southernwolf

southernwolf, 6 months ago

🤘🏻

southernwolf, 6 months ago

There are plenty of ways to convince people to take privacy and security more seriously, but this isn’t it. This is more likely to make people not take it seriously. Spotify Wrapped is a fun little gimmick that a lot of folks appreciate. Heck even I did, and I only rarely use Spotify.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

You are correct, yeah. I updated my post with more info on what I was asking about, plus the text of the two licenses.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

Wanted patent protections for myself mostly. I know the Apache 2.0 is best well-known for that, but I tend to prefer the simplicity of the BSD licenses. More so curious why the BSD 2-Clause was chosen for that Patent clause and not the BSD 3-Clause. Just seems odd to me. I updated my original post with more info.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

Really, it’s gonna depend on what your top priorities are. I run a Pixel 6 Pro with CalyxOS and I love it. But for you, it depends on whether you really need top security or want to go for a more open and long term design (which may not be entirely beneficial or all that special now).

For the Pixel 8, you’re gonna get much better cameras and more of those “Pixel Features” even when running something like GOS or CalyxOS. Its really nice cause you can even use GBoard and GCam and just firewall them (or however you do the equivalent in GOS), so you get the benefits without the downsides. Though it will be more expensive too.

With Fairphone, you’re gonna get a more open design that likely will last longer. That said, it doesn’t have a top end processor in it, so you have to imagine what it’ll be like in 6-8 years trying to run Android 20. Longevity is nice, but not as helpful if it can’t keep up physically with new releases. Also, with the Pixel 8 line now set to be supported for 8 years, it kinda… Undermines the Fairphone argument somewhat, though not to a huge degree.

Personally, if it were me, I’d choose the Pixel (and also choose CalyxOS as well, but that’s more a personal choice, don’t let the Graphene folks try and sway you with a bunch of FUD. CalyxOS is just fine, but GOS is a good choice too). It will have higher quality hardware, the processor should be able to handle tougher workloads into the future, and I think you’ll quite like the experience.

But, the Fairphone isn’t a bad choice either, and its definitely supporting a better ecosystem overall. It just won’t have as good of cameras and may not run as well a few years down the road, which could be an issue for the longevity. It can also run CalyxOS as well, so you won’t be missing out on using most other normal apps.

Really, it just depends on your use case and priorities. I don’t think you can go absolutely wrong choosing either one though.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

This is absolutely true. The Fairphone kinda gets around this since its got open parts and can be user serviced for most things, but the honest question for that is how many are gonna go to that trouble, not next week when your phone is still new, but 5 years from now? The dedicated certainly will and I commend Fairphone for it, but a lot of average folks with a slower phone are gonna want to upgrade at that point.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

Holy crap, I didn’t know about this fork before now. I kinda thought that OpenBoard was sorta… abandoned at this point, but seeing the improvements from this fork just made me go and try it again. Normally I just use GBoard with it’s connections disabled (CalyxOS, so that is possible to do in a secure way), but trying this out now to see if I can dump Gboard entirely.

southernwolf, 7 months ago

+1 for Neo Launcher!

southernwolf, 8 months ago

I really don’t get why the Pixel lineup always gets this weird… hostility directed at it every release cycle. It’s like the Pixel line is always given an extra level of scrutiny, that makers like Samsung, OnePlus, or even Apple don’t get. There are reasons to give it scrutiny, especially on the software side, but some of the things thrown at the Pixel line (especially since the 6) just sometimes seems… petty. I’m not saying it’s without fault, I’m a Pixel 6 Pro owner after all and can definitely offer some criticisms. But a lot of the criticisms about the design of the models always seems like nitpicking, yet it becomes a big to do.

I just don’t get it, is it just the Google name that brings about higher expectations?

southernwolf, 8 months ago

14/20, nicely done! I will say, I maybe would have wanted to see more AI results than just from Dall-e 3, though given I still missed 6 of the, that speaks very highly of Dall-e 3’s capabilities. But some midjourney and SDXL images would have made for a wider guessing selection too.

southernwolf, 8 months ago

I mean, that’s the case for KDE too, so can’t really throw stones there.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Say what you want about Brave, but at least they are moving to their own indexing. Where as DuckDuckGo is just Bing…

Also I’d take that anti-Brave link with a grain of salt. I’ve got a hunch it’s somehow connected back to a Vivaldi dev. So I’d view it as highly untrustworthy.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

I’d definitely try CalyxOS first, as it’ll be the closer experience to what you’ve had in GOS. There’s also DivestOS as well, but you’re gonna be more limited there since it won’t have MicroG (be default, not sure if it can be added in?) So it won’t have any real access to play store apps. You’ll probably get another 2-3 years out of CalyxOS on your pixel 5 if I had to guess. All depends on how long they can keep the security updates going for it.

LineageOS is a fantastic option, and eventually even when CalyxOS stops getting updates, LOS is absolutely a good choice to continue in using your device for long after the official support window. Just make sure you go with the version with MicroG so Play store apps mostly work as they should.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

It’s likely something out of their control. I imagine their payment processor either uses it, or requires the site to use it. Mostly to combat automated fraud.

You likely won’t find any site, that has online shopping, that doesn’t use some sort of way to gatekeep against this behavior, unless it’s crypto-based. And even then it likely still has something like that. Even if the site redirects to Paypal, you’re gonna face that.

Your approach simply isn’t realistic to the modern web. You can try uBlock, but blocking those connections likely will make the site ultimately not work for you.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Considering Purism is running a pump and dump scam with their phone, I wouldn’t grace them or their website with a single cent. There are worse things than a potential privacy issue…

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Quite frankly no one should be using captchas at all. They are mostly pointless, and AI’s have reached the point of being able to solve them. It’s mostly just a gratis thing at this point… The illusion of trust and safety, probably for both users and providers.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Could be it’s a requirements for their payment processor, and details like that aren’t something you talk openly about freely.

Also, you will have sites that u lock will break beyond repair, so try is the correct word. I know this well from using Brave, which is even less than uBlock does, and even then some sites are still broken and requires the shields turned off. Just an unfortunate reality with today’s web.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

^^^ This!

southernwolf, 9 months ago

I’m honestly surprised GOS hasn’t supported the FP yet. CalyxOS has for about a year or so now, and I imagine they’ll support the FP 5 too.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Ah, another post on a great new addition to the Fairphone lineup, another post where the top comments are complaining about because there is no headphone jack, they won’t consider it.

Y’all seriously have your priorities messed up if that’s what keeps you from supporting Fairphone. If having a device with a headphone jack is that important to you, invest in a dedicated audio player. You can get some with high quality DAC’s and more. But seriously, y’all need to cope about the Fairphone not having a single feature you want being a total deal breaker. That’s honestly petty…

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Fairphone brings a much better device to market with better cameras, a better screen, likely a better chip, open hardware specifications and modularity, a completely unlockable bootloader (with likely support for CalyxOS and other ROM’s shortly), and up to 8 years of software support(!), but people say they won’t get it because no headphone jack…

MFW people have their priorities extremely mixed up… That’s been the world now for 6 years, it’s time to get over it. Letting perfect be the enemy of good is how you decide to throwaway something as good as what Fairphone seems to be offering. Sony still offers Android devices with headphone jacks, just don’t be upset if you don’t get another Android version pushed to your device.

southernwolf, 9 months ago

Yeah, I hope the FP5 will come to the US officially too. I know the FP4 could work here, but it apparently did have issues with a carrier or two, or something.

Hopefully the 5 will bring true support for US markets.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

It’s honestly remarkable how few people in the comments here seem to get the joke.

Never stop dissecting things, y’all.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Because it’s just a proxy for Bing, with all the pitfalls of that.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Lots of that going around for stuff like this.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Imagine if someone had said something like this about the 1st generation iPhone… Oh wait, that did happen and his name was Steve Ballmer.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

May want to lock this community here so people move over to the correctly named one.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Huh, this might be one of the few examples of “don’t break userspace” not being held to by Linus and co? I’m sure stuff like this has happened before, but “don’t break userspace” has been a fairly strong guiding principle for the kernel for sometime. So seeing something like this happen is actually a bit surprising.

Though I guess it could be argued that if the removal of fTPM causes fewer bugs/issues than leaving it in place then userspace wasn’t broken. But still, it’s interesting to see regardless.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Probably because it is… Cannabis smoke isn’t that healthy overall, but it’s found to be safer than Tobacco smoke is at least. It doesn’t carry nearly the carcinogenic risks of tobacco, and afaik, it doesn’t carry the same risks for COPD, chronic bronchitis, etc. Though longer term studies would be needed for those to get real data to know for sure.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Lol, well that might be a challenge to some, but yes you are generally correct! xD

southernwolf, 10 months ago

They said themselves the issue isn’t signups or server capacity, it’s that they’ve been under multiple rounds of DDoS attacks.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Infinity too.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

I mean, that could happen to any other Lemmy instance too, unfortunately. And even if you do decentralize, a server going down still deprives the rest of us of that content, so it’s never not going to cause some issues. So I wouldn’t hold this against Lemmy.world.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Well, by that logic, if they shut down, the the next largest will be targeted, and then the next largest, etc. That’s not a winning game for anyone involved…

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Heh, I’ll just leave this here for folks.

YT-DLP

southernwolf, 10 months ago

I love my Pixel 6 Pro! I run a De-Googled ROM (CalyxOS) on mine, but even with that, basically every Pixel feature still works as expected. Google Camera is fantastic (doubly so on CalyxOS since I can firewall it from the internet), the AI features in the photos app works exactly as expected (and firewalled too), the camera itself is fantastic as well. Beautiful screen, great speakers, absolutely wonderful and beautiful form factor for a phone.

Only real complaint is battery life isn’t the best it could be, compared to the top-tier iphones or Samsung Galaxy devices, but it’s hardly “terrible” either, as some have made it out to seem. It does seem like running a De-Googled ROM may help that some (and I’ve had fewer bug issues than it seems stock Pixel Android users have dealt with, which is weird given CalyxOS is built on AOSP).

Overall though, I love my Pixel 6 Pro and absolutely intend to stick with it well into the future, and likely consider another Pixel when the time comes.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Yeah, I chose CalyxOS over Graphene because it seems to me that CalyxOS focuses a lot more on usability (thanks to it’s MicroG support) than Graphene does. Graphene has likely improved on that front thanks to their sandboxing GSF approach, but it used to be slower to open apps and overall a bit less snappy due to the security features it enables. Plus, the team behind CalyxOS is fantastic, great guys who believe in what they are doing. Meanwhile, the leader of GrapheneOS is a bit… Psychotic, although he did recently step down after Louis Rossman called him out.

For ProtonAOSP, that’s basic just stock android. However, I’m unaware of it comes with either MicroG or Google Services installed. If it doesn’t, then you’re gonna have to figure out how to get support for apps either by flashing MicroG along with it, or be stuck with Foss app only. If it comes with Google Services, then it’s basically no different than stock Pixel Android at that point, which you might as well stick with to gain the full benefit of the Pixel device.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Yeah, Nick Merrill is an awesome guy, and I really like what he’s done with CalyxOS as well. Community is great too, if you need any help, just ask and someone will definitely be able to help out.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

I didn’t know Red Hat had an account on the Fediverse?

And FYI, Infinity for Reddit was always open source. Still is actually, even though the creator is struggling to keep it alive. Infinity for Lemmy is carrying on a rather proud FOSS tradition.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Heh, as an addendum to that last bit, Truth actually got a C&D order from the Mastodon creator(s) and had to make the source code available, iirc. I know Gab faced that too.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

He really is. He put in a lot of work to make Infinity work as well as it did. I viewed it as the best alternative to Apollo for Android users. But I guess that’s all in the past now mostly…

Regardless, I really am glad to see this work being carried on for Lemmy. I hope DocileAlligator can see that happening, and appreciates seeing it happen. Would be cool to even get him over here one day. :)

southernwolf, 10 months ago

This sounds a bit like how to bring the shared blocklists from Twitter to Lemmy. Those were a disaster on Twitter, and I don’t expect it’ll end any better here either…

Please don’t use tools like this. Manually curate instances you feel the need to defederate with. The Fediverse was built on a model not unlike that of email. You wouldn’t just randomly block whole email providers willy-nilly, so you shouldn’t do so here on the Fediverse either.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Wrong comparison. It’s not like a server admin using an email block lists (which are also often implemented badly, as anyone with a protonmail account knows…). It’s more like if Protonmail suddenly blocked Tutanota, or if Gmail blocked MS Exchange. The uproar and rage from that would be unceasing.

The Fediverse operates on a model like that of email, and in the email world blocking whole email servers from each other is very rare, and usually done with the most explicit of intent and for a very good reason. That’s how the Fediverse should operate as well.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

Read my other reply, I’m not talking about email blocklists, my reference is to email providers doing that, which is extremely rare and done with explicit intent and good reason.

Secondly, while I won’t disagree there’s some vile content out there on the Fediverse, do you trust someone else to make that decision for you? Why would you let someone else decide what is and isn’t vile for you and those using your instance? Better yet, how would you feel if some popular instance decides you were the vile one, and because it was a common instance to use for blocking references, your instance is now cut off from a good chunk of the Fediverse?

This is exactly the sort of nonsense that swept Twitter with shared Blocklists, and the potential for negative impact on the Fediverse is even worse from it. Don’t let others decide make decisions for you just because it’s easy, as it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility when something goes wrong.

southernwolf, 10 months ago

The ActivityPub standard is modeled on email. Each instance is a server, and we all have inboxes. It’s a very apt comparison to use.

Also, unless the email is E2EE, then it’s not private, no more meaningfully so anyways.