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I asked my wife to not share any info with Muse and she said “Well they know everything already”. Well I was able to convince her not to with some stories about hallucinations of agents getting things horribly wrong as agents in the past, because the privacy concerns just didn’t phase her. Shes even more aware than most people since I’m very privacy aware. 100% it’s very echo chambery to claim that it’s not 1990 anymore. It’s like a historian saying that history won’t repeat itself because we all know what happened last time
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My wife and I do not even allow Meta Apple and Google products or proprietary software in our home (unless owned by guests) because they are all predatory and endless alternatives exist.

What software / hardware do you use? How do you get around binary firmware blobs?

I use Linux and maintain my own Linux distribution. All software I directly touch and rely on is Open Source and does not spy on me. I do not own or use a smartphone. I do however permit the use of proprietary software for purely entertainment use cases, such as video games, but never for a -tool- that I use to do my job or live my life.

I even have a Talos workstation. Open hardware motherboard and open spec CPU both made in the US with fully open hardware. Also a Precursor which is similarly open.

I support these efforts as much as I financially can, but I admit open firmware/hardware is not a gap I have fully closed day to day. Yet. Deep down in some hardware is firmware I do not control, such as on the inside of my AMD GPUs. But I wallet-vote for those over Nvidia who require proprietary code in user space where it requires rights within my operating system.


Hmm. The areas where I ran into a brick wall on this were firmware for SSDs and hard drives. Doesn’t exist in open source form.

True but if it is immutable it still meets the FSF definition of an appliance regarded as a closed hardware problem vs a closed software problem.

Software Freedom means no one has more control of the hardware in front of you than you do. If no one can change the SSD firmware, then it is part of the hardware.

Now for firmware that can be changed, that is a different story and maybe the OpenSSD project gets us there. We will see.


> I do however permit the use of proprietary software for purely entertainment use cases, such as video games

How do you isolate those from affecting the rest of your machine? Do you use a different machine for entertainment? A different account? Something else?

I’m not judging or trying to catch you in some kind of gotcha, I’m interested in your setup in case the idea is something I could use myself.


All machines that can do things like play games are untrusted to the point I never even lock them. They are treated as game console.

I sometimes consider going scorched earth, but then I realize doing so will leave a conspicuous void which may also limit my options in the future.

Do you allow guests to use their Meta Apple and Google products in your home?

Begrudgingly if for short periods of time, on a dedicated wifi network, but if they are visiting my home I encourage them to interact with me and others instead of doom scrolling.

Try as I might some are so addicted and gone now that they just come over, doom scroll for a few hours, and leave. Maybe they feel like they get something out of just being in the same room as other people. It confuses me, but I will not force my views on guests.




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