If we recommend you a tracker tracker, soon enough you’ll just be back asking for a tracker tracker tracker. When does it end?!

Last I checked (which, admittedly, was a few years ago) I literally couldn’t find any security cameras that weren’t compromised in some way. The only options are basically:

• Consumer models tied to “cloud” services
• Generic Chinese ONVIF cameras that probably phone home to who knows where unless you firewall them off from the Internet
• ONVIF cameras that might have a slightly better reputation than the previous category but are only sold through security system installers, not normal retail channels
• Analog (not IP) cameras that you hook up via coaxial cable
• Building your own goddamn camera from scratch with a Raspberry Pi or something

It’s ridiculous!

For TVs, there used to be the option of Sceptre dumb TVs, but even those have disappeared from the market in the last year or so.

I’ve been looking for a smartwatch/fitness tracker (and a bike computer, which is kind of a similar category) and the pickings seem very slim there, too. There’s the Pebble and the PineTime, which are open but maybe lack some of the sensors one might want in a fitness tracker, and there’s stuff that’s intended to be proprietary but supported by Gadgetbridge (e.g. iGPSPORT bike computers) . There might be others, but I don’t know about them.

It’s fuckin’ bleak, y’all. I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering building almost all my own tech out of Raspberry Pis and/or ESP32s because that’s easier than searching for needles in the infinite haystack of surveillance capitalist slop!

The Slate EV also doesn’t actually exist yet.

I’ve tried to use ZeroTier because Tailscale still has centralized servers for starting the connection, but had trouble getting it to work. Maybe I should stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

My stuff is only accessible from my LAN (because I haven’t figured out how to set up a tunnel or reverse proxy yet).

No, because until the dot-com era when “tech bros” first became a thing, a lot of the computing pioneers were leftist/hippie counterculture types. Think MIT AI Lab (RMS), The Homebrew Computer Club (Woz, Captain Crunch), Germany’s Chaos Computer Club, etc.

Further reading:

https://bigthink.com/the-present/1960s-counterculture-created-silicon-valley/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

If you already are their tech support, you probably could’ve forcibly switched then a long time ago.

At least, that’s how I treat my computer-illiterate boomer parents. For them, it’s “use what I tell you to use or you’re on your own.” To be fair, on their last few computers that was MacOS, but their iMac from 2013(?) got so obsolete it wasn’t good enough anymore, so as of a few months ago they’re on a mini PC running Linux whether they like it or not.

Nah, SteamOS is a normal Linux. It counts.

As the owner of multiple cars from the '90s and 2000s, I 100% need a Linux head unit.

Because I have self-respect.

I find it hilarious that a government is sponsoring something with “UwU” in the name.

And I berate you!

“Just as” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, IMO. Can they be subverted against the people they are supposed to serve? Of course. Is it as likely as a for-profit corporation doing it? Hell no, I’d say.

Pretty sure he meant something like “not a nonprofit or government entity.”

Why does this need to be a hosted service/web app? Why can’t it just be a regular-ass application?

Since Dodge v. Ford Motor Co (1919), if not earlier.

See also: https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/

Their audience is the kind of person who still buys paper magazines, so…

I’m seconding the request for a writeup.

I second the recommendation for TP-Link running OpenWRT (that’s the important part).

I’ve been using a few Archer C7s for going on a decade at this point. (So long that they went from “OpenWRT” to “LEDE” to back to “OpenWRT”, LOL!) They’ve been working fine that whole time, and the only thing that annoys me about them is that they’re a funny shape instead of being rack-mountable.

But downside of a M series is either you run macOS or Asahi Linux and nothing else yet.

I’m OOTL; what is it about Apple Silicon Macs that apparently make them such trouble to support? If one distro can manage it, what’s stopping that code from being upstreamed to the mainline kernel etc.?