In most companies L1 Support are severely underpaid offshore, total muppets, or both. Their most frequent triage or escalation path is gonna be “I routed it to the wrong application team because the caller said some words that sounded vaguely relevant to something that team works on”.

Several Porsche models, the Mustang EV, I guess the Tesla Plaid if you consider that a “sports” car.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, it appears Amazon is trying to “disrupt” the grocery market. Anecdotally they have been selling shit for crazy low prices and they’ll make like 30 separate trips to your house all on the same day with lined/insulated packing for the perishable items and frozen water bottles (no extra charge to the customer) in each bag to keep the food cool in transit.

It seems like there is no way they can be making money on this process, which tells me they are speedrunning Walmarts strategy of operating at a loss to force other grocers out of the market.

My understanding is that, in broad strokes…

1. Aurora acts like a proxy or mirror that doesn’t require you to sign in to get Google Play Store apps. It doesn’t provide any other software besides what you specifically download from it, and it doesn’t include any telemetry/tracking like normal Google Play Store would.

2. microG is a reimplementation of Google Play services (the suite of proprietary background services that Google runs on normal Android phones). MicroG doesn’t have the bloat and tracking and other closed source functionality, but rather acts as a stand-in that other apps can talk to (when they’d normally be talking to Google Play services). This has to be installed and configured and I would refer to the microG github or other documentation.

3. GrapheneOS has its own sandboxed Google Play Services which is basically unmodified Google Play Services, crammed into its own sandbox with no special permissions, and a compatibility layer that retains some functionality while keeping it from being able to access app data with high level permissions like it would normally do on a vanilla Android phone.

If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can’t speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.

To be fair, this federal program was a cluster eff since they started it in about 2010. It passed a bunch of grant money through to the states, which all did different “things” with it. Most held semi-public meetings and planning sessions for 5-10 years or wrote detailed planning documents but never delivered any physical infrastructure (actual results to the residents).

Maybe if they allow API access for alternative frontends that eliminate ads and block telemetry. Otherwise, not interested.

Its possible a sleeper cell of terrorists could effectuate some small area drone strikes with commercial off the shelf drones and improvised explosives.

The large scale military drones you are envisioning that can do the same damage as military aerial bombardment, that is a much harder thing to “sneak” into the US at any kind of scale or to build in secret.

As for future state actor capabilities. It seems possible that China is working on drone tech deployed from submarines or other force-projection platforms. Yet another reason to avoid a hot war with near peer militaries in current year.

Yeah I would also like a crystal ball here. I am somewhat interested in the 10 if I can run GrapheneOS. Otherwise I’m going to explore other custom ROMs with broader device support.

I am running GOS on a Pixel 7, which means I’ve had this device for ~2.5 years at this point, and back when I transitioned to this setup I was aware they were talking about being beholden to Pixels due to the hardware security module not being available on other devices.

It has been a known issue. I understand it is a very difficult and costly undertaking to develop new hardware and new entrants would be competing against the big guys for fab space, manufacturing and assembly etc.

We need some kind of nonprofit or independently financed group to advance this cause. Could it be FUTO, Framework, or some other company/organization like this?

There would be market incentive to solve these problems - There has got to be a lot of demand for a neutral hardware platform that meets the hardware security module and other requirements for bootloader security, custom ROMs, etc.

They won’t ever say it out loud but they have always removed videos for mentioning alternative frontends or other technology they view as direct threats to their revenue stream.

No, it is Meta and these companies fault, but I focus on things I can actually control. Just spewing the party line default Lemmy opinion of “capitalism is the problem, blah” doesn’t do anything to solve the problem.

Educating people so they understand how the surveillance works, and explaining that there are alternatives, actually gets us closer to a solution.

Its reliant on running a normie phone and OS, and running the native FB, instagram, or other apps in the Meta constellation. These apps create persistent services that internally backchannel sensitive browser data back to them via internal ports. All browser traffic on devices running these apps should be considered compromised.

The solution is to run Graphene or other de-googled OS and avoid Meta apps like the plague.

Dildo-as-a-Service

Side note -

I literally have the reader pictured in the thumbnail. It is a Kindle keyboard from 10+ years ago at this point. It still works fine. At one point the original battery went to shit, and it cost very little to get an aftermarket replacement and install it myself.

I keep it offline and read 100% sideloaded .epub books from various sources. The lockscreen ads don’t even try to display anymore.

Sure it isn’t backlit or waterproof but it still functions flawlessly as a generic reader. Old tech like this is awesome. Why not get a decade of use (or more) out of something that still works?

I’m having an OK time with alternatives, namely GrayJay on Android and Windows desktop. Basically I had to make sure my subscriptions included the 50-75 creators I am actually interested in, then the list becomes 100% relevant because it is just videos from creators you are subbed to. On the Desktop app it still uses algorithm of some sort for sidebar content based on the current video you are watching only. So if you still want to “organically discover” things you can, but don’t have to.

The only bad part with the Windows desktop version is it will crash the entire app mid-playback sometimes. Hopefully the bugs get fixed eventually. Also the “home” tab of Grayjay is some weird pseudo political stuff but at least you can ignore that entire tab and just look at your own subscriptions.

I dunno if there is a subculture of printing the models at home. I would think resin printers would have more than enough resolution to make good miniatures. Is that frowned upon? There is no reason to buy overpriced licensed shit.

They already do it in Podcasts and it is usually extremely ham-fisted. The presenter will be mid sentence talking about something and suddenly IMPROVE YOUR DIET WITH FACTOR

Watch crypto miners will be trying to build LHCs in their yard with asinine electricity costs to make a few micrograms of gold.

Please at least just phase it out instead of immediate elimination.

Eliminating it at this time would mean there is a pretty large demo who want to go full EV or at least PHEV for their next vehicle but they won’t be able to as easily.

For example if you’re driving a late 90s or early 2000s car, you practiced austerity and deferred maintenance over the last decade to survive financially and/or build savings, your current vehicle may be on its last leg.

This means that during that time, your tax money subsidized a bunch of rich douchebag early adopters to get themselves a Tesla Plaid, and now it’s finally your turn to dip a reluctant toe into the new car market, and for your trouble you get tariff-induced price hikes and evaporating EV credits.