In my attempt to drive a wedge into the ideal of unconditional government faith:

I have deduced that there are five laws of society:

1. State - national or regional regulations, uses prisons, sometimes to protect themselves rather than the community
2. Religious - based on the perception of guidelines of how to live, as per holy scriptures
3. Moral - the societal, generally accepted rules to not be a dick, such as harming others in malice, stealing. Not to be confused with subjective, personal morals
4. Ethical - a broader, more easily agreeable set of regulations, almost exclusively to protect life, the way of it, and the generally accepted ideas of rights for fauna and flora
5. Corporate - enforcement of copyright and intellectual property, a capitalist creation, often used to socially and financially destroy individuals rather than battle other businesses, in some regions utilising state law

The state legal system is sometimes the absolute enemy of the people and morals, especially when combined with corporate law, and shouldn’t be treated like it’s unconditionally justice.

Well, in one respect it’s humans - always humans - that cause destruction in one way. Even if some of us try, like backing a carbon offset program that plants trees (in correct places that historically support trees), there’s the rich and powerful creating some other hyperfixation like fast fashion, space races, greed wars, religious wars and witch hunts like the one against AI to cock it up again

On the other hand, I as a builder of tech fucking hate what the obsession with AI has done to the current global economy, and how generative AI is a complete waste of existence as its meaningful use is dwarfed by its cost…

But I do see value in developmental AI, and while it’s little more than a standard algorithmic program with memory, parameters and developer bias, it is useful at doing some work better than us, and much faster. And since the dawn of humanity we’ve been inventing things to make life tasks easier. I do believe that form of AI will persist. In a way, vehemently opposing the AI programs that make calculations or accurate code is about as righteous as refusing to use a hammer to nail together some wood, or making fearmongering pamphlets about the advent of electrified cities.

There’s a motivational app someone I know uses that has this very idea - I think it’s Finch (little Tamagotchi type deal, reels you in with cute interactions, and gives you little app-based rewards for achieving little goals). One day in a given week its like ‘Clean the bathroom sink day!’ or ‘Time to wipe down the skirting/baseboards!’

bitcoin isn’t cheap

Well, you dont have to buy whole digit BTC (or any other cryptocurrency), you can convert like €50 into the wild and sketchy world of unstable currency which will be around 0.0026436362 BTC, but is enough to cover the cost of the transaction. I’m not sure I recommend it, only that it’s technically not expensive because you’re still using the equivalent of your currency, with a transitional currency.

things like search that limits options

And you can self host SearXNG, metasearch engines are much easier to handle than search engines, and I believe they are private enough – no tracking or sign in data is communicated through each search API – but I do not know all there is to know.

They asked GPT 4o to peer-review the choice and they trust it because they pay US$10/m for it

Yeah nah that makes sense. I’ve got a weather integration in Home Assistant and chose to add relatively accurate coordinates for the API calls. That at least was entirely under my control, whereas their implementation was “use it this way or not at all”, demanding location access or no weather.

Ah, like Daniel Radcliffe’s character in that one movie. When you believe all haters and bigots are ignorant, then bro drops, amid slurs, the most intricate background knowledge of Judea

Is it because they were right? They know more about the geography of Africa than most folk in their region, and made an accurate, and importantly, educated guess? I have no idea what finale the reaction face is supposed to convey.

And that’s just America.

But to defuse the paranoia a little, they said the same about the most recent, disturbingly powerful, global PMC: G4S. Not much actually happened yet as a result of G4S power. Which, as it turns out, also uses Palantir systems.

And that’s just America.

The next contractor is debugging why the upstairs cloakroom has a breeze running through it, only to eventually realise it should probably have four walls

In some respects I’m glad the US gets invasive updates before the UK, it means I get a longer warning, and this realm isn’t always protected by EU regulations. I haven’t used Photos for a while but I still need to warn others. One saving factor: even though the article never says it, this feature seems to be for backed-up media only, and not for on-device media.

Try Fairphone. Ethically fantastic company, and they offer their phones with either Android or Murena /e/OS

>Downloads Niagara to minimalise my phone, reduce distractions
>Buys Pro, re-enables icons

Am I a heathen

Well it’s a good thing those two URIs can be easily blocked. Besides you can get the app from their Github page (sadly no F-droid repo as closed-source), and pay for Pro (if wanted) via Stripe instead of Google Play. I also had issues migrating Niagara off of Google once I’d connected the two, but an email correspondence with the lead dev Max Rumpf got the issue pleasantly and quickly resolved.

It’s likely the only reason for the privilege is to collect coords to send to the weather API. At least it’s optional, and there are alternative ways to see weather reports, just not on the home screen.

I tried accessing Google Photos via my phone to handle a couple of things I had active on that account from before. Little fuck refused to let me open the app unless it had unconditional access to all my media.

+1 for Niagara, plus even though you don’t have to, pro features can be purchased outside of Google Play.

A good movie for visualising this (IMO) is A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

I’m using an adblocker and get in just fine, may be random or it may be the js blockers I’ve implemented. Here’s my list of lists in case:

• AdAway Default Blocklist
• Peter Lowe’s Blocklist
• OISD Blocklist Big
• uBlock₀ filters – Badware risks
• HaGeZi’s Ultimate Blocklist
• AdGuard DNS filter
• Phishing URL Blocklist (PhishTank and OpenPhish)
• Perflyst and Dandelion Sprout’s Smart-TV Blocklist
• Phishing Army
• HaGeZi’s Windows/Office Tracker Blocklist
• Malicious URL Blocklist (URLHaus)
• EasyList Cookie Blocker
• No Google (disabled for now)

Note for any NordVPN users, their URIs are blocked by HaGeZi. Same list temporarily had Tidal’s URIs blocked as well but it seems to have been fixed.

Steam is turning into a sour grape for me - I complied with their restrictive and ancient method of age verification for UK accounts but I kind of want to migrate off them (they also charge high fees for devs, make it ridiculously difficult for new devs to exist, can singlehandedly destroy a studio and are very much monopolising the PC games industry so there’s also ethics) - in favour of GOG. At least with them you own your games, and can (shock horror) even choose whether or not to update and patch that way to glitch out of the map, or duplicate those orbs for currency, or anything else that doesnt comply with the specific way you’re allowed to play with the world they built.

Damn, sorry, I should file this away into my ‘rants’ folder