Does it come with a 5 sided cookie with a hole in the middle?

Don’t forget that they’re buddy buddy with amazon, and have even included amazon sourced ads within the OS at one point.

I would hazard a guess that this was brough up in reference to a meme on this board showing a close up of someone snorting a line of white powder. I can completely understand why that might not be considered suitable for all places and audiences.

No. I daily a Galaxy S23. I really like it except for all of Samsungs preinstalled apps that can’t be deleted.

A couple months back, I bought a refurbished OnePlus 6T (2018) to mess around with Linux and de-Googled Android, and guess what, my phone which is 5 years newer feels virtually no different. It does have a better camera, granted, but personally that doesn’t effect me as I do any serious photography with a proper camera anyway (also, I have to acknowledge that the 6T is slower as it’s not really a flagship phone like the S23, but the 6T feels comparable quality and performance wise to some mid range 2024 phones I’ve used).

Bottom line, unless we see more Apple M-style chipsets in phones, imo, we’re at a plateau. You could get a $200 5 year old phone and be fine.

Oh 100% agreed. I think it was the Song of Susanahh especially that I thought could have been cut down by about 50%.

And yeah, it would definitely be nice for him to see his work faithfully adapted. I do selfishly hope he takes a backseat creatively though. He’s a phenomenal writer but a terrible filmmaker (imo).

Yeah that was a fever dream. On the bright side, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) is apparently the one in charge of a series coming in the next few years. So that should be pretty solid. Fingers crossed lol

Them reciting their mantra when they start shooting, or the shrieking they do when they throw the plates, just makes my skin crawl lol. I hope they omit those if they do an on screen adaptation.

I think platforms like patreon are the real way forward. If you have a product or service that people want, you can even offer it for free, but people will support you financially if they believe in what you’re doing. The added beauty of this is that there really is no upper limit. You could add an “ultra platinum” tier for $150 a month and one wealthy investor could make a huge difference in your project.

Also, I don’t even think ads are the devil. I get why they exist, and I understand why they make so much money. I’m fine being advertised to, because I know what I’m interested in and am very skeptical. I think I’ve had one ad sway me into buying a product I’d never heard of until that point. What I do hate is when the actual advertised product takes a backseat to the massive amounts of data harvesting/brokerage that comes with the advertising industry.

I would rather pay an upfront fee, or even a subscription of some kind than have this crap shoved in my nose. I’m firmly in the camp of believing there’s nothing wrong with closed software that the devs want to earn money from, but this modern method is so fucking annoying I’ll use basically anything else

I’m blanking on specifics but I know I’ve seen a few examples of “dark web” criminals being narrowed in on by means of analyzing their writing styles and comparing them to other accounts. I want to say this played into Robert Ulbricht (the main guy behind the original Silk Road) being arrested

What kind of company needs this much information to close an account?

Never been on a keto diet or needed a product like this, but I know which company I would never buy from if I did.

I’d argue that searching around a slew of webpages to find a download button (without clicking an ad that imitates a download button), then running the .exe while making sure to uncheck the 4 or 5 pieces of adware they try to slip in without you noticing, then having to remember to update it manually now and then, is much more of a sketchy pain in the ass than running a single command to install everything from your kernel, to your web browser, all of which is tightly vetted and comes from a monitored set of servers.

Also, if you really want a “click to install” most DE’s have a software store that either acts as a frontend for your package manager, or just uses flatpaks.

I’d argue this is just what people are used to, and Windows has taught people that terminal=scary/hacky.

I get it, my tinfoil hat is showing. But, am I wrong? If people said “wait, this is creepy, don’t let this slide” when data collection first became a thing, I really do believe recall wouldn’t have happened.

That’s not why it was made. Data collection is a titanically large industry. Why just collect data from specific programs when you can literally just set up a screen recorder to collect all data?

This is what happens when people are flippant about data collection. First, data collection isn’t even there. Next, it’s there, but is off by default, then it’s on by default but you can opt out, then only certain aspects are opt out, flash forward 10 years and here we are.

This stuff isn’t coming out of nowhere, it’s a slow build because consumers consistently allow more and more egregious privacy violations to slip past because they “don’t care, the big corporations already have the data”

Do you have examples of issues? The only hardware incompatibilities I’ve ever experienced were with my VR headset.

Signal has been subpoena’d multiple times by the US government to hand over all user data. Signal complied. The only data that Signal gave, because it’s the only data they themselves have access to, is the username, the unix timestamp of when the account was created, and the unix timestamp of when they last signed on.