Fly4aShyGuy

Pretty cool idea, just wanted to say I agree that Reddit, most tech site comment sections, and even Lemmy unfortunately really fall into this hive mind mentality. Saw a Reddit post on first time home owner or whatever that community is, people flaming the guy because he had the audacity to have a pickup truck with an American flag decal, just so ingrained in the culture. Truck bad! America bad!

Have any evidence that both are the same regarding privacy or just your personal feelings?

one day when Apple start changing their tune on privacy policies

I don’t think this is a fair point, unless someone was making the claim that Apple is some benevolent do-good company out of the kindess of their own hearts. No one really makes those claims though, I think most who choose their products for privacy reasons simple thing they are better than the other of the main 2 options, and that like any corporation needs to be watched closely. Just because I chose an Apple device at this time does not mean I advocate that they will always be a better choice for privacy (or any number of characteristics someone may care about when choosing a phone).

almost every apple user says shit like this while using Gmail, Google docs, and the Google app on their phone

Again, just your feelings. Maybe statistically it’s even true that most do, but at least there is a choice on these things. I can and do avoid all of these, the only things I load from google are tracking scripts embedded in websites that make it through several layers of blocking.

privacy means not giving your data to ultra mega corps

Not sure this is true, surely there are large corporations that are at least better than others with regard to privacy. It would be especially foolish to assume the inverse of this, that just because a company is small that they will respect privacy or act better.

I mean lot’s of things follow that trend. Look at drones for example - RC helicopters were around since (and I’m sure before) I was born and were never a huge problematic thing with people flying them in dangerous places above people or near airports (although I’m sure there were very specific cases where those did occur).

But during that time they were both A) expensive and B) required a lot of practice and skill to operate. Anyone that spent the large amount of money and will to put in the time to learn to fly them probably had the common sense to not fly them near people or airports. Bit when anybody can spend $100 on a drone of the convenience aisle at checkout, you start seeing all sorts of problems.

Bookstack looks really cool, considering it for a project at work but I don’t like how you can’t have pages outside of books. We’re looking to put together a general knowledge base that could span many different types of equipment and manufactures. For that reason I’m leaning towards wiki.js due to the search and tag browsing, but basically planning on doing the same installing those same 3 to check them out.

Check this out: https://www.freetelly.com/

This thing gives me serious 1984 vibes. I hadn’t read the book when I first heard of this, but I now realize the name is pretty much and open play on the tellyscreens in the book. Reminds me of the black mirror episode where you have to pay to stop watching.

Since I didn’t comment elsewhere on the thread, my plan of attack for now is usually older TVs (even just a few years old are still really good quality), even if they are smart but not ever connected. Apple TVs on each one, also buy the 2-3 year old version of this used for about $40-$50 not any more then I used to spend buying Roku sticks. Gives me a good enough balance for now, and before Apple haters pile on, yes it’s not perfect, but there have been some studies showing these are some of the best behaved streaming devices. More importantly than what the streaming device is, I have the ability to chuck them and add a PC or whatever else without having to replace the actual TV.

Ah, the site that is still responsible for me locking any PC when I walk away from it. During college within our class there was a very high chance if you left a PC unlocked you would come back to this website. I remember one time, me and a buddy found about 4 of our classmates all out of the lab with unlocked PCs during a late night working session. They could hear the song playing from all 4 computers as they were walking down the hall. I’m sure whatever IT folks saw our browsing history thought we were weird, and they’d be correct.

And also https://www.watch-id.com/ for watches

This one so much. How can people not realize if everyone stood back in a larger halo around the carousel, it would be so easy for everyone to get their bag when it’s up. I usually stand back at a distance, and if people have it completely blocked standing right next to it I grab right around them getting uncomfortably in their personal space.

Regular watches - been wearing watches of some kind since middle school, and at this point I feel undressed or like something is missing without anything on my wrist. Like many others here, while I love the tech of smartphones (and admittedly the smart watches are really cool) but don’t want an even more in-my-face screen to further pull me into more phone time. Trying to really cut back on screen time. Also, if I went for a smart watch, I’d feel the want to wear it all the time both because of how much they are and to keep activity tracking data consistent, which would mean my collection of watches would likely get much less wear time.

Watch I have on now is the Citizen Eco-drive I got when I graduated college, years of service and frequent wear in situations I had no business wearing it and it’s held up great. Because of the eco-drive it’s one of my few watches I don’t have to worry about, it just always has the right time.

Definitely prefer a real book, of course a ton of convenience to be gained by the various ebook readers. One thing I’ll say I have a very hard preference for though is at least an e-ink screen when reading on a digital device. Spend enough time on backlit screens, way nicer when I can’t have a physical book to have e-ink and regular lighting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GRSbr0EYYU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbJrIeEjtaY

Both always good for a good laugh!

Yes, for me this has probably been the biggest and also the easiest one. So much data, in my case, willingly given to one of the worst companies from a privacy stand point. Every photo, email, etc, etc. Email was a very easy transition over a few months, I’m shocked but how quickly I’ve got the point of only logging into gmail once every 6 months or so just to check if anything still going there. I realized I didn’t really need all of my photos going to their servers, now running no backup for photos although my plan is to start using iTunes for periodic encrypted local backups to my PC, mainly for photos and contacts.

This is an excellent one and one I’ve been dreading getting to. I have a system that works great among several credit cards all setup to optimize cash back and track certain spending my having specific purposes for the various cards. These are all mainstream providers, although I haven’t looked I can assume the privacy policies are not great.

I’d love a service that could offer both an internally good privacy policy as well as allowing for many virtual cards that don’t require a real name to validate. I could envision a service that works like this…

• Still a credit card.
• Unlimited or near unlimited virtual cards, no real name required with merchant to validate.
• Similar protections as other credit cards regarding fraud etc, generally accepted as much safer than using debit.
• Binning to allow categories for the various virtual cards (only really helpful for tracking purposes, guess this could always be done by hand).
• Decrease cash back amount - say 0.5 % with the difference between the more typical 1-3% based on category being extra profit to offset what is lost by not sharing any customer data with other parties.

I realize Privacy.com probably comes close on some of these but works more like a debit card from what I understand. Of course cash is the best but I’m not sure that convenience tradeoff is one I’m ready to make yet, but more power to you. That is a LOT of personal data not bouncing around various parties.

I think the issue is with what is implied by the headline as well as the context of being posted on a privacy community. I as well as many others probably ready that headline assuming the police somehow had access to that data from the app outside of the person’s phone. I know that also makes some assumptions, but probably the ones most people on a privacy community are thinking/making. Most of us would be assuming that if the app was sharing this data with police, or the police had some back door way of accessing it, then this would be a big privacy news item. The fact that they viewed the data on an unlocked phone and app is much less a privacy concern, more of a policy concern that they are allowed and able to do that (admittedly, still privacy related but to me this is like 80% policy concern and 20% privacy related). Also what actually happened is pretty different from what the headline on a privacy community implies which is where people are having issue. Some examples of this to make it even more clear…

• Statement: Facebook post “My aunt got her covid vaccine and died within 24 hours! Don’t trust these vaccines!”
• Implication: The covid vaccine killed her.
• Reality: She was in a car accident on the way home.

The statement isn’t technically false. The first sentence is true, the second sentence can absolutely be the opinion of the poster. But the combination implies that she died from the vaccine, something totally different from what actually happened.

• Statement: c/Privacy post “Police use OneNote information to convict murder suspect!”
• Implication: Moreso because of being on a privacy community, most would read this as police somehow having access to OneNote data either through sharing or backdoor.
• Reality: Suspect had a print out of their shopping list made in OneNote consisting of a shovel, ducktape, bleach etc and coordinates of a remote spot where body was found laying on their desk at home.

If it was posted to a non privacy related community, the assumption that there was a privacy concern may be much less, but I think the headline would still be misleading. In the facebook example the person was misrepresenting what happened to push a political agenda that vaccines are bad. In both the murder example and in the article linked in your post, the headline is trying to misrepresent what happened to increase engagement.

There are very clear reasons why the headlines weren’t the following:

• British police use data found on unlocked phone to investigate miscarriage. (Still concerning for reasons of morality and policy, but probably not going to get tons of attention on a privacy community)\
• RIP my aunt who died in a car crash on her way home after getting the covid vaccine.
• Police convict murderer found with evidence of crime on suspect’s desk. (Yes, I realize the list isn’t “evidence” per say, but you see what I mean. This post would not get any attention either.)

Since this got really long, it’s important to say I was just trying to show how the headline is misrepresentation of what happened. I don’t think you posted it with any ill intention or that there aren’t other moral and political issues with what is happening.

The assumed connection between advertising and privacy. While they are often related, there are situations where they can be different concerns. Two very common lines of reasoning I see a lot:

• Regarding Brave - that is is just an advertising company so shouldn’t be considered for privacy - without getting into a whole debate about Brave, I think advertising can (and used to for many years) be done in a way that doesn’t harm privacy. And while many privacy advocates may be 100% against advertising of any kind, I think there are some people out there that care a lot about the privacy but not as much against any ad of any kind. The idea of a model that respects privacy but allows for advertising supported free content is at very least interesting to me.

• The assumption that Apple’s growing advertising business must mean declines in privacy coming. While they certainly could lead to that, I don’t think that is a given. There are several areas (specifically areas where already browsing 3rd party items such as apps or businesses) where contextual ads could be effective without harming privacy at all. Not saying I approve at all of these advertising moves on what are sold as premium devices, just that the assumed decrease in privacy is assuming a lot.

My point is only that these can and potentially should be looked at as separate issues. I’m not ignoring that there is a conflict of interest created where a company like Brave could go back on privacy features to improve the advertising features or that Apple does the same for their advertising money, but I think it’s a bit of a miss to assume the worst possible outcome in these and other scenarios.

Thanks for the info! I am somewhat new to HA, my only experience with it was temporarily checking it out on a VM on my windows Plex server but at that time didn’t have my own place was just checking it our for the eventual move. I think I’m going to add Sky Connect for Zigbee and eventually Matter/Thread devices.

Good link for that site. Currently shopping bulbs for my just recently arrived home assistant green and hard to find consistent information on best bulbs to be using. Love that these are flashed with open source already but I think due to the amount of bulbs I need and their location I’ll be better suited with Zigbee. Will definitely check this place for future devices as I build out the system.

Excited to check it out!

Think I might skip the pain tier 😆

And at least that entity has some stake in doing what they say they are doing. Proton VPN just to pick one as an example should care a lot about if a story were ever to surface about not being trustworthy as users would leave since that’s it’s only purpose.

My ISP on the other hand probably doesn’t care too much since my choices are A) take it, or B) leave it and go without internet (or drastically subpar services, 5G internet, satellite, etc).