Well if you say so, I defer to your higher authority on bullshit.

Not cheers, no. But it increased my problem-solving reputation within the company and it made Linux more appealing to key people in the company.

What’s wrong with that? What’s your butthurt? Are you bitter about something?

Well I’m sure they have very good reason and I’m not questioning them. I’m just talking from a user’s standpoint (and I’m a very poor Windows users): whenever I try to port any of our tools to Windows, wham the damn antivirus kicks in and puts my stuff in quarantine. If I use an engineering application that talks to some device on an unusual port - and I’m talking outgoing traffic, not incoming, wham it’s blocked. And unblocking it requires making a formal request to IT, that whitelists the application, until WithSecure updates itself and forgets about it, and here we go again.

It’s just a complete PITA. You constantly feel like you’re fighting an algorithm with stupidity built in just to get normal, honest-to-goodness work done.

It’s whatever works for you.

Me, depending on the type of file, I either have a more or less full description (so I can find things with find and English words) and/or some sort of short coding system that makes sense for a given type of file. After using the same codes for a long time, I know exactly what they mean.

For example, I would name an ebook “823-sf-rah-The_moon_is_a_harsh_mistress.epub”: that way I can look it up by DDC number (823), genre (SF), author if they’re well known (Robert A. Heinlein) and of course the title of the book, or any combination thereof. That’s my own system for ebooks.

For music, I make one directory per album or record named artist-comma-name (e.g. “Al_Di_Meola,Orange_and_Blue”) and the individual tracks inside as e.g. “track01-Paradisio.mp3”, “track02-Chilean_Pipe_Song.mp3”… The reason I only do one directory deep per album instead of, say, author/album/tracks is because most MP3 players back in the days, and most music apps today, understand that way of organizing music. That’s my own system for music.

Etc etc. Just make up your own system that works for you. Just stick to characters that are acceptable in all OSes’ filesystems so you can move your stuff around without problems, and avoid spaces so it’s not a pain to type.

mv?

Honestly, just prefix or suffix the filename. I’ve been cataloging all my stuff like that for the past 30 years - including, for things like music, the track number, which the filesystem and every portable device under the sun will naturally sort and play in the correct order. Finding things can be done with regular filesystem tools like, well, find. And it will work exactly the same way in all OSes that have a concept of filesystem.

Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.

Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.

So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.

Someone is making money off of the surveillance and that someone knows someone else in the board of education. That’s why it exists. It has nothing to do with sudent safety.

I would cancel and tell the restaurant why.

Businesses need to know why they lose customers, because if enough of them report the same reason, they might do something about it.

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I’m a kid of the cold war.

It’s behind a firewall. The only thing exposed to the outside is port 22 - and only pubkey login too.

And gee dude… It’s been running for 18 years without being pwned 🙂

tl;dr: your money does not go to Google and the ppl you get it from would have purchased it anyway. The device just ends up in your hands instead of the land fill or being recycled

It all depends on how you look at it. You choose to see it as your money saving an object from the landfill, and I choose to follow the trail of my money going all the way to Google’s pocket ultimately.

But those two outlooks are not incompatible: they both hold true. You just choose to disregard the latter while I can’t get past it.

Really?

Say I buy a pack of gum at the supermarket. The supermarket got my $2. Then I resell the pack of gum to my neighbor for $1.50. Who do you think has my neighbor’s $1.50 in his pocket? Me or the supermarket?

Hint: it’s not me. I’m still down $0.50 from the moment before I bought the pack of gum. And even if I had sold it to my neighbor full price because it’s new and unopened, it’d like I never bought it in the first place and my neighbor did.

Nobody talked about Calyx

I did, and you replied to me 🙂

if you wanted to avoid anything primarily made by Google you’d have a Linux phone

That’s true.

Unfortunately that’s not possible: I live in a country that delegates secure authentication to banks, and banks only supply 2FA apps that work in Android or iOS. If I had a Linux phone, I’d still need another phone with Android just for the purpose of banking, interacting with social services, logging in my work hours, getting notifications from the post office…

That’s the misery of Android: Google is such a pervasive monopoly that even if you want a fully deGoogled OS, the basis of it has to be 95% made by Google anyway because the rest of society goes along and reinforces their monopoly. And at some point, even someone like me has to make compromises to simply live normally.

I would gladly buy a Linux phone and I’d even put up with their quirks (I tried one once so I know they’re not as polished an experience as Android). But I am also a practocal man and it’s just not an option.

I think GrapheneOS should come with a no-compromise-security branch that only supports Google Pixel phones and an “ordinary security” branch that supports a wide variety of less-secure but non-Google hardware for people who can’t stomach the idea of buying a Google phone.

GrapheneOS would reach a much wider audience, and not everybody needs perfect security. I for instance am a low-value target and I have no need for GrapheneOS-level security.

If you buy second-hand, you give money to Google.

Someone bought the phone the first time and gave their money to Google, and you reimbursed part of that money to that buyer. In the end, Google gets your money. Maybe not full brand-new retail price, but what you paid for your second-hand phone goes indirectly into Google’s coffers.

Buying anything Google, second-hand or not, supports Google’s business. Given the choice, I refuse to support Google in any way, shape or form.

Example Fairphone, which has horrible update schedules

Fairphone’s release schedule and Calix’ release schedules are two different things. CalyxOS is updated less often than GrapheneOS for sure, but it’s updated a lot more often than Fairphone OS.

I am aware of the shortcomings of my choice.

But my priority is to not give a cent to Google: what am I supposed to do then?

I argue that GrapheneOS gives Pixel phones more value, thereby supporting Google. That is not great.