Submitted 2 weeks ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to technology@lemmy.world
The line between helpful tech and quiet surveillance is blurring — and our devices no longer feel fully under our control.
I installed Lubuntu on my Microsoft Surface 2 and my custom PC from 2024 that couldn’t get upgraded to windows 11 due to lack of a tpm chip. We don’t need better hardware, we need better operating systems. We need more Linux.
We need more real Linux – GNU/Linux, with compliant copyleft licensing – not Tivoized crap like they put on TVs.
Roku OS, Amazon Fire OS, Tizen (Samsung TV OS), etc. – all technically Linux, but you wouldn’t know it because they’ve systematically butchered them to destroy everything that made Linux good (the users’ freedom).
What’s the point of being so pedantic?, they were obviously not advocating for more Roku installs.
We also need megadesk. More megadesk
Tizen is actually pretty fun to hack tbh
I have a computer capable of outputting video like 5 different ways: over the internet, near-field EM, HDMI, yadda
I just want a fucking standards compatible dumb screen
I heard a talk a few days ago, and the fella said that if you want a non-smart monitor, you’ll need to pay somewhat more for what he called an ‘industrial monitor’. He said the ‘smart TV’ is cheaper because of all the data it’ll collect, and they can sell that data to make the price-to-the-user lower. (Don’t know for myself, my old Samsung monitor’s only smarts were to send data out to one URL, and I was able to change that URL to a site that doesn’t exist.)
Pi hole is required internet safety
There’s gotta be a market for taking cheap smart TVs, replacing the guts with dumb tv, and reselling it, right?
This is where the Linux and self hosting people chime in.
I get tut-tutted by other Linux nerds for this a lot, but I think Linux is impersonal in a different way because it simply demands more of the user. Sure, it gives freedom, but that freedom comes with responsibility, and a lot of people just like like “ain’t nobody got time for that!” Which I think is a valid way to feel.
I’ve been a developer for decades. I’ve contributed to FOSS code and do a lot of my own development.
I just want a desktop that works. No fuss.
Yes I could compile my own x11 (and have) but I would rather spend my time doing my own shit than trying to stand up a new VM for some edge issue I’m having.
Just…just give me a UI I can use.
It’s why I use Ubuntu.
Linux has come a long way though and it’s basically turn key for some distros. Even with flatpak or system catalogs built into the gui.
Freedom and taking ownership (responsibility) for one’s actions go hand in hand.
People irritated at having to make their own choices don’t get to then be mad that choices are being made for them when they outsource that decision making process, imo.
I agree. Linux has come a long way, and I love using it. But its definitely not for everybody.
Many times I just don’t want to do something because I don’t want to invest the time. I also get that there’s a GUI that is very capable, but then why is the terminal easier sometimes?
I also need to look up everything I do. That’s probably me just being a noob but I can never look through the system and figure out how to do something. Everything I do is an internet search first, then an implementation. Again, probably just lack of knowledge on my part but comparing that to the average Windows user, I can see the allure of adding AI to just do things you ask it to. Time is valuable and if you’re not invested into your system then its not worth it to most.
Self hosting doesn’t make you immune, though. See how Plex evolved, for example. Self hosting plus free software that isn’t abandoned or compromised is the way, but idealistic developers need to take bread to the table too.
So the way maybe is self-hosted + libre software + a non-profit supporting the project. And that can too be corrupted, for example, the Mozilla Foundation and Google’s influence.
Always be ready to migrate.
This is why permissive licensing isn’t good enough; copyleft is essential. Every part of the system – the tech itself, the management, and the legal/business structure – have to be designed to resist being subverted against the user.
Always be ready to migrate.
or be ready to contribute to the project you use, so they don’t have to sell to google.
Oh yeah linux people have been building like crazy these past 10 years.
Sometimes the user experience is so slick its boring. But the great past of.linux is even when the usage is simple I can always tweak it or modify it to my exact liking.
On Mac it either works nicely or I’m fucked.
They’ve been really holding back until now.
Laughs in every computer I own is Linux and my mobile is GrapheneOS
Cries a little for everyone else
I switched to gOS and had to go back for NFC payments and auto.
It is great to see though, those are just necessities for me. Having gone back, I can say I hate pixel launcher and can’t even change keyboard
I’m genuinely curious, what makes NFC a necessity? And what do you mean by auto?
I’m just starting that journey … Graphene is dope once you learn your way around
My favorite feature is honestly so simple. Denying network permissions during install.
The poor user experience is intentional. Compare FireTV to AppleTV. Everything about FireTV is carefully designed to coerce you into spending money. Easy access to the content you already have doesn’t make money, so the UX serves Amazon, not you. Apple does it, too, but with a more subtlety.
It’s all the same UX to me; I start up Stremio then check what torrent to stream from.
All monopolies should be split into different smaller companies which would then be given to the workers who would collectivize them.
I agree, big tech should be trust busted to oblivion
Sure, I might own the hardware
Not for long. The goal seems to be to make RAM, flash memory, and GPU’s so expensive that most consumers will need to purchase low-powered client devices and subscribe to cloud computing business models. It’s a handful of companies who are cornering the markets, controlling the supply, and seeking rents.
I don’t really see that happen. It would mean developers (or crappy AI code generators) would have to write efficient code for the low-powered client devices. The web is basically already other people’s computers and look how memory hungry browsers are, or maybe more specifically the websites/apps that run in the browsers.
I bet it’ll be more like a subscription for an LLM upgrade, since they’re shoving “AI” into the OS, it’ll need a bit of local processing power but then you pay to connect it to a beefier server
We well make some new companies
It is not user experience, it is user manipulation.
The more Windows tries to manage my files for me the less I’m able to find where anything is.
I wish Windows 2000 still ran modern games.
Linux does. Not all, but a lot, and more every day.
It’s been years now, amd it still hits me sometimes how insanely nice it is that my computers now work the way I want them to.
Yeah, that was an unexpected nice thing about switching to Linux, though also the whole point. Like I knew that I wanted to take control back over my computer and OS, but I was surprised at just how much nicer it is when defaults are set without any profit incentive. There just wasn’t “spend time disabling MS attempts to get me to use their other software” or “dig deep for how to change a setting MS would really rather you don’t change” periods and it made me realize that that was where I’d spend a majority of the “computer maintenance” time on windows.
Interestingly, Linux also runs old Windows games better than modern Windows.
remind me about the odds on whether a specific distro will work with my gpu or cpu
What’s so hard about C:\users\skisnow, it’s pretty intuitive. Also I don’t think that has changed for almost 2 decades now. (XP was last I remember it being different).
Unless your talking about OneDrive or some shit.
What’s so hard about C:\users\skisnow, it’s pretty intuitive
Except it only plays out like that if you follow their entire plan for how you want to structure your files and do it exactly how they want. Yessir, I put my pictures in Pictures and my documents in Documents and my music in Music and my videos in Videos like a good boy and everything is taken care of, until the moment I have to do something very very slightly different to Microsoft’s plan for my life, like get a second SDD.
Unless your talking about OneDrive or some shit.
You mean the OneDrive that gets bundled with every Windows along with an account that you have to really fight the computer to not give you? Why wouldn’t I be including that?
I think that’s the reason why I always change the operating systems of my devices – Fedora Linux for my PCs and custom ROMs for my phone. The stock ones don’t feel “personal enough” to me anymore.
I mean tech innovation has been stale for a long time, even with hardware remember how the CPU market was before Ryzen? Completely dead, Intel was sitting on it’s morals doing nothing because they were owning the market 10 to 1, but even now that I’ve got my i7-10700 I don’t see any point in upgrading.
Software side? It’s a mess companies will always be greedy, just today I wanted to upscale something with the cloud because my PC is great for 90% of the things I want to do, Upscaling is not one of those but guess what Topaz asks for credits in order to use their servers, yes CREDITS, so I said bye bye. I’ve also said bye bye to Adobe and moved on with Davinci Resolve.
sitting on it’s morals
Assuming that’s not a typo, the phrase is “resting on its laurels”.
And they definitely have no morals
For upscaling, check out chaiNNer: github.com/chaiNNer-org/chaiNNer
And openmodeldb: openmodeldb.info
It’s quite possible your PC can do it with Vulkan just fine, and if not, you can rent something online pretty cheap.
Also, for video processing, if you know any Python check out vapoursynth.
This highlights the problem: the primary obstacle to a lot of software enshittification is accessibility, and discoverability.
Once something like Topaz or Premiere gets SEO, it starves all the other cool efforts out there as they get buried under spam.
Honestly this is more complicated as I’m looking for something that just works, maybe I’ll set it up later and yeah I’ve got an AMD GPU so upscaling is much much slower.
bye bye to Adobe and moved on with DaVinci Resolve.
This is the way. I skipped Adobe entirely due to how they conduct business. I really wish Resolve had better Linux support though. Like, it works and I use it, but having to use a third party tool (make resolve deb) is ridiculous.
Additionally, Gimp is just not on the level of Photoshop, at least from what I understand, I’ve never used photoshop. I mostly long for smart select tools where I can, for example, just circle a person and have them selected. Also, content aware fill would be incredibly nice to have. Of course neither of those things are worth shoveling money out of my wallet into Adobe’s.
Affinity Photo 3 is also free and it’s kind of like Photoshop, I haven’t tried it yet but I’ve heard good things
I’ve been considering using my phone only for tethering, and doing anything on the go on a ultraportable Linux laptop. If anyone is doing this already, I’d love to hear about your experience.
I’m working towards something like that. I’m hoping to ultimately drop the smartphone altogether, and I’ve set my current phone’s end of life (2027ish?) as the goal.
I think the other thing that’s necessary to keep the same sense of connectedness is a device to receive notifications, and I have an open source smartwatch I want to program for that. I’ve been working on a notification server too (kind of like Gotify), but at the moment it’s a work in progress
I haven’t committed to doing it full time, but I’ve had a GPD Win Max 2 for a few months now. A little 10 inch laptop that actually has solid new AMD internals. Love it so far
I tether my GOS tablet. I currenly don’t use a notebook privately, only a desktop.
You need a generous data plan, or never install system updates but on WiFi.
Honestly I do this a lot. Not a bad experience overall. Phone planes for hotspots suck in the US IMHO. Calyx’s hotspot device was better, but I had device issues with them from time to time
I’m no tech expert and I haven’t done this for a while so don’t know if that change but they were more packet loss/errors (not sure proper terms, not English native). For most files this isn’t an issue but was for more sensitive ones like programs/iso…
Battery also suffered more from this used, keeping phone charged while tethering wasn’t good due to battery management system. But things could have changed.
Last point is that bad weather does affect cellphone reception.
Do any cell phone plans allow for unlimited Hotspot data? That’s my largest issue with doing that, I use more than 50GB every single month.
Huh
Maybe it’s different in other countries, but why would there be a different allowance for tethered/hotspot data?
Surely unlimited means unlimited and it makes no difference whether the ones and zeros go to a phone or something connected to it?
I’ve never had any problems
Yes but they’re like $60 a month
You don’t even hold the hardware if it’s not user repairable, customizable or upgradable
I watched something on Netflix the other day.
It immediately then showed an ad for that same movie I’d just watched, telling me the last day to watch is in a few days.
Big Tech keeps building smarter devices
Smarter or just louder?
Our devices are no longer fully under our control, it’s not a “feeling”.
They aren’t building things for our benefit, they’re building things for their benefit. All the idiots who gleefully bought devices with surveillance and tracking and data collection, normalized it. The masses showed them they can take from our private lives whatever they want and the masses of fucking morons will happily pay them to do it. Why the hell would they stop taking when the consumer market has lost any sense of caution?
Repost: The power and influence of billionaire tech companies over the government is enormous. Ofcourse workers don’t have any rights in america, none is lobbying for them lol, nobody in Washington is fighting for us
The more this shit goes on, the more I find myself aligning with the villains in James Bond films. Burn this whole system to the fucking ground!
Have the day you paid for.
The supreme irony of that message coming from Windows Central...
It’s no coincidence that when I let the screen of my computer turn off, it sounds like it’s mining Bitcoin!
Because soulless ghouls can only pretend to be human.
I’ve been on Linux since 2016, and I’m honestly useless at Windows Administration now.
It’s not just that, but a lot of software feels awful to use. It feels like when Cable stations would just start airing Infomercials (maybe they still do) late at night, trying to sell you things you don’t need. Using modern software unfiltered is an onslaught of advertising, and pressure. It’s not fun.
Yeah it sucks. The more people that educate and switch others to open source community-run stuff the better. There is also alternativeto.net, and european-alternatives.org for helping people find open source projects just have to search online if it is corpo or community-run
We need to stop supporting them. We’re just helping them build their empire to leave us behind sooner than later.
I down graded phones for simplicity and control
No no absolutely not Big Tech built a large spy network and now all of your lives are a hot linked to every CEO across the planet.
IF ITS too manage AI, no its not innovation at all.
FaeriesWearBoots@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
What innovation? The user experience hasn’t undergone significant innovation (improvement) in the last decade
Broadfern@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s enshittification fatigue, not innovation.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Innovative data collection for the shareholders so the line goes up!
TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t forget all the innovative ways they’ve found to make it harder to repair “your” device.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Exactly. I almost feel like many are hungry for something new and different. So much so, that you give them something completely useless like an Ai widget, and they are willing to accept it to scratch an innovation itch.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My dream phone would basically be a phone jammed into a small handheld console with a big battery. Like stuff a pixel into a gameboy advance and that’d be perfect.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Forced ‘innovation’ see-
Windows 8/10/11
Gnome 3
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s no forced Gnome 3 (and it’s not been called that for a long time either), because you choose to install it, have the freedom to install anything else you want, and can customise it infinitely if you so choose.
Besides, Gnome is great. Maybe you don’t like it, but it seems odd to say that the way Linus Torvalds uses Linux is the “wrong” way to use Linux.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
If you want to keep using Gnome 2 there are a million forks that are actively maintained, or idk you could just use another desktop. Nobody is forcing you to use gnome but you aren’t entitled to having a project do things the way you specifically want.
saltesc@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s kind of been an increase in things being more accessible and usable by the standard user where previously they would need to be quite savvy or know a language.
But, yeah, I can’t think of much else. Not user-based tech anyway. Just the usual insignificant increases and a bunch of bullshit no one asked for and actually ends up using, but has to pay for.
I think smartphones are an excellent example. Most people wouldn’t notice the differences between a second-hand $150 Samsung Galaxy from five years ago, and the latest flagship for 10× the price. The innovation is almost entirely unnoticeable.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In many cases that accessibility is a full-on neutered replacement for a previous system that offered more user control and customizability, removing options from power users, so one man’s progress is another man’s step backwards.
Blackfeathr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As someone with a second hand Galaxy from seven years ago, yeah there’s not really much difference. Newer phones are slightly more annoying to use, actually.
Mondez@lemdro.id 2 weeks ago
Only difference is lack of updates for security and latest android, turns phones into ewaste long before the end of the hardware useful life.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
B-b-b-but thinner bezels!!! Slimmer phones!!!