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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The Turris Omnia is an open, powerful router that comes with OpenWRT.

    Turris adds an additional UI and features beyond that, but the OpenWRT UI is still available and the stock firmware can be completely replaced with OpenWRT if so desired.

    It’s a bit pricey but has great specs (1.6 GHz dual core, 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC) and is an excellent device for tinkerers with headers exposing UART, JTAG, GPIO, and more. It has three internal mPCIe ports as well.

    I am not affiliated with Turris but just happened to stumble upon a new one at a garage sale a couple of days ago. Lucky find and I’m excited.











  • Piranha Phish@lemmy.worldtointernet funeral@lemmy.worldreminder
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    9 months ago

    This is disingenuous at best and incorrect at worst. The mute button on the Echo is just that, a button; it is not a switch. It is software-controlled and pushing it just sends a signal to the microcontroller to take some action. For instance, one action is to turn on the red indicator light; that’s definitely not physically connected to the mute button.

    Maybe another response of pushing the button is to disable the transistor used for the microphone, but it’s more likely that it just sets a software flag for the algorithm to stop its processing of the microphone input signal. Regardless of which method it uses, the microcontroller could undoubtedly just decide to revert that and listen in, either disabling or not disabling the red light at the same time.

    But I personally don’t think it listens in when muted. I don’t think it spies on us to target ads based on what we say around it. I’m not worried that the mic mute function doesn’t work as intended.

    But I fully understand that it is fully capable of it, technically speaking.



  • You can tell that this is just a cash grab, as opposed to a technical or administrative motivation, by the mere fact that Simple/Select Choice plans will be migrated to Magenta, while Magenta plans will be migrated to Go5G. So Magenta isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

    Also, of course, by the fact that you can opt out of the “upgrade.”

    I switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and, coming from AT&T, it had been hands-down a positive experience. More features, unlimited data, better customer service, better speeds, all for less than what I was paying AT&T. I even have a line or two that was added for free, no strings attached.

    But then there were the many data breaches and the announcement they would add a surcharge for credit card payment. And now this.

    Looks like I came on board just in time to witness the enshitification



  • What about “INSTALL A DIFFERENT OS!!!”? Is that better? There are reasonably two others to choose from, and one of those doesn’t require the purchase of expensive equipment and arguably a path into an even more controlled ecosystem.

    And your analogy is way off. This isn’t a malfunction of Windows that a technician is going to fix, never to be seen again. This is more like a rep from the car manufacturer meeting you at your car every morning to ask if you want to install their factory upgrade. You tell them that you never want to see them again, so next week they start sending a different representative. You have no other options.

    Well, except getting a free car that doesn’t send a rep.


  • I get that the comment is almost surely circlejerk, but it is also honestly the only real answer to OP’s question, isn’t it? To switch OS?

    So it’s kind of hard to get mad at their comment when it’s the only viable option. Is your problem with Linux or is it the fact that it brings you anxiety to know MS is in control of you? What if we substitute another OS for “Linux”? Does that make you feel any better?

    I’m honestly not trying to be a jerk; these are honest questions. That’s probably saying more than for OP, though; they, of course, knew the answer before they asked.


  • For most utilities (water, electricity), there’s a relatively linear relationship between the tangible value provided (energy used, water dispensed) and the cost to provide it (coal burned, water sourced/treated). Even for wind- or hydro-powered electricity, the amount that everybody uses has a proportional amount of wear on the system and consequent required maintenance.

    But not so much for ISPs. Instead, you’re basically paying for a “fictional” amount (speed) of a non-tangible product. Granted, there is a linear relationship to the amount of electricity the ISP uses to provide each bit, but it’s negligible.

    Instead, what you’re paying for with internet is essentially to recoup the fixed costs of the provider’s equipment. They do need to upgrade every so often to accommodate more capacity and faster speeds, but this is proportional to speeds provided and not data volume used.