I know, and I hate it to the core, but I have considered that they might actually be inadvertently helping humanity (at least in the US).

Obv, they can’t take what we have, which is why for now we’re OK. The winds are shifting, though. I expect at some point, I expect android will require a deal with the devil from manufacturers. Start actively combatting linux phones.

For now, it’s a quick path to privacy, long term, we’re going to need friendly hardware

Assuming google’s fuckery doesn’t affect them, nothing.

But we’re relying on google to keep up that code and not see them as a threat. Right now AOK, but in the future that makes longevity questionable.

It’s something to be noticed and understood so there’s no surprises when the company that did no evil now does all the evil.

Good thing Linux distros can be forked,

Distro isn’t the problem; The OS is already on a far too tight update schedule, fork away, but we need the package repository to remain sound and I don’t know what this would do to that.

It’s still Android kernel and drivers :/ but it is private. For Linux you’d need postmarket or one of their derivatives and they are fighting to get cameras and power under control.

prob the best we have at the moment.

edit: to be clear, I’m saying Halium is the best we have at the moment, real linux is trucking along but it’s still a long way out.

It’s using Hallium, which is still using Android kernel and drivers, hopefully they can keep that up while vendors are getting increasingly antagonistic.

It is private.

If you want to run some android apps you can use waydroid, but it torches the battery.

If you want to run arm linux apps, you need to dork around with containers as the root os is RO.

I’m sitting on the fence of shelling out for a decen FP

The mobile options for Linux are years out from being ready and the hardware vendors are locking them out as fast as possible.

That speaks a valume about how much control google has on Mozilla decision making process.

It doesn’t say anything about that at all. Just because you’re paying for something doesn’t mean they have to do it your way. It is at most something to keep an eye on.

Google pays them for two reasons. To be the default search engine giving them substantial marketing and ad space, and to keep them floating and independent to lessen their probable status as a monopoly.

In fact, in the recent antitrust ruling, Google is precluded from even making exclusive deals with them.

Low power states is a good call,

Looks like there’s a lot of work on using ESP32 for this kind of thing, even a couple open projects, but they end up bit-banging the screen into submission. not super elegant.

You can get 7" eink panels for $50.

A Raspberry Pi with an E-INK screen is surprisingly doable.

That’s my post apoc Youtube plan. Play on a sanctioned browser with videos and use comskip, write them off to my storage.

We’re going back to my TV->AVI setup from 2003, only maybe we’ll use HVEC this time.

MakeMKV is in AUR :) Sure, it’s not playing a disk…

Having your cake and eating it too isn’t on the menu

Kindles were loss leaders to get you in their ecosystem, just like all the shitty cheap tablets they sold.

The from four years ago part is real, but honestly, 4 year old devices read books about as well as current devices as long as you’re not trying to go all fancy.

What GOOGLE did WITHOUT PERMISSION to paper books. ;)

I’ve imaged a few short books with a cellphone and page correction software.

It takes dedication to make a pleasant final product. But those vacuum book scanners are freaking amazing.

There’s no impossible because if you can see it, it can be captured and digitized, but there is a level of complication that can make it unreasonable. They could make it unreasonable to crack the drm outright and require you to screenshot/OCR it. Then they can limit the OS to make to difficult to automate capture.

Bottom line, they’re just kicking payers off their network when it’s easier to pirate it than to buy it through their service.

The only pre-baked option to them…

If they require a full JS implementation, they could crap out different algorithms and rotate you through them. I’m afraid they’ll eventually use a coding LLM to generate daily algorithms.

Imagine YT-DLP needing to adjust to code changes daily.

They have a bank of companies that are paying to have their ads shown.

The companies dictate who they want to market to.

Google originally pitched scanning your things for relvant ads and delivered on it, but that’s not where the money is at.

Yeah if you don’t like his voice, there’s no escaping that :)

I worked at a christmas tree farm for three years, we had a christmas 8 track. Same 8 versions of the same 8 songs blasted at full volume on a 1970’s unit with those giant speakers.

It was 15 years before I could stand christmas music again.

Pearl Jam, Last kiss