Very little.

I like that I have very few social or family obligations, and most days, I wake up and I can follow my whims. Usually that means books and wine, but I like the thought that I’m married to my freedom.

Yep.

They paywalled basic-ass Wordpad a few years ago. Yet another reason why I started using LibreOffice.

What a beautiful baby.

100% good boi right there

That’s a good thing.

Brave’s native adblock is the best.

I am somewhat less than enthused about American law enforcement.

That’s also fairly simple.

Leave the phone at home (the best way to go) or put it in a faraday bag, but yes, there’s a plethora of things you need to do to be completely anonymous.

Agreed that there’s no perfect solution.

But one can, and should, make it harder, and if your head, eyes, and face are covered (which is exceedingly easy and inexpensive to do with a ball cap, sunglasses, and a face mask) it’s going to beat all but the best systems.

Then wear a cloth one with a pattern on it.

This isn’t difficult.

Exactly.

Beating facial recognition is simple.

Remember 20 years ago when Wikileaks was telling us about all the false positives swept up in the War on Terror dragnet?

Both Bush and Obama got reelected. No one at the federal level gives a shit.

You don’t need a portable EMP.

All you need is basic KN95 mask and a hoodie. Or you can invest in sunglasses or ID-blocking eyeglasses, like IDGuard from Zenni. The point is to have your features covered as much as is feasible. When I go to a protest I wear a costume that covers my whole head and a jumpsuit.

You should have a KN95 on anyway if you’re going out among people.

The usual example is Kagi.

I made a video about a few others this week: UDM-14 (Though, note that UDM-14 is basically just google search with a different overlay and no ads/ai), Mojeek, and Marginalia. (Though Marginalia focuses on non-commercial content and is a little different.)

Wish we had more gregs in the gaming world.

The very first time I got one from google it was incorrect. That was an important lesson, haha.

Summarize it for you Summarize it for you incorrectly.

There. Fixed it.

Also, not to toot my own horn here, but I made a video this week about alternatives to google search if anyone’s interested.

And now the press are calling us ‘device hoarders’ for taking good care of our shit and not wanting to upgrade to new devices too.

I’ll give them this much.

They did a brilliant job integrating Windows into every significant sphere of the globe. I had never even heard of LibreOffice until a couple of years ago when they rolled out Windows Recall and I got serious about learning and using Linux and open-source software more in order to protect my privacy.

It’s wild to me that they have made a product that basically worked so incredibly buggy in the span of a few short years. It’s actually a running joke at my work how basic things, that functioned for decades, no longer work as expected. We all just assume that Microsoft is passing along LLM-generated code into prod without any human verification, as a company may be wont to do when they’ve laid off tens of thousands of actual humans.

And now I haven’t touched Windows except where I have to, usually for work.

They don’t. That is why regulation is necessary.

Just like how expecting people to recycle was bad policy.

Though I wouldn’t be opposed to there being statutory regulations against parents whose kids get addicted to these applications and end up self-deleting or causing harm to others, not unlike how we’re seeing the state start to go after parents who fail to secure their guns. But just trusting parents to parent isn’t an option anymore. There’s simply too much evidence of the harm these applications cause.

Not at all.

I’m a professional painter and sketch artist who’s done everything from books, to commissioned paintings. to sketch sittings with pro athletes.

I’m nervous at the start of every project. The key is resisting the urge to burn them when they’re not immediately perfect after one session.