d-RLY?

A messaging app/service that can work via both regular stable connections but also via non-online. Briar is kind of similar to what I am talking about. But it can’t/doesn’t go as far as I mean. It can send messages via cell data, WiFi, and Bluetooth but as far as I am aware, it can’t do a mix of them. And it would still require the person being messaged to be within range of my phone’s Bluetooth if not on cell/WiFi. So it doesn’t do the hopping I am really interested in (to my understanding).

So I am wanting to be able to have basically zero cell or WiFi signal on my phone, but be able to just have shit be able to bounce around via all methods to get to the person I am trying to reach. So like I could be in a no service spot for my carrier but maybe a friend that also has the app and does have a signal be used to bounce my message from Bluetooth to their cell or WiFi that is working. Then it either get to the final person from that bouncing, or maybe still get it if they are also in a no-signal area but still near another friend that does and is also in their Bluetooth range.

So the message would just hop whatever chain of devices and connections even if it takes a little more time (like if it just had to keep hopping from a number of phones completely through Bluetooth jumping. Would also be cool if it could jump even if the other devices didn’t have the app and was just encrypted text-only blobs hopping like how data hops around various servers when online. But aside from the fact that data costs money and would mean basically everyone’s shit would get used at all times. The nightmare of how the messages/service would know how to get places, or if maybe it already arrived via one method while a different chain was still trying would be massive. In addition to literally all the other things that would have to be figured out. And that is all before making sure it could be still private in any real way.

For real! One of the things that made using Signal a non-issue for me was due to it being able to use SMS as a fall-back and therefore didn’t need me to push friends to also install another message app. I really only first installed it because it was the messaging app my local chapter of the SRA was using. I was excited that it did the shit I loved about the old Google Hangouts before they unnecessarily chose to break shit back out into three replacements. Being able to use a more feature rich messaging service when the people I am messaging also have it is awesome. But being able to still send a basic SMS from the same app without leaving is super nice. It is the main thing I always envied about how iMessage has worked basically forever.

Fortunately some of my friends and co-workers also have needed to install Signal for similar reasons I did or for remote therapy stuff. But it is so hard to get others to just install it just because it is privacy focused and since we already have Facebook Messenger/Discord/Snap/IG/Line and of course SMS. Also hate feeling like I am being pushy or annoying unless I am directly asked about apps to try or some specific reason.

I also have fond memories of using Gaim/Pidgin back in the day for being able to just have one IM client that could work with basically whatever any of my friends/contacts liked using. A universal chat/message client really seems like something that would be cool to see come back.

I think the only reactions from the west will sadly be just endless propaganda about how they are “actually just using it as cover for making enough nuclear weapons for there to be one for every person in the US”. Or some other BS that just serves the military industrial complex and contractors that stand to make even more mad profits from this new cold war we are groomed into more and more daily. Just look at how freaked out the federal government that won’t shut the fuck up about how fucking perfect our “free market capitalism” is, has made damn sure to tell companies they can’t sell lots of shit to any Chinese company.

Doesn’t matter if those companies can pay. Just matters that they are artificially kept from having the most current tech at all costs. Also how our government also legally blocks certain Chinese products over here for additional BS reasons and even shown to not be issues by our own allies (before those allies also had to ban them because we said so).

Fortunately for China, they have said “fuck you, we will just do it then” and are closing the gap pretty fast. So all the sanctions/bans will just mean that China has the most to gain from being able to offer cheaper but similarly working (or close enough) tech to more places. But it will all just be used to bring back the “good old days” of history that really doesn’t need to be re-lived.

True, it is really up to the instance to decide if they want to stay small and turn off registrations or big and keep them turned on. So long as the instances of all sizes stick to the official standards of the Lemmy codebase and respect the specs of the various other federated systems. It is not really an issue that the average user should have to worry about (for most issues at least).

TamperMonkey is one of the “recommended” add-ons when I look at the list on my Android version of FF and I am not on a beta or dev build.

Even Google was giving people full refunds for all games that were bought on Stadia when they gave up on that. I can’t imagine that the total refunds would even be that bad for Sony given the increases they made for PSN prices. Would at least come across as at least pretending to “do right” to keep some level of trust from the people that have been buying non-game media from them. It would all be just a PR thing with some loss of current money for future money. Maybe even just offer a free amount of credit for getting some shows/movies from the Sony owned studios.

But since Sony is currently the number one, they will keep on their fuck shit until Microsoft or Nintendo are able to pull some big push. Playstation really only does kind of cool shit for customers when they aren’t in the lead.

Here is the problem with changing the user agent (IMO). It just re-enforces the idea that Chrome/Chromium browsers are the only browsers and therefore sites should just be coded for them. Which they are currently the most common for people to be using since even Microsoft gave up on IE and the original Edge. But the fact that Microsoft and Google are still the most dominate OS’es means that we are just seeing IE all over again. With sites being coded to only expect Chromium, then they are just set to not even allow them to be loaded by anything else.

The fact that so many of the sites do in fact work with Firefox/Safari when the user agent is set to falsely report that it is Chrome/Chromium should be kind of concerning. Just leads to false narratives that other options are not worth using due to being bad products. Kind of like how in the US we are conditioned to believe that there are only two parties to choose from and all other options shouldn’t be allowed or are never okay to support.

Just going to just preface this with a heads-up that it is all just a rant about how much I hate that the “reopen everything” box is defaultly checked.

Also it being the default setting for Mac OS means that people just never actually quit out of programs (though being fair most normie Mac users don’t even seem to know that just closing a window doesn’t quit the program). Which leads to just massive slowdowns and weird errors that they just turn around and pay way too much money to “fix”.

I have had so much success with just immediately restarting them and just making sure to uncheck that stupid box so most shit finally is fully closed out when it powers back on. Which I also make it a point to tell everyone I help to actually reboot their shit even just a couple times a week (since most users also seem to never use either the shutdown or reboot and just always close the lid) to keep things more or less okay. I also educate them on how to actually quit out of programs.

I shit you not that I once just did the whole “uncheck the box and reboot” shit and completely fixed a weird webcam not being detected problem within less than 2mins total. Made my boss happy that I was able to help that fast, but was very frustrated to hear that the person had actually been to the Apple Store before coming to us. They (the Apple Store) ran some super quick diagnostic and it came back as not seeing the webcam. To which they had quoted the person like $500~$600 to for the parts and labour.

Coming to us was just a last attempt to make sure and the MacBook Air had been at least turned off and not just put to sleep before coming over. But the main factor was that stupid box being defaultly checked, and just everyone ignoring it and just keeping the problem around. The average person I can understand either just not really noticing or just being scared to uncheck it for fear of somehow messing something up. As they just assume that it wouldn’t be already checked if it was “correct”.

So at least I was able to fix an issue that really wasn’t an issue, and the person walked away not having to spend a dime. And they learned to only check the box if they need it and will just uncheck it the rest of the time. Which also makes me happy to have helped and have taught them something they didn’t ever think to question.

There is a pretty similar looking and function called Revolt that could be useful for getting people that are used to Discord to switch. I think they also have a long goal of being able to send and receive messages and calls with Discord. Obviously they don’t have that atm, but it is open-source and nice to at least know about in the event a quick exodus of Discord is needed.

Not providing any channels (the ones I know the most about are listed by OP and commenters), but more about non-YT versions of channels about privacy being on YT. For people that use YT but are open to LBRY/Odysee/PeerTube. I have found these extensions to be great for quickly seeing if a channel is also on those services. If anyone knows of others like these, I would like to know about them. And for anything that isn’t also on them of course Invidious instances are great for at least having some amount of privacy while dealing with YT (at least until Google finds some way to stop them from working).

Disclaimer: I am not a dev (or these or anything) or an auditor of security, so I can’t say how good or bad these are outside of personally finding them useful. I also am not affiliated with them and again just find them good for seeing if non-YT versions of channels exist.

For LBRY:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-lbry/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-lbry/jjmbbhopnjdjnpceiecihldbhibchgek?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

For Odysee:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-odysee/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-odysee/kofmhmemalhemmpkfjhjfkkhifonoann?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

For PeerTube:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/peertubeify/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/peertubeify/gegmikcnabpilimgelhabaledkcikdab?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

It doesn’t definitively prove openAI didn’t pay for the works.

But since they are a business/org and has all of those works and using them for profit. Then it kind of would be provable if openAI did or didn’t pay the correct licenses as they and/or the publisher/Stephen King (if he directly were to handle those agreements) would have a receipt/license document of some kind to show it. I don’t agree with how copyrights are done and agree that things should be public domain much sooner. But a for-profit thing like openAI shouldn’t be just allowed to have all these exceptions that avoids needing any level of permission and paying for ones that ask for it to use it. At least not while us regular people that aren’t using these sources for profits/business also aren’t allowed to just use whatever we want.

The only way that (I at least) see such an open use of everything at the level of all the data/information being fine is in a socialist/communist system of some kind. As the main concern for generally keeping stuff like entertainment/information/art/etc at a creator level is to have money to live in modern society where basic and crucial needs (food/housing/healthcare/etc) costs money. So for the average author/writer/artist/inventor a for-profit company just being able to take their shit and much more directly impact their ability to live.

It is a highly predatory level of capitalism and should not have exceptions. It is just setting up a different version of the shit that needs to also be stopped in the entertainment/technology industries. Where the actual creators/performers/etc are fucked by the studios/labs/corps by not being paid anywhere near the value being brought in and may not have control over it. So all of the companies and the capitalist system are why a private entity/business/org shouldn’t just be allowed to pull this shit.

Kind of a funny “shower thought” to think about. Well if it were an iOS or Android device, the “jailbreak” is rooting since root is highest level access for *nix systems. So that is what is technically happening with the Steam Deck as you now have sudo access and most/all read-only restrictions are off. But at the same time Valve doesn’t start banning your deck or punishing you for doing it, and even tell you how to do it in an FAQ on the official Steam Support page. Which means it isn’t technically a “jailbreak” either and more of a “advanced settings” with some warnings and specific instructions that aren’t defaultly turned on. So it is both technically “jailbreaking” and not “jailbreaking.”

I think the main issue here is that the very simplified rhetoric of ending use of personal cars in favor of public transportation. I don’t think that their issue is about it being better to get as many cars out of use. When the idea of ditching personal cars for a much better system of public transport is brought up it is presented as if everyone is in urban or a large suburb. Which are the areas that such public transportation is a great and needed goal. But the same words that are used never present that people in rural areas aren’t to be considered assholes for still needing personal transportation. Which also allows for right-wing outlets and politicians to spread the constant feeling of rural folks and their live are being attacked by libs. Those same right-wing folks will of course always find stuff to make this argument. However the lack of any mention of farmers or other rural folks as being an exception until we can make usable alternatives is a simple thing to sort out for the movement towards public transportation.

It just needs to be mentioned at all and can bring in better solidarity in reducing the vast majority of unnecessary personal ownership and use of cars. As someone that does live in a rural area and is very much in agreement about getting enough public transportation to get rid of so many cars. As it stands it just sounds like just another thing needed for daily work and life being “taken” from folks that don’t have the chance at other options. It would be good to not turn having a car into being a “rebel”. So many other efforts in protecting the environment have shown a similar divide between urban/suburban vs rural. Shit like “rolling coal” is an active effort to say “fuck you!” by people that really do feel like they are being attacked. It is a very stupid and stereotype re-enforcing thing to do in addition to being an asshole to others and the planet. But it is a divide that needs to be closed as much and and fast as possible if we want to be able to have any chance at un-fucking the global disaster. There is a difference between having a big truck with four wheel drive and actually needing it for farm work or other jobs that need that kind of thing. Vs the urban/suburban folks that get them and will never need to use it any different than they would a basic small two wheel drive car.

Also doesn’t help when rural folks constantly hear about all the stuff cities and suburbs get for infrastructure (especially stuff like telecommunication/real high-speed internet access), but they get left behind and charged even higher rates for the bad options that are there. The whole closing down of schools and offices for COVID meant that so many people literally just couldn’t do those things. It is much easier to deal with needing to suck it up and just stay home if you aren’t constantly fighting a shitty and laggy connection. Dial-up is still a real thing and unless the communications companies are forced to get shit for real out to these folks, then they will always just leave them out because profits.

And this one particular example of the massive divide is something that could be used in addition to the push for rolling out more rail options. The cities and suburban areas could benefit from taxes being used for public mass transit and rural areas could get massive modernization of internet access. Get more fiber laid while building the high-speed rail and other lines while the construction teams are already digging things up to get the tracks installed. I don’t know, but it would build a better feeling of connection instead of the current division of “city slickers and country hicks”.

Slight modification to my point as I think I was meaning to say that they could have a separate system in the first sentence. Like maybe there isn’t one right now (as you point to by stating that folks have fully disassembled current cars), but they could add one or more as they gain profits from either directly using the data or (more likely) from selling the data.

As for the later point you made about them not bothering for the <0.1% of people. How long is it worth just assuming that they won’t do it as they try to find any and all ways to generate profits? They could start moving to the Apple repair tactics of requiring parts to be paired to the vehicle and require “calibration” using their tightly controlled systems in order to have very basic things work correctly. Which removing fuses to those data mining “features” could start shit like a constant system error check light or artificially disable unrelated things.

Honestly feel free to just stick to the top two paragraphs. I went down a rant rabbit hole beyond my initial point. But leaving it here as it still has some amount of value (not sure how much and to whom).

To use Apple again, if you replace a display with a third-party or even a real part but not one they sent you directly (and therefore isn’t a valid repair listed for your phone). You all of a sudden get a list of “scary” sounding warning alerts all the time about how the parts can’t be verified or calibrated. Which then leads to shit like auto-brightness, truetone colour, and even one or more cameras not working or pictures taken not saving/not being post processed with their software that makes the images look as good as they do. All that because the screen was replaced that they didn’t approve of. Sure some things like bio-metrics might make some sense to be disabled due to the non-zero chance that someone could put a hacked part on that could maybe possibly steal your shit for gaining access to your device/account/money. But shit can’t dim or do basic shit (even if the replacement is a real part).

Given how drastically so many companies of all kinds are finding it harder and harder to make numbers go up for the shareholders (which is a legal duty to do literally everything possible to do so). Especially as prices for everything are being artificially upped under the pretend guise of “inflation”. But it is really more about how they have to charge more so that those shareholders and the top level people can keep making more (but not workers). The level of data mining for passive income is invading all of our shit at levels that really should be freaking more people out. More of these car companies that were bragging about having built-in CarPlay/Android Auto a couple of years ago are now removing them in order to artificially require using rebranded access to them. Locked behind yet another subscription that they can just stop allowing to work every few years. Got to install their apps on your devices. Going to get worse as they find more and more things to “require” having their app. Even if not using your car at the time, it can try to find out what you do and where.

We at the very least need to have all that shit controlled in the interest of users/buyers with very clear legal requirements that at least it be very easy to see a full list of what is, how it is, why it is, and where it is being collected from. And it needs to be legally required that these lists or whatever are written in ways that someone with an 8th grade level of education can read and understand. So no just having an insane amount of super micro tiny legalize TOS stuff like we see with everything currently and hidden away in some cases. Each model of every car with every trim/add-on package should have that list in both print manuals in each car, and have it permanently (and very very easily to locate) on that manufacturer’s site.

But it is also likely that the car companies have a separate system in the car’s computer that acts independently of the main infotainment system for sending data. Even if you aren’t paying for any of the “extras/add-ons”, it could still get information from your phone just being used with Bluetooth or ping your WiFi if it is on and your phone visible. Also given how much more actively these companies are all trying to get passive income from our data. I wouldn’t be shocked if the other commenter’s point about getting all kinds of “errors” popping up if disabled (especially if a fuse is pulled/modified). We already see that non-car companies like John Deere go to some big levels to remove your control over something you bought and DRM shit that has zero reason outside of forcing us to pay only them for repairs. We as people aren’t allowed to control both our physical devices or our data, and big corps are just allowed to skim everything and sell it to any other parties that pay for it. Hell even our legal system and enforcement are allowed to bypass our rights that prevent search and seizure by just going to these companies instead of us.

Yeah but those supposed companies that “needed those malicious practices to stay competitive” also could have done the thing Mozilla is now doing. Could even use direct knowledge and proof of those practices in a big ad campaign about how they actively don’t want all your info. This “doing it because everyone is doing it” headspace is one of the many corpo versions of “just following orders.” I understand the point you are making, but it isn’t like any of these companies are too small to fight back. Allowing this kind of thing (beyond just this specific instance) just further gaslights us at a consumer level into continued abuse being normalized and okay. Which makes it even harder to do anything about it.

Just like with how we see that a major amount of voters literally just give up and see everything as pointless in doing anything (and that is assuming that they even know about any information at all). Or how we are trained to only see one or two day polite marches in protest of something as being the whole “fight” and just go home. But when people don’t just go home or “stay out of normal people’s ways” it is seen as those protesters being “unrealistic” or even “assholes in the way.” The whole point of protests is to literally be as in the way of “normal life” as possible to push whatever change they are fighting for.

Which he is also pretty consistent about. Yet somehow these children’s cartoon evil/greedy businessmen are just handed power and trusted by such a shocking amount of people. It is kind of impressive in a “we’re fucked” kind of way.

Not being hyperbolic, but almost every single time I have to speak with or am spoken to by a manager/GM at work. HR at all large companies I have ever worked for as well.

That is because they are a publicly traded for-profit company. They are legally required to do anything and everything to always make the numbers go up. By any means necessary, which is where any semblance of “not being evil” goes to die. Especially after a product/company was able to get massive popularity for doing/supporting actually good things and/or being known for being “the” name that people think about as being ridiculously well made. So many CEOs and the top controlling shareholders start gutting everything to squeeze out any and all extra profits. Just a hollow shell where massive cuts in jobs and replacing anything that got them there with passive money generating replacements. And since basically all normies just go with whatever they were last really told was good. They don’t notice how bad it has become, and don’t question it at all (like how many people thought those IE toolbars were just part of IE from an update).

Feel free to skip the next bit as it is more rant about the importance of actually updating the information normies have gotten and just default to.

I on a daily basis have to explain to customers who’s computers I work on, that AVG and Avast are beyond bad things to have installed these days. And that they (and really all the major paid for AV products) are the reason that their computer is dog slow. Along with pointing out that all the scary messages they are seeing are from the AV products trying to constantly up-sell them on getting every single one of their pointless products that they will never use/need. Especially bad when you pay for something and think that it will just do the damn thing you wanted without harassment. Just to then get more alerts and pop-up messages trying to scare you more into getting more “protection from X” than you got before giving them any money at all. They just keep using these things all because someone or a few “tech people” that they personally knew at work or before moving somewhere told them it was the best. Same goes for shit like Office and Outlook. So many older folks think they can’t use email if it isn’t through Outlook and freak the hell out if their drive or OS fucks up. They think they can’t create/open documents if it isn’t Office (same goes for Acrobat for PDFs). There are randomly people that do need those things, but they also tend to be more aware of stuff like creating backups of PST files.

Yeah for real! They were really really quick and light on RAM in the super early days. But that was due to not having much there compared to Firefox and Opera, or even IE and Safari. Even the original Edge browser was kind of quick due to it just not having everything. All of them lose that little advantage after being around long enough to have the code base be added to along with trying to copy features from popular extensions or trying to add random things to stand out. Even when Firefox got heavy with RAM, I still stuck with it due to extensions factually being able to do more that I wanted. But then they solved the RAM issues dramatically with that Quantum refresh, though it did mean many extensions got nurfed by virtue of not having as much access to the OS level stuff (which is probibly a good thing with regards to security and privacy). Even then they still have better access to being able to really block ads and other privacy related things. And that is because they aren’t an ad company that wants to dictate how you are allowed to use the internet.