d-RLY?

For all the very real bad things AI is/can be used for. I really would love to see more uses like this. So long as the code generated is made to be easily auditable (clear comments and traceable code) by folks that know how to do it for other projects that have been trying to free as many left to rot devices. Obviously a lot of slop stuff will make things hard for finding the gems, and will be important to treat all things as “too good to be true” until verified.

With the way that companies lock the shit out of modern devices with planned obsolescence. It would be great to repurpose those devices with as much of the hardware being accessible, unlike the current issues with major parts not working (not from lack of trying/caring to be clear). The breakthroughs that humans are able to figure out will still be more impressive, but there is a difference between folks like them clearly stating what parts they used tools to help with (if used at all) vs the no effort vibe-coder crowd. Will be also great if they are able to get results with small focused locally hosted AI instead of everything being on those “bubble” data centers.

But scammers can just use stolen IDs. So they would be able to get away, while the person who’s ID was used now gets cops showing up and lawsuits. I agree that it makes sense sites would want to have something. Just seems like much like other options, really low effort scammers might get stopped here and there, but everyone else has yet another way for their identification to be stolen. It is hard to figure out how to deal with very real problems for sure. Just seems like gov IDs should not be the only option with how bad sites are at data breeches. Though I am not sure what options would be good for the situations where needing to have tax documents tied to sales/income for regular people that don’t have like an LLC.

Microsoft has been a major annoyance on me with passkeys. I don’t like not knowing for sure that I can get back into an account if any of my devices get fucked (authenticators are nice and I do have some things setup but always worry if my phone is broken or lost out of nowhere). They (Microsoft) have such a dark pattern way of pushing passkeys. When I have to help someone get into their MS account at work (normal consumer PC stuff not IT/corp stuff) which is already hard since the people I try to help already don’t tend to realize how important even simple things they don’t think about WILL fuck them later. Some examples are stereotypical “boomers” that default to adding their land-line when an account asks for a phone number, or that they were even making an account (another dark pattern from Windows 8 where sooooo many people created @outlook.com accounts without really paying attention).

Obviously I experience a higher than average amount of tech illiterate folks (that also seem to just not care like shit is still the Windows 7 and earlier times). But Microsoft pushes dialog prompts/boxes for physical security keys and passkeys in a way that at first seems like the person has one of those setup. In some cases trying to sign into an account without a passkey/security key it will do what I expect. Give an extra option to not keep using a password or password+text/email code, or setup passkeys to “not have to worry about remembering passwords”. Though I still think they don’t really clearly explain how crucially important it is to make sure the person’s information for the account is correct and making damn sure to know recovery options if anything happens.

But I started seeing just a box pop-up that looks like a system prompt that only gives two options. Enter your PIN/insert security key, or to use the authenticator app. No obvious option for picking that neither are setup. The only way for not using those is to click the X on the top-right of the prompt. In some cases I have seen people click on the options and it just acts like they are setup. Pick the authenticator option and it asks for the code on an app/device that doesn’t exist. In the cases that it does start the process of setting up passkeys, I still feel like they are trying to trick people into it rather than the users choosing to do it.

Again I deal with more than average “I’m not a ‘techy’!” kinds of people along with older folks. But it really does seem like any level of tech literacy keeps getting worse based on running into more and more people of all ages. Which is what freaks me out about how these things are suddenly seemingly pushed on folks at the worst moments. A lot of people first trying to setup their new device just want to get into it as fast as possible, and really don’t understand how they can just lose access to so many things they didn’t realize are now tied together. Let alone be aware that they should export those things to something that isn’t tied to the OS in the event they for some reason want to get something else (PC to Mac/Mac to PC/Android to iOS/iOS to Android/etc).

I wish I could give more than one upvote for the commitment to the bit on this.

Gonna have to stop all sales of lead and brass in any form (don’t want to have access for people to melt things down). Gunpowder of course, including all the elements needed to make gunpowder. You know, just to cover all the bases. /s

Yeah shit is kind of annoying. I don’t mind having “simple” versions as an option, but seems like they (apps and even the OSes) just want to remove options over time by making them hidden. With the mobile OSes wanting to take over more things that traditional OSes can do. It is lame that instead of making those apps being able to be switched to something like “desktop mode,” it is just large buttons and everything else. I just want to be able to switch to small clickable UI if I choose to use a mouse instead of all the mobile touch UI. It is already a pain that mobile OSes already try to hide the idea of file management making normies even less aware of how to navigate around and know where their shit is.

Would imagine that with automakers’ own history of trying to push people into new cars by dropping support for stuff in older models without framework for being able to switch to a different option (like GPS nav using their own software/services and no option for at least casting phone apps). Seems like the problem will get worse. Automakers insisting on only using their own planned obsolescent features in so many models, is about as bad as phones used to be. Except a phone is at least easier to upgrade from in cost. And that most people really still see their cars as not having security issues just because the company stopped caring about it in 4 or 5 years.

For real. I would imagine that the US agencies that have the same levels of access/authority could (maybe already do) have the same access as China to US cars. Pretty sure that the levels of real surveillance/spying can force access with the ability to gag the manufacturers from taking to open court via national security. If that doesn’t work, they can flip already existing employees or get agents hired at the companies without the company itself knowing to insert backdoors (or find zero-day stuff that they will not disclose to keep as long as possible).

At least with China the nature of known laws regarding forcing compliance is more or less known. With the US it is much more hidden and pretend “it can’t be done because laws.” Anything the US claims the “evil CeeCeePee” does/could do are shit the US already can/does do to spy on/fuck with stuff sold to citizens and people buying abroad. If Chinese computers/infrastructure components can’t be trusted because “they might”, then no one should trust the same things from the US for the same reasons. Any nation with advanced tech and major “defense” budgets can (or eventually) get access to any of the computer/“smart” tech. But China is always painted as being “evil/scary” by default to make people think the US or other major powers don’t actively do the same or more of it.

The real problem with EVs (and combustion cars with so many bells and whistles) are how much more attack surface for governments or even hackers that just love finding flaws just for pranks. The more computers in the cars that replace previously analog items means more ways to gain access. Hell people act like people with FlipperZero or similar tools weren’t showing lack of security with unlocking, starting, etc. cars and showing it online it can be done. And that insurance, manufacturers, or companies like All Star can disable cars for lots of reasons, and get data from the passengers and their devices (and sell that data).

I hadn’t, but it certainly has some aesthetics that look cool! Will for sure try it out since it the other two commenters seem to like it. Really happy to have a few options to know about so quickly. Thank you!

Thank you for such a good overview! I will likely hop between three advised (Niri, swayfx, and river) since it will be fun to get the feel of TWM options.

Are there any hard forks or similar to Hyperland that are for Wayland? I was going to try it on my Pi5 (it is my main “messing with random Linux stuff” device that I don’t care if I break something), but then I saw people talking about the far-right/fascist stuff and didn’t bother. It looked nice when I saw people in random videos running it (wasn’t the focus of the videos and just stood-out).

I know there are other well known tiled window managers which I might end up trying since I keep meaning to see how I take to them. The look of Hyperland is nice with some stacked window manager elements if needed (which I imagine other projects also have). I just don’t know which TWM projects are “better” (for starting with coming from only using SWM). Some level of aesthetics would be nice but am fine with adding after install.

People really want those builds/any files from Half-Life Episode 3. The other stuff is just extra.

After going through both my Galaxy 24U and Pixel Tablet initially, I wasn’t seeing the option (was looking for the old “Install from unknown sources” which is in a different location (and per app toggles). I went back and manually disabled and enabled the “Android Developer Verifier” app and then saw the option for “Apps from unverified developers” show up. Then was able to follow the steps (very glad you provided that second source which is what led me to what I did).

So I guess if you don’t see it. First search in your apps that the verifier app is present. If it is, then go into the app info for it and toggle disable and then enable. Willing to accept that maybe I was just blind to it due to the old way of sideloading that made me miss it in Developer Options. But for sure saw it after the toggles. Now I just need to remember to go back tomorrow to set the “indefinitely” option. Curious if this will allow Play Protect to not try to yeet apps if PP is turned back on. I had to turn it off a couple months ago because it kept flagging SyncThing-Fork installed from F-Droid trying to trick me into uninstalling it (which was weird that was the only app it freaked out about out of all the third-party store and Obtainium apps).

Which is why they knew you were running Linux. lol

I have been curious if IPFS would be useful for releases if the trackers keep getting taken down (or another option aside from torrents and Usenet). But aside from installing IPFS a few years ago, I haven’t looked into it. And the crypto parts are a turn-off for folks that hate the crypto-bro stockmarket/scams (which is completely justified to hate). The decentralized part of it is cool.

More related to torrents. It would be cool if Nyaa and other large trackers were to setup i2p versions of the sites. Since it actually helps make the system run faster the more people install the routers.

The rest is general ranting.

With all the different decentralized P2P, a lot of spreading out of concentrated server loads could help beyond piracy. If profits/copyright/capitalism weren’t the things holding us back (along with data caps). I wouldn’t mind sharing some of my connection for so many things. Like updates for programs, media I happen to have copies/parts of, or even random files/parts of files that rotate into and off of specially allocated amounts of my drives.

Even Windows has the option for helping updates for the OS to other PCs. But I am not trying to help them with all the shit they pull while making billions (especially if I had a data cap) while not legally able to do the same for general data. If profits/copyright/capitalism weren’t an issue, then stuff like having digital libraries constantly at risk of shutting down and losing everything would basically be a non-issue. If one service pulls out, the data is still accessible via another front-end. I would even be fine with options to donate money to the devs/artists for stuff I use/like in amounts I can afford as I can.

If it does get far enough to be introduced and to actual vote. I am guessing there will be a massive push by Flock to flood news outlets and lobbyists to how “successfully bad guys were caught” or otherwise “prevented.” Probably lock-in on any instance(s) involving children being protected/found. With any and all misleading stats downplaying the actual levels of spying on literally everyone not doing anything illegal (or that children are being scanned and added to those growing databases). And the fucked up cases of false positives that drag those people into court, job losses from being accused/arrested, and financial losses from the first two.

Would be great if there was a feature that detects a clone and start zeroing itself. Or start flipping bits every few seconds/random intervals in a way that just seems like nand in early stages of failing (maybe even give false drive health data). Though I have zero understanding of the cloning processes, and imagine that it would quickly be something they would have their own detectors and mitigations.

But can’t just stop trying to make it harder/frustrating for anyone trying to access all our digital lives. They already get around our rights with how they just go ask the companies like Microsoft to get people’s Bitlocker keys (which even most people seem to not even be aware of having until Windows breaks).

Good to see devs willing to do the work needed in order to draw hard lines on the capitalist leeches that divert money away from the project. I am looking forward to the traffic system that they mentioned as a future option. Would allow users that are okay with turning on those features for adding crowdsourced traffic data and stuff like marking cops posting up to get their quotas.

Literally the only thing that keeps me on Waze is that stuff. I have to deal with a lot of interstate travel to and from work and knowing that a big crash happened so I can re-route before getting stuck is crucial. I will still make sure to have this installed just like I had Organic Maps as a good option. And to see what stuff I go to that needs to be updated on OSM and StreetComplete. Had to add all of the addresses on my street on OSM a while ago just to be able to correctly enter my address. One of those addresses that is listed as one town for mailing and is technically within the borders of a smaller one with regards to utilities and plots of land.

Where do you get the blob?