People from Denmark also all learn English during school and have done since at least the 60s, which is why you found that only 15% of them can’t speak English. Over 50% of Danes correspond in English for their work and are confident they can read English news according to 2013 survey. The proportion of US Americans that can’t read AP News stories is honestly probably higher, with the US now at 21% illiteracy.

AP News may be primarily US-focused news source, but they are a global news organization. They sell their stories via syndication to hundreds of other news organizations and newspapers worldwide, in multiple languages, and have done for a very long time. To decide that all their articles are automatically for US audiences is just wrong.

Gaslighting is repeatedly presenting information that’s untrue to convince someone of an alternate reality. Literally not possible to do in a single message, and nothing I wrote is not factual.

I only tried to let you see how Americentrist your response to OOP was, and your subsequent response is to weaponise victimhood to dismiss any introspection. I will not waste further time.

This is a news article published in the ‘world news’ community of a worldwide Internet forum, from one of the oldest and most respected not-for-profit news agencies in the world, whom themselves published the article in their ‘world news’ section. It discusses Danish people’s overwhelmingly negative responses to the American president’s tariffs.

And you somehow make this into “ugh why to the liberal elite always only care about what the rest of the world thinks”.

Maybe, just maybe, this article wasn’t written nor shared solely for the demographic of USA voters?

I’m bummed about this, but it’s not a shock given they retired the brand back in 2021. So much for “we will support these devices for as long as they continue to be used” however. This will generate a lot of e-waste.

I have an 880 that my family use regularly with the TV/AV/etc. I don’t mind so much navigating the three remotes and several buttons to get movies or TV running, but it’ll be annoying having all the extra remotes out on coffee tables all the time now, and repeated instructions to the rest of the fam on how to use them 🥲

Organic Maps is not at feature parity with paid options but it is pretty damn good for FOSS. I use it almost daily for driving around city/suburban Australia and it very rarely gives me bad directions - certainly no more than the paid option i previously used (Sygic).

I’m keen to give GrapheneOS a try when I upgrade to my next phone, it’s got some privacy enhancements that CalyxOS doesn’t (my current OS). The sandboxing is cool and every bit of obfuscation helps.

However unless your phone is on an always-on VPN with an IP isolated from your other devices, or you’re in a bulding full of other users to obfuscate your traffic somewhat, then just accessing your Google Play account via the phone will give them your public IP address and they’ll be able to tie that heuristically to your other data/accounts.

Eg scenario: you have a laptop at home, it browses and has a bunch of cookies saved, it uses your public IP. Google is all over the web, inescapable while browsing, and through browser fingerprinting has an advertising profile saved for your device even if you’re not logged into an account, this is often called a ‘shadow profile’. If it sees another device (your phone) on the same network (same internet IP) regularly accessing the same sites - those devices are likely linked in their database as ‘likely same user’, with frequency they will be merged permanently as same user. If you then log into your old Google Play account on the phone - boom, all history for that account is now linked in their database to any other profile identifiers for the shadow profile eg cookies, browser fingerprints etc. They don’t need you to log in multiple times, once is enough to confirm owership of that device & account. Opsec is a cat and mouse game and Google (and the other surveillance capitalism giants) are literally the most valuable businesses in the world because they’re good at tracking users to create personal profiles for them.

Using a Pixel 5 on Calyx OS. I was attracted to CalyxOS and Graphene as they both use a locked bootloader allowing OTA updates and keeping the boot process secure. I’d say either are good choices. I’ve been very happy with CalyxOS, only a few minor issues in the few years I’ve been on it (a tile button not working in one update, that kind of minor stuff).

This phone model is EOL now and only getting security patches, so im on the lookout for a Pixel 8 to move to (going second hand for costs). I’m planning to give GrapheneOS a try for a few weeks when I upgrade as I’ve read good things about it and will have a good yardstick to compare it to now with my time on CalyxOS.

P. S. I think the Proton CEO thing is overstated - he praised an anti-big-tech pick for the (iirc) Assistant Antitrust Attorney General (that is objectively good), and then backed it up saying he is very hopeful this person with a proven track record litigating against big tech will take on their monopolies that have been hindering players like Proton heavily over the years. His statements were always going to be taken poorly though (any Trump action being praised - even if the action was good, is a red flag because Trump is a disaster for a thousand other reasons and people are understandably on edge), and the follow-up comments should never have been done from the official Proton social media account - which is something Proton also stated, and said wouldn’t happen again. Me: OK that’s strike one. I’m not throwing them out after 9 years of very positive work for one failure, I think there’s a tendency in the privacy community to ‘let perfect be the enemy of good’ and for me at least this is an example of that.

The thing people often dont realize is that if you do end up caving in and installing Google app services back onto your de-googled phone and logging into your old Google account - well, you’re almost back to square one. Google now ties all the identifiers of that phone/OS to your old Google account and will continue tracking it as much as possible whenever it sees those identifiers accessing anything. So I’d avoid that if your goal is de-Googling, but I understand why some need it as a stop-gap.

I thought the same initially re: sunk costs, but when I actually sat down and made a list of the apps I had on my old phone and what I used them for, I could quickly see that almost half of them were already FOSS. Then checked what alternatives are available for others and realized i could actually replace almost everything. The only premium apps I ended up “needing” were Poweramp*, and a couple others I actually forget now without finding my list. Almost everything can be replaced by using the website as a web link or web app, or using an open source alternative.

A big bonus of that process was seeing on the Aurora Store how many trackers were detected in each of the old apps while i was reviewing them and it was insane. I remember one Sudoku app I’d installed years back had like 16 trackers… Wtf. Checked FOSS options on F-Droid and found several alternatives.

*Poweramp can be bought direct from the developer, no need for Google apps, so I repurchased it via that method so I could avoid using my old account. I don’t mind buying things a second time if the devs have made the facilities available to avoid Google. I recently did the same for Symfonium.

The only ones that stung a bit to abandon was Sleep As Android which I’d paid for (I use their limited free version now and block it on the firewall to prevent ads/tracking); and Sygic (gps app) I’d paid lifetime maps for… I just use Organic Maps now, and while it’s not as fancy it navigates just fine and I use it regularly for car GPS.

Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for but are free (with questionable tracking) you can install as a ‘work profile’ app via Shelter, which means it has no access to your real contacts and personal data, and can be set to auto-freeze (deletes cache and pauses app, keeps personal data). So you can use it and expose minimal data, and it can’t tie it back to a Google account to profile you as it doesn’t see one.

So far I’ve never needed a Google account on this phone, which means it’s been a clean break from Google entirely. 3 years now and very happy with the results.

I see the usual classy comments on such news stories from the Israeli public, calling the Gazans “Gazanimals” etc, and each comment 90%+ upvoted on the site.

The history books will have a wealth of material to work with.

It would very much surprise me if Satoshi turned out to be Russian (is that what you’re asking?). His whitepaper proposal is written in very fluent English, as are his other communications on SourceForge etc, also Russians are not known for their technological entrepreneurial aspirations - at least not for the last ~40 years.

To be honest I would not be surprised if whoever Satoshi is has died, rather than craftily holding onto the early minted blocks. Only time will tell if they ever get transacted.

Oh-no_anyway.JPG

If there’s one type of app with no shortage of options, it’s notes apps. Just look at the other responses here I’m sure there are dozens being evangelized already.

I very much doubt that this alone will push users onto Microsoft 365, like MS seems to be hoping it will.

There is speculation that a secondary goal here would be to weaken the US dollar as a defacto exchange currency standard worldwide if Bitcoin were to gain prominence.

That would be highly beneficial to certain “very good friends” of Trump like Putin whom would much prefer an unregulated currency that the US cannot impose controls over when presidents change.

I mean even that original plan would be fairly stupid. Law enforcement agencies seem to operate just fine with the current reserve of forfeited cryptocoins - I didn’t read anywhere of the FBI/CIA/etc crying out for a central bank style ‘strategic reserve’ managed by the FRB to add more layers of bureaucracy.

The only place I can find in news cycles saying it’s a great idea is a think tank entitled the Bitcoin Policy Institute who put out a report in late 2024 entitled “The case for Bitcoin as a reserve asset”. Plus all the usual crypto bros begging for it to pump their positions. Gosh, I wonder if these parties may be biased.

Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no… It’s not new.

I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth… It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.

I think aiming to sanction the US is the wrong plan, treat it like it is what it is - a country run by an autocrat, and go after the oligarchs. Same approach as taken with Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.

In terms of effectiveness. Frankly we’re (globally) only getting rid of Trump and his cronies if the American public rise up against him and oust him through whatever means that may take. Protests and extended strikes for starters - and the people will be more likely to band together with Trump than against him if the whole world starts Tariffing and sanctioning the USA like a rogue state.

On the other hand, sanction and freeze Trump & Co. assetts all over the (western) world and when he retaliates to protect his own interests its a lot harder to sell to his constituents.

How you would even legally go about that is another question though, he would have to be breaking financial international laws and the countries involved in the personal sanctions would have to be ready and willing for blowback.

Its all fantasy at this stage until he starts blatantly breaking international laws that allow his assets to be seized. Likewise with the idea of US sanctions - look at how much Israel has done and they’re not sanctioned, and it took a great deal of blatant acts of war before Russia and North Korea were sanctioned also.

This news post from OP is from news.com.au, and they’re the ones who labeled it ‘surprising news’.

So, your comment is deeply illogical to me.

The article says that Customs and Border Patrol agents “found “sympathetic photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures in the deleted items folder of her cellphone.”

That statement is vague enough in itself (could be memes from a group chat, could be something someone shared in a whatsapp chat that she had no interest in - we don’t know). What we do know is that having pictures sympathetic to Hezbollah figures on your phone is not illegal, and it doesn’t automatically equate to ‘being supportive of terrorists’. I have photos of Trump in my phone from group chats and from web cache of viewed articles, and I hate the treasonous c*nt.

No mention of gang involvement or anything illegal whatsoever from the female doctor deported in the article you’re commenting on - so you’re just spouting nonsense.

Probably the same as we have now, “be neat if and when it eventually arrives”.

Already happened to chocolate. Raw cocoa is currently around 10% more expensive than it was at the same time last year - but chocolate products at retailers has shot up 40% or more. Including brands where cocoa isn’t the dominant component ingredient like milk chocolate.

Yet businesses like Lindt are celebrating a 7.8% increase in sales… Make it make sense to me cos I buy far less now. Who are the people who see these increasing prices and buy more 🤡

Source data: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cocoa

This might help someone, I recently found an Android app called ‘DigiPaws’ that is designed to block selected apps during ‘quiet time’ or ‘focus periods’ that you set up - so the use-case of the topic.

I know “an app to quit an app” but I’ve found it actually really helpful to stop me from touching social media when I’m supposed to be winding down to go to bed - I click on Lemmy/Greyjay and it literally closes the app and popup/toasts ‘quiet time [period remaining]’ and I’m like, “oh yeah shit I should just go to bed”.

I have a bachelor’s degree but when it comes to the dopamine loop of social media scrolling I’m dumb as hell, and just having this little app effectively slap the phone away from my hand has been great in the month I’ve used it (its fairly new).

Its on F-droid store as its open source, code on github. I know that’s a big plus to most here.