Linux can be frustrating when something goes wrong, but at least you know it was by accident (either a bug in the software or a mistake on your part). In contrast, when proprietary software goes wrong it’s often due to some megacorporation deliberately trying to fuck you over, and that’s what’s really infuriating!

I wanted to upgrade my kids from Pi 4s to Pi 5s, but ended up just getting NUCs instead.

Did he still call you?

If so, I guess that just means you were important enough that he had your number memorized.

If by “complicates… basic PC ownership” they mean “infringes on your property rights as a computer owner,” then they’re finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for damn near a decade.

You should not accept having an abusive relationship with your operating system, and that’s what Windows has been since at least 8 (when they started infecting it with “telemetry”), if not earlier. Have some goddamn self-respect, people! Kick Microsoft to the curb!

If I admitted to calling, I would be confirming that the phone number the guy’s office received a call from was linked to this Lemmy account.

As it is, who knows who might have called? The call (or ideally, the calls, plural) could’ve come from any number of people who read that message.

Somebody tell this guy about Mastodon.

The phone number for his executive assistant is 617-349-4280.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/citycouncil/members/jivansobrinhowheeler

Upon further reflection, I think my previous comment may have been a little too harsh on it.

But I still think that, to be truly “excellent,” it could’ve made its point without muddying/confusing the definition of enshittification.

It’s not that “excellent.” It’s just ‘for the evulz’ mustache-twirling comical villainy, which ends up downplaying what’s actually important to know about enshittification, which is how self-serving and abusive it is. When companies enshittify products and services, they’re not just making them worse; they’re specifically making them more exploitative.

A lot of the examples shown in the video – cutting holes in socks, sawing off a chair leg so it wobbles, drying out a marker, etc. – are not enshittification. Enshittification is stuff like putting spyware in devices so that you double-dip on the purchase price and the value of the data, or turning products (as opposed to services) into a subscription. Stuff that extracts unearned value from the customer.

It touches on it in the latter part of the video, but for the most part misses the mark.

Lots of unreasonable devs out there.

That’s not enough. Just like with systemd, you will be made to care about what the corporatist Microsoft-garglers at Red Hat do, whether you use it or not.

Then use Keepass, which is literally just a local app.

Magic, I guess, 'cause nothing in the sceenshot would do it, unless the attacker had already replaced cat with a trojan or something.

Admittedly I haven’t used Omada even though my gear supported it (before I flashed OpenWRT on it), but I don’t think it bears any resemblance to Ansible except in the most basic sense of being able to accomplish administrative tasks somehow.

What I was expecting was something that would provide a web dashboard showing all of my OpenWRT (and ideally, misc. other devices) at once, maybe with a nice diagram of the network topology and stuff like that.

Does there exist something more appropriate?

EDIT: I talked with a guy and totally forgot an important point, does reflashing the hardware prevent me from using features with the vendors i listed? I know companies can suck

If they’re software features and OpenWRT doesn’t implement them, yes. That’s not really the fault of the hardware manufacturer, though; that’s just a tradeoff you’ve chosen to make.

For example, I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to use Ubiquiti’s UniFi or TP-Link’s Omada software-defined networking to manage your OpenWRT-flashed device, but that’s just because OpenWRT hasn’t implemented it, not because installing it trips some kind of DRM fuse or whatever.

(I think OpenWISP might be the OpenWRT-compatible Free Software equivalent for that sort of thing, but I have yet to look into it myself so I’m not sure.)

Otherwise, I haven’t personally heard of any vendors intentionally sabotaging their hardware such that it disables itself when flashed with OpenWRT, but that’s not the same as an affirmative statement that it can’t ever happen.

Everything’s an outdoor activity if you’re exhibitionist enough! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Edit: oh wait, you meant genealogy research.

Stop the atrocities from happening and then we won’t have to keep talking about them.

Nobody gives a fuck about your weaseling technicalities. The salient fact is that this change was made in order to “comply in advance” with totalitarian fuckery. It SIGNALS POLITICAL SUPPORT for it, and that’s not okay!

That outline is like the entire continental shelf, or all the area where the glaciers are directly over rock (as opposed to having ocean in between), or something like that.

But if the ice weren’t there, not all of it would actually be above sea level:

Might actually be smaller than Australia if the ice were gone, give or take things like sea level rise and isostatic rebound.