Oh boy, that personal anecdote about the guest’s son and the instant meme made just for his son to push him into suicide sounds like AI has been programmed with Eugenics in mind. Like AI is being used to nudge people into … what ever suits the target, whether it’s suicide, transgender, gay, sterilizing self as a political statement, etc…
Yes, many of us have lost our minds. My half brother has lost his mind, and he really believes I have lost mine. Pre covid, my half brother and and I were on the same page politically. Post covid, there is no commonality between us at all and he cannot intelligently discuss a single disputed issue.
Ummmmm, I having another chumped moment. Click all the boxes with cars, or click all the boxes with trees, with traffic lights, with steps … and on and on and OMG, in the past I have gotten so upset with all this clicking on images …! Fucking thieving irritating asswipes.
I think the real, final, buck stops with them “They” are the Rakshashas. They live a lot longer than humans and play the long games, they eat their own young, and they are at war with humans. All based on the teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
The “reporter” of the 60 Minute segment on Germany’s crackdown on internet speech was bizarrely enjoying the government over reach and appeared completely oblivious to how that bitch (censorship) can be turned on her. Imagine if the left was subject to censorship by Trump and Elon!
I’m praying that Trump is sincere and really working for mainstreeters, but even if he is 110% sincere, how long will it last? We have to get control of Congress.
I recently got a pixel and installed grapheneos on it. It’s a very easy process and I’m very happy with the pixel hw and an open source privacy oriented OS. In a way it feels similar to having physical gold. Protected. It just feels good.
This year with windows 10 end of support is a great chance for many to ditch windows, rather than upgrade to w11 spyware. That’s what I will be doing.
In the EU the digital identity wallet project is in motion. The eIDAS (electronic ID) regulation was recently amended to include it. In Spain they are developing an age-verification system tied to the digital wallet to access porn pages.
It’s really sad how there seems to be little real sovereignty in European countries and the UK. Most politicians are dummies that go along with EU plans and the 2030 agenda.
Our family put our phones in something called an RFID bag (not sure if i’ve spelt that correct) but these bags are supposed to stop any transmision to cell towers.Therefore they van stop data transmission too. We’ve also swapped to an old style alarm clock with wind up mechanism rather than using a mobile phone alarm. Old school, but cool school.
All this talk about computers and smartphones, but people need to start thinking more about what our “smart cars” are doing under the hood (beyond collecting our driving data for sale to insurance companies).
I’m trying to hold on to my old car, but the insurance rates for that thing is starting to get pretty crazy considering how little that car should be worth at its age (2006).
This is music to my ears, a real alarm clock is awesome to boot. I bought a old school Nokia to replace the 3g phone I had for years and never really used beyond txt and calls. All my netting is computer based.
The old Nokias we have 2. Ive been told that here in the UK work on the same old system that the trains work on. So because Our Goooobermint cant afford to change it, that they will not be changing or shutting it down. Good news for us who are reinvesting in old tech.
Great interview on a very important topic! I agree with Glenn on pretty much everything and I like a lot of the ideas in the discussion. Here are some additional
comments and suggestions that I hope are useful.
To get a better grasp of just how nefarious and wide-spread the “nudging” is, check out Dr. Robert Epstein and the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. https://techwatchproject.org/
For more privacy-focused analysis of tech topics, I recommend Rob Braxman.
Privacy focused products:
Learn about:
Why end-to-end encryption is dead unless you take certain steps (spoiler, it’s client side scanning! So no AI on your computer and a de-googled phone are needed).
The same goes for the other people you communicate with. If they use insecure platforms and social media apps, you are very limited because their devices will upload information about you and/or compromise your supposedly secure communications.
How to safely use an LLM locally
Other privacy problems with various OSes/platforms
Solutions to various privacy challenges (you don’t need to buy any of his products to improve your privacy and security)
Phones:
If you actually intend to log into google or any social media app, using the sandbox in grapheneOS won’t help you. Your privacy is compromised immediately because
they track you via hardware identifiers and other meta data. Honestly, I recommend you simply NOT log into google and most social media apps from your phone if you care about privacy.
That or have a dedicated phone for those purposes and leave it off and/or in a faraday bag when not in use. Apple devices are a privacy nightmare too (always enabled low power Bluetooth, phone home/find my device, infrared canning/FaceID on the iPhone 16, etc.)
I’ve had good luck with CalyxOS on a pixel device. You can install all of your normal apps from the Play Store if you want to while staying mostly anonymous. It doesn’t use google’s network location services either, which is a big hole in many security models. It just works. https://calyxos.org/
I haven’t tried iodeOS yet, but I might do so in the future, it looks nice. Probably a good option if you have kids and want to take advantage of the filtering features.
If you are NOT on Verizon and are in the US, the Braxphone3 is cheap (pre-order now, $300) and you can get iodeOS or Ubuntu Touch pre-installed.
I even tried out a Purism Librem 5, but it’s just not mature and functional enough for a daily driver. I do love their commitment to privacy and open source all the way to the firmware though.
Desktops/laptops/OSes:
Glenn is exactly right that the only way to avoid the local AI models from spying on you and influencing you is to not use Apple, Microsoft, or Google products (the de-googled AOSP phones being the exceptions). So some Linux variant for your desktop OS and a de-googled phone are your best bets. Folks have already recommended numerous linux distros, any of which would suffice.
If you really want to get serious, you could try QubesOS:
The installer is straight-forward and it is quite usable out of the box, but I still wouldn’t recommend it as your first foray into linux-based options. Just keep it
in mind for the future or if you are already comfortable in linux and want to up your security/privacy game. If you go this route, get the fastest NVMe storage you can and lots of RAM.
If absolutely required (meaning you have trouble getting some things to work in linux), I’d suggest you keep a Windows 11 PC around for your streaming/gaming/“finicky hardware” platform, but only log into it with a “bogus” or anonymous local account and NEVER use it for anything other than those specific tasks it is needed for. There are ways to build your own Win11 USB installation drive that lets you log in with local credentials rather an MS account (look for Rufus Win11 boot media).
Don’t log into social media (except your google and/or Rumble account for video
publication etc.), don’t search the Internet, don’t save or open documents here, don’t even link it to external storage (usb or NAS). Let it be an island, then have your primary computer (the daily driver) be some linux-based variant where you do pretty much everything.
Others shied away from Coreboot and while it’s not a requirement, I’d give it a try if you’re ok with the hardware available. Some options include:
Purism Librem laptops
Protectli 6-port vaults
You only get slightly older gen laptop CPUs and they are intended for industrial uses, but I really like these and they have good support/KB articles that clearly show they understand
and are committed to security. The only reason for the 6-port models is to get newer/faster PCIe bus, DDR5 RAM, and a “desktop-equivalent” cpu, not because you need all the network ports.
I have a VP6650 running QubesOS and other than only 2 p-cores (and 8 e-cores) on a laptop CPU, I love it! It keeps up with what I need it to do, but a desktop cpu would be nice to have.
Nitrokey NitroPCs
Newer hardware plus a tower with desktop CPUs. Can get Ubuntu or QubesOS pre-installed.
Starlabs
I don’t know anything about them, but they have lots of OS options, CPU upgrade options, and the Byte mini PC has coreboot.
I’m a member of both ‘tribes’, introduced to Glenn by Chris last year, THANK YOU!
Got a Linux laptop last fall through his program & am just now going through his linix orientation class.
The laptop came preloaded with a VERY user friendly version of Linix, Zorin Pro, as well as lots of open source software vetted by his team.
I can’t say enough good things about the classes; so well laid out, bite size understandable chunks, unboxing videos, how to videos, etc.
I put the laptop off, as I am doing graphene phone as well, thinking the laptop would be ‘the problem child’…
Finally, when my outlook email started to try helping me every time i fired it uo, it was time to unbox the laptop & start through Glenn’s privacy laptop classes.
I’m a week or so in and wish i’d have focussed on the laptop first, as it’s been a breeze, compared to the Graphene phone.
I signed up for Glenn’s Privacy Academy courses last year. They’re GREAT! I learned a ton. They helped me do all of the following:
switch to a more secure password manager
get into the habit of using a VPN
switched from Microsoft OS to Linux, which is something I had wanted to do for many years but kept dragging my feet on actually doing
learned how to use anonymous email addresses
learned how to anonymize online credit card payments
learned to live without the Google voice assistant turned on (warning: this does make it more important that you not misplace your phone, cuz you can’t just yell at it to tell you where you left it )
I even went so far as to install GrapheneOS on my Google Pixel. But I wound up going back to Google, because some apps that are important to me don’t run on it. But I hope to de-Google my phone one day.
)