A software developer and Linux nerd, living in Germany. I’m usually a chill dude but my online persona doesn’t always reflect my true personality. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I usually try to be nice and give good advice, though.

I’m into Free Software, selfhosting, microcontrollers and electronics, freedom, privacy and the usual stuff. And a few select other random things, too.

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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2024

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  • Does anyone happen to know if there is a N100 model that supports HDMI-CEC so I can make my old TV set smart with a recent Kodi and maybe some retro-games? But I’d rather not let it consume 9W or whatever such a machine needs all day long. So it’d need to start and shut down on its own. Preferably without manual additional steps involved, hence the CEC…


  • Sure. I’m not against people buying it. Including for novelty or be an early adopter. I’ve had a look at all the foldable phones in the store and I didn’t really like them. I mean it’s a nice idea, and I can see how I’d get some good use out of that large screen. But at least the Samsung one had a pretty noticable fold in the middle. And I can get a rusty used car for that kind of money. Or a mid-range gaming PC new. Maybe I’m just not the target audience. I never got why people buy expensive phones. My $350 one can do pretty much the same tasks in everyday life and also the camera and everything is decent enough. And I spent the extra money that’d get me to $2.000 on a laptop and other things. Yeah, but I know different people make different decisions and that’s fine. I’d be in for something like a Nokia N950 if we want to change the form factor (and operating system for more diversity). But that’s not happening. Or just a regular uninspiring Pixel with the price point of the 4a, just with the current (extended) update timeframe. That’s something they don’t do very often. Probably because of the smaller profit margin. But I also consider it an achievement and challenge to design and sell a device close to high-end specs, just for a fraction of the price.



  • I like than everyone seems to think we’re days or weeks away from a ChatGPT 5 release. I’ve read that claim for months now.

    But I agree with the premise of the article. Whistleblowing should be legal and appreciated. I wouldn’t rely on the government however. They’ve done far worse things than just fire someone who calls them out, in the past.




  • Then I misunderstood what the question is about. With your definition and the original question in mind, it’d boil down to doing journalism. Of course that isn’t illegal. But it also has some severe restrictions when it comes to individual people and their private life. You can’t just doxx someone and publish everything invading their privacy. And here also different rules apply to the person investigating and the person publishing the information. But the rules for private investigators still apply.

    And I still think a good part of what a private investigator does is things like finding out if someone cheated on their spouse. And that includes following people. And they better not tell how much they exactly followed someone, but instead only take a picture when they actually caught their suspect doing something wrong. Which they can’t do with the premise of this story… Without a clear goal, they’d have to become more like a paparazzi. Which might be closer to illegal and the movie PI than their usual job.

    And sure, other parts of their job is probably digging through social media, paper trails when it comes to money, investigating if someone embezzles money or is in breach of a contract. But I don’t think it applies fully in this situation.

    However, if you find a politician embezzles money, or poses for the working class and secretly owns 5 mansions in Miami, and you call them out… That’s regular journalism. You just need to make sure to obtain that information legally. Or claim you got that from a mysterious source. And adhere to the standards of journalism. You can’t publish when they fetch their kids from school and then someone goes ahead and uses that information to harass their 12yo daughter.









  • And since it wasn’t ever a secret that these services are for data harvesting, they got next to nothing from me. I mean does it make a substancial difference if they sell your data or use it to get to know you so they can do targeted advertising… Or train an AI with it? I’d say the latter isn’t even that bad compared to the other business model. But yeah, be cautious about these tech companies. Generally speaking they’re not invested in your privacy. On the contrary. If you value that, use other services. And it’s been that way for quite some time.




  • I’m pretty sure Lemmy isn’t about having well-reasoned opinions… They need to be strong, and be blasted out there 🤗 I think it’s a bit weird that specifically niche Linux topics like Rust, Flatpak and whatever I’ve discussed here, trigger some emotional responses in some people. I’m more emotional about licensing and freedom. Less so about specific technology stacks. They usually come with objective arguments, and use-cases that change the perspective.