2022-12-20
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@ -16,6 +16,112 @@ ideas' witlessness;
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ideas' witnesses;
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ideas-
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2022-12-20
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I started studying Japanese again because WSJ and others from /g/bpg/
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are doing it. Went though ~300 JLPT N5 Anki cards today to refresh the stuff I
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hadn't touched in a while.
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I caved and have started (ab)using caffeine again as of last Saturday
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(today is Tuesday. Do the math). Sigh...
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Here's a blog post I wrote for tebibyte.media/blog:
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2022-12-15
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+++
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title = "i hate smart phone"
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date = "2022-12-15"
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description = "some thoughts regarding the twenty first century"
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license = "[UNLICENSE](https://unlicense.org/)"
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[taxonomies]
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author = ["DTB"]
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tags = ["opinion", "philosophy"]
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+++
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I hate smart phones with a burning passion that has caused my weak
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willed hands to give up three to various bodies of water including a puddle
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outside a mechanic's and a pond to which I walked through the forest. I don't
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regret my actions except that I haven't killed more digital beasts.
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My own current phone (until it too meets the fate of its brethren) is a
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PINE64 PinePhone running postmarketOS, a Linux distribution intended to keep
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good-enough smart phones running well past the expiration date on the box (or
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on the manufacturer's website). Technically, though I bet most people don't
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care, it's a security hazard to have an out-of-date smart phone; your banking,
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personal, medical information is on there and it doesn't take too long to get
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it out. Look at NSO Group and other wretched sub-scum that have evolved out of
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leech law enforcement's taxpayer-funded searches of people's smart devices,
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that made money because their product was good, because they could take the
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data out of your cell phone like the mind flayer sucks at your brain, like Coca
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Cola through a straw. Who even needs a crime scene indexed when you've Googled
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"How do I kill my rapist?", when GPS and cell tower logs show you were the only
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one at the scene of the crime, and when your slow descent into hell is
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chronicled in your Camera Roll, and when Samsung stopped updating your phone a
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year ago so all the police need to do is plug the black mirror into their
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stylish plastic suitcase? The journalist documenting the dictatorship is
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booking an airplane trip into a death trap if they forgot to make sure the
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little version number in a menu in a menu in an app in the bottom right corner
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of their home screen is high enough. I'm happy with postmarketOS's very regular
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updates which are for now preventing my pocket gizmo's eternal submersion.
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Why the hell are we keeping all our shit on a piece of glass? I
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wouldn't trust my best friend with my nudes, why am I dumping them into a
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device someone else made that I don't understand? What happened to paper? What
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happened to Polaroids, to CDs, to e-mail and hard copies and for the love of
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Allah what happened to cash? The PinePhone is slightly better for this. I can
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call a dude that works on my phone's operating system ("Who are you? How did
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you get this number?") and ask any questions I want ("It's 3:00 AM. I'm turning
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my phone off.") or post in a forum and usually get an answer about what's safe
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and what features will turn me into a gecko (usually Find My, sometimes
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Auto Rotate). I don't even know how normal people deal with bugs in the system
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or ghosts in the machine. I asked a friend. "Usually I just ask you." When you
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run the "normal" phone operating systems, Android or iOS, you can't run your
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own apps, which doesn't matter if all you do is TikTok and Instagram but I like
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to solve my own problems which I'm forbidden to do unless I spend $2000 on a
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MacBook and $100 on an Xcode license. That's iOS. Android development is free
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but so godawfully slow and painful that I would probably rather be waterboarded
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by someone in a clown costume, and even though you can run your own apps on
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there you still can't take control of your phone by becoming system
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administrator like on a normal Linux or Windows installation. You have to
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"jailbreak" (iOS) or "root" (Android) your phone to have full control over it.
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Why am I paying for a jail? Why am I storing all my stuff in a prison? Again,
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postmarketOS is yours to control from the outset, not hiding any functionality
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behind a subscription or preventing you from using your device however you want
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(for better or for worse). postmarketOS supports full disk encryption with
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Linux Unified Key Setup, the cutting edge of the file security field. It's very
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nice.
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But phones still suck, even my PinePhone, which is the best one I've
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found. "There's an app for that" but it isn't available for my phone and no I
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cannot fucking download your app, Dunkin' Donuts, to get that free coffee every
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Thursday or whatever. God forbid I have to take money out of my savings account
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like I do every once in a while because my shit job has miserable pay. I can
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either use the app my bank publishes (only for Android and iOS, of course) or
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go to an ATM, pay for the privilege, and hope I only have to use it two more
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times that day because my bank limits ATM transactions because they were
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targeted by hackers probably because their phones weren't updated. At this
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point I just keep cash with me which is great except for the places that don't
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take cash and instead take poker chips, ahem, numbers on a piece of plastic.
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In this day and age having no social media means having no friends, which I
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honestly do enjoy after the lengthy withdrawal because it's serene not having
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to check everyone's Instagram story (else miss out on the Next New Thing) or
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Facebook wall (else miss out on the Next New Gathering) or what have you. It is
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for me worth having nothing to miss in exchange for never having that gnawing
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fear of missing. I still have my phone number and on paper I have plenty of
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friends in person who never call, never e-mail, never stop by, because they've
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forgotten what life is like outside the app. Which I can live with, which is
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unreasonable for any non-crazy person. But forgoing this rotten post-Capitalist
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world of ad-soaked shitware takes a financial toll. How do you live on minimum
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wage? Discounts. Download the Dunkin' Donuts app. Download the Starbucks app.
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Even a god damn Home Depot app. I'm a Luddite for rejecting the last ten years
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of technology? They say not having Android or iOS is self-torture but even
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spending a little more of the little I have and taking a little more time of my
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little left to engage with the analog pleasures of the world is in my mind much
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more tolerable than the endless thoughtless suffering of the digital era and
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casino-floor news cattle feed and disintegration of person from world. So I
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suppose if I'm broke, I'm broke by choice, but it's a choice I never felt
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comfortable making.
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Better the screen in the puddle than my head under the water. Reason
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died with the atom bomb.
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2022-11-29
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I think around the time of the last blah post I quit caffeine. I abused
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