• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
cake
Cake day: March 15th, 2025

help-circle
  • You would hate living in my apartment – there are at least seven doorbell cameras on my floor, and more cameras in the elevators and parking garage.

    I understand your privacy concerns but I don’t do anything to conceal myself around doorbell cameras. I know I’m recorded by dozens of cameras and other devices every time I leave home. Trying to conceal my face would make me stand out more and might look suspicious to my neighbors. So it’s better to be boring and not give the neighbors anything interesting to look at. Those cameras are here to stay and soon almost every home will have them.






  • Privacy while shopping in person is literally impossible these days, so I don’t even try there.

    I know I’m recorded dozens if not hundreds of times by cameras and other devices every time I leave home. Apartment building security cams, neighbors’ doorbell cams, public transit cams, police surveillance cams, dashcams, retail cams. There are thousands of automated license plate readers in my state. My car has four cams and sends all sorts of data back to the manufacturer. My apartment front door is electronic and it logs all locks & unlocks. My building’s parking garage logs every time I enter and exit. Virtually every intersection has surveillance cams (not just red light cams). Hell even when hiking you’ll end up on trail cams.

    Last month police in my metro used outdoor surveillance cams to falsely accuse a woman of package theft and the cop that visited her home told her, “You know we have cameras in that town. You can’t get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing."

    Your best bet for privacy while shopping is if you walk everywhere, pay with cash and wear a mask. And even if you do all that, gait-recognition technology will be widespread in the very near future and you’ll be identifiable in public even while wearing a mask.


  • Are you me!? What you described is exactly my experience with Linux. I really want to completely ditch Windows, but I’m not keen on the idea of spending full days of my life every year on maintaining a Linux installation. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro and PopOS, all of which have bugs preventing audio from being played on my laptop (I spent so many hours troubleshooting and couldn’t figure it out). Finally tried Mint and audio works most of the time, but Mint is a super mediocre experience that I’m not excited about and I don’t understand why people rave about it. My laptop is dual boot and I use Mint 95% of the time but it’s pretty lame and doesn’t feel like “my” OS.

    Linux enthusiasts scratching their heads wondering why the masses aren’t switching over to Linux need to understand that it’s nowhere near ready to go mainstream. Even after decades of development it takes more troubleshooting and customization than 95% of people are willing to give it.