Thanks! TIL about EveryDoor.

That would be $249.99 please

Well, I realize that 1970s sounds like an age of dinosaurs to some people… But, people back then weren’t cavemen. They had electricity, batteries, video cameras, telephones.

The concept of an electric outlet in a couch is easy - not sure, but they might even had such things back then. Like to feed a lamp or something. USB is just low voltage and different connector, from the power transmission perspective.

The concept of a speakerphone with video signal is also easy. The only thing to grasp is that the devices and batteries became that miniature and efficient. Oh, and wireless.

Explaining that all video and voice recordings from all these neat devices are actually stored by a gigantic corporation, processed with voice and face recognition algorithms, and used to enrich personal profiles collected on all parties of the conversation to boost profits of said corporations, and many people even pay for this - THAT I would find complicated to explain.

Fennec is a poor alternative because it connects to Firefox services. Sync is optional, but some internal components will talk to Mozilla, and Mozilla changed their mind about “never selling your data” recently.

Brave is Chrome with a history of suspicious moves, toxic leadership, involvement with crypto and AI

It’s not a very bad idea. Tor browser provides good tracking resistance in clearnet, but there are more chances that uneducated person leaks personal information there and at the same time will have a false feeling of safety because they are using Tor, not Google Chrome.

LibreWolf is a decent alternative. I switched to it a while ago as Firefox enshittification required more and more tweaks in configuration to close leaks.

I’ve heard good things about Mullvad browser too especially on fingerprint resistance, but LibreWolf works for me well enough to not search for alternatives.

For rare sites that I need to use and which don’t work in Firefox based browsers, I just use Brave.

And Mullvad is not in business if selling user profiles to advertisers, at least as far as we know

Because the data used in browser fingerprinting is also used to render pages. Example: a site needs to know the size of browser window to properly fit all design elements.

I think this should be baked into client apps.

The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.

Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone’s mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.

Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.

FAKE NEWS!!! Why would you want to pull an ancient lever mechanism if you can do it in a few taps on the touch screen. Sure, unless you have a premium subscription, you’ll have to watch a short video from our partners, tailored individually just for you.

Well, luxury and rich are closely related terms, aren’t they? I think what you described is a financial independence.

I’d add that if you can support your desired level of luxurity for yourself and your family without working anymore - that’s being rich.

Edit: I misread the original question, which was asking about wealthy, not rich. Still, I think my answer applies

Social Security fund invested in government bonds, so the interest from that goes into the fund.

To be fair the budget deficit was there before Trump. His campaign promises are going to increase it, but they can offset that partially with spending cuts. Also, the government has been using money from the Social Security fund routinely, again nothing new under Trump. They just count it as an internal debt. According to Wikipedia, by 2022 it’s been already about 20% of the fund “borrowed” by the government.

Apple does extensive audit of mobile apps, including limitations of tracking. So the app cannot spy on something you are not letting it to know. But you are giving it a bunch of info voluntarily.

I’d say using that app on iOS is similar to making a food delivery order using a loyalty member ID. Basically, you are letting the company (McDonald’s) know who you are, what is your phone number, where do you live, and what do you like to eat. And if they wish to, they could use all that to purchase your profile from a data brocker. Or they can sell that info for a few cents to make up on that discount.

Private transactions, despite what people here are saying. Let me explain:

1. Privacy is not equal to anonymity. The latter is much harder to achieve.

2. There is Monero, a crypto made specifically for anonymity. It’s not very convenient to use, but it is preserving anonymity with multiple measures.

3. Even Bitcoin, which is not built for that purpose, is private enough. It depends on how you use it.

4. Deanonimization in general happens when you link your transaction with personal identifying information, but you can reduce your exposure by following certain opsec rules. I see this situation is better than traditional banking where your transactions are always not anonymous, and privacy is only protected by the bank itself. Data leaks happen, governments can get to your transaction info via legal means, but with crypto you have more options to protect yourself.

This petition is for developing something dubbed “EU-Linux”, so if implemented as is will be pretty uniform

A million or two shitcoins can buy you that easily

Microsoft is famous for nonsensical product and feature renamings. There is Microsoft 365 Copilot in their enterprise offerings, which integrates well with Copilot in Windows. And there is a tool to build your own Copilots with customized logic and data sources.

I don’t think people want to vote for a party. People want to vote for someone who’s making sense for them, and looks like for majority it was Trump this time.

An “actual left wing party” must not only have ideology, but a sound plan on how to improve people’s lives and an ability to communicate this plan to people, loud and clear. Actually, as populists are now trusted everywhere in the world, the plan is less important than communication

Who are “they”? Child trafficking democrats? Oh, sorry, it was from another conspiracy theory.

No offense, I just think that the idea of some masterminds ruling everything from behind the curtains is a bit ridiculous.

Yeah, this scenario seems… feasible. I’ve read people were contemplating Obama to run for Kamala’s VP before Waltz was chosen. And this attempt would certainly end up in Supreme Court.