I saw this a while ago and wonder if it's related at all
sudoer777
joined 4 years ago
NYC Democrats are already introducing legislation targeting the protestors
Dallas area feels pretty conservative. People keep voting against the public transit system, one of the suburbs where a lot of businesses are is leading an effort to cut public transit funding across the entirety of Texas, horrible cycling infrastructure even downtown, and one of the first recent Democratic candidates to be publicly anti-trans was from Texas. A lot of the businesses here are financial or military contractors, and not a lot of grassrootsy stuff, feels more corporate.
I was on public transit in Dallas and it was the most packed I have ever seen it
No they're telling people to be non-violent and to wave the American flag and not the Mexican flag
I use Fedora Asahi Remix currently, and I want to switch to NixOS but am uncertain about the MacBook support, and even if it was good switching would take longer than it's worth unless my current installation stops working for whatever reason
Hmmm maybe not, but i guess for me its part of doing my part to stop big tech from using our info.
The big question here is how does big tech use our info that makes it important to keep them from having it? Here, political orientation has a large impact on importance, for example:
Ads: Nobody loves ads, but some people tolerate them more than others. Liberals might see them as a necessary evil to provide services at a good cost. Libertarians might say they have the right to use their own hardware as they please and block them out of convenience. Progressives might say that they promote consumerism, and leftists might go further and say that they are one of the ways capitalists keep their control over society. So since data is used for targeted ads, that's one area that can be argued based on political orientation.
Product improvement: Overall depends on their view of the company's impact on society. Conservatives and leftists both see big tech as it exists currently as morally corrupt, others may see them as providing a useful service. If they think that big tech has a positive influence on society, then they are probably okay with their non-security critical data being used to improve the product, otherwise they might be more likely to want to avoid that happening.
Finances: Data can be used to personalize prices for large expenses, which is something that threatens everyone. The cost of healthcare, housing, education, and transportation is a major concern across all political orientations (and is why the Democrats lost the election by not doing fucking anything while the Republicans kept telling people that they would fix it by cutting government spending). However, people might also think that there's nothing they can do about their data being used to make things more expensive or that if they try to resist that then it will cost more for them, so that's an obstacle that needs to be considered as well.
Law enforcement: If the person is a target of the Trump administration and knows that, then their data being used against them is one clear motivation if they don't think it's too late to do anything. Otherwise, it depends on how much the person trusts the government and current law enforcement.
So overall, I would consider where they fit in this political categorization and use the reasons that align best with this. Challenging their political stances is also an option but requires a lot of other things to consider and probably won't work well since a lot of it is rooted in fundamental values that are difficult to change.
They need to have a reason to care. Are they or people close to them in danger if they don't put effort into increasing their privacy? What steps do they need to take to switch to alternatives, and does what they gain from taking those steps outweigh what they lose? Is your advice oriented around the context of their own lives, or are you telling them to do things because a bunch of people on the internet told you to?
These questions themselves are also very contextual, especially with different political orientations. For instance, if someone distrusts the government, then their definition of "danger" may include the government reading their conversations, which in this case it is a lot easier to convince people to switch to FOSS or more secure platforms like Signal (and I've convinced nearly everyone I know to use it, both conservative and progressive/leftist, because they distrust the government and large tech corporations). Whereas if someone thinks the government is alright, then they won't give a shit. So I'd say that considering and discussing their political beliefs and making sure they align with valid reasons to make changes is an important step before telling them how they should do things.
Wow that's depressing. Apparently also Firefox makes it very difficult to install extensions that aren't signed by Mozilla, which I learned when a pro-Palestine extension got removed from the Mozilla store and we were discussing alternative ways to distribute it. It's an issue in LibreWolf as well, although there might have been less hoops I had to jump through to disable that.
The worst part about the Firefox AI stuff is their provider selection is shit. No Deepseek, no OpenRouter, so I have a stupid pane and a stupid popup button every time I select text that only works with models that are either inferior or closed off.
1.Email
FastMail, IceDove (GNU debranded ThunderBird), FairEmail
2.Cloud storage / file sync
Syncthing, Nextcloud for sharing and browsing files, I store my files using TrueNAS and a RAID Z2 configuration with Backblaze B2 for backup
3.Maps & navigation
OsmAnd with Brouter (FastBike-VeryLowTraffic profile) for ebike, my local transit app for public transit, Magic Earth the rare occasion I use a car, Uber rarely, I still use Google Maps for searching because everything else sucks
4.Search engine
Kagi, nowadays I usually use Deepseek R1 model with either Kagi Assistant or OpenRouter but might self-host LibreChat
5.Web browser
LibreWolf for searches, FireFox and FireFox PWAs for sites I regularly visit but planning to switch to Floorp. On Android, Cromite for random sites, Vanadium for sides I stay logged in to, IronFox with extensions for searches.
6.Calendar
Etar synced with Nextcloud using DAVx5
7.Contacts management
GrapheneOS contacts app synced with Nextcloud, the Fossify app has given me problems
8.Notes / to-do lists
Tasks.org synced with Nextcloud, Logseq for random notes, Markdown or comments in Typst documents in certain contexts
9.Office suite (docs, spreadsheets, etc.)
Typst or LaTeX for documents I make myself. LibreOffice or Collabora app for MS office documents.
10.Messaging / chat
Signal (Molly) and Discord (Vesktop, Revenge) most of the time
11.Video calling
Signal or Discord for personal, Teams for business stuff
12.Social media / microblogging RSS reader / news
Lemmy, Reddit, Instagram
13.Music streaming / podcast app
Tidal for my own playlists, Spotify for playlists from other people, YouTube when I want to randomly listen to something, ListenBrainz and Last.fm for scribbling. I want to set up Navidrome again but last time I did it was a disaster.
15.Password manager
Bitwarden/Vaultwarden
16.VPN / DNS / Firewall
InviZible Pro and Privoxy (uses Tor and I2P). I should probably get Mullvad or AirVPN.
17.Launcher / Android OS (if you use custom ROMs)
Kvaesitso
18.App store / APKs
Obtainium for FOSS, Google Play for proprietary
19.Photo backup / gallery
Syncthing-Fork, Aves Libre
20.Weather
Weather.gov, Windy which tends to be more accurate for more specific locations
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I mean when I first came across it (which was linked from a mass text advertisement from Truth Social in January), this is the quote that stood out to me:
Notably the word "ecosystem".