I’m bummed about this, but it’s not a shock given they retired the brand back in 2021. So much for “we will support these devices for as long as they continue to be used” however. This will generate a lot of e-waste.

I have an 880 that my family use regularly with the TV/AV/etc. I don’t mind so much navigating the three remotes and several buttons to get movies or TV running, but it’ll be annoying having all the extra remotes out on coffee tables all the time now, and repeated instructions to the rest of the fam on how to use them 🥲

Their app is predominantly a web front end. You could previously program your remote entirely via their website years back iirc. They had to program this component as you say for getting new remote profiles.

To be fair, why would they bother programming a ‘local only offline mode’ for your specific use-case when Internet connectivity was ubiquitous long before these devices were released?

Like yeah in retrospect it would be helpful now, but as a business decision it would have made very little sense to Logitech.

Organic Maps is not at feature parity with paid options but it is pretty damn good for FOSS. I use it almost daily for driving around city/suburban Australia and it very rarely gives me bad directions - certainly no more than the paid option i previously used (Sygic).

The thing people often dont realize is that if you do end up caving in and installing Google app services back onto your de-googled phone and logging into your old Google account - well, you’re almost back to square one. Google now ties all the identifiers of that phone/OS to your old Google account and will continue tracking it as much as possible whenever it sees those identifiers accessing anything. So I’d avoid that if your goal is de-Googling, but I understand why some need it as a stop-gap.

I thought the same initially re: sunk costs, but when I actually sat down and made a list of the apps I had on my old phone and what I used them for, I could quickly see that almost half of them were already FOSS. Then checked what alternatives are available for others and realized i could actually replace almost everything. The only premium apps I ended up “needing” were Poweramp*, and a couple others I actually forget now without finding my list. Almost everything can be replaced by using the website as a web link or web app, or using an open source alternative.

A big bonus of that process was seeing on the Aurora Store how many trackers were detected in each of the old apps while i was reviewing them and it was insane. I remember one Sudoku app I’d installed years back had like 16 trackers… Wtf. Checked FOSS options on F-Droid and found several alternatives.

*Poweramp can be bought direct from the developer, no need for Google apps, so I repurchased it via that method so I could avoid using my old account. I don’t mind buying things a second time if the devs have made the facilities available to avoid Google. I recently did the same for Symfonium.

The only ones that stung a bit to abandon was Sleep As Android which I’d paid for (I use their limited free version now and block it on the firewall to prevent ads/tracking); and Sygic (gps app) I’d paid lifetime maps for… I just use Organic Maps now, and while it’s not as fancy it navigates just fine and I use it regularly for car GPS.

Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for but are free (with questionable tracking) you can install as a ‘work profile’ app via Shelter, which means it has no access to your real contacts and personal data, and can be set to auto-freeze (deletes cache and pauses app, keeps personal data). So you can use it and expose minimal data, and it can’t tie it back to a Google account to profile you as it doesn’t see one.

So far I’ve never needed a Google account on this phone, which means it’s been a clean break from Google entirely. 3 years now and very happy with the results.

It would very much surprise me if Satoshi turned out to be Russian (is that what you’re asking?). His whitepaper proposal is written in very fluent English, as are his other communications on SourceForge etc, also Russians are not known for their technological entrepreneurial aspirations - at least not for the last ~40 years.

To be honest I would not be surprised if whoever Satoshi is has died, rather than craftily holding onto the early minted blocks. Only time will tell if they ever get transacted.

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If there’s one type of app with no shortage of options, it’s notes apps. Just look at the other responses here I’m sure there are dozens being evangelized already.

I very much doubt that this alone will push users onto Microsoft 365, like MS seems to be hoping it will.

There is speculation that a secondary goal here would be to weaken the US dollar as a defacto exchange currency standard worldwide if Bitcoin were to gain prominence.

That would be highly beneficial to certain “very good friends” of Trump like Putin whom would much prefer an unregulated currency that the US cannot impose controls over when presidents change.

Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no… It’s not new.

I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth… It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.

I think aiming to sanction the US is the wrong plan, treat it like it is what it is - a country run by an autocrat, and go after the oligarchs. Same approach as taken with Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.

In terms of effectiveness. Frankly we’re (globally) only getting rid of Trump and his cronies if the American public rise up against him and oust him through whatever means that may take. Protests and extended strikes for starters - and the people will be more likely to band together with Trump than against him if the whole world starts Tariffing and sanctioning the USA like a rogue state.

On the other hand, sanction and freeze Trump & Co. assetts all over the (western) world and when he retaliates to protect his own interests its a lot harder to sell to his constituents.

How you would even legally go about that is another question though, he would have to be breaking financial international laws and the countries involved in the personal sanctions would have to be ready and willing for blowback.

Its all fantasy at this stage until he starts blatantly breaking international laws that allow his assets to be seized. Likewise with the idea of US sanctions - look at how much Israel has done and they’re not sanctioned, and it took a great deal of blatant acts of war before Russia and North Korea were sanctioned also.