The very notion of proof implies that you can reproduce it. So I would suggest you forget what anybody here or elsewhere said. Instead, you :

• get a cheap phone (so typically Android)
• reset/format/flash it to a blank state
• make a new testing account on it
• use for random browsing, using app, etc and you log your history, namely what did you actually do AND what ads you actually see
• test for something outside of your new habits with a search query, then log and compare again, seeing the threshold to change
• repeat the last step for something said using e.g. a voice assistant, log&compare
• repeat WITHOUT explicit search, log&compare

Yes this takes a of time but that will help you make YOUR own opinion on the matter if you genuinely care.

Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately I’m no expert in the matter. I bet that some mods are compatible, I bet some aren’t. I bet some open source client/server pairing implementation might give more freedom but aren’t necessarily as popular. I have no idea how that impact culture or the size of projects. I imagine that the community of each project, e.g. Minetest, would know better if the limit itself is technical, e.g. mod compat, or not, e.g. network effect and thus a lot of people “sticking” to the “original” proprietary implementation not because it’s better but solely because their in-game friends are there.

I like risky sports (relative for some people it might be boring) but when I have to work or even play I want stuff that just works. I can’t imagine using a laptop and wondering every day if this is the last update to my OS I might get.

Sure Apple laptops might be great hardware, you might love the design, etc but just the fact that this question exists make it impossible to consider such hardware.

TL;DR: I don’t know and I don’t want to care. Please support OEMs who are not making money by selling locked hardware.

Yes I’m serious and I’m not a troll. I don’t know what in my questions or suggestions make it sound like that but feel free to dig deeper.

Anyway, AFAIK Minecraft has an official client which connect to official servers.

It’s possible to replace clients, as listed earlier, but they might still rely on official servers with their accounts as you pointed out. There are though, AFAICT, compatible servers too, e.g. https://glowstone.net/ so one could connect an unofficial client to an unofficial server and thus have a similar experience with no reliance on anything related to Microsoft, no?

No worries, if you want you can “test” that via a virtual machine, even a container e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ and see what you would genuinely miss.

It feels like our computer is very unique, very customized, but often it’s done in very few key places, e.g. browser profile data, ~/.bashrc , etc and once you locate those, transitioning to any other system is way easier.

the sheer amount of content that was added over the years, and the enormous amount of mods, and the entire community, aren’t remotely comparable

Are they compatible though? Like can I load content, connect to open source servers, uses mods on any client? Please don’t presume I know anything about the topic, I’m genuinely trying to understand exactly why alternatives are not good enough.

How about any open source alternative e.g. https://www.luanti.org/ or Minetest or Terasology or Voxel.js or…?

Pretty much what nix (distinct from NixOS) is.

That being said I would recommend NOT to do that because you most likely need 10 specific packages at most. That should take you 15min tops to install with few minutes paying attention.

Just make sure /home is its own partition, or even disk, the distro hop if you want. You can also have in your ~ directory an apps directory where you keep binaries, AppImage, etc.

For most people this is not a real concern.

• get top recent commiters with https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pulse
• click on 1st link https://github.com/bluca and see https://github.com/microsoft in profile

Just 2 steps.

Yes Poettering isn’t at Microsoft but seems the person driving the project at the moment is.

Freedom is overwhelming.

You can change everything and anything… so that means a LOT of choices.

Author wish he was born in 1880 and is not going to give up! (context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophone )

PS: thanks for the links, between this PIXHELL, GAIROSCOPE, or SATAn clearly air-gap is just a concept. Fascinating to go through his work basically using everything potential to go through. Great overview in https://arxiv.org/html/2409.04190v1

The fact that I’m having more and more discussions with non tech people about what even Linux is, that they heard of GrapheneOS or /e/OS, makes me thing that yes, it’s possible.

What also makes it potentially possible is that Microsoft is doing like NVIDIA alienating gamers. They are “just” gigantic corporations which only go where there is more money. There is no ideology except capturing whatever drives profit up for the next quarter. They currently see AI data center as they place to earn more so they are giving up on the rest.

So for the PineTime the most popular firmware is https://infinitime.io/ and by default you get

• Watchfaces for telling the time
• Steps (displays the number of steps of the day and the daily goal)
• Heart rate (controls the heart rate sensor and display current heartbeat)
• Music (control the playback of the music on your phone)

and the PineTime is relatively slick, large bezel but frequently people told me, surprised if they knew me, they though I had an Apple watch, which was a brilliant moment to open up the discussion about open source, free software, open hardware.

Meanwhile Watchy has e-ink and the 3D printed frame is very bulky. It’s definitely a lot more noticeable and I received few compliments for it. By default its firmware is https://github.com/sqfmi/Watchy and…

• time (+ weather if connected to network, not mobile phone, via WiFi not BT)
• Steps

… and that’s about it. Honestly the Watchy ecosystem is a lot less lively than InfiniTime. Sure you get some different watchfaces but that’s about it in terms of popular customization AFAICT. Basically I’d only recommend it if you only want a watch for time and if you are adamant about e-ink.

Linux on desktop, self-hosting and GrapheneOS too.

I have a few smart watches, namely PineTime and Watchy by SQFMI but… honestly I don’t wear them anymore simply because I try to be as minimalist as possible. In fact just yesterday afternoon I was wondering if I could do without GrapheneOS because I might actually NOT need a phone.

So… what do you want out of watch?

I can recommend both but honestly it depends on your need.

Interesting, it’s also not a chapter in https://browser.engineering/

That being said I imagine Google messed up the whole landscape with its Manifest V3 situation.

Also I imagine after a certain expertise threshold, one can relatively easily re-create an addon themselves. I’m thinking people who are familiar with Tridactyl or GreaseMonkey might not be as sensitive as this problematic.

FWIW I don’t recommend starting a post about selling data where the very first link points to a Google product.

Consider next time not linking to YouTube but instead the blog post that linked to it and ideally an alternative more privacy conscious frontend, e.g. invidious.

you shouldn’t run software that accesses such intricate personal information if you don’t trust it, if it can be updated to change to grab all that data.

Yes, and you should also brush and floss your teeth, do physical activities, buy local produces, recycle everything, do your due diligence on all political candidates, etc, etc. In practice we ALL have to make pragmatic choices. There are not a lot of browsers and basically for fully featured engines there are (arguably) only 2, Chromium by Google and Firefox by Mozilla. One is an advertising for profit company, the other is not. If you genuinely care a lot about privacy though you might not have to use either, you might be perfectly fine with much simpler browsers like Links or even lynx and I can tell you with a lot greater confidence that there no data will leak. You can also containerize your browser using e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ and then run within there whatever you want.

since Mozilla seems to potentially give itself a license to all your data, apparently.

That’s not correct, you mean some data from your browser usage. I think it’s important to be precise here otherwise through shortcuts you try to convince yourself, and others, about a problematic situation that just does not exist.

So which browser do YOU trust and why?

• Install anyway
• daily drive
• do a SeedVault backup on a USB stick

then optionally, after a short while if you are convinced

• buy a 2nd hand Pixel 8 (cheapest with longest support) or whatever match your preferences, maybe by then even a Motorola with official support
• bring your SeedVault backup back to the new device including, contacts, apps and data

No matter what you do you will be “left behind” but at least you have time to learn something useful in the meantime then reassess.

I know you ask this question in jest but basically it cascades, e.g. if I trust Debian or F-Droid, then I trust that the applications they include in their distribution or store is both secure enough (no piece of software is perfectly secure) and actually does what it say it does. In turn I believe they do the same, namely that initially when an application is added to their collection, they do review the application and the code yes. Then each update is only a gradual check, if ever done, assuming nothing special happened, e.g. no main maintainer change. If it’s far from perfect, and as somebody linked else there are limits (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor ) but in “normal” situations it’s enough for me.

Anyway that’s just my perspective on the matter, on your problem specifically after a brief ~5min search I haven’t found exactly what you are looking for but here are still some examples of what I do find helpful :

• IMHO very close but limited to Android https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/org.mozilla.firefox/latest/ and only technical, not about the “business” side, still it shows what is potentially collected and thus sold back
• example of 3rd party security audit on the accounts part of Firefox https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2017/07/18/web-service-audits-firefox-accounts/
• some publication from that 3rd party https://cure53.de/#publications-2024 but not specific to Firefox
• what Mozilla itself sponsored in terms of auditing other open source software https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS/Secure_Open_Source/Completed

Those though are mostly around security. They are definitely linked to privacy but still distinct. If I genuinely cared about the topic I would directly ask if organizations, non-profits, etc do think about the topic, e.g. Access Now, EFF, Exodus Privacy.

If by any chance you do find something helpful there please do share back.

a Jia Tan type of actor

Yes, absolutely, yet the fact that we even know who they are proves that it’s definitely an odd case. It’s important to remember it but it’s definitely not a normal situation.