That’s the catch: you can’t not use Google at all if you’re online at all, because Google has managed to insert itself into every little corner of the internet.

And that’s how the surveillance trap has quietly snapped shut on all of us without most of us noticing anything.

George Orwell had it wrong: the surveillance isn’t conducted directly by a tyrannical dictatorship but subtly, indirectly by the private sector in cahoots with the government. And the date he predicted was 40 years off. Other than that, he was right: we live in a full-blown dystopia now.

People coming here to rant about Reddit isn’t activity.

Yeah I watched some Gutfeld. He does go through the motions but his jokes never really land. It’s kind of like having a conversation with an AI chatbot: it’s convincing to a degree but something is off and it’s nowhere near as enjoyable as talking to a real person.

Here’s an interesting video about Zuckerberg’s rebranding:

Why Zuckerberg’s Rebrand Shouldn’t Distract Us

I use a calyxos device to share VPN, as of a few months ago.

Hotspot & Tethering

• Allow clients to use VPNs

Oh wow I totally missed that. It works great! Genius!

Thank you for that. Suddenly it makes repurposing one of my old cellphones a very simple and viable proposition.

(and I’m posting this from my laptop connected to the hotspot connected to the Calyx VPN 🙂)

get a older cell phone. Put lineage OS on it, or calyxos… share your VPN over hotspot, these are the only two ROMs that I’m aware of that allow you to do that

That’s what I thought too. So I tried it on my CalyxOS phone and… it doesn’t work: the hotspot doesn’t route through the VPN. And from what I read, it’s by design.

I have an old Nokia 4.2 running LineageOS. I might try that one.

end-to-end VPN

Incidentally, do you know if the GL.iNet devices can act as a VPN server too?

Hmm… Touché.

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet

Can you give me some pointers to non-Chinese equivalents of those GL.iNet routers? I’m quite ready to suck up the extra cost.

the TikTok of the fediverse

Gee just what the Fediverse needed…

deleted by creator

Wholesome, yes. But the magic and the poetry is immediately spoiled by the poster’s username.

What software do you use to forward the texts automatically?

Actually I kind of had the same idea but for the whole phone - i.e. leave a cellphone with phone features at home (so voice and texts are received on this static phone that never gets used for anything else) and forward calls and texts on another cellphone with data only. But I don’t think there’s anything to set that up easily.

Why do all fascists have that weird breeding obsession?

They’re control freaks. The ultimate control is controlling life.

Surely you meant “Chinese officials knock on doors to find knocked up women.”

Besides the subject matter, this video makes me sea-sick. I don’t know what it is with this trend of zooming the video in and out to punctuate the narrator’s delivery, but this one really takes the cake. I couldn’t even watch it to the end and had to look away to listen to it instead.

Here’s my ambition: be there for my family and enjoy life with them for the fixed number of hours I have on this dirtball. Working overtime isn’t compatible with my plan. Nobody goes to their grave thinking “I should have worked harder”.

But you do you…

Interesting thanks. I’ll dig into the privacy issue.

Using things like Signal and WhatsApp may reduce your footprint further.

I use Signal with most of my family and friends. The phone things is for random people or companies that need to call me, and the texts are mostly to get notification when I receive a parcel, or confirmations for appointments, that kind of things.

WhatsApp, being owned by Facebook, can fuck right off.

I was planning on using a VPN.

But anyway, even if I’m connected direct from a known fixed WiFi, it’s still less precise than cell triangulation.

EDIT: actually I just did a test with the VPN, and WiFi calling totally bypasses it. Damn 🙁

Well, I know it’s all going through the internet anyway nowadays, so yeah it’s technically always voice-over-IP even if I use the cell network. The only difference between normal calls and WiFi calls is how it connects to the internet really. I just don’t want the extra baggage that comes with staying connected to the cell netowk method of getting on the internet.

And of course what I referred to when I said VoIP is pure VoIP providers that sell you a number and access to a SIP server, independent from your cellphone provider.