I commend and congratulate you! As a born American, it was never a problem for me. However, as a Jew I know full well the fragile and tenuous peace can vanish in a moment if any one or more ethnic groups become a convenient scapegoat for a regime. My grandparents got out of Germany literally with moments to spare. At the same time my grandparents were boarding a plane, SS were bashing down the doors to their home.
So if you are in a position that you could ever face persecution like that, getting the F out is the smartest thing to do. I sincerely wish you all the best and hope you make a peaceful life somewhere that isn't headed down the hellish path that America is. Even being a white American, I still sometimes worry because of being Jewish. It can very easily happen again to my people, especially since antisemitism is in vogue again lately. And the biggest problem is that it's familiar and comfortable for most people; my people are expected to have acclimated to oppression - hey aren't you used to it?
I hope someday soon, the USA will be safe again for you, though I would further admire if you've made a life somewhere that is preferable even over a safe USA.
I would never buy a Google branded phone just honestly I know there’s ease of use and supposedly some of them are the most compatible with custom ROMs but really… they’re Google. They are notnot evil.
I wish! I have a Samsung and I used to have an LG. One thing I anticipated which turned out to be on the nose is that these TVs stay operational just up until the maker decides they want your money again. I never bought into it to begin with. I only got a Smart TV to begin with because it has everything else I want. But I go straight to hooking up a computer. The apps on the TVs are all ooh and aah until a couple of years go by and then suddenly the apps are not compatible with the sites or backends what have you, and guess what? No more updates. You need a new TV despite the fact that yours is 100% perfectly fine, other than the inherent sabotage built in.
So that’s why I never even had any expectations. But I would love to find the best Linux distro for a media machine that my wife could learn to use. Right now I have to do all of it because it’s just browse to the files or load a playlist. I’d like something like Kodi or Plex but they have issues with one thing or another. I just want an SMB based connection in an interface that shows friendly thumbnails kinda like Nova player on Android. That app is highly underrated. Free, as far as I know open source and aside from a few control designs not being too great, the app is terrific. Kicks VLC’s butt. Why are they still designing the software like it’s 20 years ago and it’s on Windows XP?
Anyway I digress. Smart TV running Android or Linux would rock but I don’t expect it to be too feasible. But what do I know, because I’m not a professional dev.
Honestly fine by me. I prefer Linux remain non-mainstream. It has integrity like this. The moment any suits see dollar signs on it, it’s as good as ruined.
Not at all. More like not wanting to see some corporate entity start to turn it into another monetized trash heap that’s enshittified to be sold to the masses in bloated and corrupt form. There’s a legitimate argument for remaining the way it is.
We chould be fighting back. We could pick one huge company that has done a lot of bad, one that relies on willing patronage, rather than a utility or the like, and we could collectively boycott them to death. Overnight the worst offenders could be shut down. But try to get anyone to give enough of a shit to sacrifice so much as a fart.
I’m not blaming individuals at all; the corp CEOs are the true evils. But they will never change, and we have minuscule to no power over them. Government regulation could have in the past, but the corporations are the government now; anyone who still thinks otherwise is just in denial.
So it’s up to the individual to choose not to give their money and information to these companies. It’s up to the individual to starve them of their lifeblood. Even then, they might double down - these gluttons are not known for their sense of humility. So one or two must be made into examples - and it would need to be companies that don’t have backing like the auto and banking industries, otherwise it would just be our tax dollars bailing them out like last timeS where the worst of them retired on multimillion dollar “golden parachutes.” All that would need to get slaughtered at the conceptual level.
I will refrain from sharing more of my perspective on what I expect because I really don’t wanna be that much of a bummer, but we are really approaching our very last moment before we would be labeled as terrorists for installing our own ROM. And if we don’t wake up average Joe/Sue, they’ll just go along and eat it up.
One of my favorite lesser-known sci-fi shows is Continuum. Their depiction of the future society was so spot on it’s scary. Everything down to how good people can actually believe that individuals who don’t want to be born into slavery should be considered aberrant, and those who fight back are terrorists… it’s uncanny how close to that we already are. You should watch it, because it’s pretty much a road map for where we are almost at.
On the positive side, lots of people are getting to the point where they are fed up enough that they just might be receptive if the ideas are presented in the right way.
Nah… no matter what they do, people - especially Americans, are too lazy and apathetic to care. We all know about all the spying that has been publicly divulged and admitted to - by the phone company, by the NSA, by Facebook, the list goes on. And how many Americans made any change to their lifestyle? None. They still line up in droves to pour out their money for the latest spy device. How many times was Alexa demonstrated empirically to have uploaded conversations recorded without the owner’s awareness or consent? The sheep still BUY such devices.
Please don’t delude yourself that people have any reluctance whatsoever. Open arms indeed.
If the day comes where it’s impossible to at the very least, clean off spyware stuff you don’t want, or install custom ROMs if necessary, then I’ll stick to older units that have the ability still. And if that ever becomes impossible, then stop using a smartphone.
And all the arguments in the world about how everything requires a smartphone - I don’t care about. That cannot be literally required, at least not for anything important because it’s not possible to assume/ensure that every person has one and that it is fully operational etc.
If this creates a nuisance for providers of various services, so be it - in fact, all the better because they can potentially be a source of pressure to maintain the availability of customizable devices. But that’s a very very miniscule likelihood; more likely is that they say well, too bad, if you don’t have a smartphone then this hospital can’t treat you. There may come a point where it literally will be impossible to functionally integrate in society without being spied upon 24/7. And in America at least, this will be welcomed with open arms because - well, you know: sheep.
But even then, there will develop a bigger and bigger fringe subculture of off-the-grid individuals who still value the concept of privacy.
So - like every sci-fi dystopia depicted in film and literature throughout history. Well, anyone who complains won’t be able to claim they weren’t warned a million times literally.
Well I was thinking of more like late 80s early to mid 90s. Games were written by actual writers like Roberta Williams, Jane Jensen, Sid Meir, Raymond Feist, and people like them. I’m thinking of titles by Sierra, Apogee, Activision, Brøderbund, Sir-tech, 3DO, Infocom… you get my meaning, I trust.
If you’re gonna suggest that games like Myst, Zork, all the Quest series by Sierra, the Might & Magics and Wizardry titles - if you think those were made with the kinds of greed that we have today where it’s cheaply made junk with every deceptive money-making practice imaginable… then you may just be younger and not aware of what it was like. Those titles made money, yeah, but they put their heart and soul into the quality of the product and never expected money in the billions. And they got paid ONCE for the game from each customer. And many games gave people years worth of play. Today games popup in your face telling enticing the player to spend money, and they give the player enough progress to think they know what they need to do in order to advance, only to introduce newer currency and demand money for it. Etc etc. there are dozens of tactics to scam people out of continual payments. I don’t play any of the garbage they make today. And I feel so sorry for young people now that they don’t even know what it’s like to get immersed in a game’s creative narrative for months and they already paid for all of it one time.
It’s not a fallacy, I know there were also loser titles back then, and of course. Not everything is a hit. But games like the Krondor series which were written by an actual award winning author (Raymond E. Feist)? Find me anything like that today amongst the sea of sewage. Sorry to be so negative because I know there’s some really great stuff. It’s just afloat in a vast sea of garbage and hard to find. The app shops bury them because they’re not as profitable. Greed has become all-consuming and insatiable. It’s a cancer to the whole industry.
Yeah anyway… no survivorship bias here. I lived through those times of gaming. Fuckin paradise, it was.
I commend and congratulate you! As a born American, it was never a problem for me. However, as a Jew I know full well the fragile and tenuous peace can vanish in a moment if any one or more ethnic groups become a convenient scapegoat for a regime. My grandparents got out of Germany literally with moments to spare. At the same time my grandparents were boarding a plane, SS were bashing down the doors to their home.
So if you are in a position that you could ever face persecution like that, getting the F out is the smartest thing to do. I sincerely wish you all the best and hope you make a peaceful life somewhere that isn't headed down the hellish path that America is. Even being a white American, I still sometimes worry because of being Jewish. It can very easily happen again to my people, especially since antisemitism is in vogue again lately. And the biggest problem is that it's familiar and comfortable for most people; my people are expected to have acclimated to oppression - hey aren't you used to it?
I hope someday soon, the USA will be safe again for you, though I would further admire if you've made a life somewhere that is preferable even over a safe USA.
Kudos to you and your family.