coffeeClean

Ebikes and electric devices, however, sound to me like something futuristic

There are kits enabling you to convert a muscle bike (push bike) into an e-bike. If you get one with a torque sensor, then it will detect how hard you push on the pedals and drive the motor proportional to that force. So you still must pedal but it amplifies your effort which preserves the natural feel and control of pedaling. It essentially makes the hills go away; a hilly place becomes a flat place.

IMO part of the fix for that is liberating psychedelics. There has been some research finding that if someone takes psilocybin (shrooms) before they reach the age of 35, they are significantly more open minded for the rest of their life. Though I’m not sure how they controlled for the question as to whether the drug makes people more psychologically flexible or whether they are more psychologically flexible in the first place if they are willing to try it.

Either way, it seems to naturally follow that conservatives proportionally tend to avoid psychedelics. It’s anecdotal but my fellow psychonauts are all liberal.

Might be a fun social experiment to propose a public gun lending armory. Like a library, you can walk in and check-out an AK-47 for a day or week for free. But just like the library charges for printed pages, you would have to pay for the ammo.

I don’t think a car-free city actually exists. The article mentions Copenhagen:

“[London] has avoided the kind of outright car bans seen elsewhere in Europe, such as in Copenhagen”

I’ve been to Copenhagen. There are cars throughout the city. There are some cycle-only paths that connect to intersections with cars. I cycled along side cars all over the city. Apparently Wired is calling car-reduced cities and cities with small car-free regions a “car-free city”.

Exceptionally, Brussels is a car-free city but for only one day out of the year. And car-free day falls on a Sunday. On that day it becomes illegal to drive a car in the city center without a special pass after showing you have good reason to use a car on that day. But even on that day, the outer region of Brussels is unaffected.

I’ve ditched email for the reason you mention. If I need to email a private sector entity, I might check their MX server and attempt to send a message if the receiving server is not Google or MS. But generally I nix whatever company I would otherwise want to reach. If I need to reach them (e.g. to get support for a product I already own and I’m stuck with), then I use snail mail. Same for public offices. Most government offices use Microsoft for email which is a non-starter for me. If they use MS then they’re getting snail mail from me.

What’s TAN?

(edit)
Regarding the train svc, the carsharing, Netflix, etc, I generally draw a line and say all the private sector stuff can be disregarded apart from life essentials like groceries. So in your list, the train service is a good point because that’s a public service which invokes human rights (equal access to public service). Since you mention Germany, I happen to recall some Germans saying that the train app can access tickets and fares that are otherwise unreachable, perhaps in part because some stations have no kiosk.

I’m collecting this info to document the extent that Google’s walled garden has a trapping effect. I regard Aurora Store as an illegal hacker option in this context because Aurora Store gives just two options:

• supply your Google creds (which neglects to escape the walled garden)
• use an anonymous account, which is actually a shared account that violates Google’s ToS

I personally will not do either of those because I believe that by using the exclusive app, it signals to the bank (or whatever establishment) that they successfully got the app to me and that there is no problem with their way of operating.

Anyway, I appreciate the info on the “ID Austria”. That’s indeed a noteworthy factor in documenting the Google trap.

Don’t need Google account to access my bank. How does that work exactly?

Like most banks, a bank pushed an app exclusively via Google Playstore or Apple’s store. At the same time, that bank shut down their website and closed their walk-in over-the-counter service. Customers then had 3 choices to access their account: join Google’s walled garden, join Apple’s walled garden, or make an appointment for every single transaction which incurs fees. Alternatively, the Android app can be obtained using an app called Aurora and violate Google’s ToS by using a shared account to download the app.

I think that particular bank started making their app available in Huawei’s app store, so there is an alternative walled garden for Android users in that case. But Huawei is an uncommon option as more and more banks trend in the direction of forced-Google-patronage.

Never needed an app to dial 911…the whole point of 911/999 is that it’s easy to remember, easy to dial. Also, I haven’t dialed 911 in 25 years, but I’m pretty sure opening the dialer and pressing 3 buttons isn’t too difficult. Also, I don’t see how having a Google account is required to dial 911 (or use an app? ) to do so.

A 911 app was hypothetical but a 112 app certainly exists. You populate the app with important details like name and address. The app is capable of both voice and text (SMS) and IIRC can also connect via wi-fi if there is no GSM signal. If you can’t speak for some reason (choking, throat cut or you’re hiding from an intruder and must be silent) the app transmits all the data you configured plus whatever you can type.

update

Someone in a crossposted thread said it’s not just Playstore that marries people to Google but also an API library for financial transactions:

https://infosec.pub/comment/7677961

http://techrights.org/o/2022/03/20/brussels-police-facebook/

Useful but important to stress: root required.

It’s a shame because I think in principle root should not be required. My unrooted device uses Netguard and Orbot to force traffic to be routed over Tor. A pro version of Netguard could support filtering at the firewall. Or alternatively, Orbot supports an outbound proxy. So I wonder if a Google-blocking proxy could run without root and Orbot could channel the traffic through it.

Ah, that’s interesting.. that’s what I was missing. So indeed if it directly controls the tuner and maintains a schedule, that sounds like a direct replacement of mythTV.

I just checked the official Debian repositories and there is no pkg for “Plex”. This means it’s either non-free, or it hasn’t become mainstream or mature enough for Debian to take notice. I’ll have to look into more and see why it’s not in Debian. I may be forced because it appears mythTV is dropped in recent Debian versions.

Do you consider Facebook a walled garden? One of the essential attributes to a walled garden is trapping people and making it hard to exit the garden. (see oppression 2 in this walled garden definition)

What you say about FB was certainly true in 2004. In 2022, a police dept. exclusively used FB in a way that denied theft victims from police protection unless they have a Facebook account. How is that not a trap? You can be outside the walled garden, but then you must give up police protection in that instance. Having to give up something essential (e.g. a human right) in order to escape is a trap IMO.

Otherwise, what is a trap to you? When a rat is trapped in a snap trap, you might argue that the rat has the option to chew its limb off to escape. But I still call the rat trapped because exiting the trap requires an unreasonable sacrifice.