Yes.

I searched for “Messages” on the play store, and the top link was malware. WTAF?

I removed the network permission from the play store. Apps will still work if they arbitrarily require Google Play to be installed. The store itself can’t do shit.

GrapheneOS can remove Play Store network permissions. I’m not sure about others.

This is my preferred one. Just paste one command into a powershell console to run it.

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

Run a Win11 debloat script. It will remove a lot of privacy-invading windows components.

Apart from that, install a browser that isn’t Chrome, and use an ad blocker.

Don’t install any garbage that gives the Uni IT department any control over the device.

Way to stand up to the man!

The inbuilt VPN is a red flag. A VPN isn’t private unless you own the server. It’s channeling all your data through a third party. They could be watching it in the same way your ISP can.

Optus can barely make a regular 4G call at this point. The drop in call quality when routing between networks is absurd. The last 000 call we made was so bad that we had dropouts whist standing in the middle of a suburban footy oval.

I’ve also found that it’s possible to completely break VoWifi so it will say it’s connected but fail to make or receive calls. Just enable 464XLAT on wifi and connect a Google Pixel to it.

The Optus network is about 15 years behind the competition at this point.

She’s the woman who kept the dream alive.

Do you reckon there’s a fraction out the back that isn’t 9/10, or did it never exist?

I’m wondering why it’s even a thing.

That sounds like a bit of a ride. I just selfhosted everything. There’s still things tied to my gmail, and probably always will be. However they’re not seeing the important stuff like medical, school, banking and services.

NGL; selfhosting is quite a commitment too. Especially for email. There are a lot of hoops to get trust as a server, and full text search took me years to get working right. Hosting a keepass database on a personal webserver is not as convenient, but there’s 100% control.

I inherently don’t trust any company that sells trust or privacy as a product. I’ll only fully trust open source software running on my own metal.

Alternative medicine is a placebo at best, and has an adverse reaction at worst. The TGA only cares about the latter.

Of course, people die because they think they’re treating a condition when they’re actually not.

I wonder if anyone ever wrote an update aggregator that would find all package managers, containers and git repos and whatnot and just do all of them.

Some are a right pain to update, such as Nextcloud. Installing a monthly update should not feel like an enterprise prod deployment.

It’s kinda ironic that package managers have caused the exact problem that they are supposed to solve.

Her pollution has killed way more people. Ben’s murders don’t come close. She wouldn’t get it.

So, ChatGPT can’t match any function of a Casio wristwatch. I’m concerned that when it can, it will consume the power of microwaving a turkey just to tell a user what time it is.

We need to lock him in a cell then flood it with shit.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost money on the hardware. Remove their software and the revenue stream is severed from day one.

GrapheneOS and LineageOS don’t ship with any Google services at all, so Google’s policies shouldn’t affect them.

I’ve found the biggest bottleneck is bugs. If you catch a bug during development, it takes the least time to fix.

Catch a bug during PR, you need to fix the code, and the PR needs to happen again.

Catch a bug in QA, and you need to fix the code, do another PR, and get it tested again.

This pattern goes right through UAT, and god help you when a bug makes it to Prod.

There is nothing more time consuming than code that was written quickly.