https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smart-tv-snooping-features-a4840102036/

Lot of people saying they don’t give internet access to their TVs.

Fine, but that doesn’t work for cord-cutters who opted out of cable to go with streaming. And if you keep your TV away from internet but have a cable box, it will be doing all the tracking in this paper (and worse) then sending it to the cable provider.

So short of sticking with DVD/Bluray (unconnected) or over-the-air broadcast TV, there’s no way to stop from getting tracked.

The paper also lists domains where the data is being sent. You could always try blocking the destination addresses at the router level.

If you use github pages, you can create, deploy, and host static websites for free. Only cost, if you want your own URL, is for a custom DNS name.

You can use their default Jekyll static rendering engine, and create the content using Markdown. And with github actions, all you need to update the content is create markdown, then push the change to the same repo. After a few minutes, the new content shows up.

https://pages.github.com/

Hugo can also be used, but it takes a few extra steps: https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/

You can also find ‘themes’ to customize the look and feel of the site, specific to the site generation tool.

If you want a lot of extra features, Docusaurus is pretty much as good as it gets, and you can set it up to push out to GH pages: https://docusaurus.io/docs/deployment

Wish somebody would plot public chargers per 100,000.

Once they get Threads support, their target audience will be the non-Twitter universe. This would make it easier for businesses, governments, journalists, and non-technical folks like influencers and celebrities to switch out. That’s how you get mass adoption.

I just tried it last week. Good start. Lots of promise.

How long before the students gamify it to see who can generate the most alerts?

Tried bash, Make, and awk/sed. All hit brick walls. Finally landed on pyinvoke. Two dependencies to install on any new machine. Never had problems. Also, easy to debug and modify as projects evolve.

Not everyone has a github account and can comment or vote there.

But, agree. Don’t think any good will come from making votes public. Any pro/con should be measured against who it benefits. If it’s mods or devs, there are always alternatives

If it’s end-users, consider the edge-cases and the repercussions of malicious actors having access to those individual preferences.

Thanks. After your note I went back and re-checked with my friend. I mixed up his comments with those from another friend with a different setup. Updated my original comment.

I have a closet full of old routers (including Linksys), extenders, and switches to be able to handle dead spots. They all sucked. Then I heard about mesh routers when they first came out. Tried two, saw that they worked well, and got a third one. A few months later, a new ISP showed up in our neighborhood with unmetered Gig fiber and I happily drop-kicked Comcast to the curb. It was gratifying that the fiber connection came with a single mesh device of the same brand I already had. Since then, I’ve upgraded to the next-gen routers, and gotten a few smaller ‘wall-wart’ units for extending the range outdoors.

I don’t really have to fuss with configurations like I had to before. It’s amazing how much of a time drain it was to go screw around with settings when a new device came in that didn’t work, or to replace a router when one died. I haven’t had to do anything in years. Every once in a while, I go set up a DHCP reservation but that’s it. The firmware updates auto-install while everyone’s asleep and I get pretty decent bandwidth in places I had constant dropoffs. When I switched out the actual routers to the new gen, the whole thing took 10m and the whole network was down for maybe 2m while the new ones booted up. No end devices had to be modified or restarted.

Where the fiber comes in, there’s a single router node, with two Ethernet ports. One goes to the fiber ONT, the other to a 10-port gig switch where it feeds the rest of wired setups. Elsewhere, the farthest mesh unit has no incoming physical connection, but a small wired switch connected to other wired devices near there. I didn’t have to make any router configuration settings to make this work. Just plugged it all in. Common devices go on the main network, and janky IOT devices (and visitors) go on the guest network.

For external access for self-hosting, you can take a domain name and set up a free Cloudflare tunnel to access your in-home services remotely. Pay Cloudflare a fee and you get extra rules-based access control. The router also has a premium service where it comes with a family bundle of security software. One other thing I like is that the mobile app sends a notification whenever a new device joins the network, so if I see one I don’t recognize, I can block them. Hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, I’ll know to go rotate the wifi passwords.

Anyway, highly recommend mesh routers. I happened to get Eeros (before they were acquired) but there are a few other brands around. Some people don’t like that Amazon bought eero, but they appear to be left to run as an independent outfit. It has been pretty solid so far.

P.S. A friend with a more complicated setup than mine got Ubiquitis. It’s anecdotal, but he recently asked about switching away and I told him pretty much what I’ve written here. YMMV.

Edit: checked back with friend. He said he was very happy with his Ubiquiti gear. I mixed up his review from years ago with another friend’s networking setup.

Most discovery is via hashtags since you can subscribe to one (for example #press gets you lots of news).

Also, following and blocking individual accounts, as appropriate. You’re not going to get the sort of random exposure to strangers that algorithmic boosting gets you on other social media.

Before podcasts, there used to be RSS readers. They let you quickly subscribe and scan a lot of blogs and catch up on latest posts. Flipboard started as a fancy mobile app version, with access to articles from mainstream news providers.

It’s grown and changed a lot, but it’s essentially a quick way to scan for interesting daily news.

They’ve now added ways to subscribe and catch up on Fediverse sources like Mastodon (and soon, Lemmy).

The CEO has a podcast called Dot Social where he talks to people about how this Fediverse stuff all fits together: https://dot-social.simplecast.com/

deleted by creator

I just spent the weekend installing 24.04 on a Lenovo laptop as a self-hosted server. The only thing that didn’t work was the fingerprint scanner. No big deal, but it seems peripheral device driver support is still a bit janky.

Running the self-hosted apps under Docker, though, worked without a hitch. chef’s kiss

You’ve been using cheap cables.

Next step up is a JCAT: https://audiobacon.net/2019/11/02/the-jcat-signature-lan-a-1000-ethernet-cable/amp/

/s if not obvious.

It would be amazing if parts of it could be animated. Maybe multiple layers of canvases (say, 5 frames, shown over a second). Each with their own images, which could be viewed as a flipbook.

Instead of going for a larger canvas, go for more layers.

Just a thought.

This has been one of the most wholesome and heartwarming things I’ve seen online. People behaving well and working together. Kudos to the organizers and all the participants.

The main reason a lot of people still stick around Twitter is because the journalists are there. If Mastodon goes down this path and adds more features to help news organizations and individual reporters, the more likely people will move over.

Was just listening to the latest episode of Dot Social podcast where there was a discussion with CEO of Ghost (alternative to Substack). They’re integrating ActivityPub into the platform, but where they’re going with it is that you can use your Fediverse ID instead of email to sign up.

Once they have that worked out, any likes or comments automatically migrate back to the fediverse. Replies back to replies also show up in your timeline and your followers can see them. This makes discovery pretty effortless. They can also use the stats to keep track of engagement across all fediverse services.

It also means turning one-way streams like RSS (podcasting), email services, and commenting services into common two-way communities.

You’re now going beyond just catching up to existing services and doing things just not possible in closed silos. Real “Aha!” moment.