that’s "disaster capitalism (read N. Klein for full understanding of what that entails) mixed with a real sh#tty situation in Gaza that was brewing for a long time. For all I can tell selected elite (on both sides) lines their pockets nicely while people are bring brainwashed and dying on both sides. On some days I really despise humanity…

depending on where you are in phone replacement/upgrade cycle I would recommend Fairphone or looking into e/OS.

Like others mentioned don’t expect to do a wholesale jump. Slowly replace services with alternatives: Proton mail, NextCloud, Box, Dropbox, Lemmy, Mastodon to name a few services. There are numerous apps that can interact with those services so you’ll be spending some time going over those sorting what works for you.

To get the apps FDroid coupled with Aurora you can get most apps (that do not have explicit dependency on Googleware). Amazon App store is a possibility too for some commercial apps. For Youtube there are several alternatives like LibrePipe and NewPipe (but there are more). For existing social media site apps there are thin wrapper browsers that would “sandbox” each site allowing you to still use them while you slowly detach yourself: SlimSocial, RedReader, etc.

I’ve been Google-free for a bit now but I went with LineageOS+microG setup which may be challenging for you at this stage.

Treat it less as a crusade and more like multilevel challenge when upon completion of one challenge you get to complete another. It could be fun and liberating.

yeah, recent revelations seem to point that way

Ars posted that there’s some evidence to suggest board wanted to chase profit over ethics or somesuch. Altman apparently did not listen.

deleted by creator

form Ars

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/openai-president-greg-brockman-quits-as-nervous-employees-hold-all-hands-meeting/

According to reporting from Kara Swisher and The Information, it’s looking like the ouster of Altman stemmed from an internal disagreement over the direction of the company with regard to a focus on profits over safety… wasn’t too far off

All kinds of conspiracy theories are running through my head in light of further departures.

1. Board has asked Altman to do something shady, he said he’d do it but really he didn’t and they’ve got pissed firing him. Folks who were viewed as his “clique” naturally got worried and left before their names get tarnished.
2. Altman and a group of supporters were up to no good, board got a whiff of it and fired him, and everyone involved saw the writing on the wall and resigned
3. Board was shaping things up for acquisition, Altman opposed and was shown the door. Folks close enough to him understood the consequence and quit with their resumes clean of what’s to come. …

so many things will remain unknown for the nearest future it’s hard to tell who’s lying about what.

self-hosting is great but that still means datacenter someplace. I’ve been using GitLab for some time now and CodeBerg “feels weird” to me. But then it could be my biases and “muscle memory”. I’d say whatever feels right for you.

Unlike other big name Git hosting company who chose to use AI to “steal” from hosted projects other two did not stoop that low. So there’s that.

Whatever you’ve done to UI must be some atrocity as I do not experience issues with FF. You’ve never specified which FF extension you’ve used that had slowed down your browser.

Chrome (and by extension) Chromium and all derivative browsers are Google’s lever to truly control and shape internet to their liking. Multiple people said it already.

Personally I find Chromium UI very cumbersome and dislike it a lot. Which is to say we all have our own preferences for UI.

In your case you’d have to weigh your repulsion with available performant FF UIs vs future of internet and choose which decision can you really live with.

Just came across HAMAS leader openly enumerating benefactors: https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-leader-abroad-khaled-mashal-russia-october-seven-chine-taiwan

“For your information, Russia has benefitted from our [attack], because we distracted the U.S. from them and from Ukraine. China saw [our attack] as a dazzling example. The Russians told us that what happened on October 7 would be taught in military academies. The Chinese are thinking of carrying out a plan in Taiwan, doing what the Al-Qassam Brigades did on October 7. The Arabs are giving the world a master class.”

So lets put it all in perspective. Some established facts first:

• Russia is pretty open with it’s declaration of love to HAMAS
• Iran really wants to “give it” to US
• Russia is sanctioned and desperate in it’s war with Ukraine, hoping biggest weapon supplier would stop supplying weapons
• Russia is best buddies with Iran
• Iran wants nukes
• Russia used to be buddies with Israel (esp. military-wise, which was cited as one of the reasons no military assistance to Ukraine came from Israel)
• Israel has it’s internal political problems.
• all the nations that now so keenly support Palestine and violence towards Israel never sent any significant investments or humanitarian aid to Palestine to beat Israel economically
• Israel was behaving as an a-hole towards Palestine for quite some time
• HAMAS has not moved Israel-Palestine relationship an inch and needs to show some activity

So, to me all of the above kind of adds up to: Palestine was used by everybody else to achieve goals absolutely unrelated to Palestine survival or prosperity.

If I were to make up a conspiracy theory, I’d say: Russia needed diversion real bad, they talked to their Iran buddies to stir dhit up in Gaza. Mossad snifs it out and does… nothing, opening door to unspeakable acts that followed, but also giving a pretext for “outrage” and rallying the nation against existential threat. Arab world leaders quickly jump on a familiar train of antisrmitism boosting their ratings locally and doing diddly squat to help Palestine (I mean help, not entrench them further in conflict)

In sum: both sides were comfortable sacrificing their own people (without people’s consent) to achieve political goals.

How is it a farewell if you’re still consuming Youtube content? Only exodus of consumers from the platform will prompt content creators to look for a different platform and maybe, MAYBE, force google to rethink. If you don’t like their practices, move off the platfrom, not just change the client.

to memory comes previous anouncement of supersonic missile… which ended up being destroyed over Ukraine with reasonable degree of accuracy. So yeah, same posturing from russia but k owing what we know after (almost) 2 grueling years in Ukraine it’s just that - posturing. They failed to attract talent but they’ve succeeded in scarying or destrying talent. So their only option for technological advance is espionage. Even then they’d need high caliber specialists to replicate whatever has been stolen. What they are really “good at” is brute force and dirty tricks. But any technological superiority is off the table.

you can read experts advise as something pointed ad policymakers and manufacturers: “people can’t afford what they need to live, do something!”. What’s really annoying that city planning in NA is geared specifically for cars and not public transportation, so it’s a mess created by designers and regulators. And our governments on every level allowed them to get away with it. Now those same government structures would have to get their collective a$$es im gear and do something about the fact that people can’t afford to.live in such an environment. (that’s BEFORE we start talking overall cost of living and housing affordability). We’re really back to 20’s which factories owning dorms and allowing workers live there (for a price) basically doubly owning them: owning means of production, and means for living, really…

thank you for such a detailed response. I would love to contribute however at the moment my capacities are rather limited but otherwise I’d be willing to add sqlite adapter. From your description it sounds like currently architecture is narrowly locked on PostgreSQL features. In my daily job I love PostgreSQL for big apps and stacks but I’m also aware how “hungry” PG can be, which is why I’m wondering whether it’s “too big of a hammer” for this particular problem. Also, setting up single service is easier to novices vs maintaining several. Docker compose is nice but it has it’s limitations.

@mgdigital, first thing I’be noticed: reliance on “heavier” database stack (pg + redis), at least from the first glance at docker-compose. My suggestion would be to have an option for minimalist setup with sqlite and without redis if possible. That would work better for those of us flying with minimal hardware (rpi, old PC and such).