Anything by Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp). Facebook literally got people killed by volunteering their location data to a tyrannical government in a third world country. Don’t think they won’t do that to Americans.

Android (the mobile OS) kind of is. The only reason Google bought the hobby project to put Linux on smartphones was because they could collect more data with it than they could with Gmail. You can get a Pixel device and install GrapheneOS on it, but not even 1% of Android users are turning off telemetry (which only anonymises it), let alone installing custom firmware that doesn’t have it. I’m not saying iOS isn’t — because it’s not open source, we don’t know — but I am saying Android definitely is. And I don’t just mean Pixels — to use the Android brand, Google requires certain things of OEMs like Samsung, from having Gmail and/or Chrome on the main home screen, to having Google Play Services, which does the data collecting, installed. (I’m pretty sure the Play Store actually requires it. Forks that don’t use the Android branding, like Amazon’s Fire OS, don’t have this restriction, but Amazon probably has plenty of other crap in theirs.)

Now, I never said Android was a honeypot, and it may not be. But Google was just sued for antitrust, and they made a deal to keep Chrome and Android under their banner. We don’t know what the terms of that deal are. I would consider both of them to be compromised by bad actors (potentially they always were since Google was selling the data). Don’t think so much about who you call (though that can be valuable) but like, your Maps data, anything you put in Health (like if you’re female, like if you miss two or more periods but not eight or nine and then start back up again, I’m sure the GOP would love to know that — for the dense fellas, it could mean she got pregnant and then terminated it, or the pregnancy failed somehow). Tim Cook’s advice of “get your mom an iPhone” doesn’t sound so far fetched now. Your sister, too. Heck, specifically regarding Health, Samsung put out an update last year, maybe the year before — that is, before the current administration — saying if you keep using Health, they can sell your information to whoever they want. Either agree and keep using it, or disagree and they delete your data. At this point, no stock Android phone can be trusted to keep your information private. It’s different if you use GrapheneOS, but that requires buying a Pixel, putting money in Google’s pocket. The Pixel 10 is what, about as powerful as an iPhone 11? A 12 maybe? And it costs the same as an iPhone 16. You decide. Personally I don’t think it looks like a very good deal.

Do that many people in 2025 not know that while OpenOffice was first, LibreOffice is the more actively maintained fork and that OpenOffice has been somewhat problematic in the past and is kinda avoided?

I clicked your link, and I actually like how that office suite has the options on the left rather than the top. Like it was made for widescreen monitors.

The only other office suite I’ve seen do that is Apple’s. As a Mac user, I recognised the style immediately. So I use iWork stuff because it’s on my Mac already and it’s good enough for me. I like the way LibreOffice is looking but I don’t need another office suite. But I really like the way calligra looks. It might need some polish, but they have some good ideas.

Honestly wish you’d written this comment without the profane hyperbole. Because it’s correct. You didn’t need to be offensive — the truth stands on its own; hell, you didn’t even need the links — but here we are.

Friendly reminder that when they redact information, it’s because they fear that the information they’re keeping from you is worse than you think it is.

In this case, believe them.

They might target, but sometimes they buy information too.

For example, my wife and I use Visible. It’s Verizon but cheaper (and it’s owned by Verizon). They also sell your number to scammers. So we get a lot of scam calls and voicemails. We just ignore them. Reporting them does nothing because the carrier is who you report them to (on an iPhone) and the carrier is the one that sends them. But I do it anyway. Most of them come in when I’m at work (and without my phone) anyway. So yeah, so they know who we are (name, town we live in). We just don’t engage with them.

Like an agent? Actors and sports players have them. People who get paid in the millions. So they can hire people to act on their behalf to get them work while they sip martinis by the pool.

Because it’s fun to?

A few years back this guy called Brad said they fired his wife — same restaurant chain — and for a minute, everyone rallied behind “Brad’s wife.” If her name was ever known, it wasn’t widely spread.

The funny thing about the logo was, they supposedly changed it to be more inclusive (e.g. to people who aren’t white like the guy in the logo), but last time I checked, they still don’t do business in California because CA has left leaning laws that protect minorities, so they’re not being less racist/sexist, they’re not being more inclusive, they just want you to think they are.

Anyway, release the damn Epstein files

Different reasons, but I don’t really get the point of it either. It only works on Pixel devices, which means you gotta pay iPhone prices and reward Google’s bad behavior. If you’re fine paying that, you’re probably not too far against Google’s behavior and thus, why are you using Graphene? If you’re against Google’s boorish privacy practices, get an iPhone. Apple is sort of trying to take a stand against privacy invasion (at least to Google’s scaling; they aren’t perfect) but the fact remains, a lot of people don’t care about privacy. Pixel+Graphene is objectively better for privacy than iOS, sure, but there are tradeoffs and people who love Graphene are willing to accept them.

The biggest problem with iOS is, it’s closed source and we don’t know what Apple will do tomorrow. As a Mac guy I don’t have a problem with Apple vis a vis my Macs. However the iPhone is kinda silly for a few reasons, but I still prefer it to the alternative because I don’t want to be playing around with custom firmware. That’s a younger man’s game. It was my game when I was a younger man and I don’t want to be in that scene anymore. My choice. I know it’s a good choice for others. Android isn’t really open source either, though. AOSP is — but forks of it, like the Android on Pixels, like OneUI (I still wanna call it TouchWiz), HTC Sense, and all the others, are not. Of course, if you’re running Graphene, or Oxygen (again, I still wanna call it Cyanogen), or something like that (I used to be sweet on an AOKP fork called LiquidSmooth), you’re playing with open source so you do have that. But you also give up a lot.

I do think it’s a bit weird Graphene is only on Pixel. But I guess by keeping the device list small, they can focus on what they want to do, which isn’t support every phone, it’s supporting ones they know they can.

At the end of the day, Graphene is a better option for privacy than iOS, which is better than any commercial Android OS by default due to not having Google Play Services.

I’d say you have to really assess what kind of privacy you need. Maybe iOS is enough. If it’s not, Graphene is a good bet. I don’t need Graphene. Heck, I’d be fine with Pixel Android, but I have an iPhone so I can afford to claim the high road in privacy. Just not the highest road. I know where I stand. But I know where I need to be and I’m standing pretty close to it. If someone needs to be in another place, what works for me may not work for them.

Thoughtcrime issues? You have thoughts about harming someone, you get punished for it even if you don’t take action?

I suppose the upshot is it could be used to detect and diagnose mental illnesses?

Furthermore, going into the future, it could ostensibly be used to control parts of the body that are damaged or otherwise not working, or emulate their function. For example, someone with damaged vocal cords could use it to speak through connected speakers. Someone who is paralysed could use it to walk with a mechanical exoskeleton.

The problem with something like that is, it would have to be privacy focused. Samsung, one of the most popular smartphone makers, updated their Health app a year or two ago to where you had to agree to allow them to sell or give away your medical information if you want to continue to use Samsung Health. And that’s a Korean company. Apple Health is still private, but Apple is an American company, so the question is begged, “but for how long?”.

So, the question is, are the powers that be/fascists in charge going to use it to weed out LGBTQ+ and put them in concentration camps, or what?

I was just looking at it. And I should preface, I do not like or trust AI chatbots. I saw “uncensored” in the headline, but when I scrolled down to the pricing, it’s actually censored unless you pay. So for free you have a limited number of prompts (seems quite generous though) but there’s a maturity filter implied on the free tier which is “disabled” on the $18/mo tier.

I’ve just been using Duck.ai (DuckDuckGo) for simple and stupid questions (e.g. who would win in a fight between X and Y, dumb shit like that) and it’s been fine. You should know DDG has been linked to Bing (Microsoft) for searching. They claim their AI is private. Doesn’t really concern me, I think all AI is inherently shit, so I take them at their word that it’s private… because I’m not sharing anything with it that matters. Just asking it dumb questions.

Happy with a phone that’s basically based on UNIX and isn’t run by a personal information broker. I can put Google apps on it if I want (and I think I have a couple) but ultimately it’s up to me what I want advertisers to be able to buy.

I dunno, just seems better, especially given the two cost the same. So all that personal information they sell doesn’t work out to a cost savings for you, plus the phone they make themselves is like 20-40% slower, newest model to newest model. So in a sense you’re kind of paying them to sell your data? Not my cup of tea.

You ever see a dump truck that says “not responsible for broken windshields”? Guess what. EVERY truck — this is US law anyway — is responsible for securing its load. So why do they have the sticker? So you don’t bug them about it. Or at least so most people don’t bug them about it. They also say stay back 200 feet. That’s not a law. It’s just a bumper sticker and is equally as enforceable. If they crack your windshield because they didn’t secure your load, you (or rather your insurance company) can go after them. But the truth is, most insurance companies just write off so many broken windshields per however long anyway, they won’t go after the company even if you have proof. But they could — and so could you.

Post the review anyway. Or at the very least post a review that says “the terms say I can’t post a negative review so believe me when I say the service was acceptable.” It’s not a negative review. It’s not a positive review either. It’s a neutral review and it calls out the clause. It is heavily implied to be opposite of what you said. You said the work was acceptable, implying it’s unacceptable. If you used the same tactic and said the work was great, the opposite would appear true, that it was not great. But acceptable is not great. So say it was acceptable and imply you were forced to say that. Thusly, an intelligent person will see your message for what it is.

At least with Cyberpunk we have a number e.g. CP77

Maybe.

I grew up reading Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and John Saul. I now think horror movies are kind of silly. I like the Scream series because they’re smarter. They’re good slashers but you have the whodunit aspect as well.

I can’t speak for everyone though. And maybe it’s not so bad to be scared of horror? Like, isn’t that part of the fun?

Never got into horror games though. The problem I have with that is, being that it’s a game, either you have the agency to peek behind the curtain, or you don’t. With a movie, you only see what they want you to see. I never actually played horror games, as such, but there were a couple scary moments in games I have played, like Fallout 3 with the Dunwich Building. It’s a random building toward the southwest corner of the map that is not connected to any main or side quests. (I think one of the DLCs had a tie in to it, though.) When you go in, you find that you can’t leave the way you came in, and as you traverse the building looking for another way out, you see flashbacks that are handled like jump scares. It’s really not that scary, but the first time through might be. There’s a similar area in Fallout 4 (Dunwich Borers, so, same company) and you experience some of the same stuff.

Final Fantasy 7 on PS2. They published the intro movie re-imagined using the PS2’s capabilities. Later they laughed it off and said it was just a tech demo. Later beyond that they said they felt they should not capitalise on FF7 by remaking it until they could release a newer FF game they were proud of enough to not need FF7 to support the company (newer FF games should do that on their own). The FF7 remake was later broken into 3 parts (2 have released so far) for the PS4 and PS5, with an Xbox release on the way.

As for the Amiga (mentioned by OP), that computer was more capable than the IBM/clones and Apple computers of its day. Bill Gates (Microsoft cofounder) once said you need 8MB of RAM for multitasking, but the Amiga did it with 256K (and also with 512KB if you had the memory expander), though some argued Amiga did not do true multitasking. The Amiga was in the 1980s what the Mac is today, a computer for artists and creators.

Also, obligatory Half-Life 3. The issue there is, Valve decided it was more profitable to sell other people’s games and make money off the backs of others rather than develop their own games. At this point I don’t even want HL3. HL2 built such strong momentum, and it spawned two expansions that were mostly good. And then of course Portal, and arguably, The Stanley Parable (game that started as a HL2 mod). I don’t think a HL3 based on how games are now would be as popular as some people think. And if it were based more on HL2 gameplay, I don’t think it would sell very well today. Same reason we don’t have Deus Ex anymore. The Deus Ex formula got pretty diluted with the latest entry, Mankind Divided, and that was almost 10 years ago? Now if you want the Deus Ex gameplay, you kinda have to go for something like Cyberpunk. DX elements plus some GTA stuff.

Depends on your age to a certain extent. Older men tend to value monogamy more, but we’re also older and looking for a sure thing (if we don’t have it already). Chasing tail, bedding a different young lady every night, sounds fun, but when you need someone to take care of you, it doesn’t really make sense as opposed to a long-term relationship.

If you’re younger though, you got your whole life ahead of you… just be safe. And try to avoid the crazy ones. They deserve love too, but they also take a lot of patience.

Nice — I absolutely use SponsorBlock on desktop (/laptop). Did not know it was on mobile.

It’s the other way around, it’s down to GrapheneOS to support other hardware. They simply choose to focus on Pixels.

You’re onto something with the AirTags but you haven’t got it quite right. Every Apple device participates in the Find My network, which means any Apple device marked as lost will have its location reported, anonymously, by every other Apple device it can communicate with. This is a good thing, unless you’re being stalked via an AirTag placed on your person, but Apple has taken pains to mitigate this issue. One shoe company recently released shoes with AirTag compartments so parents could track their kids, and the placement should mitigate the beeping they can emit. Honestly the AirTags and Find My network do more good than harm, the impact to devices participating in the Find My network is minimal, and if it’s your device that’s lost, you don’t want people opting out so thieves can get away with stealing your stuff.

Yes, ironically I just read another article about how Facebook/Meta has gotten around the ATT (App Tracking thing, I forget what the other T stands for) with in-app browsers. The article’s point was that all the beef between Apple and Meta is just for show and that they need each other like Apple and Google, Apple and Samsung, et al. So yeah, with you on that.