This is what i settled on as well. I maintain a side project that is completely legal and above board but i refuse to go through the nonsense i was forced to go through the last time i had to integrate with a credit card payment gateway (another side project that went belly up).

If someone wants to buy something from me badly enough, they'll figure out how to get some bitcoin.

I don't have the time and energy to deal with their arbitrary bullshit anymore.

Exactly. Same boat here, fully legal normal business. My main issue is literally having customers from middle east. I've had bank accounts frozen, PayPal reverting my business account to personal without notice, fees, crazy amount of fees everywhere ... So much pain for no benefit compared to crypto.

Had you posted this comment in the early 90s about linux instead of local models, it would have made about the same amount of sense but aged just as poorly as this comment will.

I'll remain here happily using 2.something tokens / second model.

But local aka desktop Linux is still an awful experience for most people. I use Arch btw

I'd rather use Arch over a genuine VT100 than touch Windows 11, so the analogy remains valid - at least you have a choice at all, even if you are in a niche of a niche.

Those same users will be tricked into downloading the "secure bowser" which has these tools. This is a nonsensical argument.

To this day, firefox is still the only browser that prevents its users from running custom extensions without Mozilla's blessing, likely motivated by the same garbage argument.

I have very little hope for Mozilla at this point and sincerely hope that they fail soon so that better open source browsers can take its place.

No, you can. In regular Firefox (without doing any shenanigans) the extension will be installed for the session (until the browser is closed), but Firefox Developer Edition lets you just install and run unsigned/invalid extensions (which is very useful if you occasionally have to change your clock back to 2018 and don’t want to lose all extensions).

Repeal and outlaw drm. It was a mistake that violates everyone's constitutional rights.

“constitutional rights”

Words written on toilet paper. Only thing that exists today are “billionaire rights”.

Exactly. DRM isn’t going anywhere so long as copyrights exist.

Not even that. Companies are already lobbying massively for selective enforcement of copyright as to not harm the AI boom (immediate jail terms for individuals torrenting a movie, "it's a complex issue" for AI companies scraping the entire internet)

But even the DRM that is already there often only uses copyright laws as suggestions. E.g. YouTube's takedown guidelines are defined through their TOS, not through the DMCA.

Agreed. I was surprised of how bad it was compared to their other apps (their calendar app). The recordings are faint/muted and it seems to have reliability issues.

Luckily there are quality options to choose from on fdroid.

Any recommendations?

I need opus at low bitrates that works in the background and haven't foud anything that really works for me on fdroid.

That is more or less what i did with my parents, but this approach is still susceptible to active mitm attacks.

2 factor authentication through a secure app or a trusted family member is probably also needed though i haven't tackled this part with them yet.

> 2 factor authentication through a secure app

the problem is that the sort of emergency scenario in which family member would need the help is not often done or possible via a secured app. It's often just a telephone, with a number that you cannot recognize - imagine getting that phone call from a police station in the middle of nowhere when arrested, then you dont have access to any of your personal belongings as they're confiscated. The phone is a landline from the police station!

Therefore, a verbal password is needed, as this scenario is exactly how a scammer would present as the emergency that they need help (usually, wire some dollars to this account to bail out).

For me it's the R1 fiasco and their dishonesty. How anyone can continue to trust a project that brazenly mislead their users to such an extent just to cash in on the hype is beyond me.

I guess ill just connect my phone to a charger and record the screen then. What is the threat model that Microsoft hopes to thwart with this nonsense?

I'm surprised that they're doing this now, with how strained international relations are. I'm sure their timing will help motivate serious non-us customers to look at linux for desktop use.

I really doubt that if it was, say, the early 90s (with millions of people yet unfamiliar to computing) and MS and Linux was in its current state of development, that the masses wouldn't have found it much more frictionless just to use linux. MS is literally running on hot air, hubris, and lock-in the likes of which I don't think many others cant match, devil incarnate not withstanding.

Google is not a company I would want to work for.