lot to prevent rooftop solar, but calling it "almost free" is not correct. Rooftop solar still comes with significant upfront costs. The weather of Florida degrades panels quicker with non-trivial odds of hurricane damage. Finally, Southwestern states receive much more solar irradiance.
If you are willing to be pragmatic and want solar in Florida, FPL's solar together program is your best option. Like it or not, utility grade solar is 1/3 the LCOE.
Sodium-ion batteries are becoming more viable, which will be necessary to buffer the solar energy surge during the day and lack of energy production at night.
We have just released v4.6.0 of NodeBB, containing fixes to our ActivityPub integration, minor fixes with SCSS, and some new functionality with topic templating.
[h2]:globe_with_meridians: ActivityPub Fixes[/h2] [ul]
[li]WordPress blogs can be properly p
We have just released v4.6.0 of NodeBB, containing fixes to our ActivityPub integration, minor fixes with SCSS, and some new functionality with topic templating.
:globe_with_meridians: ActivityPub Fixes
WordPress blogs can be properly pulled into NodeBB (via their URL) now
Fixed an error when moving a remote topic to another category
This also fixed the issue where moved topics didn't update topic/post counters
Fixed bug where NodeBB could not properly process Link headers when it contained the standalone crossorigin directive
Notifications for replies to topics made in remote categories now show the appropriate user
Fixed bug where remote users were not able to post to a local category if registered-users privilege was removed (now checks fediverse pseudo-user)
Nested remote categories can now be removed from the ACP
Remote categories can be renamed for de-duplication purposes
Improved title generation for quote-posts
Core fixes
Persona theme now shows hidden (zero-character) links in post content
_variables.scss page in ACP > Appearance can now override Bootstrap variables
A template can be provided in a category's settings. This template is auto-populated in the composer when a new topic is being authored.
The Texas senator blocked a bill that would have prevented data brokers from selling personal data on anyone in the United States, and not just federal lawmakers and government officials.
Cruz was the sole objecting senator, who claimed without evidence that Wyden’s bill could disrupt law enforcement, “such as knowing where sexual predators are living.”
No, not those sexual predators. Not the rich ones who fight to oppress the LGBTQ+ and dark-skinned people. The sexual predators who are struggling to make ends meet. Those sexual predators. The ones that no one will miss.
Those are the ones the GOP wants to go after. Not the ones in their own ranks.
That's the difference between the two parties. One will kick out perverts. The other embraces them, as long as their money's good.
~~Ted Cruz blocks bill that would extend privacy protections to all Americans~~
Real Headline: The American government is corrupt and compromised, top to bottom, side to side. No one gets a pass. Not from the current admin or any previous admin. You do not go into US politics on a mere government salary and exit politics a multi millionaire.
Cancelled. You can't be socially incorrect now, you can't say it like it is, you can't make stupid harmless jokes because you need to consider the feelings of those MAGA snowflakes.
/s fuck them. They love playing the bully, but then get bitchslapped and go running to mommy sobbing their eyes out "they're being mean to me".
In this edition, we spotlight who climate voters supported in the 2024 presidential election, exit polling data on fracking in Pennsylvania, and how voters in Ann Arbor, MI approved the creation of a local clean energy utility.
In the proxima series by Stephen Baxter, when people realize just how fucked they are and revolt, they have huge international trials sentencing the oligarchy and their extended families to death.
Similarly in The Ministry for the Future, a bunch of people take "more direct" actions against those who put them in the situation where thousands of people boil to death in peak summer heat in India and such. And I don't blame them, I'm sure that's going to happen much more when the general public experiences more and more negative extreme effects from climate change. Hence why many billionaires are building climate change proof compounds.
Not just clean energy. America's scientific advantage has always been underpinned by our ability to recruit exceptional foreign scientists. Now we're rounding them up and deporting them. And broadly cutting funding to the remaining scientists while half the country actively demonizing them. China is jumping all over the opportunity and recruiting every scientist they can. They aren't the only one but they are America's most significant single country rival and, currently, the best candidate to be able to build a new global hegemony as America destroys its own. As an American my current hope for the next world order is the rise of a strong unified Europe. Even then we're probably going to end up with a bipolar world order like with the US and USSR post WW2.
4º Encontro de Cidadania Digital em Carataeua – Belém-PA
Nesta edição, com o tema “Comunicação, Território e Apropriação Digital”, o encontro coloca na agenda local o debate sobre as Infovias Amazônicas, infraestrutura essencial para ampliar o acesso à internet e às tecnologias de informação nos territórios ribeirinhos e insulares. Ao discutir o papel das infovias, o encontro reforça a necessidade de que a conectividade esteja a serviço da vida comunitária, fortalecendo redes locais e garantindo o direito à comunicação como parte da cidadania plena.
Durante quatro dias, serão realizadas rodas de conversa, oficinas, vivências e atividades colaborativas, articulando saberes tradicionais e práticas digitais. A proposta é criar um ambiente inclusivo e plural, no qual a comunicação se consolide como um instrumento de transformação social, de defesa dos territórios e de fortalecimento das identidades amazônicas.
Datas: 01 a 04 de Outubro de 2025
Público: comunicadores populares, educadores, movimentos sociais e coletivos.
Parceiros: Casa Preta Amazônia, Comitê de Cultura do Pará (Ação Cultura É muita Onda), Laboratório de Cultura Digital (UFPR/MinC), Instituto Outeiro Verde, Irmãs da Horta, Recanto dos Orixás, Ninho do Colibri, Coração Verde, Tralhoto Leitor, Coletivo Digital, Produtoras Colaborativas, RedeSub, Aldeia FM, Sítio de Maré, Casa da Mestra Zula, Cosmotécnicas Amazônicas, AMP, Cordão de Pássaro Urubu, OBX (Observatório das Baixadas) e CEGAS.
Endereço: Rua Evandro Bona, n. 3380, Bairro – Itaiteua/Outeiro, CEP: 66842-030
Obs: O espaço onde será realizado o evento dispõe de piscina, área de lazer e quadra de esporte, por isso sugerimos usar roupas confortáveis e trazer roupas de banho.
Nesta edição, com o tema “Comunicação, Território e Apropriação Digital”, o encontro coloca na agenda local o debate sobre as Infovias Amazônicas, infraestrutura essencial para ampliar o acesso à internet e às tecnologias de informação nos território…
Stillwater
in reply to freedickpics • • •PowerCrazy
in reply to Stillwater • • •It comes down to the hostile actor you are trying to defend against. If you are Jason Bourne and you have been burned by your agency so multiple nation-states are looking for you, then you have to go fully off-grid and live a quiet life without ever communicating with anyone in your prior life again. It doesn't matter if you are using Signal, or SMS, or even a dial-up BBS. If you are communicating with people that are also under heavy surveillance, you cannot hide.
If you want to reduce your "digital footprint," then not using google/facebook/other social media is the most worthwhile thing you can possibly do. Your phone doesn't matter. Use iOS, never install any of the social apps, use Safari in incognito mode, and you'll never be tracekd across websites again.
ScoffingLizard
in reply to PowerCrazy • • •sigmaklimgrindset
in reply to ScoffingLizard • • •What happened with Firefox?
I think OP meant use Safari with the Apple's Privacy Relay thing that hides your IP and generalizes location data into a larger area, not just regular "private mode" that Safari has. Too bad it's subscription only on iCloud+, and who knows if it actually works as well as Apple claims it does.
PowerCrazy
in reply to sigmaklimgrindset • • •frongt
in reply to PowerCrazy • • •This. A dumbphone is private in the sense that it's not collecting and transmitting a whole lot of data to Facebook, Google, etc., which is what most people are concerned about in this community.
If you also want encrypted communications, use something built for that purpose. But keep in mind, the other person will also have to have a compatible device, and probably isn't as concerned about maintaining hygiene.
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artyom
in reply to PowerCrazy • • •Wat
PowerCrazy
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to PowerCrazy • • •It's absolutely not. It requires extraordinary trust in Apple.
The most private and secure OS is GrapheneOS, without a doubt. Google cannot use data they do not have.
Godort
in reply to Stillwater • • •Switching from a smartphone to a dumbphone is usually not about increasing privacy in the first place.
People tend to make the switch for mental health reasons, rather than privacy ones. When your phone goes back to being a direct communication tool rather than a passtime, you tend to realize just how much time you spend during a day doing basically nothing.
EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
in reply to Godort • • •xvertigox
in reply to freedickpics • • •Apostrophy - Ultimate Privacy and Data Security
Nicole Cau (Apostrophy.ch)SOULFLY98
in reply to xvertigox • • •Pretty sure the Punkt is my next phone and a Raspberry Pi 500+ is my next desktop.
Take me back to the start of the millennium. I'm tired of this shit.
Goun
in reply to freedickpics • • •Chemical Wonka
in reply to freedickpics • • •whiwake
in reply to Chemical Wonka • • •Yes but you also have to get your phone from a hardware manufacturer who you trust, so not google or Samsung or huawei or… etc.
Fair phone maybe?
ExcessShiv
in reply to whiwake • • •Outdated HW and doesn't have graphene support.
hperrin
in reply to freedickpics • • •like this
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shortwavesurfer
in reply to hperrin • • •HiddenLayer555
in reply to freedickpics • • •like this
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DupaCycki
in reply to HiddenLayer555 • • •Good point. Linux phones, even in their current state, might be a good middle ground for people with low needs.
Although there's two things I'd mostly be worried about.
1. Battery life. Smartphones, including Linux ones, aren't exactly known for amazing battery life. A dumb phone would likely last several times longer on a single charge.
2. Physical durability. Even after all those years of structural improvements, smartphones remain fairly fragile. Usually I use high durability cases with my smartphones (ideally Otterbox Defender), though I don't think anything similar is even available for any Linux phones. And of course, we all know dumb phones are generally durable enough.
Zerush
in reply to DupaCycki • • •EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
in reply to freedickpics • • •That's kind of the point.
Sure, you can't do much with them, but by that very fact you also won't have nearly as much data to be spied on.
Likewise, you can do much more with a smartphone, but that comes with a much higher surface of attack, and you also have to work a lot harder to keep all the data away from spying.
TipRing
in reply to EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted • • •Zerush
in reply to TipRing • • •Yes, not so difficult to spy phone calls and SMS, but it's way less risky for privacy and security as in Smartphones, full of sensitive data on an OS and tons of apps which logs and spy on you, spreading the information not only to the ISP and govs, but also to private advertising companies and others, which is way worse. Phone lines are way less dangerous for privacy and security as the Internet, log data stored by the ISP are deleted after an max. of three month, data on the internet are forever and can't be deleted, because they are spreeded everywhere.
At least in my case, I don't use my Smartphone for other things as for calls, I don't use any messenger apps nor storing sensitive data on it, desconected GPS and localisation apps. For me smartphones as such are spyware by definition, more if the include AI like they are doing currently.
Ardens
in reply to freedickpics • • •And your keystrokes are logged on phones where you use Signal...
Dumbphones are more private. Privacy is on a scale, and you have less apps and systems that track you and profile you on a dumbphone.
Do you want true privacy? Don't use a phone...
Kefla [she/her, they/them]
in reply to Ardens • • •swelter_spark
in reply to freedickpics • • •like this
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mcv
in reply to swelter_spark • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to mcv • • •mathemachristian[he]
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to mathemachristian[he] • • •mathemachristian[he]
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •First they came for the gamers
tlmcleod
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •mcv
in reply to tlmcleod • • •mcv
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to mcv • • •Ok but the only server you can connect to is that one that plays that ASCII version of star wars in the term
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nlfor anyone who hasn't experienced this masterpiecemcv
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to mcv • • •mcv
in reply to ClathrateG [none/use name] • • •FutileRecipe
in reply to mcv • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to swelter_spark • • •even all old Nokias and flipphones and the like have an OS they're just in house developed proprietary embedded software/firmware not open sourceish like android
its how almost any sufficiently complicated device that uses PCBs works even modern washing machines and such run atleast what it basically a firmware os
Auli
in reply to swelter_spark • • •ClathrateG [none/use name]
in reply to freedickpics • • •yeah a smartphone with locked down hardware and graphene and open source encrypted communication is best obvs
the reason street drug dealers use burners is the customers won't all have encrypted communication they'll have sms/calls
jonathan
in reply to freedickpics • • •ringpop
in reply to jonathan • • •How can you have a private phone with less security?
Edit: Certainly without security you cannot have true privacy
survirtual
in reply to ringpop • • •It is simple.
It produces significantly less data. It doesn't have all the apps you are being tracked by reporting on your every move.
It doesn't have faceid, and probably has a lot of exploits (less security), but the data it holds isn't worth securing and it doesn't provide a non-stop datamine (more privacy).
Basically, instead of having a large safe filled with gold, you have a duffel-bag with your old gym clothes. You don't need security for old gym clothes.
TurtleTourParty
in reply to survirtual • • •Someone once broke into my sister's car and stole her bag of gym clothes but I get what you're saying.
Personally I would love a dumbphone but I find a smartphone too useful (specifically map and transit apps). I wish I could have the same number for one of each and only bring the smartphone when necessary.
Auli
in reply to survirtual • • •jonathan
in reply to Auli • • •Obinice
in reply to freedickpics • • •Why would my Internet Service Provider have anything whatsoever to do with my dumb phone?
Yes, texts and calls aren't hidden from your mobile phone provider, they never were. I agree it's not great, and the government is likely spying on you as they have been for decades.
But alas, I don't see a solution without using a non dumb phone and encrypted apps, which will require the internet and at that point you've not got a dumb phone any more.
My Nokia 3310 still works great. Sure, the government could spy on me, but I don't discuss anything sensitive over the phone (traditionally one doesn't, for this very reason, wiretaps and the like). It's a tool for casually staying in touch and arranging to meet up ^_^
shortwavesurfer
in reply to Obinice • • •Auli
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to Auli • • •They provide internet to your device, which makes them an internet service provider. And if nothing else, they also offer fixed wireless, which makes them an internet service provider.
Sure, Comcast can't log your phone calls because they are a cable or fiber provider, but T-Mobile can absolutely log your calls, and they are still an ISP.
Nora
in reply to freedickpics • • •namingthingsiseasy
in reply to freedickpics • • •As others have mentioned, this is a matter of threat model. To be realistic, a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications, but companies like Facebook and Google can only access them if you give it to them willingly. On the other hand, if other people you communicate with do this by themselves, then you've gone through all that effort for nothing. It's also worth pointing out that it cannot be proven that a regular phone does not have corporate spyware installed, so this may be another way your information could leak to companies.
That said, it is pretty insulting that tech companies have decided that they're simply entitled to everyone's private communication data. That for me is probably the biggest motivator in trying to avoid their services as much as possible.
pineapple
in reply to namingthingsiseasy • • •If you use encrypted messages and both people using the messages have a phone with disk encryption then there is literally no way for a government to gain access to your messages. That is assuming the government isn't going to torture you.
artyom
in reply to freedickpics • • •I would argue that phone that a phone that runs Android is not a dumb phone. Not having a Google account logged into your phone is a huge step towards privacy.
See:
- Mudita Kompakt
- Punkt MP02
- etc.
Also don't fall into the trap that privacy is a binary issue. There's a massive spectrum.
swelter_spark
in reply to artyom • • •Eagle0110
in reply to freedickpics • • •Exactly, taking away tools which enable you to enhance your digital privacy, or the ability to use such tools, is fundamentally a flawed way to enhance your privacy in the long term.
Same for security with rooting, and it's the same reason why the argument that "rooting makes your phone less secure" is a fundamentally flawed argument.
winnie
in reply to Eagle0110 • • •Yes! I hate that companies are trying to make people think thar rooting=unsafe. Then make it work safely. Root user is safe on Linux, then why it isn't on phone?
That's just boils down to user not giving root access to every app.
Eagle0110
in reply to winnie • • •Exactly!
Ultimately rooting empowers users with control, and many company profit from users not having control, like Netflix, like Google with their ads, etc., so they love to make people think rooting is somehow unsafe lol
Hudell
in reply to winnie • • •Because they don't know what could potentially be running with root access and they'd rather block everything they don't know.
Earlier this year my accountant asked me to install an app on my phone to give them access to some banking details and that app would not open the login screen without the gboard keyboard enabled, because they considered custom keyboard apps = bad. It also would not let me use password managers, so I was forced to put my banking details beyond a weaker password than any of my online accounts for random sites.
zod000
in reply to freedickpics • • •rumba
in reply to freedickpics • • •I can't speak for everyone, but if I'm using a dumb phone, I'm not going to be doing any of the things that I'm worried about them hearing.
If ICE grabs my phone right now and beats me until I lock it. They're going to be looking through my lemmy history.
I'm not going to hold a long political dissertation over SMS or during a phone call.
What I really want to at this point is a pager, a cellular Wi-Fi access point, and an 8" tablet that can run Linux and sip power so I can just pretend I don't have a device.
Corridor8031
in reply to rumba • • •rumba
in reply to Corridor8031 • • •That's a good way to get locked up for 6 months while they 'investigate' you
What are you trying to hide RUMBA??? Ihre Papiere bitte
eldavi
in reply to rumba • • •rumba
in reply to eldavi • • •yup, I want no parts of that.
Here's my license, here's my phone. here's my travel laptop.
eldavi
in reply to rumba • • •Crozekiel
in reply to rumba • • •This is basically what I was thinking. Where can I find a fully functioning 8" Linux Tablet? I feel like the rest of it is easy peasy.
Edit: In my head, I am imagining a steam deck but with the side controller bits snapped off. Someone pls make this. lol
rumba
in reply to Crozekiel • • •I keep hoping the Halium project will pick up support for some small tablet, but those are almost all bootloader-locked. I don't love Halium, but anything is better than what we have, I could deal with some UBPorts.
I even looked at DIY. There's no lack of 7" touchscreens, but Pi's are apparently bad on power. There are a couple of mini clone boards that might work, but they all have tradeoffs and red flags.
Crozekiel
in reply to rumba • • •Vittelius
in reply to Crozekiel • • •rumba
in reply to Crozekiel • • •The primary problem we have with putting Linux on phones is a lack of drivers. Hallium is basically fishing bits and pieces out of AOSP, then feeding that data into the Linux install. The upside is that we get pretty good power management and we get working cameras and working radios and all those creature comforts you really expect a phone to have.
The downside is that Google (and nearly every hardware manufacturer) is rather aggressively heading towards locking third parties and out of things. It's not hard to envision a world where a couple of back room deals are made and some firmware updates happen. And all of a sudden, hardware that is at any updates is not capable of running Halium.
Halium's core system partition is also read-only, so there's some lack of hacking ability there that we'd really like to see. You have to put the custom stuff you want into a separate container. Not impassable, though.
Halium is at the very least private and works fine right now. Will it continue to work? Once the eye of Sauron hits it, will it survive? Will it be sued into submission? Will it be sabotaged by Google or the hardware manufacturers?
It might very well be the crutch we need for now. But it also makes sense to get the hell off of it as soon as we can.
Crozekiel
in reply to rumba • • •rumba
in reply to Crozekiel • • •Okay, it's no steam deck, but the GPD-4 6xxx model looks like it supports Linux reasonably well.
gpdstore.net/blog/gpd-pocket-4…
github.com/aarron-lee/gpd-win-…
It's an 8.8 inch 180 degree touchscreen and it has a keyboard built in.
It's a pricey sausage, but not more expensive than my flagship phone.
GitHub - aarron-lee/gpd-win-tricks: Info on running linux on GPD Win devices
GitHubCrozekiel
in reply to rumba • • •thespcicifcocean
in reply to Crozekiel • • •Crozekiel
in reply to thespcicifcocean • • •Telorand
in reply to freedickpics • • •It's not about having a device that's secure, it's about having a device that you use less, to the point that it's not much of an attack surface for surveillance capitalism or (possibly) hostile governments.
It's much harder to profile someone if they aren't fed a steady stream of what you say and what you click upon.
communism
in reply to freedickpics • • •I think you're conflating security with privacy. Not that they are unrelated, but something can be e.g. unencrypted but lack telemetry.
Not that dumbphones are inherently private, but I don't think they're less private either. They're just what you use if you have no need for all the smartphone functions.
PolarKraken
in reply to communism • • •Idk, being locked in to using only communication protocols that are known to be roughly wide open seems like kind of a privacy non-starter, right? Sort of fails the attempt before you even start, no?
Edit: a wiser person than me reads the rest of the thread before a comment like the above, but I'm not them sadly. (AKA, plenty of good points made by others)
communism
in reply to PolarKraken • • •I suppose that begs the question of whether or not privacy (as used by this community) inherently means private in the colloquial sense, like the way a diary is private. Because to me, a e.g. public static website with no kind of profiling of its users is privacy-respecting, but obviously not private in the colloquial sense—it's a public resource.
I do use SMS sometimes and I use it strictly for things that I'm happy to be basically public. Same for using other protocols like unencrypted email.
A stock smartphone is also locked in to mandatory telemetry, like a stock dumbphone. The practical difference is that there's a much smaller community for installing custom FOSS OSes onto dumbphones compared to smartphones.
Sam_Bass
in reply to freedickpics • • •dragospirvu75
in reply to freedickpics • • •