Best AI rant hands-down. I can agree with every word there.

100%

Disclaimer: I did not buy smart TVs recently. However from my research and experiences with other “smart” appliances - manufacturers now offloaded the most basic functions to the cloud and they LOVE IT. This gives them leverage in any extortion scheme they desire (just look at Toyota making some of their fob functions “subscription only” retroactively. This is a new era of digital extortion and the only way to shift is to avoid participating in a market of “smart things”. Corporations certainly capitalize on that, but if there is no market for smart things or it’s not lucrative enough they’ll begrudgingly cave as they need to sell. We’re not the majority though so unless we educate others this is the new reality.

from what I’ve observed so far outsourcing does not preclude proxying external entities through existing trusted domain.

not at all

I’m in the same boat. So I kill two birds with one stone when I shop for used dumb TVs - they are cheap and available as general population craves “smart”. Can’t loose there. I got 42" for $25 and larger ones can be had for under $100. So even if you’ll buy a lemon once or twice you’re still ahead

manufacturer may very well integrate add and update endpoints so that it’s rather hard to distinguish. For example, say Samsung decides to serve adds and updates. Doing so through https://serives.samsung.com/{ads,updares} they leave you with 0 handle on what’s going on, since the only thing your routers and proxies can see is “samsung.com” and differentiator is “hidden” after that. So TLDR; is: you either allow internet access or you do not, there’s no “a little bit”

don’t stress out about it - you’re on the right path, so just keep exploring. For music, depending on your location, there are various internet stations that broadcast indie and other stuff that is not mainstream. Also go to local concerts and buy CDs from artists - they actually need it. You should’ve been prepared to forfeit ownership of anything on amazon prime, kindle etc, for amazon has long history of denying people access to stuff they assumed they owned. For movies we collect DVD/Bluray disks as I don’t trust any of the streaming providers, nor do I want to share with them my viewing habbits (downside: you need storage space for those). For podcasts I love AntennaPod on Android. For books we always opt for unencumbered epubs, sometimes pdf which are abundant. Audiobooks through librivox are a thing as well. I will repeat myself: don’t stress out. Take it as a wild safari and go hunting for new and exciting things that are not entangled with big corps that suck the soul out of everything : artists, consumers, employees, shareholders, etc.

depending on where you are in phone replacement/upgrade cycle I would recommend Fairphone or looking into e/OS.

Like others mentioned don’t expect to do a wholesale jump. Slowly replace services with alternatives: Proton mail, NextCloud, Box, Dropbox, Lemmy, Mastodon to name a few services. There are numerous apps that can interact with those services so you’ll be spending some time going over those sorting what works for you.

To get the apps FDroid coupled with Aurora you can get most apps (that do not have explicit dependency on Googleware). Amazon App store is a possibility too for some commercial apps. For Youtube there are several alternatives like LibrePipe and NewPipe (but there are more). For existing social media site apps there are thin wrapper browsers that would “sandbox” each site allowing you to still use them while you slowly detach yourself: SlimSocial, RedReader, etc.

I’ve been Google-free for a bit now but I went with LineageOS+microG setup which may be challenging for you at this stage.

Treat it less as a crusade and more like multilevel challenge when upon completion of one challenge you get to complete another. It could be fun and liberating.

yeah, recent revelations seem to point that way

Ars posted that there’s some evidence to suggest board wanted to chase profit over ethics or somesuch. Altman apparently did not listen.

deleted by creator

form Ars

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/openai-president-greg-brockman-quits-as-nervous-employees-hold-all-hands-meeting/

According to reporting from Kara Swisher and The Information, it’s looking like the ouster of Altman stemmed from an internal disagreement over the direction of the company with regard to a focus on profits over safety… wasn’t too far off

All kinds of conspiracy theories are running through my head in light of further departures.

1. Board has asked Altman to do something shady, he said he’d do it but really he didn’t and they’ve got pissed firing him. Folks who were viewed as his “clique” naturally got worried and left before their names get tarnished.
2. Altman and a group of supporters were up to no good, board got a whiff of it and fired him, and everyone involved saw the writing on the wall and resigned
3. Board was shaping things up for acquisition, Altman opposed and was shown the door. Folks close enough to him understood the consequence and quit with their resumes clean of what’s to come. …

so many things will remain unknown for the nearest future it’s hard to tell who’s lying about what.

can someone enlighten me what prompted those threats?

self-hosting is great but that still means datacenter someplace. I’ve been using GitLab for some time now and CodeBerg “feels weird” to me. But then it could be my biases and “muscle memory”. I’d say whatever feels right for you.

Unlike other big name Git hosting company who chose to use AI to “steal” from hosted projects other two did not stoop that low. So there’s that.

funny thing is: “Eternity” looks like it shows totals for my upvotes on posts/comments but not showing what those are

thanks for the tech details. It sucks that there’s no endpoint for upvotes (yet). I find favorites/saved and upvoted to be distinctly different at least the way I use it. Upvotes communicate to me (and others) that content is of value or that I agree with it. However Saved/Favorite may mean that I disagree with content but I’d like to keep reference for future times. That latter is a private info too so nobody benefits from me “saving” that content other than myself.

TLDR; I’d have to get used to hitting upvote and “save” buttons on content of interest and learn to filter through my “saved” stuff while devs are comming up with endpoints for upvotes.

Whatever you’ve done to UI must be some atrocity as I do not experience issues with FF. You’ve never specified which FF extension you’ve used that had slowed down your browser.

Chrome (and by extension) Chromium and all derivative browsers are Google’s lever to truly control and shape internet to their liking. Multiple people said it already.

Personally I find Chromium UI very cumbersome and dislike it a lot. Which is to say we all have our own preferences for UI.

In your case you’d have to weigh your repulsion with available performant FF UIs vs future of internet and choose which decision can you really live with.

How is it a farewell if you’re still consuming Youtube content? Only exodus of consumers from the platform will prompt content creators to look for a different platform and maybe, MAYBE, force google to rethink. If you don’t like their practices, move off the platfrom, not just change the client.