In some respects I’m glad the US gets invasive updates before the UK, it means I get a longer warning, and this realm isn’t always protected by EU regulations. I haven’t used Photos for a while but I still need to warn others. One saving factor: even though the article never says it, this feature seems to be for backed-up media only, and not for on-device media.

Try Fairphone. Ethically fantastic company, and they offer their phones with either Android or Murena /e/OS

>Downloads Niagara to minimalise my phone, reduce distractions
>Buys Pro, re-enables icons

Am I a heathen

Well it’s a good thing those two URIs can be easily blocked. Besides you can get the app from their Github page (sadly no F-droid repo as closed-source), and pay for Pro (if wanted) via Stripe instead of Google Play. I also had issues migrating Niagara off of Google once I’d connected the two, but an email correspondence with the lead dev Max Rumpf got the issue pleasantly and quickly resolved.

It’s likely the only reason for the privilege is to collect coords to send to the weather API. At least it’s optional, and there are alternative ways to see weather reports, just not on the home screen.

I tried accessing Google Photos via my phone to handle a couple of things I had active on that account from before. Little fuck refused to let me open the app unless it had unconditional access to all my media.

+1 for Niagara, plus even though you don’t have to, pro features can be purchased outside of Google Play.

If you run your own AI and watch how long it takes, how much it runs up the resources for a few seconds, then you might get an idea of what it’s like hosting at least three copies of a multi-terabyte LLM, in memory, with much shorter response and a much bigger knowledge base (Gemini by Google), taking millions of prompts per minute. Then think of every company that’s hosting major public AI services.

Then remember that the only things good that come out of AI are natural language inference for voice commands and slightly improved developer processes.

Hosting it is just a reminder of the rapid environmental, ecological and cultural destruction that is the AI bubble.

In summary: Perhaps, if the hoster wants it for streamlining their dev process. Otherwise it can be replaced with a far more efficient standard algorithmic program, which is what we had before.

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Well, from what I can find it doesn’t seem that much of an attack vector –

– My phone does not have 2G compatibility, this probably only tracks location if you’ve switched on location services and I’d wager most people use IM calls and texts rather than cellular. If the phone is old enough to have 2G or 3G, perhaps there’s a threat. If you live in the US it’s ironically probably smart to leave it on – state forces are a bigger threat than malicious conglomerates atm

Even so, I can’t do this if I want to keep some services or games – I’m currently liberal with my app downloads and around a dozen refuse to work unless they’ve been installed or updated to the absolute latest release with the Play Store version - Aurora versions don’t work. There’s the argument that if it doesn’t work, it’s not valuable enough to keep, but I play games quite a bit.

They flagged Rustdesk a while back, which is a probably harmless open-source remote access software. Because of this I learned that Google not only has Play Protect in Google Play settings, but a second, separate setting in Security called Advanced Protection, that prompted me to remove Rustdesk, and a second time after it re-enabled itself. It reminds me of the days I ran Windows and the antivirus would kill vital programs or script files for some games.

Well this is awful. My policy is if it can’t agree to my terms, it is rejected. If a company is kicking up a fuss because I want to ensure my primary address isn’t forever compromised by spam, and doesn’t work with aliases or duckduckgo privacy relays, then said company doesn’t get my attention or business. Whatever the service you’re trying to obtain from them, I can almost guarantee there’s a more amicable alternative.

Bruh 65" is only good if you’re like 6m away - almost no homes are like that. <=42" is the only normal size for a normal home, and sacrificing no quality. I get preferences, but that size has nothing to do with practicality

Lol, such bs. When HDTVs were made ‘smart’, and then 3D, the only ones sold were 40"+ and £3,000+. Took about three years for that price to drop 90%. But this is garbage news, who still wants a television in this century? Pubs, community spaces and that’s about it. Monitors are significantly cheaper, with less bloat and software lock.

I use a humidity sensor, motion sensor and a helper that shows the change over a period of time. If the humidity raises fast (+2%/5m) and goes over a certain amount (unique, depending on your room’s climate) the bathroom automation changes tracks to hold the light at 100%, turn the extractor fan on, and well, how you stop the automation depends on you. I let it stay on for 15 minutes before waiting for motion. Small tips: For me the humidity triggers the automation within 15s-1m of showering, which is okay for me. Motion sensors typically use IR to see movement. If the room is too steamy it might struggle to see you. Also, it cannot penetrate glass. It must have a line of sight to you.

The best alt I think would be mmwave presence sensors, but they’re pricy and require a wired connection.

Pre-crime. Fucking PRE-CRIME.

We have Minority Report now?!! With automated homes we’re close to getting fucking preemptive punishment.

Shall we wait until these findings are proven with a sharp decline in the national average GCSE scores or can we do fuck all about the use of gen. AI… Literally, tools are fine. But replacing the one thing that makes us human, our expression, with machines is ridiculous and doesn’t work.

I kept spending my money on food instead of upgrades. Here’s hoping DDR5 drops below 2x its Sept 2025 value in 2027, to coincide with Zen 6.

I tried to get RAM on eBay. 8GB & 16GB kits are not even being auctioned, and when they are sold their price tag is well over 3x their value, often 4x (~GB£170). 32GB sells for 3-4x its value (~£260-£320), almost as much as 64GB, which is often going for >2.5x (~£380-£440). If you’re desperate or are okay with massive financial waste, eBay is often the cheapest place for 64GB kits, but anything lower is relatively more expensive than just buying from distributors

I use NextCloud for informal shares as its GUI is very similar Microsoft or Google’s -Drive and is easily adoptable. I also host a private pastebin instance for code or guides I think may be helpful, and Matrix for personal stuff. But I do like how Bitwarden/Vaultwarden’s share works – it feels more secure, like WeTransfer. It still has its applications. And Vaultwarden file share is free, size limit is adjustable in server config, and is not limited to what the Bitwarden clients say!

It was a huge pain and I ended up troubleshooting with Gemini for hours aha! I know, I’ll plant a tree to offset my sins. It was at least useful to rapid search solutions and tell me what component was the most likely issue.

I had coturn set up for legacy Element Classic and, before that, XMPP, but as I wasn’t using those I decided to shut it down and try using Matrix Livekit’s internal TURN server. I’m not sure what actually helped in the end, but Livekit’s latest build caused a bug, so I instead pulled v1.9.12. I also shuffled around my reverse proxy config (from my old attempts) because some endpoints seemed to have changed. I’ll update later with anonymised config :3