Literally came here to share this exact story and am so glad you beat me to it. So cool, the world is so weird and wonderful.

I went from Google to Proton and then switched out for another provider. No offline mode/IMAP support allowing me to use an email client on my phone was bothersome as I need to monitor multiple inboxes. Email was fine but sluggish (in part due to decryption so partially understandable I guess). Still use the VPN which I think is their most mature product. Drive is basic but I didn’t need much more.

I was willing to put up with the annoyances when I really believed in what they were doing. But after the GOP comments, the crypto/AI stuff, and leaving Mastodon it just all became a bit much. I like that they are nonprofit, FOSS, and independently audited of course, but their messaging/priorities have been mixed to say the least. Wouldn’t blame someone for staying, wouldn’t blame them for leaving at this point.

From this article alone: suing the federal government over the birthright citizenship XO, instructing Chicago and Illinois law enforcement to not cooperate with federal ICE raids, having the CTA display ads on immigrants rights and connecting them to resources, hosting know your rights trainings, vet rumors of immigration raids and lay the groundwork for future legislation to counteract federal gov’s actions.

Would much rather have Gracie be the mascot on the mega thread and such if for no other reason this is clearly a labor of love from a like-minded artist rather than cheap AI work. Amazing design!!

This is honestly the only thing I use gmaps for too. I feel like organic and other map apps are useful, but there are very few others for looking up restaurant/business info with the ease of gmaps

I found that citymapper is a great stand-in for transit. Great with bike and public transit info, plus ads can be blocked with DNS so you get full functionality! Basically dropped transit once I started using it

Thanks for the detailed response will look into it!

I have a TCL running Google TV that I use Flauncher on - a nice little FOSS lightweight launcher that I like a lot. However, I am only able to switch inputs (for gaming etc.) when using the default launcher. Anyone found a way around this? Pretty sure its a Google/TCL hardware thing and not due to any alt launcher just not wanting to include that

Right now I feel like its more that it’s a hypothetical, while the resource extraction of the AI hype is very real.

AGI itself won’t end us, but the land, water and energy needs of the massive data centers needed to scale up the computation needed for AI development sure are gonna try

Perfect that the thing they are attacking her for is not even what she does. Just proves complying in advance is worthless, as Musk and his lackeys will attack for what they perceive to be true regardless of reality.

More than Twitter. Less than Mastodon. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Bought a second hand Pixel 7 in like new condition at the time for $250 on back market (dropped it, bought another, still cheaper than the equivalent iPhone 14 lol). That at least means I am not financially contributing to Google, but I do agree that I don’t think there is a way to verify that the hardware is completely foolproof even if its the best option we currently have.

I guess that’s true of any hardware though, and we have to make our assumptions based off known quantities such as Pixels’ unique hardware security features?

But yeah, it’s a minefield out there. Let’s get carrier pigeons.

Its 2030. your state of the art AR glasses have a bug. mr. mime is lurking behind every corner… always watching

Good news, but does someone more knowleagable of these things know the likelihood of a Trump DOJ derailing this? I am hopefully as the original case was brought in 2017 under Trump, and his relationship with Big Tech is at best strained, but I truly don’t know what to expect moving forward.

No features missing just prefer an actively maintained app. I am also using it right now as its the best available option!

My bad you definitely did! The search continues!

Thank you for all this research! I’ve used both Pedometer (PFA) and Paseo, but is it true Paseo is actively updated? Seems like last commit was 2022 and used to come fairly frequently. I’ve been sad that there is not an actively updated pedometer app.

Sigh I hope LLMs get dropped from the AI bandwagon because I do think they have some really cool use cases and love just running my little local models. Cut government spending like a madman, write the next great American novel, or eliminate actual jobs are not those use cases.

Look I’ve bopped around bsky and do enjoy it. Wish Mastodon had picked up the eXodus but bsky isn’t the worst alternative.

Really hoping we get past the point where day old accounts are saying “bluesky is such a BREATH of FRESH AIR”. I would think so too though if I was breathing whatever is coming out of of Twitter up until now…