For sure, never ever connect it to the internet.

Samsung equipment is pretty good, and to some degree the larger companies subsidize the cost of the TV with the assumption that you’ll connect it and give them data to sell. So while a large monitor might be more expensive, there’s a reason why. Unless your friend actually gets over the air TV stations, consider a large monitor, then Samsung and LG.

This is kind of useless fear-mongering suited to no one’s threat model.

Are messages truly E2EE and they don’t share meta data? Yes? Then you’re fine. It needs a phone number for registration? OK, well buy a burner SIM card (you of course have several, right?) to register it if you’re that worried. Because if you’re already at a level where you’re THAT concerned about your phone number pinging for using a widely popular messaging app, then you have lost the game by even having a phone or sending messages to other humans who are the weakest link in the security chain anyway.

Considering that the Feds tried to make some government-compliant front end for Signal for idiot Hegseth to use to talk about national security stuff with the Vice President, I’d say that it’s probably fine for you to buy weed or whatever.

I know, the point is that you’re broadcasting over the radio that you’re encrypting the data over the one medium were it’s illegal to encrypt the data because the FCC thinks it’s still 1989 or whatever when it comes to amateur radio. So it’s not just that you’re doing something illegal, you’re using a registered call sign and a really loud, easily triangulatable signal to do it. It’s like putting a movie poster-sized sign on your fence that says “Rattlesnake venom for sale, inquire within.” It’s not a sustainable practice.

Ultimately, the amateur radio crowd needs to get this law 47 CFR 97.113 changed to allow an exception for encrypted internet over radio and allow for modern communications standards. Personally, I expect that it would only take one House Rep willing to score any sort of win with rural voters for this to work right now.

You’ll have yellow shins and calves on every pair of pants you own.

Encryption using IP over HAM is still illegal - you can’t access Lemmy because it’s an HTTPS site, because we live in the 21st century.

That’s what Google wants, because people gave up on Jailbreaking iPhones because the loss of features wasn’t worth it on the other side. Google probably doesn’t love that their flagship is the best model for use with custom ROMs, plus they’re also trying to lock out Xiomi as well for what that’s worth.

While giving up is an option, someone somewhere needs to coordinate this entire OSS ecosystem to focus on singular projects. I would love to see a privacy and FOSS non-profit do exactly this.

I’m in the same exact boat.

At some point when Google kills custom ROMs, everyone working on customs ROMs won’t have anywhere else to go other than a Linux phone.

Same. Never use these things on Android.

That’s about the connection to Car Play, not GPS

When customs ROMs and most FOSS apps are killed next year on Android, we’re all going to find out very quickly how much the trap has closed around us.

Same reason I loved to Linux on desktop, something that used to be cool and open and at least work mostly has enshittified beyond repair. I’m not going to let the bastards get me if I can help it.

This is the point, isn’t it?

Lock down their own ecosystem because they’re jealous of how Apple does it, so they can herd all users into their walled garden. Then close the gates behind them. There’s no easy way out, you can’t just wander back and forth anymore. You have to scale a wall in the dead of night and shed a tear as you look back and see everyone else having a lovely life, then set off into the dark forest of privacy on your own.

People hate friction in the first place. This is as much friction as they can realistically make on their own without triggering anti-trust cases and EU fines.

100% this. I had a neighbor who was caring for their elderly, bed-ridden mother. She was almost entirely blind, diabetes took her foot, and had the TV on the televangelist 24/7 channel. Yet she would sneak and get the phone and send televangelists all her money. They tried to hide the phone, she would manage to mail them checks. She set up recurring debits from her bank. Crackheads are less determined. They were in such a bad place their gas got shut off because all her money was going to these people. Family was crazy about it, and had no way to stop it with the bank.