Things Break

[alexjack]

Is it about trying not to be a victim consumer? To think through your purchases and which things are meaningfully functional, and which are junk.

Without knowing for sure, I'd predict that Linux users have a relatively high proportion of people that think about the above.

[rs55]

Amusing anecdote - This weekend Google had a massive outage - apparently several Nest owners were locked out of their houses and /or could not operate their air-conditioners as a result !
That is exactly what I was talking about.

I think that was a foretaste of some very bad problems down the road. Not just with Google, but also Amazon's Alexa devices, and so many companies becoming totally reliant on cloud computing, etc.

Yes in the near future - your bank account, your healthcare, taxes, front door lock, car, home heating/cooling etc all networked in a gigantic network, controlled by some learning-algo that is tracking your every move, every purchase , every email. One "bad bit" can shut down your life, lock you out of your house and leave you penniless on the streetcorner.
No Thanks!

[turtlebay777]

Yes in the near future - your bank account, your healthcare, taxes, front door lock, car, home heating/cooling etc all networked in a gigantic network, controlled by some learning-algo that is tracking your every move, every purchase , every email. One "bad bit" can shut down your life, lock you out of your house and leave you penniless on the street corner.
No Thanks!

This may not be popular here but in fact the whole above scenario is predicted to happen in the Bible in the Book or Revelation.

Just think about the Mark of the Beast which you will be required to have injected in your right hand and your forehead. Just one wrong move and they turn off everything!

[richb]

This may not be popular either. However from the Forum Rules:

Moderator Comment

Do not post topics that relate to different genders, race, color, politics or religion.

[KBD]

Yes in the near future - your bank account, your healthcare, taxes, front door lock, car, home heating/cooling etc all networked in a gigantic network, controlled by some learning-algo that is tracking your every move, every purchase , every email. One "bad bit" can shut down your life, lock you out of your house and leave you penniless on the streetcorner.
No Thanks!

Yes, and if your personal business also uses Google's cloud services to run it, everything connected to Google--or whoever's cloud your business runs on--will be out of luck as Shopify found out yesterday:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sho ... 691/#close

[rs55]

Yes in the near future - your bank account, your healthcare, taxes, front door lock, car, home heating/cooling etc all networked in a gigantic network, controlled by some learning-algo that is tracking your every move, every purchase , every email. One "bad bit" can shut down your life, lock you out of your house and leave you penniless on the streetcorner.
No Thanks!

Yes, and if your personal business also uses Google's cloud services to run it, everything connected to Google--or whoever's cloud your business runs on--will be out of luck as Shopify found out yesterday:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sho ... 691/#close

Yes - the solution is to diversify - divide-and-conquer. Find things that do One-Thing_Well. Have many such things that do One-Thing_Well and have no relationship to each other.( Do Not Trust Marketeers who want to merge everything into ONE God Like thing that does Everything - Delete them from your life. Microsoft comes to mind.Google too - but at least their stuff works well and is not annoying as hell. SystemD? Pulseaudio?- no thanks).
Keep data you cannot afford to be compromised in your own personal ( backed up) encrypted storage.
I still use paper and pen - quite good for long term non-volatile storage.
I have a few different bank accounts - unlinked to each other. And some paper cash .

Moderator
Paragraph deleted , political violating Forum Rulrs.

My light switches and thermostats are not connected to anything - they do One -Thing-Well. My car is not networked - runs on gasoline - so I can do a 18 hr drive in Maine in January when its 20 below zero( can you do that with an Tesla?).

For now - as far as laptop operating systems - I think MX Linux does that One_Thing-Very_Well. So I have a usb flash live copy of the current version. In case things change in the future - I want today's version - it does everything I would want from a laptop OS.

[KBD]

Music is a big thing for me. I keep it on my phone via a micro SD Card. I also keep it on a Plex server so I can play it across various devices, but mostly my Roku or Fire TV and soundbar. I have an over the air antenna in case our wifi goes out, and to save cash.
I'm preparing to round up all my digital photos (scattered across several services) to put onto my server and a large back up drive. Redundancy is a word I like.

[rs55]

Music is a big thing for me. I keep it on my phone via a micro SD Card. I also keep it on a Plex server so I can play it across various devices, but mostly my Roku or Fire TV and soundbar. I have an over the air antenna in case our wifi goes out, and to save cash.
I'm preparing to round up all my digital photos (scattered across several services) to put onto my server and a large back up drive. Redundancy is a word I like.

Yeah - music is big for me also. I have my 120 GB of music on a usb flash - so I can play it on my home stereo( via Roku) / or car. I have it on my phone. I have on my laptop - currently using DeadBeef ( very happy with this) - hooked up to a DAC and Amp and headphones.
I tried casting the music over my wifi - DLNA etc. Never worked great - and really dont need it.

[handy]

Sometimes things get broken:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06- ... ill-switch

[alexjack]

I really don't want a smart fridge, even if it's running linux. Just not enough advantage for the additional complexity. Some things are worth it. A computer is a lot more complicated than paper and a pencil, but I would presume that everyone on this forum thinks it's worth having a computer.