I don’t have a problem with the police entering private homes and installing spyware when authorized by a court order supported by strong evidence. That’s narrowly focused on investigating crime.

What I’m very concerned about is attempts to perform surveillance without individualized suspicion or independent oversight.

I normally dislike self censorship of profanity, but replacing fuck with fsck (filesystem check) is a Unix joke, and I can appreciate that.

I’m sure I hit numbers like that on my DSL.

If you are trying to get the Wordpress software and install it on a server you own or web hosting account you pay for, yes.

If you’re trying to do something else, like sign up for blog hosting from a privacy-respecting service provider without having to administer software yourself, then no. If you want recommendations for services like that, you should probably make a separate post asking for that, with as much detail about what you want to do and whether you’re willing to pay for it as possible.

Edit: I see you did make such a post. If you’re “not tech savvy” as your post says, I don’t recommend administering Wordpress yourself. While it’s something nearly anyone can learn if sufficiently motivated, it’s much more effort for someone without a technical background.

Wordpress the software is open source and isn’t known to do anything shady. Wordpress.com the hosted CMS product uses tracking pixels.

Yes, that’s adequate for someone who knows how their phone works and doesn’t stream video while out and about.

Signal seems unlikely to comply. It will be interesting to see how they respond. A way to register without a phone number would be ideal.

It looks like that plan allows 35gb of data use in a month before it throttles, I don’t think I’ve ever used that much mobile data.

The fact that casting to older devices is allowed on the expensive plan but not the ad-supported one offers a clue.

Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm.

Google has partly backed away from this plan, and it was only announced for “certified” Android devices, which yours isn’t after rooting.

It does affect you indirectly though. If open source on Android gets harder, fewer people will do it.

I’m old enough to remember the web being primarily text, and turning off automatic image loading being a good way to see fewer ads. I’m old enough to remember popup windows and popup blocking.

I suppose the underlying issue is that if something I don’t like happens on my computer, my first thought is to look for a way to change it, and most people don’t think about computers that way. I’m sad that most people don’t think about computers that way.

Right, I do understand that’s a limitation. I think I’m more puzzled that many people find the presence of ads in a device they paid for to be a minor issue rather than intolerable.

I haven’t moved to a privacy OS on Android yet because of money.

That’s entirely reasonable. You can still block most ads if you want to:

• You can use a web browser that supports extensions. That includes Firefox and its various forks, and perhaps surprisingly, Microsoft Edge. uBlock Origin is still available for both, despite Edge being Chromium-based and Google trying to cripple adblockers there.
• You can use web, rather than app versions of most services so that they’re covered by the browser’s adblocker.
• You can use DNS-based adblocking to reduce ads where you need/want to use apps that display ads.

“But personalised ads are really convenient!”

Not seeing ads is really convenient, and I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn’t block ads aggressively on every device they spend much time using in 2025.

To cover a couple common objections:

It’s a corporate/institutional device and I can’t

Then it’s the institution’s IT department I’m puzzled by. If I was running corporate IT, ad blocking would be part of the standard install. The FBI recommends it for security.

The device is too locked down for that

Why would you buy such a device, or continue using it now that you know better?

Someone logging timestamps for messages received on both ends of a conversation would be able to determine that two people are probably talking to each other given enough data. Signal is probably not doing that, but Signal’s other security guarantees provided by an open source client that encrypts communications end to end hold even if the organization was infiltrated or taken over by a bad actor. The anonymity of participants in a conversation is not protected as strongly as the contents of messages.

Correct, though the car in question here is electric and will almost certainly use the motors to slow the car to reuse that energy. The motors should be able to stop the car even if the hydraulic brakes fail, and probably more effectively than a mechanical parking brake.

It is like paying to unlock satellite TV reception (even though we are receiving the signals the whole time).

It’s reasonable to charge for this because the value is in copyrighted content and a service that costs the provider money to operate. The same would apply for satellite radio in a car or an internet-based streaming service. It is not reasonable to charge for access to the adaptive suspension or seat warmers that are already in a car a customer bought. That breaks the traditional model of ownership.

An interesting middle ground might be to allow the owner to install arbitrary software on the car, and charge for the OEM adaptive suspension app. I think I would like a world where things work like that; OEMs would whine about security to no end.

I think it should be legal to attempt to decrypt satellite signals without paying; if the satellite service is designed well, it won’t be possible. All the anticircumvention laws should be repealed.

It’s an electronic parking brake. Those are common now because a small switch takes up less interior space than a lever for a cable-actuated parking brake, and the computer can disengage the parking brake if it detects that the driver is attempting to drive with it activated. The computer is involved in brake pad replacement to tell the parking brake motor to open to its widest position to accept new pads, and calibrate itself to their thickness.

This requires a special adapter and software subscription rather than a button on the infotainment screen because Hyundai is engaging in rent-seeking and perhaps trying to direct business to its dealers.

Can you? The blog post says it only works with Pixel 10 devices, which GrapheneOS doesn’t support yet. There’s no explanation for why it might need a specific model of phone.