I’m not having any issues with my current setup

I’m lazy. I just want things to work. So in your shoes, I wouldn’t go trying to create work if things work fine.

I run Debian on my home server and my VPS, but I chose it for familiarity and stability. I wouldn’t say Debian is inherently barebones; you can add/build whatever you want. It is a longstanding, capable distro that is the base of many other distros. It’s a solid choice that favors stability. And if things are working with Mint, why break them?

By contrast, I run CachyOS on my laptop because it’s a newer laptop and the rolling release model of CachyOS (and Arch, which it’s built on) gets the updates and hardware support I need to make my laptop work. It’s simpler, better, and less work, and significantly more functional than it’s be with Debian, because the rolling release distro moves fast. My home server is 10 year old hardware, so the more stable Debian is fine.

I’m not suggesting it would take much, I’m merely suggesting that the dipshit isn’t serious and shouldn’t be taken seriously in this context. He’s not even trying to make a logical, reasoned point (as evidenced by the fact that he’s an order of magnitude off on what they national debt is). Here is merely a cog in the maga machine, tasked with saying dumb shit any time a microphone is in front of him.

Church is fiction for profit. It’s foundation is dishonesty. This one ‘dishonesty through omission’ is a rounding error. You can’t expect them to have any sense of shame about this.

The thing is that he’s right

He’s not right. The national debt is way fuckin bigger than 3 trillion. He’s also wrong in presuming that an infusion of productivity (tax revenue) can “solve” intentional over-spending. He’s just a serial scammer spouting uninformed nonsense to stay relevant.

Absent a warrant, probable cause, or some exigent circumstance, isn’t “likely to escape” just a charged way of saying innocent person going about their business?

Long before Tesla existed, the Hurst tool (aka Jaws of Life) was created. It’s like a giant can opener for cars, and firemen love to use it. The lack of door handles, locked doors, and even smashed and jammed doors,don’t really stop firefighters from getting in. This has been a thing since the 80s at least. Also, Teslas do have mechanical door handles on the inside, so occupants can open doors without power, but these factoids don’t make for good rage bait.

I tried Zulip for a small org. Used their hosted version since it’s quite generous for nonprofits. I personally liked it, but I was very much in the minority. Most of our people didn’t like it. I don’t think anyone articulated very well why they didn’t like it so it’s hard for me to characterize it other than people bitched about the UI a lot. I personally think it works fine, just be ready for some pushback.

We also tried Mattermost, and the uptake seemed a little easier. If you’re used to slack, discord, etc., most of them are pretty easy to transition to, but if you’re dealing with people that never used a real time chat platform, all of them (even slack) are like pushing a rock uphill because people can be impressively resistant to sensible change.

Yeah, that was kinda my point… I’m so used to being mistreated that when I saw the headline, I thought I wouldn’t be given the choice to participate. But giving me the choice builds trust in the people. It’s a move that supports their community in a time where such policies are rare. I love it.

I was all set to be pissed off at this, then I read that it was opt in. Home Assistant is f’n awesome!

I remember reading a thread like this a while back and saw Home Assistant. I thought I don’t need that.

It’s probably the most used self hosted app we have.

Mullvad VPN works well on Android and has some DNS based ad blockers & content filters in the VPN app (though off by default iirc). Mullvad browser is not ported to Android.

That said, it’s important to understand that VPNs don’t provide privacy in any absolute sense. They can (maybe) obscure data about your browsing habits from your ISP. But they won’t stop all the other, more effective tracking exists nearly everywhere else on the web.

Gradually, the migration to new platforms will take place

I’m not sure that will (or should) happen. Mainstream social media has an awful lot of shit that wouldn’t exist (or wouldn’t exist in the same way) on federated social media. For things that are purely commercial (which is a lot) the effort is higher and the payoff is smaller in a federated system. There’s a lot of social media that thrives only because it’s fundamentally commercial. That segment would never embrace federated social media willingly.

Then of course there’s the trigger-reward cycle you talk about. People might know it’s unhealthy, but they still do it. Not having that as part of the user experience a big adjustment coming to federated social media.

I’d say the fascist coup is well,underway. Also, a meaningful opposition response (let alone scorched earth) requires an organized opposition. We’re pretty far from that existing, and you’re right, it absolutely won’t come from within the ranks of Democrats.

The formation of an opposition will be dramatically more challenging too because of the pervasiveness of the surveillance-capitalism apparatus that’s fueling ICE’s campaign. A key step toward a meaningful resistance would be punishing the companies that comprise the surveilance capitalism regime, but most of the people who would like this regime to go away don’t have the will to stop using TikTok, Feacebook, X, and Insta.

Dems lost in '16 and '24 because they did not hold primaries and just hoped that there were enough people opposed to Trump

2020, yes, but 2016 wasn’t about Trump. The Dem establishment had already decided “it’s her turn” well before Trump even won being taken seriously, and before his first primary win in NH. The Democratic Party eliminated the democratic process from its primaries and is baffled why people are mad at that.

The APU and taxi rules would likely help a lot, but would likely require a lot of change to infrastructure and airline and ATC SOPs. The electrification bit is beginning to happen where it makes sense, but that part will likely be slow to make a difference, and a small difference at that.

I agree that having transportation alternatives like rail could help reduce demand for commercial air transport, but we would be a generation away from useful intrastate rail service if we were serious about building it now, which we’re not. So there’s no good reason to not do these things while we faff about on “high speed” rail.

Surround sound receiver that works via optical or HDMI. That’s what I would recommend

Those are both digital outputs, not analog. Maybe you’re confusing digital with internet connected?

I’m not advocating internet-connected audio gear, but plenty of people like the utility of networked audio for automation, in-home streaming, and multi-room setups. But again, those can be isolated from the internet.

Encrypted apps like Signal encrypt messages in a way that only you and the recipient can decrypt and read. Not even Signal can decrypt them. However it has always been the case that another person could look over your shoulder and read the messages you send, who you’re sending them to, and so on. Pretty obvious, right?

What the author and Signal are calling out here is that all major commercial OSes are now building in features that “look over your shoulder.” But it’s worse than that because they also record every other device sensor’s data.

Windows Recall is the easiest to understand. It is a tool build into windows (and enabled by default) that takes a screenshot a few times per second. This effectively capture a stream of everything you do while using windows; what you browse, who you chat with, the pron you watch, the games you play, where you travel, and who you travel with or near. If you use “private” message tools like Signal, they’ll be able to see who you are messaging and read the conversations, just as if they were looking over your shoulder, permanently.

They claim that for an AI agent to serve you well, it needs to know everything it can about you. They also make dubious claims that they’ll never use any of this against you, but they also acknowledge that they comply with court orders and government requests (to varying degrees). So… if you trust all of these companies and every government in the world, there’s nothing to worry about.

If OP wants surround, Atmos, etc., this isn’t gonna work. Analog outputs can’t handle ambisonics, and TVs don’t have discrete 6 channel outputs. If you want 2.1, 5.1, Atmos, MPEG-H or whatever, you’ll need a digital output to your sink device (AVR/soundbar, etc.). Digital doesn’t mean internet connected. And there’s no real benefit to forcing an analog output from your TV. It’s DAC probably isn’t better than the DAC in an AVR or soundbar.