I’ve disabled Google’s Play Protect after it deleted multiple apps I rarely use and all their settings and being forced to spend hours configuring them again. I know I can manually change individual app settings to prevent that from happening, but given all the years Google’s been spreading malware why trust them? The fact Google regularly distributes malware and then wants permission to scan my phone for malware is laughable.

I avoid apps from the Google store because they can be downright dangerous, but I have few worries about that “dangerous” third party F-droid store.

If a organization with a tiny fraction of Google’s resources can detect these extensions Google can too. There is only one reason malware extensions and Android apps are being distributed by Google - they make more money distributing malware than they would if they detected and blocked it.

And these assholes pretend they are blocking app stores like F-Droid (which has never had a malware distribution problem) for “our protection.”

Sometimes?

I think it’s simpler than that and just is down to the impact on the next quarter’s profits.

I wonder how many trillions of dollars the Trump dumpster fire will end up costing American business.

You’d think our corporate overlords would remove him.

Most doctors make terrible doctors.

I was not referring to smart shuffle.

basically just full of ads disguised as recommendations

Sell ad-free subscription. Include advertising anyway but make up another name. PROFIT!

I haven’t tried to set it up, but It looks like Tidal Connect is alive again and there are several ways to use on Linux, including WINE. When my Spotify subscription runs out I’m going to give it a try.

Clearly another attempt from the child rapist to distract from the Epstein files.

I looked at a tital a year or so ago and it wouldn’t work for me. Will look again, maybe they’ve improved it.

My “Made for You” has occasional popular artists but most of the songs are from people who are relatively unknown. The only way I listened to a podcast is if I clicked on one by accident.

Even the Spotify shuffle feature is built to maximize profits and to hell with the user experience.

I have almost 2 thousand songs on one playlist and Spotify plays the songs from minor artists (who don’t get paid much) constantly, while songs from major artists (who get paid a lot more) are never played. I’m actually surprised to hear those songs when shuffle is turned off.

They’ve also recently added “Video Episodes for You” to my home screen with no way to turn it off. It takes up 1/3 of the screen with helpful titles like “Session 105, Hillory Duff”, and “Reinvent Life from Rock Bottom and Become Unrecognizable.” I have never watched a video or listened to a podcast on Spotify.

When it comes to enshittification Spotify’s got it down.

Maybe someday one of the other music services will create something like Spotify Connect.

In the past few months our electric rates went up 14.5%, our heath care costs more than tripled, and grocery and necessities prices have shot way up.

Guess what we’re cutting back on? The kind of stuff Amazon sells.

We’re just starting to see the Trump economy.

I have both running right now. Mint on my laptop and media server. Debian only because it was previously required for Home Assistant support, (support which they’ve now dropped.)

Both distros are extraordinarily reliable, but I much prefer Mint. Debian is more focused on security and some of the design choices focus on that over usability. My LAN is completely locked down and only accessible via Wireguard and the physical systems are only accessible to me, so IDK how much better security it provides in my situation. Mint has every package I’ve ever needed prebuilt while I have had to build some packages for Debian.

Bottom line: As much as I like Mint, for me there is not sufficient reason to switch from Debian to Mint or visa-versa, but if I were installing from scratch I’d choose Mint every time.

Nomachine with local & Wireguard access only.

I think Anydesk can be trusted as much as any company. They did notify users when a breach occurred a couple of years ago. By contrast Teamviewer was hacked and blamed their customer’s “password reuse” for years before finally admitting they had a breach. The company cannot be trusted.

I use Anydesk occasionally to help friends but never leave it running if it’s not actively in use.

The battery limiting capability was an absolute requirement and I also ended up with a Dell. Having a display and keyboard always available is also great for some tasks.

I had a similar failure while I was out of the country for a month. My Raspberry Pi didn’t come back after a power blink. Home Assistant, Wireguard tunnels, security cameras, Jellyfin, Syncthing backup and DNS all failed until I returned. After looking at possible solutions I ruled out buying redundant hardware because of the cost, and more importantly the time and complexity of implementing and maintaining everything.

Instead I bought a small, relatively inexpensive laptop and a router with plenty of processing power and memory. I moved my Wireguard endpoints, DHCP and DNS server to the router and everything else to the laptop and disconnected my UPS completely.

If the router is up, WG connectivity, DNS, DHCP and wifi are up. The router does reset on power failure, but my ISP has no local power backup so Internet is out until power is restored anyway.

This laptop loafs along at 10 watts and costs about $2 per month to operate despite our high electric rates. My old UPS drew 75 watts most of the time even when there was nothing plugged in and cost more than $16/month to run. The laptop’s battery is firmware limited to a 70% charge so the battery will last years without degrading and making other battery issues unlikely. It provides 7 hours of operation if power fails compared to an optimistic 20 minutes for the UPS. Power blinks (and there have been plenty) have no effect on the laptop at all.

I’ve been happy with this configuration. It has worked flawlessly for almost 2 years.

In keeping with Musk’s Swasticar theme, the new Model S will be the called the SS.

You got a year? Ubuntu must be improving! I’d typically get 2-4 months and then have to spend hours troubleshooting to get something working again. I can’t remember the last time that happened to one of my Mint installations.