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Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

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Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#121

Post by COGlory »

chrisco255 wrote: post #103
COGlory wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did it: - LineageOS + MicroG and F-Droid for mobile. - NextCloud (and DAV) running on an old laptop for calendar, contacts, and file storage. The mobile app uploads all my photos automatically. It backs up to Backblaze -ProtonMail with a custom domain for email. Amazon is pretty avoidable. Shipping has gotten faster and cheaper everywhere else at this point. At least for the rural place I am. I'm not particularly t…

What phone did you load LineageOS on? Do you know of any guides for it?

I was using a Pixel 2, but the list of well documented phones is available:

https://lineage.microg.org/

It's pretty simple if your phone is supported. You enable developer mode, enable USB debugging, download the image, and run a couple ADB commands. For me it was:

fastboot flashing unlock

fastboot update image.zip

And that was it.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#123

Post by simonh »

userbinator wrote: post #52
hda2 wrote: post #35

OEMs and software vendors have been pushing hard towards locking-down and controlling people's computing devices and people have largely been indifferent. It genuinely seemed all was going to be lost until the tech industry went crazy exercising their control. Their recent (and imo unjustifiable) actions have clearly demonstrated to everyone what it means to hand over control. It remains to be seen whether people wil…

A lot of people already know that you can get apps directly as .apks, but the majority of them have been conditioned by corporate "propaganda" that they'll be almost certainly getting malware that way. The term "sideloading" was invented to ostracise and discourage the practice of acquiring software independently --- which was the norm up until Apple and its walled garden appeared. But now, perhaps when sufficiently…

Ok, that's some historical revisionism I've not see before. The term sideloading was invented by an internet storage service company to refer to copying files between remote storage buckets without having to do an upload or download. The term then got adopted by the community for copying MP3 files to a player from your computer.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#124

Post by narrator »

pleeb wrote: post #77
thebladerunner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that not using Google search has improved your quality of life?

Google search has gone significantly down in quality over the last year or so. Even just searching for simple things only seems to yield articles from the same 20 or so major websites, and it’s worse if you’re looking for niche items. DuckDuckGo on the other hand is starting to give relatively better and more diverse results these days.

I agree Google has gone downhill. DuckDuckGo is much better now.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#127

Post by agravier »

throwaway888abc wrote: post #76
agravier wrote: post #60

Time to Riot again.

Not funny. Do you think the riots are leading to better society/life ?

The other comments are right. I found it mildly amusing that this happened after the name change, which was presumably in part motivated by some worries over political correctness.

Sorry for the confusion, throwaway.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#128

Post by ArcVRArthur »

shripadk wrote: post #21

I got banned here for saying this but I'll continue to say it nevertheless. We are already in the Censorship Era. This is an Orwellian Nightmare. The quicker this is brought under control the better. The last thing we need is Corporate Overlords controlling what we say or do online. This includes Hacker News as well.

I agree entirely.

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#129

Post by mastazi »

burnte wrote: post #93
mastazi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit Reddit, Amazon, Twitter, Google, Instagram and Facebook. My life has never been better. Minor inconvenience does not outweigh major improvements in my mental wellness. (Edit: I mention mental wellness because those products, and the ads they carry, are designed to be addictive.)

So let me ask you a question, how were they negatively impacting your mental wellbeing? I ask this genuinely, because I have a tendency to feel these tools only negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating ways. That, however, feels like victim blaming. There's a difference between a using a circular saw dangerously and a circular saw that is MADE with electrical failures that shock you. Let me give the e…

Thank you for sharing your experience!

> how were they negatively impacting your mental wellbeing?

I think the answer to your question is obviously very personal and will change from an individual to another.

For me personally the stress came in 2 forms:

* Outrage/politics, especially on Twitter and Reddit. On Twitter, it's impossible to escape this, even if you carefully sanitise the list of those who you follow, due to the trending section being visible to everyone. On Reddit, if you visit the site while you are not logged in, again you will see all of the above.

* Time sink. The worst offender here was Youtube. E.g. "I need to do X in my aquarium let me just quickly double check that video by Aquarium Co-op" - 2 hours later (spent watching "recommended next" videos) I would realise "wow I just wasted 2 hours of my life". Note that I can still quickly view a video without having an account, but due to not having followlists and such, the recommendations are less addictive. Facebook and Instagram were also a time sink and unlike Youtube they weren't really useful in any obvious way, except maybe a couple of Facebook Groups I was part of (e.g. my daughter's school parents group where I could get some news about the school - I now subscribe to their newsletter instead).

* Instigating compulsive spending, e.g. Amazon - this is quite obvious due to it being an e-commerce website and knowing well what you're thinking to buy. I now shop on local retailers whenever possible and as a last resort on eBay, since at least it is less pervasive - unlike Amazon which entices you to take advantage of the rest of their ecosystem e.g. Prime Video or Kindle or Twitch, then "follows" you in all those places with tracking ads.

> Google Search is by far the best, IMO, and saves me hours every day.

If you use Duckduckgo, you can add !sp at the end of your search, and you will get proxied Google results. You don't need to have a Google account for that.

> I have my personal domain go to gmail, and it makes managing ages of email a breeze.

Having a personal domain is a great first step, well done! I didn't have it so I had to setup an "out of office" message, warning everyone that my Gmail address would be deactivated soon...

Re: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store

#130

Post by zeeone »

marcinzm wrote: post #28
throwawayboise wrote: post #24

Opt out. No Google. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Amazon. You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without them. You can't change how they operate. But you can change how you operate.

> You don't need them, you might even enjoy life more without them. So I should probably lower the quality of my life to make a statement that will have no impact on them at all? >You can't change how they operate. Sure you can, by petitioning your government to draft laws and so on.

If your quality of life depends on big tech then I suspect your life is of low quality in the first place.
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