Onii-Chan

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Those are certainly words.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Absolutely agreed. I came here to escape proprietary corpo bullshit, and if we don't defederate, I'll just stop using kbin altogether. I love it here, but that will change if Meta's grimy tentacles are able to take hold of the place.

Defederate.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

I haven't watched television in years. YouTube is my main source of entertainment, closely followed by pirated TV shows and movies running through Kodi.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

This is something I'm very interested in too.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Email, Signal and SMS get notifications. Literally everything else is off, and I use Buzzkill to shorten the vibrate. I have ASD, and run my own business, so I get literally 30-40 SMS/200+ Signal notifications a day, and the constant BZZZZ BZZZZ actually causes me an immense amount of sensory overload. Buzzkill ensures that vibration pattern is nothing more than a very quick sub-half second, one-off buzz. The number of apps I actually have installed is so few, I can literally fit them on one screen, no scrolling required, and I check for the few app updates I'll need manually each day.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Australia too. I'll never understand it, and I live here.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Spot on. My wife and I are actually making plans to move overseas. I'm ready to get out of here, but she wants to wait until the next federal election to get a guage on where things will be heading. In the meantime, we're saving as much money as we possibly can, because Australia isn't the country it used to be, and it's clear that we're both deeply-incompatible with the general culture of apathy, government trust, and rules, rules, rules. It's suffocating.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Defender is all I use, with Malwarebytes free as a backup if I sense something feels different. Haven't had a virus in years.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Google Pixel with GrapheneOS. Nothing matches it.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

I love the passionate anger.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

It's very telling when the only criticism you really see leveled against Brave is that same article everybody posts as some kind of trap card, despite the fact it can be boiled down to "don't use Brave because the CEO is a bigot or something, and you have to opt out of their crypto stuff." Cool. I don't care about those things, I care about the browser's ability to do what I need it to, and Brave does. Are you putting your trust in a company that could be selling your data? Sure, that's always a risk, but until it's been confirmed, I'm happy to stick with it. I mean shit, it even beats out GrapheneOS's Vanadium in the fingerprinting test, and that's the browser I use on my phone.

imo, the hate against Brave is unfounded and seems to be coming from the anti-Chromium crowd. There are valid arguments to be made against it, but I honestly couldn't give less of a fuck what their CEO believes as long as the product works as advertised, and Brave consistently scores highly in privacy and security tests.

Onii-Chan, 6 months ago

Yeah, TOR in particular seems to give a lot of people a false sense of security. I live out in a very remote area, I'm certainly not going to be using TOR, for obvious reasons.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Yeah, but would have required effort and like, taken a while. They had their poor shareholders to think of.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Oh my god, you're an insufferable cunt. I'm glad you don't represent all LGBTQ+ individuals, because holy fuck. Nuke me, big, powerful moderator.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Legitimately invest a shitload into Bitcoin before cashing out at the top of the last bull market we just had (waiting a good number of years until then just having fun being young.) I'd then buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, set it up to be completely off-grid (as much as can be done, anyway), and then live happily in peaceful isolation while the world burns itself to the fucking ground and I hopefully die before I hit 60.

Unfortunately I didn't do any of that in 2013, so I'm still working on step one here in 2023... whatever the hell the right move is in 2023.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The evidence seems pretty damning from what I've read. Confirmed authentic by Nashville police, too. Big tech and the media seem to be scrambling to cover up and censor the manifesto story as quickly as possible. Make of that what you will... but if this were a right wing terrorist, it'd be news the world over, and nobody would have had an issue with it. The writings shown in the leaks make it very clear that the shootings were racially-motivated - and had been planned for months.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

For the record, I think the guy is a massive fucking dickhead, but he originally broke the story, and imo, did the right thing here. His Twitter is a good place to start: https://nitter.net/scrowder

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

You cannot tell me with a straight face that if the suspect's political ideology were far right, that the media and large tech platforms would be employing the exact same response. This isn't a matter of legal proceedings, it's glaringly-obvious demonstration of what mainstream media and their counterparts will do in order to silence any story that may damage the credibility of their beliefs. This was an anti-white hate crime. It is being suppressed. If this were an anti-black hate crime, it would be covered worldwide, court orders be damned - and you know it.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Again, if the perpetrator instead happened to be a far right terrorist instead, this same response would NOT be happening, and you know that. This is a case of media bias and suppression, and you can dress it up any way you like. There are plenty of ways in which cases like these SHOULD be handled by the media, but historically aren't. Why is this particular case so special? Why are news organizations and big tech platforms trying so desperately to bury this particular case, when their response wasn't such for high profile far right terrorist/racially-motivated attacks in recent years? It's not like the media has ever given a shit about doing the right thing. If you truly believe these platforms operate on objective reasoning, then why have they never employed it until now? It couldn't be that the difference between this attack and others is that Nashville just happens to have been acted out in the name of anti-white hate (based on the shooter's own writings and political ideology?)

Media companies only care about profit. Mass shootings are guaranteed profit for large media companies, and history has shown that they will happily share any story guaranteed to bring in more revenue and spark outrage, especially given that any fines issued for breach of confidential legal information will pale in comparison to the revenue earned. So what's so special about this one? It's the first in a long, long time to run counter to the mainstream media and big tech's generally left wing narrative. They're protecting their own. If you look into the HRC and CEI, which most of America's large media companies are beholden to, then there are genuine financial consequences for not staying in line and protecting the ideology they espouse.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy your argument on this. We fundamentally disagree here.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

I don't like this ride anymore.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

As someone who uses GrapheneOS but knows very little about the technical side of things, what implications does this have for the OS? I'll actually just not use a smartphone anymore if I'm going to be forced back onto the privacy nightmare that is stock Android.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

Wyll stayed at camp my entire first playthrough while I adventured with Astarion, Karlach, and Shart - it was so much fun. Things are different this time round though. Time to see if he grows on me.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

I'm going to show my age here, but my first was a shiny new Google Nexus One. I still miss that phone.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago

It was all so exciting at the time. If only we know where it'd all eventually lead to.

Onii-Chan, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Keep in mind this is the same guy who said that he idolizes the way Musk has been running Twitter. It's a real shame, because reddit is the only place I know to get actual real answers from actual real people for generally difficult or otherwise niche questions. I don't use reddit anymore as a user, but without Google search, reddit is done (given that even ex-users like myself still affix 'reddit' to the end of a search query.) I have no idea what Spez is planning, but it can't be any improvements to his site, because holy shit.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Horrifying for this millennial too.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Yeah, agreed. This is a very spicy take, but Mario Kart 64 also disappointed me after going back to it as an adult. It just... doesn't play well compared to the newer titles, especially with how good the gameplay in 8 is. It was amazing for its time, but things have absolutely improved since then.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

The question I have is where does the world go from here? I can't foresee a future where these attempts by government to enact a kind of all-encompassing control and monitoring of citizens' lives just suddenly stop and we return to a time when our every movement wasn't watched. It seems like they will just keep trying, taking any pushback as a sign that their social engineering just needs a few tweaks and a little more corporate/media brainwashing before they try it again. The only winners are government and their corporate buddies.

We're entering a world that myself and a not insignificant percentage of humanity are fundamentally incompatible with. I don't see a reason to remain optimistic about the future, to keep building upon what I've got going on, to strive for more, when we're staring down the barrel of a technofeudalist nightmare dystopian future that it seems most people don't give a shit about eventuating because they've "got nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to worry about."

Somebody give me a reason to think things will get better.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Currently using GrapheneOS on my 8 Pro, and the experience has been extremely smooth so far.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

That was so much better than I was expecting. Genuinely good, with great characters and a premise that kept up its intrigue. Excited to see more.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

GrapheneOS, Signal, Vanadium, Mullvad VPN, extremely strict permissions. I don't do much with my phone, but I still need to know I'm in control of my privacy.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Enjoyable exploration at the very least. It's the one thing Bethesda has always excelled at, but I knew Starfield was going to be a massive disappointment full of copy+pasted POI's as soon as they mentioned "1000 planets" and procedural generation. So not only does Starfield fall flat on its face in the story and wooden dialogue departments (imo, all their games suffer here), it isn't even able to save itself with the kind of immersive and rewarding exploration experience you'd have expected Bethesda to at least provide as they did with their previous games by merit of a handcrafted, curated map.

I'm glad the honeymoon period is over with this game and people are finally seeing it for the half baked, outdated, and bland exercise in mediocrity that it actually is.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

"If you refuse to return to the office, we will assume you work on behalf of North Korean intelligence, and will be monitored by our WFH bots. Please keep your curtains open."

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

If this passes, the rest of the world will follow. This CANNOT be allowed to happen.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Exactly lmao. I don't trust Google with shit, so I'm still going to install GrapheneOS and Mullvad as soon as I get the 8.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

I always assume the most overconfident, passive aggressive online argument points come from literal children. Hell, I dealt with one just yesterday. When I was younger, I'd also get too invested in online debates, however now that I'm in my 30's, I'll have my say, and if I can see the replies devolving into a shitstorm, I just laugh and move on with my day.

Getting older has a few perks - you definitely stop caring so much about what other people think, especially online.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

I have no idea where American self hate has come from in this last decade. As an Australian, the US constitution affords so many freedoms to citizens that we could only dream of here, particularly the right to free speech, expression, and association, and the fifth, which we don't have in this country. This has lead to numerous authoritarian laws being passed, such as mandatory and/or warrantless device and account seizures (including passwords), with jail time for noncompliance, the complete abolishment of privacy, nearly zero legal protections for homeowners who defend themselves from intruders, extremely strict road rules without the data to justify them, anti-association laws, some of the highest fines in the developed world (and we all know fines disproportionately affect lower income earners and are essentially code for "legal for rich people") and a lot more. Even our cost of living is immense.

America literally IS the most free place on the planet, and it seems people are unable to realize that with more freedom comes more danger and opposing ideas. I'd rather live in a more dangerous country if it meant being more in control of my own destiny, safety and ideas, than in the restrictive, authoritarian nanny state in the making that I currently do. Even the most staunchly progressive American would be astounded at the number of things they'd be unable to do if they moved to a country like Australia. It's safe, but safety at the expense of personal autonomy, protections and privacy is not a life worth living in my mind.

Personally? I'd be moving to the states in a heartbeat if I had the option. Life isn't that simple though.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Can you explain how Australia ISN'T a nanny state? That's an odd take you've got there. It's one of the most common complaints from people who actually live here, even if they love the country otherwise. Nerf have to manufacture weaker springs just for the AU market, and pepper spray is illegal. You can't exceed 5km/h without incurring a large fine. We have no constitutional freedom of speech. The police have extreme powers over the people, we have next to no rights legally against them. Our car commercials are regulated in order to not show any 'spirited' driving. Hell, we banned gel blasters - which are literal children's toys - and designated them as actual restricted firearms. There's a heap more I could mention.

Australia is absolutely a nanny state, and the US by comparison absolutely isn't. I would prefer to live elsewhere.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

I'd still prefer a Pixel running GrapheneOS with aggressively-restrictive permissions.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Hell, I finished school over a decade ago now, but even as an adult, I feel like I'm being constantly watched. This kind of overreaching, omnipresent surveillance is genuinely not good for individuals and by extension, society at large. Human beings do not act naturally when they feel their every move is being watched. Anxiety, distrust, paranoia, depression, etc. can all manifest, and it scares me to know that this kind of "for your safety" surveillance has become so normalized.

It isn't normal. It is affecting the average person's mental health, even if they don't know it. It is affecting society at a very base level as a result. What a world...

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

InnerTune is what finally got me to ditch Spotify. It's free, no account required, uses YouTube Music (so imo, a wider range of content) AND shuffle is genuinely random.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

2014 wasn't a decade... ago, oh my fucking god.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

This is the way I thought you had to do it, because I couldn't find another way to her. Yeah, I felt pretty stupid not long afterwards.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Owned my current Pixel 4 since new, but I think it's time I actually upgrade. Been waiting for the 8 for a while, and as long as I can throw GrapheneOS onto it, I'll be happy to retire the 4. It's been an awesome phone.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

Come to Australia if you want some dystopian surveillance state bullshit. The border force in the country have the legal right to force you to unlock your devices, or throw you in prison until you do. We have no rights in this country when it comes to privacy (just look into the recent legislation that was pushed through parliament during COVID - they can edit, delete, etc. any data on your device. It's absolutely fucked, and Australians being the apathetic bunch of cunts they are just couldn't give a shit.)

This country is just becoming more and more authoritarian, and I'm not sure how many Americans know just how many protections they have and take for granted. Australia is fucking suffocating to live in today if you value privacy and autonomy. There are almost no barriers at all between the individual and the government, and it's only getting worse. I wish I had moved stateside when I was young enough for it to be a possibility. I'm stuck here now.

Onii-Chan, 8 months ago

Yeah same. A cheap little thing from Woolies does the trick. I just find it fucking disgusting that we have to go to such lengths to begin with.

Onii-Chan, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I don't understand how people find it so difficult to just stop spending their money on shit they don't need. You have to treat yourself occasionally, but I'll never understand those who anyways have to buy the newest thing.

My car is over ten years old. I still use a Pixel 4. I don't own any fancy clothes, new consoles, TV's, etc. and I'm perfectly happy. I run my own business and put money aside, ensuring I'm not going to go hungry if shit hits the fan, which is always a very real possibility. The last nice thing I bought myself was a gaming laptop, and that was just to replace my old one which got me through a good 5 years of use.

People need to start being happy with less. It's really, really easy to do, and you'll likely find yourself feeling happier not giving a fuck about the New Thing... or maybe I'm just getting older and my priorities have changed.

EDIT: I should note that this is aimed at people who complain about having money issues, but who go out and spend it on things they don't need and then blame anything but their own actions. If your dopamine hits come from buying stuff, and you're all good with that, more power to you.

Onii-Chan, 9 months ago

DKC2 has one of the most beautifully-melancholic soundtracks of all time imo. I was enamored by it as a child, and as a young adult, realized how influential it was for me during the time in my life I made music myself. David Wise really is something else.