There are several issues here.

The lemmy instance thing is because people don’t like being spammed by onlyfans ads, torrents of AI generated porn spam, deluges of random penises men are happy to post assuming lots of people want to see it, and in some cases operators have ethical objections to porn production itself, or don’t want to deal with the possibility of rehosting and being responsible for content containing minors being hosted on their services and the legal headaches that entails.

The last one about legal problems has arisen due to increased awareness yes but also increased pressure. The amount of hosting companies out there who look the other way for violations are fewer and fewer by year out of their own fears from payment companies, technical partners, etc. Even accidentally hosting that stuff besides the risk of getting you raided by cops at 2am and having your whole life gone through (while automatic weapons are being pointed at your face) could lead to your hosting being terminated and having to pay more and more each time that happens as you move up from the cheapest hosts to the ones left. It’s also a hassle to move.

Censoring tarot cards, swear words in memes and on TV that’s an example of corporate prudishness. That’s an example of fear of upsetting advertisers, of people self-censoring to go viral, to avoid Zuckerbook removing their post and actioning their account because Zuckerbook has this weird notion of being family friendly and appealing to advertisers. So much of that lays at the feet of advertisers and Christian pressure groups who exist to beat the drums of fear of losing advertisers and pressuring those same advertisers to pressure the tech companies.

It’s about risk compliance for those tech companies as well. Your bank would rather close all your accounts and refuse to do business with you ever again if you have less than several million dollars with them if you bring too many automated red flags. They won’t care you have half a million with them, they won’t care you protest your innocence, even the chance the system is right in flagging you a risk and getting hit by authorities leads them to a behavior similar to self-censoring where they self-police overly aggressively out of fear because you’re just not worth the trouble and risk.

In the same way these companies don’t care about artistic expression, they don’t care about freedom of speech, they care about maximizing profits and that means minimizing compliance risks, minimizing risks of being legally actioned because there’s even a chance what you shared could turn out to lead to legal liability, and minimizing risks of upsetting overly sensitive prudish customers and advertisers.

So at it’s core its driven by a capitalist drive to avoid government scrutiny, fines, interventions, and by that same desire to offend the least amount of people and not upset advertisers by placing their ad for a new burger next to erotica art or bared human body parts or naughty words.

This is silly. You’re approaching this with wrong-headed thinking. Just use makemkv.

What you will have if you used hacked firmware to bypass physical anti-copying methods present on BluRay discs to actually get a bit for bit copy of your disc is a useless blob of encrypted data that you have no way of verifying for accuracy (that it was copied correct or that the disc itself didn’t have subtle physical damage which gave you something damaged because you can’t play it to verify) and which you have no way of using. You’ll have no way of ripping it or turning it into usable data in future if your disc does go bad because no one else uses this method so there’s no software that will allow you to turn this encrypted blob easily back into a playable movie and to burn it to a new BluRay writable disc would break laws anyway because you’re engaging in duplication and secondly all BluRay authoring (burning) programs are built around building and burning unencrypted video files to a disc not around burning an encrypted blob to a disc (often specific sectors containing specific data must be written to specific parts of the disc to make it playable, something no public program will help you with when trying to bit for bit copy in reverse and which blindly bit for bit copying at low level isn’t likely to achieve).

Everyone else breaks the encryption and dumps a copy of the disc including the AACS keys and certs to prove ownership and you should do the same rather than thinking you’re particularly special or vulnerable. If you’re that much an enemy of the state or media companies they’ll do you just as much for having the encrypted copies and state you had INTENT to break it (and indeed defeated DRM mechanisms on the drive firmware itself first which may be a violation of law in order to get that copy) if they’re trying to make an example out of you because you’ve pissed them off.

In practice no media company is likely to go after someone breaking the encryption while retaining the discs and keeping the copies only for themselves. There’s simply no incentive to harassing paying customers in that way if you’re not uploading the contents or hosting a for-profit Plex or Jellyfin server of the contents or burning bootleg copies of the films. You’d have to go around publicly bragging in your own name about breaking the encryption and pretty much dare them to get you for them to know or care enough to do anything about it short of you otherwise breaking the law as I outlined above.

Not surprising but unfortunate. As to the new model probably they’re waiting for upgraded Siri AI to include that as a selling feature as a kind of home assistant hub seems to be the consensus. Really only reason to wait has been a newer chip that can support on-device AI upscaling of older video content. At this point they may not release it until late 2027 or even 28. Really hard to say as Apple isn’t rushing into the AI stuff the way Google is and seem to be pacing themselves or struggling with it depending on how you see it.

That is quite an ouch bump too. The 128GB model with ethernet used to be only $150 and the cheaper wifi only one was $120. Still a decent chance some retailer puts them on sale as the old prices used to drop by up to $30 each a few times a year.

As to the Shield. Last I saw IF you can even find the Shield pro was that they were going for $250 or so each. NVIDIA may not have updated MSRP but that’s probably because they forgot it exists. I know for a fact that things like Ugoos and Homatics have bumped their prices up to mostly over $200 lately thanks to the AI nonsense so the future really is over $200 for a device like this new and if this continues it could be $300 by spring/summer next year.

Apple TV4k. No ads on Home Screen, prompts for permissions like location data use by apps, etc.

Anything else I could recommend would cost at least as much or more and either require ADB commands/rooting process and installing alternative launchers OR lack the ability to use commercial streaming apps.

Price new is significantly lower than the Shield pro.

So far due to old stock prices haven’t gone up but once they release a new model due to AI RAM crisis I expect an increase of $30-$50 at least probably including the used market. It’s not cheap but it’s cheaper than most of the “nice” Android running devices.

Pair with a pi-hole or firewall with DNS blocking capabilities and you can do a lot more to block tracking by the apps themselves though obviously only so much without breaking them.

Maybe they should have done proper investigations aimed at penetrating the network instead of just seizing devices and thinking they can pop them into their zionist entity hacking devices and get their case delivered on a silver platter?

The old way would be build a case against someone in this network then flip them into an asset with threats of heavy jail time for their involvement in it and other crimes and get them to assist in penetrating it in exchange for sentencing leniency or even going free.

They still happily take the time to do this and secure informants when infiltrating leftist groups but criminals are not worth the hassle I guess.

Enjoy not being able to use your bank, major websites, email, online shopping, pay utility bills, do basic and required civic functions online (that require alternatives of driving long distances and/or waiting on the phone for long periods of time), etc because your open source operating system doesn’t pass the attestation check.

Maybe not long after Google, Cloudflare and others will just block you behind anti-bot defenses because you don’t pass such a check and only bots would not pass such a check.

Hiding on Linux is not a solution to a legal problem. It’s at best punting.

This stuff is either defeated or you’ll enjoy living as a hermit cut off from society with your perfectly private, perfectly offline computer.

Same. And LO cannot do everything MS office does.

It can do major things and Writer is probably 98% there (Calc much lower) but as an example of an obscure feature: Word can do nested tables and last I checked LO cannot. As a major feature Calc cannot do proper tables with headers and sorting and the opinion of the devs is to just use a database which for large sets is fair enough but I semi-often work with smaller sets where it doesn’t make sense and I just need a quick CSV sort. I have also tried to convince not so computer literate people to switch to LO and some of them have missed the proper tables support and telling them to learn to use databases isn’t an acceptable solution as many of these people are older and their needs are things like finances or lists of their collections of stuff.

Word’s styling options are also just leagues ahead if you’re preparing documents for the office it’s just easier to get better looking results. Same with Powerpoint.

Well could be these companies are buying on fascism because they’re either run by fascists or being shaken down by fascists or their friends are fascists encouraging them to do this and they uncritically do so for some vague or not so vague promises. So it’s more a signal of obedience and doubling down on the move to open, naked reaction and taking over open source with fascism.

That or its an intelligence op and the fascism is a bonus but the guy behind it is just pliable or a useful tool and there are larger plans to use this as a vehicle for influence to control open source, insert back-doors, push CIA coder guys into the right positions, steer in anti-China stuff to carve up the world of open source into strictly divided western and non-western code, remove openness and cooperation and militarize the space for American use.

Either way not good as functionally this is a big money pot being created and centralized under reactionary control to bully open source into adopting reactionary politics and other not good things. Could be Linux is seen as increasingly a threat with the open spying on Microsoft driving enough of the public to Linux that corporations, governments, etc feel a need now to seize control of it.

BIOS boot passwords were from another era with different needs and assumptions. In controlled access environments they can still have an impact if you have a proper chassis that has locks on it preventing removal of drives. Most normal people don’t possess such business class chassis. The scenario was a business environment with security teams, other employees, supervisors and locks that while you could cut them with heavy equipment you’d be noticed doing so. In terms of preventing a team of thieves breaking in with power tools and stealing things true it never was meant to prevent that. It’s more authorization and access control within an organization. The idea being perhaps the CEO’s machine or a special machine for accessing sensitive devices would be physically locked and have such a password installed as another layer of security that couldn’t be bypassed surreptitiously.

Additionally back in the day these BIOS boot passwords were paired with chassis intrusion alarms which went off every subsequent boot if the chassis was opened thanks to a sensor and the only way to clear that alarm was logging into the BIOS with an admin password.

Your gaming computer BIOS supports neither of these nor does your gaming motherboard have a chassis intrusion connector nor does your gaming case come with support for such a device.

But it was never about preventing data destruction even in these cases. It was more preventing access and making any such access more time consuming and likely to trip alarms to allow a response including evaluation of compromise by professionals.

If you want to protect your data make backups. If you want it well protected against determined parties who want to destroy all copies and/or thieves then locate a copy off-premises. If you can’t do that at least locate a copy within a bolted down safe.

No. Western governments for decades have been running automated keyword systems on all calls listening for phrases like “bomb” and flagging all such calls. Get flagged enough and a human reviews it.

This is done with full cooperation of the big telephone companies and has gone beyond intelligence use to “lawful access” requests from the police. The Snowden revelations were not that this was being done (I mean it’s mentioned in Enemy of the State so it was an open ‘secret’ by 1998) but rather that the NSA was doing this for all internet traffic, for all emails, for webcam sessions, that they were storing things that were not even flagged in a vast database of innocent people who hit no keywords and thus had no reason to be under suspicion. That was the big outrage, that and the hacking and national security letters to big companies and the fact it was all searchable by humans like Snowden (and now with AI can all be analyzed in detail unfortunately to create detailed records on every single living person).

Linux works with 4k. Jellyfin, Plex, Kodi, etc can all stream 4k streams to Linux assuming you’re using your own content and not content from commercial services that impose DRM.

HDR and Dolby Vision are another matter because even on Windows those are recent and limited implementations.

Linux hasn’t implemented proper Dolby Vision and HDR can be finicky but does mostly work on wayland. This is down to it being a lot of work, closed source and DRM and licensing problems from Nvidia, HDMI forum, etc that make it hard and very slow going. To be fair Dolby Vision doesn’t really work on Windows either for streaming your own videos purposes. I think LG has an application that can sort of make it work with certain models of theirs but I believe it’s mainly for gaming.

Media company DRM refuses to allow it. They fear the pirates (who bypass their DRM regardless using hacked android streaming devices) will use it to pirate their stuff more easily.

Even on Windows which has a locked down DRM pipeline you have to use Google Chrome or Microslop Edge with widevine for this and a few services STILL refuse to let you watch above 1080p on anything but a streaming box/stick or mobile OS because of their incredible fear of pirates and incredible hatred of general computing devices and user freedom.

Do you need works out of the box without a ton of work on your part but the privacy isn’t totally perfect? Then Apple TV 4k.

Do you use no major commercial streaming services and only your own hosted content from Plex/Jellyfin and you want to do some very light cloud gaming from the couch/bed? Then an Intel N150 mini PC or AMD equivalent (at present with RAM prices expect to pay at least $400 though if you want you can probably get a used SFF PC made recently (important for energy saving hardware decoding of video codecs) may work for you with either Jellyfin client or Kodi.

Caveat: HDR on Linux isn’t happening anytime soon and forget Dolby Vision. Also forget above 720p, maybe 1080p in Google Chrome for online streaming services.

Vero V by the OSMC people is also an option but won’t work with commercial streaming services though it is more private but you have to use your own content. It’s more plug and play than the mini-pc route and does support HDR and such. But unlike mini-pcs you can’t even open a browser to jankily watch commercial streaming services using it.

These stores host flock and other cameras on the premise of: it deters crime, decreases theft, shoplifting, and other criminal acts and is a net benefit on that basis. Privacy makes them no money. As far as they’re concerned they’d put cameras in your cars and homes to make sure you’re not stealing from them.

You have to break that calculation so it costs far more than it can save to host these. Cutting down cameras doesn’t incur anywhere near large enough a cost to change that calculus and there’s a good chance Flock pays for the new cameras not the store. A boycott would be hard to get them to acknowledge as being connected to their hosting these kinds of surveillance systems and the people who put them in and keep them there would try to strongly deny a correlation so it would need to be a militantly disciplined, well organized campaign.

The problem is you need the media to help you organize such a widespread and well-telegraphed in message boycott campaign and the media is fully on the side of Flock and regarding any vandalism of Flock and similar ALPRs as a case where they desperately want the person caught and will air their photos to attempt to help catch such a criminal monster. So the media would never broadcast such a campaign, would never even acknowledge it. Local news makes so much money off police stories, local crime fear-mongering, etc.

Of course there are other options to change the cost calculus but they’re not preferable due to legality issues.

They could but why would they? Roku sells data on you already and has limited things to gain from teaming up on the off chance you’re using a second source for content. Apple sells on the basis of privacy for a higher price and if they’re getting into that game like Roku they’d just spy themselves and not help a competitor on the chance a consumer has blocked it.

If anything Roku and others being able to say “we have data on people TV makers don’t” increases their own value proposition.

The real risk IMO is on device analysis and built in cellular modems sending this data. That and things like Amazon sidewalk meaning your neighbor’s Alexa device passes it on for a fee. That and just refusing to work without internet of course.

AI never made sense as an investment at this point except out of 1) a desire to discipline workers and labor generally to lower their wages and benefits, threaten them with replacement to get them more compliant 2) to enable a techno-police-state beyond the nightmares of any 20th century writer. It was always impractical for any government anywhere to listen to everyone all the time, to follow everyone all the time. Even a dissident movement you usually only had the resources to track the leadership and everyone else you just chilled with the fear you /could/ be tracking or listening to them. With AI the human surveillance clerk problem is solved, you can monitor and compile dossiers on the exact activities, contacts, etc of 1 million people and have it all reviewed and handled by one NSA/FBI clerk who’s just looking for top hits and threat scores or returning results on requested enemies they’re emailed about.

So this was inevitable. The ability to replace labor in a cost-effective way isn’t quite there yet but it’s more than good enough for sifting through visual, audio, textual data and compiling dossiers and threat reports on tens, hundreds of millions of people. The US government can and will print money for such a perfect, inescapable panopticon which promises total visibility and control.

Sounds like she was groomed by 764/o9a types. Typical modus operandi.

IMO they’re nothing short of a continuation and expansion of the original MKUltra. This time to horrify the public into passing mandatory online ID laws which would be very useful for the agency. That and they create a pre-selected group of amoral sadist monsters the agency can use for various purposes after making contact.

They’re aided by these profit hungry tech corps. Though it’s astonishing and a serious tech literacy problem that the mother let her have a discord account when those are not moderated and not for kids. These tech companies should all go bankrupt but they’ll all have us scanning IDs for everything soon enough instead. Problem is these o9a types have lots of groomers who are underage teens themselves so such measures don’t really put a stop to it.

Follow the steps here to perform a secure erase that resets the cells and wipes any on-device encryption keys:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_state_drive/Memory_cell_clearing

You can do this from a live-boot environment if you wish. I would very strongly recommend disconnecting ALL other drives before performing this step as the best precaution against accidentally nuking the wrong drive. However if you choose to do this with other drives connected triple check you have the right drive selected before each step.

The top two are very much standard industry tools. It’s not that this company per se has a preference for using zionist products it’s that they’re really the only game in town because no competitor comes close.

It would be a lot easier if their clients were corporations and businesses and you were asked to do things like incident response to systems compromises, retrieving information improperly deleted by people acting against company orders. Other mundane things like that. Non-criminal, white collar stuff is a lot easier and less ethically fraught.

Only you can decide whether this is moral stuff. It’s not mass surveillance true but I’d have to wonder what kinds of matters you’d be dealing with. If it’s child abuse, human trafficking, narcotics, criminal networks that doesn’t seem to be a moral issue to me. On the other hand if you’re being asked to assist breaking into the phones of climate change or pro-Palestine protestors or similar that would IMO present an ethical dilemma.

If you think you’re strong enough to say no and possibly be fired for it should such a case come to you then I think taking the job is fine. If you feel you’d be coerced by the salary and the friction of finding a new job into doing things you’d hate yourself for then I’d give it a pass.

As others said someone will certainly fill this position and that person may have no moral scruples about privacy or human rights at all as you do.

I’m sure every cent will be spent on lobbying for ID checks to get online or use a computer in the name of child safety.