They need to eliminate the registry. It moots the “Brace Rule” debate nonsense and so many other things that are wastes of resources.

Support GOA in their lawsuit to dismantle the NFA.

Sure, although it requires a special kind of dedicated cynicism to not realize that technological capture of human capital with previously heinous associations, diverted toward inarguably more important scientific pursuits such as space exploration, is a net gain.

The US already had weaponized just about every other technology it had a reasonable grasp on, and had even used nukes by the end of WWII. So collaborating with former Nazis to develop peacetime rocketry for space exploration is pretty mild by comparison.

My understanding is that, in broad strokes…

1. Aurora acts like a proxy or mirror that doesn’t require you to sign in to get Google Play Store apps. It doesn’t provide any other software besides what you specifically download from it, and it doesn’t include any telemetry/tracking like normal Google Play Store would.

2. microG is a reimplementation of Google Play services (the suite of proprietary background services that Google runs on normal Android phones). MicroG doesn’t have the bloat and tracking and other closed source functionality, but rather acts as a stand-in that other apps can talk to (when they’d normally be talking to Google Play services). This has to be installed and configured and I would refer to the microG github or other documentation.

3. GrapheneOS has its own sandboxed Google Play Services which is basically unmodified Google Play Services, crammed into its own sandbox with no special permissions, and a compatibility layer that retains some functionality while keeping it from being able to access app data with high level permissions like it would normally do on a vanilla Android phone.

Yeah we just need to proliferate wild guinea hens and other tick predators to knock their populations down. I’d rather the entire eastern US look like Kauai (random feral poultry) than have ticks take over.

Nas is Like

Nas

If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can’t speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.

To be fair, this federal program was a cluster eff since they started it in about 2010. It passed a bunch of grant money through to the states, which all did different “things” with it. Most held semi-public meetings and planning sessions for 5-10 years or wrote detailed planning documents but never delivered any physical infrastructure (actual results to the residents).

This is just another way of describing inflationary pressures, isn’t it?

Many people I know may be “millionaires” by certain ways of calculating net worth, but it takes a lot more than $1M in assets to afford a lifestyle commensurate to what people envision when they hear the word “millionaire”…

Maybe if they allow API access for alternative frontends that eliminate ads and block telemetry. Otherwise, not interested.

This is the right answer. The board of prisons could make or contract their own crap-quality versions of all these things, in an effort to make all prices the same. But that baseline price would have to be higher. Economies of scale.

Yes. There are several examples on gunbroker though they go for $750 - $1000.

Milsurp rifles of every description are increasingly popular in the US, and even the ones considered less desireable are commanding higher prices in present year.

I explained it poorly but the other half of the threat is “we have complete air superiority so we can strike your leadership itself any time they stick their heads out of their bunkers” or “we can destroy your oil fields and tank your economy at any point” etc.

Iran has very few chips left to play with considering they have zero air defenses at the moment. I predict they will be forced to surrender their entire nuclear program or they will face a decapitation attack and destruction of their entire refinement capability and military apparatus.

Its possible a sleeper cell of terrorists could effectuate some small area drone strikes with commercial off the shelf drones and improvised explosives.

The large scale military drones you are envisioning that can do the same damage as military aerial bombardment, that is a much harder thing to “sneak” into the US at any kind of scale or to build in secret.

As for future state actor capabilities. It seems possible that China is working on drone tech deployed from submarines or other force-projection platforms. Yet another reason to avoid a hot war with near peer militaries in current year.

Armchair theory is that the US large platform bombers will be used to credibly threaten repeated bunker buster hits on Fordow nuclear site. This could pressure Iran to surrender its entire nuclear program including that site.

Currently Israel doesn’t have the capability by itself to destroy the site but US bombers possibly could.

This graphic seems to put Spotify in a “less shit” category than the other big players based on national origin or something.

From a quality and fairness perspective Spotify is just as bad. A large list of credible musicians and content creators have detailed the poor compensation, shift towards fake artists and AI filler tracks, and other moves Spotify has made that harm the artists and provide a worse listener experience.

If you want to fairly compensate artists, you’d be better off pirating 100% of your streams using alternate frontends for YT music, then making a list of your top 10-20 artists and buying an album or T-shirt from each of their official websites. They will make a lot better margin on that and its better for their career than any amount of streams you can give as one individual. (Also go to shows when available locally)

Yeah I would also like a crystal ball here. I am somewhat interested in the 10 if I can run GrapheneOS. Otherwise I’m going to explore other custom ROMs with broader device support.

This is what boggles the mind for me. He has this miniscule unknowable opportunity to get the door open, and jump from the plane at just the right time.

He had to hit the sweetspot combo of low altitude and airspeed that doesn’t cause him to die upon hitting the ground, but results in him being far enough from the blast of the aircraft itself impacting the ground. Its gotta be a fraction of a second window of time. He is literally one of the luckiest people in aviation accident history.

I am running GOS on a Pixel 7, which means I’ve had this device for ~2.5 years at this point, and back when I transitioned to this setup I was aware they were talking about being beholden to Pixels due to the hardware security module not being available on other devices.

It has been a known issue. I understand it is a very difficult and costly undertaking to develop new hardware and new entrants would be competing against the big guys for fab space, manufacturing and assembly etc.

We need some kind of nonprofit or independently financed group to advance this cause. Could it be FUTO, Framework, or some other company/organization like this?

There would be market incentive to solve these problems - There has got to be a lot of demand for a neutral hardware platform that meets the hardware security module and other requirements for bootloader security, custom ROMs, etc.

They won’t ever say it out loud but they have always removed videos for mentioning alternative frontends or other technology they view as direct threats to their revenue stream.

No, it is Meta and these companies fault, but I focus on things I can actually control. Just spewing the party line default Lemmy opinion of “capitalism is the problem, blah” doesn’t do anything to solve the problem.

Educating people so they understand how the surveillance works, and explaining that there are alternatives, actually gets us closer to a solution.