It’s two different problems :

• technically speaking TEE and homomorphic encryption have proven to work. You can read public research and results from e.g. NIST or ask a researcher in the domain you trust but basically unless you find a way to break it (which is not impossible theoretically, just nobody has ever done it), it is indeed private.

• in terms of business model, Meta is an advertising company which only happens to rely on tech to sell more ads. The more information they have about someone, the more expensive they can sell ads to their true clients, advertisers. So… one can safely assume that everything AROUND the encryption itself will be used to align with that very profitable business model.

I meant literally the repository https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#From_Mozilla_APT_repository_.28recommended_by_Mozilla.29 not an alternative method. One can add the official source of built packages my Mozilla, keep their Debian distribution otherwise untouched and get the latest.

everyone around here will tell you how basic that is and how much program versions lag behind sometimes

which mostly show people don’t know they one can add a repository and fix that, my Firefox is 2 days old.

in itself no… but as you typically end up doing more stuff, have things in the background, etc probably a bit.

You can now root all Meta glasses https://github.com/Lumince/singularity/releases/

You can also, without root, use Termux letting you install a local server on the device itself, use adb to start the browser on a WebXR page running on it, etc.

So it’s possible to make it work and entirely offline, no Meta account, no app, all this without privacy concerns but that does require to tinker a bit.

I document this a bit on https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/biggu_s_gate/issues/152 so feel free to ask more questions

The vast vast majority of physical businesses accept cash, it’s mandatory in most countries, and thus are UYC by default. A lot of those, e.g. supermarkets or franchises, operate at scale.

No profile, no Google.

Termux on Android devices

To give an example yesterday walking down the street I had an idea for a prototype (basically every morning my phone would generate an ePub with calendar, map of the area, notes, articles to read, etc) but I didn’t use some fancy voice assistant, no I started Termux on my phone, mkdir, echo idea > file, etc.

I have notes on my wiki on https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SwappingPartsOfTheRestrictionStack on doing this kind of stuff on more than phones, VR headset, IoT, etc. Typically the heuristic is to still by modern hardware flash an open source firmware or OS then connect it to your tools that are already not enshittified or de-enshittified

Offline Android device, e.g. video projector, with VLC on it that starts at boot. Content from a USB stick.

If I want something live, I plug my GrapheneOS phone on it with a USB-C to HDMI cable.

Basically keep the device as just a monitor.

Window Rules and Custom Shortcuts from KDE Plasma, just earlier today I binded Meta+Ctrl+k to start Konsole in the directory of my latest modified prototype, open a per directory script which e.g. opens a browser tab, opens Vim in the file to edit, positions those windows properly, here browser on left half, console on top right corner.

Window Rules with its window picker is very convenient to get conditions and properties to apply. Custom Shortcuts is just a list of shortcuts you can add to start anything from anywhere.

Also I added my own wiki as a KRunner Web search, so if I type Alt+Space then PIM keyword it searches directly to my PIM from the center of my screen, also from anywhere.

Same, that’s not a normal usage. Spending a lot of time on Lemmy/Reddit/HackerNews tech community might lead to believe running a local model is normal but very few people do. When they do it’s typically on GPUs or Mac precisely for their unified memory architecture… but it’s not a normal setup even for gamers. Also typically it’s to tinker locally and learn from than actually productivity. I’m repeating here, I’m not saying it’s not an interesting use case for some, just not what most people do.

Did a quick search and “Most games required more than 16GB RAM ONLY if the game was played at 4k or 8k resolution. Usually between 16-25GB RAM” https://laptopstudy.com/ram-usage-games/ so I would argue that’s not a typical usage.

The fact that you wrote “some” perfectly illustrates my point, it’s not normal. It doesn’t mean those usages aren’t important, just not typical.

It’s bad, OK, I’m not trying to remove any blame or criticism for the situation.

That being said, what actual normal usage for a normal person (not a National Geographic 8K stereo 360 video editor or a developer compiling Firefox daily) needs a lot, say more than 16GBm of RAM?

Again I’m not trying to find a way to accept a bad situation, only to see which actual usages are in trouble because honestly I don’t see any.

That’s not normal, Debian works fine with NVIDIA cards including with their proprietary drivers. You can follow https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

How do I know? Been running such a setup for years including for gaming, even VR gaming, and tinkering with local AI models for evaluation (and disappointment) and works well.

I understand where you are coming from but I would take the opposite approach, namely not how quickly and conveniently you get back to exactly the same state (because that’s actually really hard) but rather how quickly and conveniently you can get to work, or play, or do whatever you do, from the most generic of hardware and software, including of course yours. What this perspective suggests though is NOT to consider your stuff precious but on the contrary, to assume it will inevitably disappear, due to any reason, from a freak event, e.g stolen to the mundane, e.g. hardware failure over time.

IMHO it’s much more relaxing to consider hardware disposable. My own heuristic for this is to understand what a distribution does, save only MY data (e.g. things that I produce, for example in a data it would be my saves but not the game itself) and buy only well supported hardware.

In theory maybe but in practice documents viewers and editors are rather foolproof as they read content but they don’t execute. The file formats are specifically defined. Also each distribution might have a different default viewer per file format and the user might install a different default, so it’s very hard to target, unlike for other OSes with a well known default.

Targeting Linux distributions is even less likely because unlike Windows or MacOS there is no “official” viewer for a kind of document, being image, video, text, etc but rather only the one that the distribution picked but that even during the installation process the user might ignore or replace. So the attack on the media would have to work for any viewer which seems basically impossible.

Technically possible yes but practically impossible at scale, it would have to be targeting a specific user and then it’s a totally different situation.

I did at https://lemmy.ml/post/51917327/27475152 hope it helps

Backup your data so that you can restore what matters to you. There is no need for an antivirus on Linux if you stick to the distribution channels of your distribution because package are verified. Unlike in the close source world because the source of those packages are open, verifying, even though imperfect, is much simpler. Popular distributions, e.g. Debian or Redhat, have a very strong incentive not to let anything slip. Maintainer of packages also are able not just to track what changed but also by whom, that means if there is a problem it can be identified and attributed rather quickly and thus other maintainers can be warned. It is not impossible and supply chain attacks do happen, e.g. xz backdoor, but it is rare, specific and has been studied and thus partly alleviated even though it remains a challenge.

If you do download executables or binaries, not media e.g. videos or music, from random places though then all bets are off.