I don’t see ads but if I were to, and despite all my precautions some would be on topic based on my past behavior I would methodically dissect to find out the leak. Namely I would try to automate the process :

• identify a place showing ads
• take an action, e.g. search or browser, on a verifiable unique topic (in order to prevent from generic suggestions, e.g medication during flu season)
• verify if the ads become relevant
• enable/disable any of the tools used, repeat

Pretty much all open hardware devices should be on such a list, e.g.

• NitroKey for both authentication tokens and storage (of e.g ssh keys)
• PGB-1 (based on RP2040) or Haxophone (based on RPi Zero) for music
• Precursor for token and dev (via its own FPGA)

so check CrowdSupply for more of such things.

I’d also add reMarkable. Sure you can use their cloud but you do NOT have to. It means you have your own Linux e-reader but also sketchpad entirely offline. You can work and sync with ssh or rsync and even setup your own cloud, cf https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud . If you want something more open from the start check the PineNote but it’s harder to get and you have to tinker a bit more.

No doubt NVIDIA is peddling AI as they are financially depending on it now.

Now from claiming something is powerful and even used to actually shipping code on something low level and benchmarkable like (GPU) drivers I have doubt. I imagine they can say they use AI there to rephrase comment and it would “technically correct” but beyond that I’m still skeptical.

Regarding chip design, AI has been used for decades … if you consider routing to be AI. It’s not generative in the modern sense, it’s not using LLM, but it’s automated a process.

To me it’s the typical Harvard Business School playbook. C-suite repeat keywords they read in their peer most popular magazine, they aggregate in a document they call “strategy” they lower down the chain of commands people “execute” that because they must, thanks to KPIs.

I’d love to hear it from an actual engineer working on drivers but I imagine it’d be hard to get a honest opinion with NDAs and all.

Thanks for providing all the sources!

Source please

Sure, but FWIW I play from AAA to indies and it “works” as in no bug, no noticeable visual glitch.

I don’t benchmark from my driver version to the previous one on Windows or Linux or a price point equivalent with AMD hardware, I just play. I don’t think anybody gain much from checking performance benchmarks before playing a game, at least I can say for sure to me that’s not part of the fun.

I would notice if something was blatantly wrong e.g 50% performance hit, but I wouldn’t if it’s 5% hit. I don’t really care for it as it doesn’t affect my gameplay. Like I said, it’s from a casual player, not a pro player nor a game tinkerer.

Working “better” on Windows means nothing to me. Either I can play and I’m happy or I can’t (which never happened) then I’d be disappointed and potentially check why.

PS: I’m also a developer of XR content so I’m relatively confident I’d spot any significant problem.

No idea, I’ve been playing “normal” games and VR games with my NVIDIA card for years now on Debian and… it just works. It just keeps on working. Maybe people are hardcore tinkerers that mess with specific options but me, I just play and I’m happy with it.

credit cards, debit cards, and now cashless vendors

FWIW in Belgium you can get prepaid nameless cards. The post and their bank partner know it’s yours (due to KYC) but not the shops and for online shops you can use drop boxes.

For membership cards I specifically reject because of that. It’s optional though so IMHO it’s precisely the easiest thing to escape, just say no.

Makes me curious if there is a per country list of banks that provide an option NOT to have that. I know that if my bank were to do force such limitations I’d consider moving to another one.

Sidetracked a bit but last week I was in the UK. I tried to visit a website (not porn actually, just private messaging on BlueSky) and it asked to verify my age. Initially I thought “Meh… OK… let’s see the process” which then lead to installing an app maybe (I’m not sure tbh as I was in rush). Clearly I didn’t want to do it because the DM was potentially urgent (scheduling to meet someone ASAP) … so what did I do? I switched from my browser to my VPN, connected from Austria, refreshed… no age verification. It took me a grand total of 5s to bypass the system.

TL;DR: maybe you can actually escape even though you are convinced you can’t.

Of course, in fact you do not have to change right now, or even next month. Instead you are in a great position when you already have a device because it means you can take the time you need to prepare for a transition without any rush. The problem IMHO is … if you repeat the cycle. If in few years, or whenever you do change phones you say, again “Switching isn’t necessarily easy or doable for everyone” while having done nothing to change your situation.

Please, don’t rush a change and make it painful. Take the time and use the resources you have… but do something, even if a small thing, to go where you want to be. Do not stay stuck in a place you do not even enjoy.

No worries!

GraphineOS

GrapheneOS

Honestly… I come from iOS, using for nearly a decade. Yes that stuff is secure, yes that stuff is (or at least was) stable, yes that stuff is slick to the point of being a status symbol… but DAMN does it suck for interoperability!

Every success of bringing the Apple ecosystem to interact with anything is just so ridiculously hard… for in the end bringing very little.

Do yourself a favor, switch to (deGoogled) Android to enjoy KDE Connect, adb, scrcpy, etc just working out of the box, copying normal files the normal way, however you want. Try “just” Linux if you can’t but on mobile that’s not for everyone.

Again, I celebrate this success and all ways, e.g. iSH or Homebrew, that help to tinker, manage, work with Apple hardware but honestly I suggest ignoring it entirely. Just rely on software and hardware that actually provides the bare minimum to be interoperable. Not this.

Instead use this, and iSH, Homebrew, libimobiledevice, and the rest to transition AWAY from that locked ecosystem.

Hard to fall behind what? None of them is making anything interesting. Best they can do is provide some text that sound superficially plausible, is statistically correct and yet have 0 reasoning.

Nobody is “ahead” of anybody except is managing to do so with even more data while wasting even more resources.

Maybe more importantly of the participants in that race demonstrated that to keep on doing so will actually solve any of the problems that have been discovered along the way.

FWIW rsync also works on mobile phones and VR standalone HMDs, via e.g. termux or ish … so it’s really on working fine on… pretty much anything with a terminal and a connection really.

Warmly recommended.

Also if you need more than solely the last version, check rdiff-backup.

All my services are fine. I self host. Yes I’m quite pedantic about it. :D

Group read on “Surveillance Capitalism” but in truth…

• tinkered with Linux as a kid
• contributed to Mozilla
• loved the ideal of free software relatively early on

… so it was rather coherent with related yet orthogonal efforts.

A friend of my is a researcher working on large scale compute (>200 GPUs) perfectly aware of ROCm and sadly he said last month “not yet”.

So I’m sure it’s not infeasible but if it’s a real use case for you (not just testing a model here and there but running frequently) you might have to consider alternatives unfortunately, or be patient.

Treating Google and Meta as apolitical …

I didn’t.

Tracking from WHOM and thus WHY should be the question.

It’s different to be tracked for profit, e.g. Google or Meta, versus for political or corporate espionage purposes.

The former is basically volunteering information through bad practices. Those companies do NOT care about “you” as an individual. In fact they arguably do not even know who you are. Avoiding their services is basically enough. It might be inconvenient but it’s easy : just do not.

The later is a totally different beast. If somehow the FSB, because you criticized Putin, or NSO Group, for something similar or because you have engineer something strategic to a business competitor who is a client of theirs, then you will be specifically targeted. This is an entirely different situation and IMHO radically more demanding. You basically don’t have to just care about privacy good practices, which is enough for the former, but rather know the state of the art of security.

So… assuming you “just” worry about surveillance capitalism and hopefully live in a jurisdiction benefiting from the Brussels effect with e.g GDPR related laws, either way is fine.