whether telegram was setup as a honeypot or got taken over or somehow is still independent and free of nation-state influence is a) beyond the expertise of any and all participants ITT and b) besides the point.

the main point is telegram’s honcho when faced with the perfectly valid question (E2EE when?) throwing out one smoke screen after the other, shit noone asked or cared about and conflating unrelated crap to spread FUD - signal is CIA backed, whatsapp turns over metadata, all crypto is blown by NSA so we’re better off without, we can’t have encrypted channels (no1 axed for that), etc.

if he’s being cagey and lying about plainly evident things, what else is he untruthful about?

there are FOSS telegram clients out there and adding on E2EE is trivial (remember Pidgin and OTR over Google’s XMPP?). the fact that that’s explicitly against telegram’s TOS and that they’re adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted “in the cloud” draws but one conclusion.

just tried to re-watch “the girl in the spider’s web”, the not-sequel to fincher’s masterpiece that’s “the girl with the dragon tattoo”. I remember hating it way back when and went in with a “how bad can it be” attitude… dios mio, what a colossal mountain of shit. the “hacking” in OP is hard sci-fi compared to this turdistan, and that’s the least of its problems.

someone posted already the gell-mann amnesia effect and this applies to everything. how guns are portrayed in movies as magical. cars and how they’re driven. the laughable naive cop shows. medical procedures. legal proceedings. journalists and their MO.

you hafta run your brain at 110% at all times to be able to somewhat disregard the learned idiocy that was programmed into you from an early age. here’s hoping we have the infrastructure in place so generations that are coming can avoid becoming similarly handicapped.

doesn’t have to be, it’s enough it’s not propped up by venture capital. all the results of enshittification are directly the result of venture capital wanting a 100x return on their investment.

a privately owned business that’s not focused on 100x-ing someones investment but content with the profit their enterprise generates (think Steam) is inherently good to its customers.

Far Cry 5, running in 1080p on a 2160p desktop (alt-tabbing doesn’t switch resolutions, so jumping back and forth is seamless)

well, living room, it’s a single-room-dwelling type of situation. but yeah, move the chair out of the way and browse Jellyfin. I’ll post an image in a minute or two when I clear out the desk, kinda embarrassing with the amount of random crap on it.

edit:

the macbook is unrelated, a recent acquisition and in the process of being tamed for Fedora.

it’s a n-th hand monitor I got five years ago from some junker who fixes and resells used TVs, he got it by mistake and was super-apologetic for the “missing” remote; it’s a monitor, it ain’t got none of those. also had no stand so I screwed a VESA mount in a board and it’s hanging thus ever since.

edit 2:

it’s way less neck strain than the usual dual 24" side-by-side. this is like having 4x 20" 1080p screens in a grid but without the annoying bezels, and that’s how I’m mostly using it. plus you have the option to expand a window in any direction when you need it, which you can’t do in a multi-monitor setup. I arrange the windows in a 2x2 grid, or go smaller, usually 3x2 with keyboard shortcuts, by way of Better Quick Tiles for Plasma 6 (Kwin extension). tried the auto-tilers, hated 'em.

when I’m done with work, jellyfin-media-player in Fullscreen TV mode with a $5 bluetooth remote from the couch for movies and shows.

gaming sure, I run the games in 1080p and the desktop in 4k, so older games allow me to turn on FSR. had problems with Gnome Shell crashing regularly, zero crashes since I switched to Plasma.

one of the best pieces of investigative reporting I’ve read in recent years. the subject is beyond sickening, maddening and dreary. the failures of institiutions on every level, inert and bereft of any desire to do their fucking jobs, vapidly hoping “the market” will self-regulate something that shouldn’t have been even in the vicinity of market forces.

don’t have one of those. doesn’t hurt to try.

Plasma on the desktop with the 40" 4K screen with lotsa windows and desktops. Gnome on the laptop, each app full-screen and swipe left-right to switch between them.

happens with AMD and HDMI. solution for pipewire/wireplumber is setting:

       ["node.pause-on-idle"] = false,
       ["session.suspend-timeout-seconds"] = 0,

like a commercially available one? negative, you have to tinker and make it such.

if you have linux on the player (like with said PC or Raspberry) you have full control and can set it up to boot directly into jellyfin-media-player in fullscreen TV mode (that’s the one where remotes work).

if you want a hassle-free experience, go for a used Thinkpad a generation or two back, especially if you want Debian. if you buy a new Thinkpad, a) the software support isn’t there yet and b) you’re paying the corpo extortion tax for stuff you don’t need (IME and friends).

as to Intel vs AMD, whatever you choose will do fine for the vast majority of use cases; even the 1st gen T14 meets your specs (6-core, 16 GB on-board) and those can be had for $200ish; even less if you’re willing to tinker.

Raspberry Pi with a cute case then, and/or glued/velcroed to the back of the TV. they also support HDMI-CEC so your TV’s remote can work.

stove them out of sight? well, you can go for a mini-PC if price isn’t an issue. but these things can be had for ultra-cheap, especially if you have one laying around or get one with a busted screen or sumsuch. an android box is a hit or miss, maybe it’s good, maybe it’s crap, maybe it’s loaded with malware… the middle ground would be a Raspberry Pi, there are unofficial LineageOS Android TV builds.

an old laptop/desktop (like 6th-gen Intel or newer) that boots directly into jellyfin-media-player in TV fullscreen mode. it supports any remote that can emmit up-down-left-right, enter, esc (like, via InputRemapper). disable transcoding on the server and play anything you want via direct stream.

what’s the thing with tether supposedly reaching liquidity? like, HOW?

yeah, had the same deal with Xiaomi’s unlock tool. no WINE, no VM, bare-metal Windows only. oh yeah, doesn’t even work on Ryzens, has to be Intel, like wtfff…

people are missing the mark; the “not hiding” is an imposed narrative, a straw man argument and a false dichotomy, all in one.

the issue is not whether you have or don’t something to hide, as this “hide” part implies something inherently sinister. the issue is you being forced to share stuff you haven’t decided to do so.

when I’m not sharing the quality of my morning’s stool across all my social media outlets, it’s not something I’m hiding, it’s something I haven’t decided on sharing with the public. consequently, I don’t allow my software, hardware, service provider, government, or whoever-the-fuck to do it for me.

so what this false equivalency is doing is moving the onus from the evildoer to me, forcing me to explain why I don’t like what this fucker is doing. fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

very cool, thanks for following up. is that the 8 GB variant? what was the total damage?

there’s an army of people parroting that the only way out of Google’s grasp is to buy a Google phone and flash GrapheneOS, so it’s good there’s an alernative, and a way cheaper one at that.

edit: if time permits, maybe create a new post, a week or a month down the line with impressions after use?