Thats exactly how I feel about heat.

Wait for the better holiday, Feb 15th, aka cheap chocolate day.

Pi4 is better for anything with video as it has a a hardware decoder. They dropped the hardware decoder in the Pi5 and I think you need to buy an extra module to have one for them.

The differentiator is max speed in Canada. Regardless of how they are built. If you can exceed a certain speed, license required.

If you don’t need voice, there are a lot of options. Matrix has IRC support and encryption, and has voice options if you self host.

Riot is… A Discord clone without working voice and I found it to be an odd duck.

There’s RocketChat… More Slack like.

Mattermost.

I replaced my voice/video chats with Nextcloud Talk and/or Steam, based on the scenario. Outside of those, Matrix is good for community needs in my mind.

We interacted on the internet for years without discord.

It is far from essential.

Most of the american companies are using Chinese manufacturing for much of the devices. Fairphone is European, but same manufacturing sources.

In 2026, as a Canadian… Choosing between a country that is adopting nazi practices and threatening us with annexation, and one who has a questionable history but is overall doing more for climate change and global stability right now than the other… The choice is easy. Anything but american.

Sure, but then you are also not funding Google’s competition in order to help improve choice.

Buying second hand might make you feel better because you didn’t directly fund Google, but you’re still helping them maintain their position.

The Graphene devs explicitly only support Pixels. Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware.

/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.

Kube makes it easy to have a lot, as a lot of things you need to deploy on every node just deploy on every node. As odd as it sounds, the number of containers provides redundancy that makes the hobby easy. If a Zimaboard dies or messes up, I just nuke it, and I don’t care whats on it.

Kids should NOT be on social media.

Yes its common courtesy. Its lazy and disrespectful to just toss your cart however and just expect that the store’s minimum paid staff should deal with your mess

I usually organise them when I bring mine back to fix other people’s laziness.

Uh… Probably somewhere around 150?

Because fuck AI, that’s why.

I work in computers, remotely. So 8.5 hours minimum every day. Then I have to use a phone to communicate, so an additional 2 hours or so on that… And then some tv or games to chill. Yeah 13 hours a day seems about right… Yuck.

Fun fact, as someone who suffers from FODMAP related IBS… Almost very “green” item in this list triggers FODMAP reactions, and about half of the red ones are on the safe to eat category.

TL;DR - damned if I do, damned if I dont.

Im… Getting there. For now I built my own cloud at home… But browsers themselves are becoming a problem.

You’re mixing the Signal Foundation up with the original creator of Signal who has stepped down and is no longer involved… And is off…

checks notes

Building fucking AI bots apparently? Thank goodness he’s not involved with Signal anymore.

Canada is in this boat too.

This is exactly my problem with BCs stupid laws. Kids can’t be without their parents until 11.

ELEVEN!

Christ. How do they ever learn independence when they spend all of the most crucial years of their development forcibly tied to the parents hip?

I was allowed to go to the corner store at five. By ten I was completely independent and mowing lawns as an afterschool job.