Could be an issue if sleep masks became useless due to glowing eyelids.

Not impossible. Just very difficult. Source: I lived there for several years without a car, moved close to where I worked (twice), biked and walked most of the time, some public transit when the routes lined up, had very little social life. If there was a special event across town, could use some money saved from not having a car to spring for a taxi.

I disagree. Anyone working in a skilled profession can attest to the number of people who come to them saying that they have this “great idea” for you to work on, for free. It’s never a great idea. Skilled professional have their own great ideas, and that’s often the motivator for acquiring new skills to make those ideas possible.

Lowering the bar between idea and implementation, in a capitalist, surveillance/attention-based, target-marketed world further incentivizes low-effort, high-engagement practices and likely shrinks the space for high-effort markets.

Meanwhile the tools “lowering the bar” are rent-only or need hardware that is quickly becoming unaffordable. Silicon Valley’s only play is enshittification. If it actually is successful it’s only a matter of time before they switch from growth mode to profit mode and it’s google search all over again but this time you’re paying a monthly fee. If you want to have an idea of how that works out ask an adobe user-- and those were products that were already profitable. There is no way people are willing to pay the actual cost of ai, it will need to be extracted. The rest is externalities.

Generally agree, especially non-spying, but the context here is generative ai. So if I misunderstood the message, I’d be curious to know how.

Seems to imply people don’t use Ai to shortcut their thinking and people don’t think when they work.

I think Qobuz and Bandcamp have the ability to stream what you’ve purchased, as well as downloading to own. So in the interim you can still stream, and the option to self-host or just have it on your local devices is a bonus that could be explored later.

Yeah, people have their own threat model and trade-offs they’re willing to make for security/convenience and it’s probably a lot lower for most people than if they knew more about the landscape and gave it careful thought. It sounds like other mobile devices might reencrypt after reboot. IDK about the pw v. bio, though, but if it’s like Grap.OS just convincing them to reboot their device before going through TSA checkpoints or other areas where their device might get confiscated may improve their security with minimal effort.

From what I’ve gathered, I think you’re right to assume it’s legally safer to refuse to unlock rather than wipe. Also, worth noting that you can be compelled to unlock with biometrics, but not a password. On grapheneOS this means simply shutting off/restarting your device as it requires a pw after a fresh boot, even if biometrics is enable.

RE “If you’re not paying, you’re the product,” also doesn’t always apply when it comes to not paying EG: Linux and other FOSS products.

Not that I know of, unless self-hosting. I’ve gone back to ripping CDs and sometimes buying DRM-free HQ audio. Probably getting my purchases profiled, but at least I can download it and no one else has to know when, what, & how much I’m listening to.

For easier access I have a Jellyfin server on my home network. I plan to switch to navidrome or similar for a better, dedicated music experience as well as setting up secure access over the internet for me and my friends and family.

For those not in NJ trying to avoid this, pay in cash and punch in a random phone number at the register.

You may need to try a few numbers at self-checkout to find a working one, but it’s surprisingly easy. Rotate the numbers to dirty up the data of these parasites.

Can’t help but imagine this would result in having to “read” and sign a 70 page ToS and 30 page Privacy Policy before we can buy groceries.

Beyond the obvious problem of paying but not owning, it’s impossible to watch/listen without that data being stored on a massive corporation’s server and likely sold to hundreds of advertisers. Last I saw Spotify had over 300 venders they share data with. I’ve seen sites with over 1000.

So you’re not only paying for something you don’t own, but you’re also paying to have a larger profile in the surveillance capitalism machine.

I didn’t read the article, so I’m not sure how hung up they are on physical media, but the title is about owning vs renting/subscriptions. There are still places were digital copies can be purchased and downloaded to own, DRM-free. Personally, I prefer to store bits on HDDs and SSDs rather than CDs. Of course, that option is limited. Digital music can still be owned (eg bandcamp,Q-something,etc), same for audiobooks (shout out libro.fm), ebooks less so, but still possible and workarounds exist (deDRM).

Movies and TV are where it really runs dry. There’s a few indie creators you can buy from directly, but for everything else, if you don’t want to have a bunch of dvd/blu-ray cases taking up space your only non-rent/subscription options are borrowing from the library (my jam, but a limited collection), or pirating.

vlc for watching.
mpv for listening.

This is “Lines of code = productivity” levels of stupid and lazy. I want to work with people who are well rested, not ones who run themselves ragged and are always on the verge of burnout.

Maybe Meta has to payout unused vacation time and laying off someone who used vacation time is cheaper than someone who has a lot of vacation time? Still be dumb but not surprising if the only measurement they’re going off of is $.

+1 It also works with Futo Voice Input for quick access to local STT (I swipe up-left on Return key).

If you want to do ANYTHING creative in a digital medium in 2026, you’ll be forced to pay them a monthly fee.

This is giving Adobe too much credit. They suck, for sure, and are monopolistic and have set the industry back, but if people want to do creative things, there are manageable options outside of Adobe. Especially if you focus on alternative software for a particular niche (photography, illustration, compositing, etc).

I love FOSS and Obsidian is literally the only close-sourced software in my stack, but open source is not necessary to prevent enshittification, not if you have interoperability. As long as data is stored in md files, if the obsidian team makes bad moves people can pack up and migrate to logseq or other competitors. While the 3rd party plugins add enhancements that might bog down switching, many of those plugins are open source and could be ported.

Slightly better is still the direction we want to head in. Not sure how else we get off the racketing-effect/boiled-frog path we’ve been on.