Guys, I’m starting to think that the US is dropping bombs somewhere

At 32K, the best model (GLM 4.5) fabricates 1.19% of answers

Not bad, I don’t know many people who are 98.81% accurate in their statements.

Let me ask ChatGPT Claude

I value my finite time more than I value a few Watt-Hours.

You could go to your local library and read through a bunch of books rather than using Google if you’re interested in more power savings ideas.

The joke is this, but updated with modern memes

I still have my great grandfather’s torches and pitchforks in the family armory, so I’m ready for the next stage also.

and also, because the OG situation:

They’re giving good advice but, in my opinion, they are using the reputation of Mullvad to ‘privacy-wash’ their public image by associating with a trusted brand.

WhatsApp is not a secure messaging service, your messages are not private. Being end to end encrypted doesn’t mean anything if both ends are compromised by having the app installed on them (or being vendor rooted).

The domestic response Donald Trump’s destruction of all of our alliances are giving these other countries the backbone to do the kinds of regulations that bribery have kept away from American tech companies.

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, X, should be next.

Why is an online book retailer operating datacenters? How is a search engine 90% of the digital advertising market?

Monopoly powers and corruption, that’s how.

Stealing them is felony grand theft.

Vandalizing them is a misdemeanor (typically, check your local laws and also don’t do crimes).

If they were all stolen, it’s an easy PR ‘woe is us, think of the children’ win for Flock.

If there’s a bunch of social media posts that are showing chopped down flock cameras just laying on the side of the road then it has better optics from the point of view of ‘We don’t want country-wide surveillance networks’.

From the article:

There is consensus to immediately deprecate archive.today, and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist (or create an edit filter that blocks adding new links) and remove all links to it. There is a strong consensus that Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users’ computers to run a DDoS attack (see [WP:ELNO#3]). Additionally, evidence has been presented that archive.today’s operators have altered the content of archived pages, rendering it unreliable.

Evidence was presented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5#Evidence_of_altering_snapshots

Finally, we can have sci-fi future that is just weird, rather than dystopian.

An archive site that alters content in the archive is worse than worthless.

The DDoS is just confirmation that the site is actively harmful.

Looks like they recently killed a 19 year old American citizen too, but he was brown so they will get away with it

I don’t believe it until they AT LEAST septuple down

The banks don’t want their payment systems being accessed by devices that are compromised by malicious actors.

The attestation chain allows for Google to tell the apps ‘Yep, this system is running a known safe image that has been crytographically verified using the secure hardware on the device’. The apps will only allow their payment systems to be accessed (like, to send an NFC payment) if this check can verify that.

If you want technical details: https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer/attestation

They don’t NEED it for NFC payments to work, this is a way of limiting attack vectors on their payment infrastructure (or, cynically, a way for Google to ensure that no competing OS can exist because people would rather give Google all of their privacy so they can pull a phone out of their pocket rather than a credit card.

It bugs me also.

My thinking is that the part of Google that I think is bad is their advertising and algorithmic recommendation systems which are built on private data that I no longer wish to divulge.

The Pixel is made by a company that used to be called HTC before they were consumed by Alphabet. That company produced good hardware that was smartly designed and innovative. That legacy continues with the device that Google has sells as the Pixel.

There are a few things about the phone that Alphabet has tainted, such as the inability to use NFC payments because hardware running GrapheneOS isn’t allowed into their secure hardware attestation chain. Not for any real technical reason, only because it allows Alphabet to disincentivize people away from a competitor by abusing their many monopoly powers.

GrapheneOS takes advantage of the excellently designed HTC hardware to create an operating system that is designed from the ground up to be secure. It then leverages the complete control over your hardware to put Alphabet’s other software inside of a little box where it constantly lies to the software in a way that lets your applications work without them actually being able to access everything on your device.

Yes, it is technically an Alphabet product and giving them money can feel distasteful. However, in this case by buying their hardware you can cut off their software, which is the actual thing that is negatively affecting everything.

I’d buy any other phone that fully supported GrapheneOS’s requirements for future devices.

Until then, I’m less worried about giving HTC money than I am about having a device that I know is under my control and that works to protect my privacy.

It’s Android with all of the Google removed where possible and sandboxed where not. You can choose to install the Google Play services and use it like any other Android phone or use it without any Google software.

Some things won’t work, namely things like some banking applications and NFC payments, because they require on hardware attestation that Google will not allow Graphene to pass. Essentially everything that isn’t banking/payment related works exactly like any other Android phone.

It is just a secure phone (though you can still install Facebook on it if you want) that is designed around mitigating attacks that could violate your privacy and security.

Very easy to install, you just buy a Pixel directly from Google (don’t buy from the carriers, they’ll be locked). Enable OEM Unlocking in the Developer menu and then plug it into USB and you can install it directly from the Graphene site via WebUSB. It takes about 5-10 minutes, then your phone will reboot (It’ll give you a scary looking screen about not running a Google OS that you’ll see every time it reboots but it’s just informational, it doesn’t affect anything and the system will boot into GrapheneOS in a second or two).

The more complete instructions and WebUSB install process:

https://grapheneos.org/install/

AI products are getting to ‘New Crytocurrency’ levels of scam.

There’s plenty of idiots who don’t understand the technology and have too much money, so this promises to be a lucrative line of scamming for a while. (I’m sure Trump is working on consumer protection regulations as we speak /s)

The only way we are going to see any meaningful regulations on social media companies is if EU countries impose them.

It won’t come from the US, they own the politicians and media so regulation would be instantly made unpopular via the propaganda channels that they control.