well, it’s not just Teams and not just MS. Have you worked with Zoom lately? I do agree that Teams occupies that very special dark space in my heart right next to hate and loathing.

any time you buy DRM’d content you’re subject to revocation of rights to use it. So buying such content along with purchase of devices geared specifically for DRM-only content is doomed from the beginning.

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funny that nobody argued opposite: all the new services are primarily streaming/hosted and otherwise “not here”. New crop of tech solutions requires crap-ton of bandwidth. So caps prevent those companies from doing ripping off customers in other areas. How un-Republican is that? They are getting in the way of enterprises making a living! So the most Republican thing to do would be to let foxes watch the henhouse. Ask ISPs to regulate themselves so that “everybody”'s (and I mean every enterprise) happy. In other words getting in the way of this proposal is very much just “polid’ticking” trying to undo what dems are doing regardless whether it’s actually a conservative thing to do or not.

some crypto learned to be efficient, others did not. We still do have crypto-mining botnets. Crypto remains to be useless to humanity and very profitable for few. Same with AI. Same with stock market. Instead of producing something of value we keep on burning through resources while selected few enjoy bonfire others have to fight to stay alive…

not only does he burn through cash, he burns through resources making life worse now for everybody: AI rivals crypto in resource waisting while not contributing at all to any improvements. I fail to see “brighter future” for us through AI as it is energy-intensive, unsustainable endeavor for which we are woefully unprepared both materially (energy efficiency, semiconductor manufacturing/recycling, etc) and psychologically (ethics etc.). Yeah, grand on paper, terrible in reality

lack of “social intelligence”. They mostly rose through the ranks because their technical (or business) skill. They never had to act for benefit of others to advanve

at this point all major chipmakers have proven that innovation is dead, nobody cares about “boring” fratures. We can finally take a step back and reflect on why did we end up here

Best AI rant hands-down. I can agree with every word there.

“Feed me Saymour… feed me…”

100%

Disclaimer: I did not buy smart TVs recently. However from my research and experiences with other “smart” appliances - manufacturers now offloaded the most basic functions to the cloud and they LOVE IT. This gives them leverage in any extortion scheme they desire (just look at Toyota making some of their fob functions “subscription only” retroactively. This is a new era of digital extortion and the only way to shift is to avoid participating in a market of “smart things”. Corporations certainly capitalize on that, but if there is no market for smart things or it’s not lucrative enough they’ll begrudgingly cave as they need to sell. We’re not the majority though so unless we educate others this is the new reality.

from what I’ve observed so far outsourcing does not preclude proxying external entities through existing trusted domain.

not at all

I’m in the same boat. So I kill two birds with one stone when I shop for used dumb TVs - they are cheap and available as general population craves “smart”. Can’t loose there. I got 42" for $25 and larger ones can be had for under $100. So even if you’ll buy a lemon once or twice you’re still ahead

manufacturer may very well integrate add and update endpoints so that it’s rather hard to distinguish. For example, say Samsung decides to serve adds and updates. Doing so through https://serives.samsung.com/{ads,updares} they leave you with 0 handle on what’s going on, since the only thing your routers and proxies can see is “samsung.com” and differentiator is “hidden” after that. So TLDR; is: you either allow internet access or you do not, there’s no “a little bit”

don’t stress out about it - you’re on the right path, so just keep exploring. For music, depending on your location, there are various internet stations that broadcast indie and other stuff that is not mainstream. Also go to local concerts and buy CDs from artists - they actually need it. You should’ve been prepared to forfeit ownership of anything on amazon prime, kindle etc, for amazon has long history of denying people access to stuff they assumed they owned. For movies we collect DVD/Bluray disks as I don’t trust any of the streaming providers, nor do I want to share with them my viewing habbits (downside: you need storage space for those). For podcasts I love AntennaPod on Android. For books we always opt for unencumbered epubs, sometimes pdf which are abundant. Audiobooks through librivox are a thing as well. I will repeat myself: don’t stress out. Take it as a wild safari and go hunting for new and exciting things that are not entangled with big corps that suck the soul out of everything : artists, consumers, employees, shareholders, etc.

depending on where you are in phone replacement/upgrade cycle I would recommend Fairphone or looking into e/OS.

Like others mentioned don’t expect to do a wholesale jump. Slowly replace services with alternatives: Proton mail, NextCloud, Box, Dropbox, Lemmy, Mastodon to name a few services. There are numerous apps that can interact with those services so you’ll be spending some time going over those sorting what works for you.

To get the apps FDroid coupled with Aurora you can get most apps (that do not have explicit dependency on Googleware). Amazon App store is a possibility too for some commercial apps. For Youtube there are several alternatives like LibrePipe and NewPipe (but there are more). For existing social media site apps there are thin wrapper browsers that would “sandbox” each site allowing you to still use them while you slowly detach yourself: SlimSocial, RedReader, etc.

I’ve been Google-free for a bit now but I went with LineageOS+microG setup which may be challenging for you at this stage.

Treat it less as a crusade and more like multilevel challenge when upon completion of one challenge you get to complete another. It could be fun and liberating.

yeah, recent revelations seem to point that way

Ars posted that there’s some evidence to suggest board wanted to chase profit over ethics or somesuch. Altman apparently did not listen.