Thanks for mentioning it, I’d like to add that Taiwan is still a settler state. Taiwanese Indigenous people still live there, and have been waging their own battles for greater rights and sovereignty within Taiwan for centuries. Unfortunately, in all the Taiwan v. China noise their voices and concerns get drowned out.

Yup, the White Terror. I didn’t disagree with that.

My point was that the KMT coming to Taiwan was a wave of migration of people who while very anti-PRC saw themselves as fundamentally Chinese and Mandarin-speaking as opposed to pre-1945 Han settlers who were Taiwanese-speaking and in many cases had been living in Taiwan for hundreds of years already.

Today, those distinctions have softened, and polling shows that even the people who are descended from that wave of KMT migration mostly see themselves as Taiwanese first and foremost.

There’s a lot of layers there, Han people have been settling in Taiwan since the 17th century and this originally Taiwanese-speaking group makes up about 70% of people in Taiwan. They don’t consider China their homeland anymore than Americans do the UK.

Han people who came with the fleeing KMT government are more directly tied to China, but even they have been largely Taiwan-ized politically since the democracy and identity movements of the 1980’s. Which is to say, very very few people in Taiwan see China as a homeland these days.

Should note that the “Taiwan is the real China” brand of politics has basically died out in Taiwan. Yes they are technically “The Republic of China” but China has said that changing that is tantamount to declaring de jure independence which would trigger a war.

Taiwan (for the most part) just wants to be Taiwan.

(See also why the “West Taiwan” meme is frowned upon and completely misrepresents what most Taiwanese people want.)

Tesla is only the second product we have ever reviewed to receive all of our privacy “dings.” (The first was an AI chatbot we reviewed earlier this year.) What set them apart was earning the “untrustworthy AI” ding. The brand’s AI-powered autopilot was reportedly involved in 17 deaths and 736 crashes and is currently the subject of multiple government investigations.

How utterly unsurprising. Also,

"Consent” is an illusion
Many people have lifestyles that require driving. So unlike a smart faucet or voice assistant, you don’t have the same freedom to opt out of the whole thing and not drive a car.

This is the kicker, many people need cars for unrelated reasons and the fact that ALL car brands abuse our data means there is no alternative.

True that’s what I use the vast majority of the time, but the OP specifically needed something chromium based.

Yeah it takes a few extra steps to get extensions/chrome store stuff like that. Probably not the best option if you’re just trying to slap it on a work computer in 5 mins.

If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.

Thanks for digging up the important line. So annoying to have sensationalist headlines like this that bury the lede and completely disprove their own thesis several paragraphs down, but I mean as long as it gets that initial click…

I would have agreed until the hinge broke through my HP Envy x360 screen :-(

Not much of a warning before it happened either, I would look into your model to see if that’s a recurring issue. Apparently you can loosen the tension in the screw on the hinge ahead of time to help avoid it eventually snapping. Good luck either way!

For sure, I think that’s a good rule of thumb and lines up pretty well with “how much this OS relies on your data to make a buck.”

I was reading there too that most of the privacy and security concerns in macOS are in iCloud, but with Advanced Tracking Protection you can make that E2EE now, or just go with an alternative cloud service.

Aw super sweet of you to think of your grandma.

Thank you! HP Envy x360 design flaw solidarity, friend ✊

I think Apple is better out of the box than most other companies in terms of privacy, which comes from a lot more of their profit coming from hardware rather than data harvesting (ie Meta, Google). Although the EFF has said that’s more an indictment of other tech companies than saying Apple is particularly good.

I do think the lack of customization in macOS makes it more difficult to harden your security settings. PrivacyGuides lists their concerns along with their recommended configuration here.

Thanks, Pixel+GrapheneOS has been the most tempting iOS alternative for me so far.

YES, it was super disappointing because otherwise it was a solid laptop. Cracked the corner of my screen and is basically non-portable now. Currently have it hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard just to make it until I can get a new laptop.

Read up on it and apparently it’s been a huge issue in HP’s build quality since at least 2017. There’s a class action lawsuit you can sign up for and hopefully be compensated in some way.

I am leaning towards a new MacBook for the reasons you stated among others. I came here to get some new perspectives, and to explore other options I might not be aware of yet.

I’m a bit of a news junkie, but I always pay attention to the link being shared. Is it a reliable source? Is it paywalled? Is it a tabloid just spreading rumors and disinfo? You’re right that a link aggregator is only as good as the links being shared.

Can’t wait for my ram to last 1000 years just for the hinge on my laptop screen to last 2 (guess what just broke on my laptop after 2 years)

I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.

I think part of the issue is we’re kind of taking about two different words here.

Liberal as in someone who believes in economic neoliberalism generally means someone who supports free-market capitalism in some form. This is what socialists/communists generally mean when they’re insulting someone for being a liberal online.

Liberal, in the US political sense, has also changed to mean something more like socially liberal that “considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (such as those involving race, gender, or class).” Which is what people I think mean when they say conservatives vs. liberals in the US, or when self-described progressive dems/democratic socialists will still claim to be very liberal or in favor of liberal policies.