They want to get every piece of data they can extract from you. And they aren’t going to stop.

Google tryna trick users into pressing the default right blue bg button universally implied for "proceed" 😂🙏.

So Google maps is pretty useful, but of course not a real option. I have OsmAnd which is pretty good with lots of features google maps does not have, like water maps which was very useful on my last canoe tour. The downside is you need a subscription now, which is probably it's moneys worth but fuck that, so sometimes I still use google maps in the browser with GPS off.

What do you guys use, what can you recommend?

Apparently I cannot contact teachers unless I am using Gmail or something else that harvests my and my family’s data. What a joke.

Edit: this is not an official news story and is based on my own experience with NYC DOE.

I'm one of the maintainers, so this is self-promotion. I want honest feedback more than upvotes.

NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook) is useful, but every document you add goes to Google, and you can only use Gemini. SurfSense is an open-source (Apache-2.0) desktop app for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux that does the same job on your own machine.

Why it fits here

• No account, and no Google sign-in.
• Your files stay on your disk. Parsing, OCR, search and the model can all run locally.
• Nothing reaches the network until you allow that host, and that includes app updates.
• Usage statistics are optional and off until you say yes; they never include an ID or your content.
• You choose the model: a local one it downloads for you, Ollama or LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible API.

What it does

• Cited answers from your PDFs, Office files, CSV, Markdown, images and audio recordings.
• Mind maps, flashcards, quizzes and podcasts, voiced on your machine.
• An agent that writes Word documents, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets and web pages, and edits your own files as a new copy. Word edits come back as tracked changes.

Where it's worse than NotebookLM

• No video overviews.
• The local voices don't sound like Google's hosts.

https://github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense

Given that Proton is making people re-interview for their jobs to double down on AI, I am looking for an alternative Gmail/Google Drive solution. I'd love it if it has some kind of Google Docs functionality but if I gotta live without it, so be it - I just want 1-2TB of private cloud email and photo backups. I don't mind paying for it. I want it to be organized/hosted in a country that isn't subject to USA Cloud Act or Five Eyes/Fourteen Eyes info sharing, and I don't want an LLM reading my data.

Any recommendations? Budget isn't a concern, but ease of use on Android is. I have a day job and would rather not have a second job to administer and work with this solution.

Just a reminder.

I need something with good reliability and deliverability to people.

Mailbox.org is not one of them, heaps of people on their support forum having issues with emails going to peoples spam etc and they arent doing anything about it

Yes, I knew Lg was taking pictures of what I watch but I didnt know this included video from thumbdrives. I wasnt watching anything weird, just a show from when I was a kid. Writing this to say wtf and also if you have an LG Smart Tv that you should probably get a new tv preferable non smart. Also if anyone knows how to disable (break) bluetooth on these tvs I would appreciate it. I tried watching a teardown to find out how to access the bluetooth module to destroy it but I didnt find a video for the model of my tv and i have been too busy to look again.

can someone help me choose between Brave and Firefox.
so first brave has a perfect coveryourtracks result but firefox fails at the third.
but also ff has ublock origin and not the lite one like Brave so whats the decision ?
which one would you choose to use?🤯🤯

I want a device that never prompts me to "upgrade to the AI package" or "Ask the AI assistant" or do, frankly, anything AI that is not strictly necessary for operation. I also want to have full control of the apps that I choose to install.

I was looking at Linux phones but it sounds like nothing on the market is terribly user-friendly or compatible with common apps yet, without significant modification. Unfortunately I've never rooted a phone and am not great at modifying mobile devices.

Realistically, are there any viable options for a general mobile user? I'd go with a "dumb" phone but I do rely on navigation apps quite a lot, as well as transport, banking, and some media stuff. But I'm close to giving up all of it if it meant I'd never have to see an AI upsell again.

i enjoyed using assistant for simple tasks like music identifying, Google Search (voice to text) and Google snippet answering

is there any good alternative to assistant as unlike Gemini which is a chatbot first everything else last that can't do simple tasks (can't do music identifying as Gemini just tells me to use Shazam despite knowing google has music identity feature)

i know someone must have a non ai system (ai as in chatgpt chatbot first system)

Hi,

Currently degoogling, deMSing, deMetaing, deUSing my digital life as much as possible.

I've started a full home server that replaces streaming services, self hosts passwords, photos, videos, remote documents, etc etc.

But my final boss of degoogling is Android. I've got a Nothing Phone 3, running Nothing OS 5 which seems to use a lot of android open source project apps like messaging, dialler, contacts etc.. I've already replaced those with FOSS apps and disabled the original ones it shipped with. I use Aurora Store or droidify or direct APK downloads for apps 90% of the time. My only problem lies in apps like my banking apps which all rely on Play Integrity to work so I'm forced to still use Play Store, and Android Auto.

I would really like to find a way to either get around Play Integrity checks. And replace Google Play Services with MicroG without making the phone unusable. Id be open to rooting the phone and unlocking bootloader but last time I did that on another phone 2 years ago my banking apps died - and using browser on a phone for banking in Australia is... I would rather rub glass in my eyes it's that painful.

I would also like to remove as much google phonehoming as possible from android auto. I'm stuck with Waze as my nav of choice - no other service live tracks police radars, traffic, closures anywhere near as close here in Australia. So if I can strip again as much data going to google it would be okay.

If there's a google wallet alternative that works id be open to that otherwise I'll just carry my physical cards

I've made some choices that I know mean I won't be filling disengaged, but I'm trying to reduce the amount of data drastically. Eg Facebook I still maintain a dummy account for marketplace as it's about the only place you can buy person to person second hand goods here. And Spotify (for now).

Any advice would be good.

Has anyone received this pop-up before? What is this settings for and how do i opt-out?

Hello, I have been gradually de-googling my life because of privacy concerns. However I want to speed up the process since I found out about the ecocide in Finland. What are some good alternatives to Calendars? I share an office with a couple of colleagues and we use calendars to keep track of who is occupying the space on any given time slot. I would really appreciate an app that allows importing my data from Calendars to avoid messes. Thank you

Last days, I have been diving into the outgoing requests my Android TV (Sony Bravia) produces.

Technical background for those interested

I have set up a docker, which hosts wireguard, pihole and a custom container running a python script and a simple html webserver to give me some insights. I then connected my TV to WireGuard and set it to only use Wireguard for internet traffic.

This way, any traffic incoming in the containers Pihole instance was guaranteed to be from my TV. Further, this also allowed me to mess with firewalls to catch any DNS bypass attempts (DoQ, DoT). To be fair, until now the firewall hasn't caught anything and everything is routed through pihole, so the only use is the isolation aspect.

Findings

TL;DR of technical background: I have connected my TV directly to a Pihole, a software package that filters internet requests containing ads or trackers to and from websites.

I am truly truly astonished by the amount of traffic that is filtered by Pihole from my TV. I have added some common blocklists to its, and as of now, the percentage blocked is 35%.

More than a third of outgoing requests contains trackers, ads, or other unnecessary information.

Two findings:

1. I have disabled the apple app: yet apple sends a request EVERY TWO MINUTES. Luckily, pihole intercepts it

2. another app in the top-3 of blocked requests: Samba. This piece of crap software has the following functionality according to Wikipedia:

Samba TV tracks what appears on the users' TV by reading pixels and utilizing this data for personalized recommendations on the TV or mobile apps connected to the television. This capability extends to streaming programs and video games played on the television.

Samba has been sending the contents of my pixels diligently every 2 minutes until now. Well, no longer, thanks to Pihole.

TL;DR: your smart TV is an absolute pile of trash, and if you have the means, setup a Pihole for your network. Installing it is incredibly easy, and it will block a lot of unwanted traffic and ads. If anybody needs any help with this, let me know!