Meanwhile, new age Glassholes Flock to their new Meta glasses.

I’m a slave to capitalism. I want to eat and not live in a box on a street.

I also like playing video games. Kind of hard to play video games if you live in a box on the street.

Ooh boy, refunds! Yay!

We should make sure to refund all the corporations and businesses - by court order! If we do that, surely it will trickle down this time.

Shrekislove posted some good advice, so I’ll add something here for you to evaluate based on what you said above.

“I hate Google so much… I’m just looking for my blindspots… Im not in tech”

Years ago I went all in and too fast on privacy. I’d recommend some guard rails as getting privacy is a journey. First you need to define what “privacy” is for you. Privacy is a spectrum. Only you can determine it based on your needs and wants, and you can do that by figuring out your threat model.

That old expression of tightening your grip and more things fall out applies here.

Think about your security and privacy. Think about what you’re willing to give up, and think about your relationships with others that can be impacted.

You can get recommendations and learn more about privacy by checking out privacyguides.org.

As for me? I’m basically at the point where I’m fatigued with big tech - especially smartphones. I’m waiting to see when GrapheneOS will reveal what new OEM they are working with, to determine if I’ll get another smartphone when my current one is too old. Else, my plan is to upgrade to a truly dumb 5g phone with hotspot. Then I’ll carry my Linux laptop with me and use that when I need the internet.

Best of luck! Don’t go too fast and evaluate everyone’s suggestions carefully. I don’t recommend just dropping the phone you got and going all in on buying a Pixel and installing GrapheneOS. That’s a drastic action to take suddenly since you’re still getting your feet wet on all this privacy stuff. You can improve privacy on your current phone, and then when you’re comfortable and if you decide you need the benefits of GrapheneOS, then look into upgrading in the future.

“Sweet dreams, Piggy!”

Those European leaders missed a golden opportunity to clap back with “Quiet, Piggy!”

Ever since he recently shit his pants on live TV, he’s noticed he’s been shitting himself more frequently every few hours. Given that his lucky staff had the pleasure of doing multiple diaper changes a day, he hasn’t had time to really focus on Greenland. I think he’s going to try some more ivermectin, or possibly, bringing some bleach into the body (almost like a cleaning?). His doctors are looking into that. But yes, he’ll get the poopy diaper thing under control at some point and then it’s back to Greenland.

Former Catholic, now atheist. In my fundamental years growing up as a Catholic and being a member of our Catholic school and church, we were entirely service based and helped do those things Jesus was all about: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick (hospice, nursing homes), etc. We never crammed our religion down someone’s throats. Today, I still live Christ-like even though I’m not christian.

I’m not in Texas, but one of my favorite videos of Talarico is his sermon to explain the difference between Christianity and Christian Nationalism. This sermon isn’t cramming religion down your throat - it goes through the dangers of Christian Nationalism and presents it in such a digestible manner. It made me angry on behalf of Christians (given that I’m a former one who strived to do good for others and serve my community like Jesus in the bible did) since Trump and his cronies co-opted Christianity.

“James Talarico Delivers Sermon Against Christian Nationalism - October 22nd, 2023”

https://youtu.be/Blph_2RSBno

Duration: 18:46 minutes

Long video, but it’s really good. Video hits harder since it was before Trump was re-elected.

“They have co-opted the Son of God. They’ve turned this humble rabbi into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist. And it is incumbent upon all Christians to confront it and denounce it.” - James Talarico.

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For now. GrapheneOS is partnering with an OEM that will offer smartphones that meet their hardware security standard. They announced this a while back and are expecting to be able to reveal the new OEM either this year or 2027. The exciting thing is it will be running on modern Snapdragon processors rather than Google Tensor.

Hopefully all the hardware component shortages due to AI won’t have an impact to this OEM’s plans.

Confirmed, my comment above is inaccurate as the Nintendo DS game cartridges do not use NAND; rather, Nintendo DS cartridges use mask ROMs.

Edited my comment above to remove that misinformation. Learned about this stuff years ago and I must have lumped DS into the mix.

Buy your games on GOG and own them forever. You can also buy a cheap, slow as hell external drive and backup your installer files, too. You can still buy games on Steam since most of them don’t have DRM. For now, Steam is also great, but a decade from now they could enshittify.

If you only do console gaming, buy physical cartridges and discs as much as possible. You’ll keep most of the game and can play whenever you want. An example of being able to play “most” of the game applies to games with legacy activation servers, such as Splinter Cell Blacklist and Watch Dogs 1. Most of the game is playable, but anything that requires a connection to that activation servers no longer works.

Finally, scour Craigslist, flea markets, and yard sales to buy old game consoles from before this DRM mess. All those old games still work great. If you buy Wii U, 3DS, and Switch 1, make sure to boot your console and every single game at least once every few years. Yes, every single one of your games. Due to NAND volatility, this will protect your games and console (Wii U) from NAND failure and increase longevity.

Edit: removed Nintendo DS from the list I provided. Nintendo DS does not use NAND; rather, the DS uses mask ROMs which does not have the limitation of NAND volatility.

Verified. I was able to use this to download an age restricted video just now.

Thanks. Yeah, I totally forgot about this. Oof.

“Day of Love”

No, not like that!

Hey. What’s up homie? Have you heard about Bitcoin? It’s a great financial freedom and I’m extra generous today reading your comment. It’s Discord keyword triggered my human detection algorithm. If you send me one, I’ll send you two back. Spread the love and the positivity fir Discord and Bitcoin users like you! ⭐️🥰🖕

Or if you’re busy, I’m actually the MasterCard. There has been a totally true breach of your bit corns. Please PM your seed words on Discord and I will secure it. Again this is Victor MasterCard. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

That could work. They should only be songs from when I was a teenager—

Wait. They’re classic oldies now?! 😢

You da real mvp. Thanks!

Great idea. Thanks!