utopiah

Copilote

Is it the Mexican version? /s

Pay for stuff if you want something reliable and supporting your privacy. Sure test the free tier to make sure it fits your requirements but please do consider not sticking to it.

Might be Filen (don't know of it) or Hetzner Storage Box (~10e/month for 5TB iirc) or Proton Drive (Visionary customers have a large quantity, e.g. >6TB) or whatever else you prefer but if you do not actually help people providing services by funding their work they you are supporting BigTech and their "free plans" that comes precisely at the cost of our collective privacy.

Sounds absolutely stupid... and yet my (gaming) desktop (model CORSAIR ONE i180) remains untouched after nearly 6 years. I still play indies to AAA to VR with it. I still work with it, specifically VR prototyping, so dev.

If I were to give it away or use as a self-hosted server with GPU used on e.g Immich or video transcoding it would still do pretty well.

So...IMHO it's not a bad take but damn I remembered I paid a LOT of money back then. As other pointed out if you can afford it, sure. If you are not a professional then probably not.

main quality criteria is that it’s doing what it needs to and it’s covered with tests.

Might want to read on TDD, it's been around since last the last millennium (OK 1999 according to Wikipedia, point is, it's not new).

So infuriating.

Technology is, rightfully, seen as a tool of control.

It should be a tool for emancipation, gaining and increasing agency. It's been "sold" as such only to then gradually yet inexorably do the exact opposite.

This is deeply dangerous because it erodes trust in both governments and technology.

That being said, it's not new. It's been done before, it will be done again.

Consequently what could be done is to refuse any technology without safeguards, including the potential dismantle of the entire ecosystem in place the second it's being abuse. It should be impossible to have mandatory usage without matching "canary in the coal mine" that force the system to stop AND the person responsible for it to also be removed from their function.

reMarkable isn't about replacing books. You can have a PocketBook with KOReader for 120EUR. It's not a price per book comparison, IMHO it's a price per sketch and thus ideas, work, presentations, etc because that's where reMarkable is unique, low latency e-ink writing.

For "just" reading there are plenty of alternatives, including cheaper alternatives.

Pretty much all open hardware devices should be on such a list, e.g.

• NitroKey for both authentication tokens and storage (of e.g ssh keys)
• PGB-1 (based on RP2040) or Haxophone (based on RPi Zero) for music
• Precursor for token and dev (via its own FPGA)

so check CrowdSupply for more of such things.

I'd also add reMarkable. Sure you can use their cloud but you do NOT have to. It means you have your own Linux e-reader but also sketchpad entirely offline. You can work and sync with ssh or rsync and even setup your own cloud, cf https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud . If you want something more open from the start check the PineNote but it's harder to get and you have to tinker a bit more.

Sidetracked a bit but last week I was in the UK. I tried to visit a website (not porn actually, just private messaging on BlueSky) and it asked to verify my age. Initially I thought "Meh... OK... let's see the process" which then lead to installing an app maybe (I'm not sure tbh as I was in rush). Clearly I didn't want to do it because the DM was potentially urgent (scheduling to meet someone ASAP) ... so what did I do? I switched from my browser to my VPN, connected from Austria, refreshed... no age verification. It took me a grand total of 5s to bypass the system.

TL;DR: maybe you can actually escape even though you are convinced you can't.

Tracking from WHOM and thus WHY should be the question.

It's different to be tracked for profit, e.g. Google or Meta, versus for political or corporate espionage purposes.

The former is basically volunteering information through bad practices. Those companies do NOT care about "you" as an individual. In fact they arguably do not even know who you are. Avoiding their services is basically enough. It might be inconvenient but it's easy : just do not.

The later is a totally different beast. If somehow the FSB, because you criticized Putin, or NSO Group, for something similar or because you have engineer something strategic to a business competitor who is a client of theirs, then you will be specifically targeted. This is an entirely different situation and IMHO radically more demanding. You basically don't have to just care about privacy good practices, which is enough for the former, but rather know the state of the art of security.

So... assuming you "just" worry about surveillance capitalism and hopefully live in a jurisdiction benefiting from the Brussels effect with e.g GDPR related laws, either way is fine.