So, Skynet attacks through Furbie's? I repeat:
Detox is a very understatement here. i got rid of every single company that tries analyze peoples data, sells user data and brainwashes people. (and those are a lot) There are mass lawsuits in Europe and some other nations against Meta and others; some of them were already successful. In fact so successful that Trump sees those lawsuits as a threat.
Losing "friends" because they are too stupid to communicate without Meta hurts a lot. Because that's literally a company cutting off my communication and invading my personal space unless i accept their monpolism. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Discord, Every AI company etc. aint any better. I cant force people to ditch Software but watching them turn into brainwashed addicts that only repeat headlines isnt a solution neither.
And then that frequent oooh but you need to lick some Corporate boot if you want to do your daily live. Everything is fine as long as one agrees to all the poo they want. but then if you dont. For example: I could download all those supermarket apps and save money. If you turn that around it means i pay extra at about every supermarket just because i refuse to be their lab rat.
about that "if it doesnt make me happy why keep doing it": pretty stupid phrase if you consider things like Job-search, Brushing Teeth, going to the dentist, cleaning the house, leading a fly the way outside if it flies against the window over and over. none the less i get your point. - its kinda like i dont really seek happiness, i more crave for having stability and not having others force their corporate #### or AI #### on me.
I tried not following the news quite a while. But honestly it just catches up; and then you are like "wait, when did that happen". It sure makes a difference where you watch news because some sources need way less fact checking then others. I also love to talk about how topics are presented in other continents because every nation has its own "narrative" and talking with people on the other side of the globe about geopolitical stuff is quite interesting.
It can get very interesting, but this forum is not the correct venue for political discussions. 
Some sources are more reliable than others. Some swear by the ones they trust and do not fact check.
In my own experience; I find most sources to have some bias or be too brief with a report to the point accuracy or context is lost.
I see this as instrumentally important. Now is a time when others are Standing Up against certain affiliations when they did not used to do so.
To stubborn, maybe?
These friends are responsible for their own choices, too.
If you choose to not use Meta, you can offer alternatives they can enjoy.
I do not use Meta - I do not use Facebook. I never have.
Maybe I have too few friends. But I never lost a friend over it. And if I did, I might think they were not really a friend.
1 Like
i fully agree that this forum should not be geopolitcal (the discussion about age verification on the other hand is important on this forum). The thing is there's not much to say if they say: "ehhhh Signal is sooo slow" "i wont get Threema for just one person" "ehh Telegram is soo slow". At least i can deflect that stupid "whatsapp got stickers" argument. ...
that's exactly the problem. its so often that one must use whatapp unless he or she wants to take the consequences and while i am all in with deleting my whole meta accounts i can't blame others to stick around because "its required to keep up". i would like to go full tourette on those but that wouldnt solve anything.
I grew up in a time when the Internet was the newest sh-t out there and everyone used some alias. in school they taught us to not share any personal data on the internet. There was a lot of privacy until some guy named larry page came up with google. Now we get recommendation based on stuff we talked about to friends, even if one left his phone home because the other one still got a phone in the pocket. Things like that didnt happen in the nineties. In the 2000s it slowly began to become weird when facebook did recommend people you met in the club just based on proximity of your phone. and when your internet was slow and didnt load the pictures fast it said "picture might contain a bed, socks, wardrobe, a face, a book". back in 2010 i was like WTF how do they know? and it just got weirder and weirder each year. when Siri was released the vast mayority didn't ask how siri collects it date. until chat gpt 3 dropped. now we have lawsuits from Ghibli because the data theft and copyright infringement got way to obvious.
that's where i totally struggle to draw a line. those 1000 mile away concern affect me (and everybody else) a lot because now you buy a game and all of a sudden they want you to agree to some arbitration law or you gotta agree that they own unlimited but not exclusive rights to every file you upload (most social media). ehhh whaat? no friggin way. Non of this existed in the past. the only subscription i had was the newspaper. when i bought some playstation 2 games they just worked. no terms, no internet and now 15 years later i still own them.
1 Like
@Bandguru. I corrected some [quote] [/quote] formatting in your post above. No content changed. Zab
Your biggest trouble is that you are speaking true and making sense.
Let's go older than you. Technological advances that brought something new - that no one really knew how to deal with.
A funny little box called "The Radio."
The problem with the Radio:
Using electricity? There is a meter and a bill.
Gas? Water? Meter and a bill.
There was no way of metering out who could listen to a station and send them a bill. Broadcasting is... Broad. That's where its name came from.
This presented a problem and as with all problems, people began thinking of solutions.
Since a lot of costs are incurred that must be covered, it was decided that Advertising can cover costs. It was genius.
Companies would be happy to advertise their products over Radio - and the people listening just got talk and music for "Free."
The internet gave opportunity to this base idea in ways never seen before. Advertisers could not just throw money in the wind - but target customers most likely to buy.
With Google, Facebook, etc - the end user is not the customer. They are the product - the target.
It is the Paying Customer that calls the shots and they are not us.
And this is why... The problem of the radio is a problem for GnuLinux.
GnuLinux has end users that use Linux for free.
If we are the free end users - Who are the paying customers?
heres a thing i like to do sometime. i argument against myself. so. The radio is still a concept that works very well because the stations actually pay the musicians while updating on traffic and emergencies. but while all that is kinda cool it leads to interfering signals everywhere which cause problems in every electronic or magnetic circuit if needs to be precise. I still wonder if G4 and G5 internet is slowly frying us. Jin and Jang teaches us that every good comes with some bad while everything bad comes with some good. you cant invent something that has only good effects. only thing one can do is to think about consequences. a concept that would change the world if more people truly understand it. but that's a whole other topic.
The Linux is free thing is something i always questioned for that exact reason you mention. And thats actually something i like about zorin. i can actually pay for premium to support the product. with most other distros its a donate button that i forget about after installing it for free. As far as i experienced it its a whole lot of volunteers and nerds(in a positive way) that put a ton of effort into linux. hands down: huge shoutout to all the fellas that keep linux running.
I really dont want to blame anybody but the whole idea that everything got to be free seems very interwoven with the phenomenon that people dont ask why stuff is free. Just like snow white ate an apple from a total stranger because ... well it was free, right?
Recent example is Affinity. It was a good deal. one time pay and it's yours, now they are owned by canva say its free but their terms are a total joke full of loopholes and blocked functions. one part of the users loves the free model because they refuse to read and do some research, the other part is angry because they actually did read and do some research.
How to finance Linux? Again: GIVE US MERCHANDIIIIIIIIISSSSSEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Really that's such a goldmine. What would possible beat drinking out of a Linux coffee mug while ranting about how bad windows is?
And then there's that other thing called greed. (btw. sounds like you red some Lanier)
I do not actually know what you are referring to here... I did try a net search but it did not narrow it down, any.
Was just a guess. Jaron Lanier wrote some books about the whole "the customer is the product" thing and how people are sold as products.
1 Like
No... The Generation number (G3, 4, 5) only refers to the implementation of call balancing. You have a lot of people, but not many towers. So, signals must be shared.
Sharing them means interference and cross communication = bad.
So by modulating and rotating,m it solves that problem. It's not some weird new Radio Wave...
I often refer to this as the Cost To Benefit Ratio.
cost to benefit ration. i like that wording. i thought g5 had a wider/broader (which one is right?) frequency range but apparently that could be wrong. especially because the whole wireless PA sytems had to change their bands. So before drifting off about G5 i just gonna look it up tomorrow and fix that gap of knowledge.
1 Like
apparently im not that wrong as 1G has a much lower frequency. Didnt know that G5 is something else then 5G. 4G vs 5G : Comparison Between LTE and NR Network Architectures | RF Wireless World
FOSS - Free and open source is something that at first seems incomprehensible. Here's one explanation:
It’s a bit of a paradox, isn't it? On the surface, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) seems like it shouldn't work. Giving away the "secret sauce" for free and letting anyone tinker with the recipe sounds like a recipe for chaos—or at least a very poor business model.
Yet, FOSS powers the vast majority of the internet (Linux), the world's most popular phone OS (Android), and the most critical security tools we have. Here is why this "organized hobbyism" actually beats proprietary models in many arenas.
- The Power of "Many Eyes"
The most famous adage in the FOSS world is Linus’s Law: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
Proprietary: A small team of tired developers at a single company looks for bugs. If they miss one, it stays there until a hacker finds it.
FOSS: Thousands of developers globally can inspect the code. When a security flaw is found, it’s often patched within hours because someone, somewhere, cares enough to fix it.
- Incentivized Collaboration
Companies like Google, Red Hat, and IBM aren't just being "nice" when they contribute to open source. They do it because it’s economically efficient.
Instead of five different companies building five different (and mediocre) file-sharing protocols, they all contribute to one excellent open-source standard. They compete on the services they build on top of the software, rather than the plumbing underneath.
3. Scratching an Itch
Most FOSS starts because a developer had a specific problem and solved it. Because they’ve shared the solution, the next person doesn't have to start from zero; they just add the feature they need. Over years, these "scratched itches" accumulate into massive, feature-rich powerhouses like Blender or VLC.
4. No "Vendor Lock-in"
Trust is a huge factor. When a company uses proprietary software, they are at the mercy of the provider. If that provider goes bankrupt or raises prices by 400%, the user is stuck.
With FOSS, the code belongs to the community.
If the original creators walk away, the community can "fork" it (copy the code and start a new version). This ensures longevity and digital sovereignty.
The bottom line: FOSS works because it turns software from a "guarded product" into a "shared utility," much like the electric grid or the highway system.
3 Likes
Thank you very much. I'm now a bit smarter.
I just see one big flaw here: Blender and other free software is mostly very inferior to their paid competitors like Autodesk and Adobe. i am still looking for a photo editing software on Linux that can keep up with Lightroom/Photoshop. Gimp and Darktable are ok but Lightroom/Photoshop are just a whole other level.
Vendor Lock-in is a good phrase for what happend to Beshesda, Affinity and EA.
All this post confirms to me, is that citizens have been losing their freedom bit by bit, over the course of decades, to increase rich people's domination. I lived it myself people, I remember the early internet. Sure, the internet back then was slow as malassas, but it was freedom.
Now the internet is deeply regulated, censored, and monetized. The promise of the internet in 1995 is dead, corrupted by government and greed. And I agree, social media is what helped killed it. Now using AI on social media, to become a mind brainwashing psy-ops operation, to manipulate people.
Whatever promises the internet was supposed to be back in the 90's, all it was, was a dream. I'm living in reality, and reality is a bigger pill to swallow, then a hopeful dream.
1 Like
I agree - I would be delighted to see something on linux comparable to the mainstream offerings. I am running my Affinity V2 via Winboat, which works fine for quick edits. Canva did dangle a carrot a few months ago that they might be thinking of a Linux Affinity version.
For RAW editing: I tried Lightroom for a couple of months, working the same files, and failed to get anything like I could get in Lightoom (V6 Classic - the last CD version). I moved to DxO PhotoLab a couple of years ago, which has some awesome features and is complex, but does a superb job for me.
However, I am keeping my eye on a young developer who has made a totally new software called RapidRaw in only a matter of months. The amount of development between versions in only months, as a sole developer, is incredible. Already, in only a few minutes I can get a usable image output, not as good as I get in PhotoLab, but its an exciting project with some already impressive features in an easy interface.
1 Like
at least im not the only one seeing it. especially the brainwashing psy-ops part (isn't ops short for operation?)
I will do some research about rapid raw and DxO Photolab. I have never heard of those. Do those work offline and do they respect my privacy (and the privacy of my clients)? Because Adobe and Canva dont. (yes Canva pretends to be nice but they hide a lot of concerning stuff in their terms)
1 Like
RapidRaw is 100% local, as is DxO Photolab. The latter of course is Win+Mac only and by license purchase, RapidRaw is free.