Those are mostly operating costs, offset by revenue, but are they actually losing 1.5 billion dollars a year? I mean, I hope so, but are they really?

Source? Where is that money going?

Don’t post on social media, especially under your real name.

This includes posting when you’ll be out of the house (I.e. vacation), or the details/names of family members.

Run an adblocker with strict tracker protection on every device you use, and opt for the web version of a product, rather than an app.

Use aliases and throwaway email addresses to anything that requires an account. If they end up being something you use, and are required to provide real information, move forward with caution.

Really, though, the worst thing you can do is post on social media.

I would flash custom roms all the time years ago, then I just… lost interest since most of the features I liked came bundled with Samsung phones. But Samsung phones are now (apparently) hard to flash decent custom roms on, so I do guess you’re stuck with a pixel.

That Sounds Great! But Will It Work on My Phone? Currently, GrapheneOS is supported on Google Pixel devices only…

Aaaaaand, you lost me.

I’ve got so many spare phones that I’d love to install this on. Not a single one is from Google. They screwed me once with their hardware (Pixelbook), and I don’t feel like giving them any more money.

The OS itself doesn’t serve ads, but rather the apps you install and the web pages you visit.

I don’t know what phone you use, but a stock Samsung phone absolutely serves ads and tracks like crazy. You can monitor the activity with something like Adguard. Not to mention the bloat like Facebook will call home even when you aren’t using it.

So yeah, it would be nice if the OS itself wasn’t an open door for this type of crap.

Awesome! Thank you!

I guess I’m asking this before I register.

I still don’t get PeerTube. Is it like Lemmy, where signing up to one “platform” gives you access to other platform’s content with the same login? Or is each platform separate and only videos there will be shown?

Adguard can work with adguard VPN to provide adblocking through the VPN. This applies to Android and Windows, and maybe even iOS versions.

With other VPNs, I’ve used some with their own adblocker, but they aren’t nearly as good at filtering.

I appreciate the math! But yes, for a crime this significant, and one that affects 1 billion (!!!) people, the equivalent of $467 to the average American is peanuts.

But I’d also argue that a $467 fine to the average American hurts more than the equivalent to a company that amasses so much wealth. There are so many hundreds of billions of dollars in excess profit being funnelled into Meta. For a fine to sting, it would need to be at least $100 billion or more, but even that could be made up very quickly…

We’re just talking wishful thinking at this point. None of these mega corporations were ever “hurt” by a fine, so they factor it into their business costs when they plan to commit these crimes.

I’ve used plenty of Linux VMs through Windows, so I’m aware of the limitations. I’m not trying to game through a VM, more like accessing some programs that I need for a few minutes at a time (and not even on a daily basis).

Can you share the software you went to use? Maybe there’s a good Linux alternative or someone knows how to get it working in wine.

These are all paid programs that don’t have viable alternatives and/or I actually need to use them.

A few off the top of my head:

• Excire Foto
• Jpegmini Pro
• Garmin Basecamp
• Garmin Express
• several paid video editing/photo editing apps; I’ve tried alternatives, but they aren’t nearly as intuitive.
• Reolink camera software.
• ACP Ups software.

I do my best to find alternatives to other software, and prefer to use self-hosted solutions, but the ones above aren’t really easy to replace, so I’d rather just run them in a VM.

I’ve use VMs in windows to run Linux, so I’m aware of the performance hit and possible startup times (but I use snapshots for quick access). I’m not too concerned about that for any of these programs, since I’m only using them from time-to-time.

Bottles didn’t run anything I tried, unfortunately. They seemed to install just fine, but that was about it.

I’m actually pretty happy to be using mostly FOSS apps. The exception are banking or services apps, which I’d never expect to be available as open source.

I went through the same dilemma. The old Synology photo software had a duplicate finder, but they removed that feature with the “new” version. But even with the duplicate finder, it wasn’t very powerful and offered no adjustability.

In the end, I ended up paying for a program called “Excire Foto”, which can pull images from my NAS, and can not only find duplicates in a customized and accurate way. It also has a localAI search that bests even Google Photos.

It runs from windows, saves its own database, and can be used as read-only, if you only want to make use of the search feature.

To me, it was worth the investment.

Side note: if I only had <50,000 photos, then I’d probably find a free/cheaper way to do it. At the time, I had over 150,000 images, going back to when the first digital cameras were available + hundreds of scanned negatives and traditional (film) photos, so I really didn’t want to spend weeks sorting it all out!

Oh, the software can even tag your photos for subjects so that it’s baked into the EXIF data (so other programs can make use of it).

Ok, I think I’ll grab another drive and try again over the weekend.

Their forum is pretty good, and there’s a dedicated linux section there, too. They also have extensive support documentation.

I’m sure I can get it working to be more stable, but man, it’s an effort for sure.

My laptop is a Framework and has official support for Fedora and Ubuntu. I wouldn’t expect these kinds of issue, TBH.

I can probably try a few more distros, but I’m just disappointed that the experience seems to always be the same :(

That is a fair point. I don’t expect every feature to match 1:1. But minimize and maximize window seems to be a no-brainer for basic use. At least, how I use floating windows.

But… I’m glad that there are options to bring those features (and more) back if someone chooses.

Is this only when using Linux? The drive’s S.M.A.R.T status is all perfect (it’s only got like 40 hours of use on it), and tests with no errors).

Maybe I can try another drive.