The story line of this revolutionary technology to fight the banks, brought by this benevolent( and anonymous) person/group of persons in the wake of the great financial crises and the bail-outs is simply too fishy to be true. Even more now that it exposes how ridiculous our “money”(currency!) system is AND competing directly with the dollar as legal tender in El Salvador (setting a precedent), while Saddam and Ghedaffi have been obliterated for threatening the USD in their own way.
…like we used to "own"the software by buying a copy, and now it’s a permanent renting system.
I’ve been battling for years to block the automatic update of windows 10 (another thing which was up to the user), which with stubbornness I`ve won but, amazingly, at the cost of having my administrator rights revoked for certain areas of the OS (very bizarre).
I have eliminated the few social media accounts I had when I was younger (and more foolish), all of them being re-activated on their own multiple times without me doing so (FB & insta). I don’t care about my on-line persona, but with the “hate-speech” laws already in place in Germany and the UK this might become a potential future issue as well (living in the colony known as Italy).
Very interesting the point of us humans training AI via those annoying CAPTCHA (sounds a little like GOTCHYA!), I never thought of that possibility.
Technology in itself is always neutral, it’s the human intentions with using technology which gives it a positive or negative twist, remarkably enough the first thought which appears to come up in the human brain is how to use such technology to exert power over another group of people.
Linux user for 11 years now. Highly recommend. I use LinuxMint which is popular and excellent. Imho better than Windows. Most popular Linux flavors have the ability when installing to have dual boot. Which means at startup you can choose to use Linux or Windows. So you can install Linux on your current computer and be able to use either Windows or Linux. This also allows one to ‘testdrive’ Linux and not spend any money.
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Agree with this advice. I’m finding that notebooks are often far less “linux friendly” than I had hoped. Lots of proprietary hardware on those things that don’t get windows updates for more than two months let alone linux drivers ever…
My hp laptop for example does not support the common S3 sleep state so the computer won’t sleep under ubuntu.
“Why?”, you ask? Well, as near as I can tell Microsoft doesn’t want our computers to “sleep” because they want to be able to install their updates 24/7 so they not only started ignoring the very widely used “S3” sleep standard, but they also convinced hardware makers to remove it completely from the firmware.
So my ubuntu machine never sleeps. Its always throwing off heat no matter what I do.
“No worries, just make it hibernate instead”. All I gotta do is find time for the 15 step process involving lots of command prompt actions, 3 of which probably won’t work on the specific version of ubuntu that I have.
Not trying to sound like too much of a whiner, but travis’ advice above is right. Install something like ubuntu to run side by side with Windows. You will fall in love with it but also slowly realize its not perfect.
Then the real fun begins.
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What’s so great about Graphene is that it allows you to find your own balance between what data you want to leak vs the tediousness of maintaining privacy. So you can learn as you go and then make changes based on how it goes.
As others have mentioned, only pixel phones have official support, but you could probably find a Pixel7 or 8 for cheap. My 8 has everything I think I could ever want from a phone including a really nice camera.
I use the google camera app in fact because Graphene has a built in firewall exposed as a new android permission called “network” So I just deny network to the camera app and get all the google goodness (except AI features which require cloud).
Same goes for Gboard, the google keyboard which is by far the best android keyboard IMO. I even use the speech to text feature. Because I deny it network permission (after initial setup), my voice and typing remain “unslurped”.
Its not “super easy” to get this all setup but its not by any means very difficult for the motivated.
I think the only feature Graphene won’t give you coming from PixelOS would be Face Unlock. They support fingerprint unlock because they say the hardware for fingerprints is secure (btw, you will find that at some point in this journey you gotta trust somebody) but the face unlock hardware is not secure so they refuse to support it.
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Bingo! Perfect description of Graphene’s flexibility and power.
Thanks for the camera and Gboard tips as well.
Nature of Behavioral Control in Smart Real Estate
This is a great article for anyone interested in understanding Digital User Rights and theory on Control Economy. “The built environment is an important part of society control.”
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Additionally many modern bios softwares will manage booting into various os / devices for you.
I have mine set to Linux as the first option and I have to be there to hit the arrow key and return to get into windows. I can also pull the windows drive out of its slot and not worry about it getting booted. My case has 6 hot swappable bays the Linus is on an SSD. and boots amazingly fast with the ryzen 9, 12 core.
I have a relative who was born with no cerebellum. The parents were promised the child would be a vegetable during the pregnancy. Miraculously the kid grew up to drive and have a job. Challenges yes but certainly not a veggie.
Edited to correct mistype.
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I feel like that “not” was a typo.
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You can dual boot windows/linux, partitioning the drive and being able to boot windows as needed for odd thing that won’t run on linux.
On many current machines you can also install win 10 that’s less crappy/less integrated with microsoft services.
I’m still running windows 7 and boot windows 10 a virtual machine as needed. 7 won’t work on new computers, no driver support.
Be caring flashing to generic bios, if it has an incompatibility doing it can brick the machine. bios is usually motherboard specific.
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Yes thanks, the mistype was corrected.
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Yes, but self-hosted and you need to roll your own PKI.
Security is also only as string as the weakest link in the chain, so while your security posture / OPSEC might be golden, that other user(s) you’re communicating with could be compromising the session.
For ephemeral chat with audio/video call support and no required registration (e-mail / phone number), I can advise you. Shoot me a PM
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Yes, forgot about the ‘smart’ BIOS’s. Mine PC is a dedicated Linux machine, which I built. I loath Windows. Have a Ryzen 7 and I’m still surprised at how fast my PC boots, it’s wonderful.
I use to be a techie. But I want to encourage folks that Linux is mature, stable, and an excellent (better?) alternative to Windows/Mac. If you use Windows regularly it is an easy transition to Linux. Don’t be afraid to try it!
Cheers All!!
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What amazes me is how I can buy a UK Linux magazine with a distro DVD and go home and install not only the OS, but all the drivers and a long assortment of programs and suites of software and even development environments all in a single pass with only one or at most two reboots.
Boom, it’s done in mere minutes.
I have a mother board I ordered about the time we learned about COVID. I had ordered all but the video card and processor. Then all of a sudden prices soared so I decided to put a 98.00 ryzen 5 4core with built in video in the machine temporarily. It was fine all this time. However so recently decided to go ahead and make the terminal upgrades for this system and ordered two more memory sticks, a decent video card and a ryzen 9. The system needed a bios update to use the CPU.
I dreaded it. Then I watch a video on YT for this board and was like, who knew, when did this magical stuff come out. I was able to download a file into a thumb drive place it in the port on io header and press a button and update the bios without even having a CPU or GPU or memory installed. It was amazing. I remember back in the day when you had to have spares, borrow parts to do such a thing.
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Thank you for this interview. I signed up for the webinar.
In regards to China’s TikTok content, I visited China in 1988. Us tourists were shuttled around to show off how wonderfully talented their people were, focusing especially on the young kids (child artists, pianists, violinists, dancers, gymnasts). No one complained about the clear oppression they lived under, but the glazed over looks on some spoke volumes. Present day, I imagine the surveillance system, social credit score, and social structure overall prevents citizens from posting anything that might reflect poorly on their families–well that, and then there is the very real fear of the CCP.
Another observation from my travels. I was in The United Emirates right before covid. Surveillance cameras and electronic speed traps were everywhere. I had my eyes scanned at the border crossing when returning from Oman. The people of the UAE, generally speaking, seemed overall very happy, very family oriented. Families spending time together out and about with other families. Picture men with toddlers on their shoulders and wives walking arm in arm chatting. Apparently, citizens are treated very well over there. (Although, an Afghani taxi driver confided in me, the treatment is much different for immigrants). Happiness seems to be a theme. Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, wrote a book titled “Reflections on Happiness and Positivity”. I read it, and although it seemed sincere, it most surely is propaganda, isn’t it?
I do not like the direction we are going with surveillance here in the US because it’s creepy, and the public is being left out of the conversation. I do feel this surveillance state in inevitable. I wonder who is behind it and what is the end game. Will it be more strong armed like in China? Will it be more coaxing like in UAE? It feels like there is a battle for power behind the scenes. There is a lot at stake.
One thing’s for sure, society is a changing, albeit, exponentially.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a working computer, but I did have Windows 10. If you go over to majorgeeks you should find a script called sledgehammer - which will let you block any or all Windows updates.
Of course it may be updated to 11 now, but if it’s still there, it’s worth checking out.
I had no problems with it when I used it - it was quite useful.
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Thank you for the hint Chanah, I’ll check it out. I like the name sledgehammer a lot already :))
I’m grateful to be married to a computer-savvy guy who set us up with Linux several years ago. He uses Debian / XFCE as the interface on his computer, but I was never able to get used to it - it’s too different from the Windows systems I was used to. So he downloaded Ubuntu for my computer, which he says is not as good as Debian but it feels very similar to Windows to me so I’m happy with it. I used to use MS Word and Excel for a lot of things, and I’ve found Libre Office to be close enough for everyday use, which for me includes some files that use a few amateur macros. There’s also a powerpoint equivalent, although with slight differences. I haven’t used it enough to be super familiar with the features but it seems comparable.
I ditched Protonmail a few years ago when I learned about some concerning behavior from them that suggests they’re not actually as privacy-oriented as they claim. Here are a few links that go into more detail:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.politics.guns/c/dqBzoBgoVg0?pli=1
I’ve switched the SekurMail, which I learned about on Peak Prosperity, when Chris interviewed the founder. I’ve been pretty happy with it, aside from the occasional technical glitch which I’m hoping they’ll eventually resolve as the company becomes more established. Eventually I’d like to (convince my husband to) set up our own email server so we don’t have to rely on any third party email provider. That’s really the gold standard…but that’s a whole project and we have a lot going on right now.
I’ve been looking longingly at the Light Phone for a while now, as an upgrade from my Android. I don’t have Graphene OS unfortunately because it takes a while to set up and I don’t know how, and my husband doesn’t have the time. The best I can do is to turn off location services most of the time and not download any apps (I mean ZERO apps. I don’t even know how to download one because I’ve never done it.) The Light Phone is supposed to be super privacy-oriented, and it doesn’t have any apps, which is great becuase I hate paying extra for a device that has all this functionality that I don’t even use. I just want to be able to call, text, take and receive pictures, and occasionally listen to podcasts. The Light phone (at least version 3) does all that plus it has basic tools like maps and calculator, it just doesn’t have all the internet stuff or external apps, and it doesn’t track you. But the version with the camera is $600…still too much for a phone in my opinion. But maybe someday.
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Linux supports a great deal of hardware. A few other thoughts:
- You could install Linux in a Virtual machine if you don’t want standard dual-boot.
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- Some PCs, particularly laptops, are designed to run smoothly with Linux. If you’re not tech-savvy, that might be something to look for.
- Unlike Windows, Linux has available to it quite a few desktop environments/windowing environments, which affect the look and feel of the desktop interface (icons, layout, etc).
- Since it’s less resource-intensive in general, Linux will often run faster, all else being equal, than Windows, on a given machine.
On a separate note, has anyone tried Rob Braxman’s privacy smartphone? I was considering Graphene, but after Louis Rossman’s story about the lead developer, decided I’d like to consider a project being run by someone a little more emotionally stable.
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