ExtremeDullard

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Not to rain on anybody’s populist parade here, but as a landlord, I’d like to offer a slightly different perspective:

I own an appartment that I rent. Assuming my tenant is honest, takes care of the property and everything goes well, after I’ve paid taxes and condominium expenses, there isn’t a terribly huge profit left.

The law prevents me from raising the rent beyond the rate of inflation. I’m not greedy, but even if I don’t want to raise my nice tenant’s rent for a given year, I have to because I won’t be able to catch up later, with them or with another tenant. I literally must raise the rent every year because otherwise I won’t be able to realign the rent to normal levels in the future. The pro-tenant laws make me do this, and - I shit you not - every year I apologize to my tenant (who’s actually a nice lady, this one) because I have no choice.

That’s when everything goes well with the tenant. When it doesn’t and the tenant refuses to pay, or trashes the property, I can’t throw him out. I’ve had one tenant who couldn’t pay his heating bill make a campfire in the middle of the fucking living room with the floorboards he ripped out. Because why not! It’s not his property.

He knew all the tricks in the book to avoid being kicked out too. It took me 3 years and an expensive attorney to get rid of him, and then I paid tens of thousands of euros to have the place renovated, because the guy left it looking like a warzone. I lost a truckload of money.

When I told the agency that manages the place not to put it on the market again and to leave it empty - because it’s plain cheaper not to collect rent than to risk another sumbitch who’s gonna cost me the equivalent of a car to make the place livable again, not to mention the headaches - the agency told me it’s illegal and it could be forcibly seized by the French state (the appartment is in France) to house homeless people in the winter. W… Wait… WHAT???

So I put a tenant in - and luckily for me, for once this one is decent - just to avoid having hobos camping in my appartment.

So you know what? I’m all for social justice and all. But landlord bashing gets fucking tiring too. Tenants aren’t the only ones who should have rights.

Now go ahead, mod me down for being a capitalist pigdog. Or better: buy my appartment from me, because I’m fucking tired of dealing with bad tenants and it’s up for sale. Just don’t buy it to rent it unless you like pain and injustice… Fair warning.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

I bought it to live in it when I lived in France for a few years in the late 90’s. Then I kept it as an investment, and I put it up for rent to offset the maintenance costs and the taxes.

I didn’t buy it to profit richly from my tenants, or make a living out of renting properties, if that’s what you’re driving at.

And you’re right, I want out and I’m selling it. And you know who will buy it? Someone who wants to live in it. It’s never going to be someone who wants to put it up for rent, unless they’ve gone funny in the head.

Meaning it’s gonna be one less property that an idiot like me will put on the renting market. If the French government wanted to promote cheap rents, they’re getting the exact opposite effect with their crazy anti-landlord laws: affordable places for rent are getting rarer and rarer because ordinary landlords like me looking to have a property to pass on to their children just don’t want to deal with this shit.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

Did you read what I wrote? I AM selling it.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

Tell me Mr. Social Warrior: who will accept to rent properties if they can’t profit from doing it even a little bit? Do you think I’m Mother Theresa and I want to put my appartment up for rent at cost?

Maybe you want the state to build and own real estate, and rent it at cost for great social justice. It is an option for sure. Just be aware that you’ll pay for it in your taxes, and not a little bit.

Also, it’s been tried before in a small country called the USSR, and if I recall, it didn’t end too well.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

No one is forcing you to be a landlord and “only” take in a meager profit.

You don’t understand: I’m not even taking in a meager profit - let alone a fat one. I’m taking a loss.

If I have a tenant in the property, on average I’m taking a loss because on average, tenants cost me more than they bring in.

If I don’t rent the property (assuming it was even legal) then I lose money in maintenance costs and taxes.

Your little quotes around “only” hint at what you think: that all landlords get filthy rich on the tenants’ backs. Many politicians like to spread that idea. While there are some tenants and agencies who make obscene profits and should be reined in, the vast majority of landlords are small property owners like me who put their money into something to avoid losing it to inflation, and instead are losing it to bad tenants.

But by all means, keep thinking landlords are sitting on piles of money and profiteering from the poor tenants. It’s so much more convenient to see the world in black and white.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

You live in a property owned by a parasite like me.

By all means, buy your own property too then. Oh you can’t?

Tell me: who’s gonna put a roof over your head? I’ll tell you who: it’s either me, or the state.

If it’s me, you’re going to pay me rent, because believe it or not, I worked hard to buy my appartment and it’s not yours to enjoy for free.

If it’s the state, other taxpayers will pay for the property and you’ll pay them to live in the property, because they too worked hard to buy the property the state owns and it’s not yours to enjoy for free either.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

What part of “it’s up for sale” don’t you comprehend?

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

You know your life has gone to shit when you have to finance a pizza.

But most importantly, whichever corporate honchos thought preying on the ultra-poor was a decent thing to do and authorized this scheme should know they’re worthless human beings.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

I have a Fairphone 4 with CalyxOS loaded on it.

I bought it new and immediately flashed CalyxOS after taking it out of the box, using the Calyx Institute’s instructions: it was easy and it went smoothly.

Don’t listen to some of the GrapheneOS fanbois: you CAN relock the bootloader after CalyxOS is installed on the Fairphone. In fact, it’s recommended.

As for buying a used Pixel phone and arguing that’s a better use of the Earth’s resources than landfilling it and buying a new Fairphone, that is a valid argument depending on how you look at things.

However, what isn’t a valid argument is saying buying a used Pixel isn’t giving money to Google because it’s used: if someone bought a Pixel and gave their money to Google, they got some of that money back when the second owner bought the Pixel used for cheaper - meaning the second owner took on part of the original purchase, meaning the second owner gave their money to Google in lieu of the first owner.

I’m sorry but the only Pixel phone you can buy that won’t indirectly give money to Google is a stolen Pixel, and I ain’t no thief. I refuse to give money to Google, and I refuse to support Google in any capacity, therefore I refuse to own a Pixel phone.

Refusing to patronize Google by not buying a Pixel phone - 1st of 2nd hand - and refusing to be part of the Pixel ecosystem is also a means to fight for your rights to privacy, because anything that hurts Google is good for privacy.

ExtremeDullard , 7 months ago

I don’t suppose this is optional.

No Porsche for me then. Not a new one anyway. That’s a deal breaker.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

What I get from TFA is that this bug only affects those who use both several user profiles AND work profiles. Anybody knows if it also affects those who have a work profile but only one user profile?

I’m in the latter category. My CalyxOS cellphone is on Android 13 and unlikely to get Android 14 anytime soon, as CalyxOS is well known for getting updates later than everyone else - which is also one of the reason why I chose it, so I can let others beta-test Google’s latest bugs. But if this is something I should watch coming even if I only have one user profile, I’ll disable updates until it’s fixed.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

The consequence of this habit is that my phone becomes cluttered with a graveyard of forgotten apps

Then break the habit.

The problem with forgotten apps is that they don’t forget you: a lot of those apps are actively gathering data on you behind your back. Also, even if they’re legit, there’s always the risk that an update will pull in malware some day - either because the app was compromised, or the app maker went to the dark side.

What I do is this: I keep untrustworthy apps in my work profile (untrustworthy being any Google app, Reddit, Whatsapp and any other well-known data collecting trojans). My work profile is managed by Shelter which keeps them all frozen.

Every once in a while, I go around the apps in my main profile that I’ve installed “in case they might be useful some day” and if I haven’t used them for some time, I stick them in my work profile to be frozen and kept out of my data should they start doing something sketchy some day.

And every once in a while, I go around the apps in my work profile and purge the apps that I haven’t unfrozen for a long time.

In short, I use my work profile as a stage-out area for uncommonly used apps: they spend some time there to prove their worth until they prove worthless and I remove them entirely. But as long as they’re in there, they don’t consume resources and they’re not a liability.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

Hence sideloading.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

Translation: let’s stick AI wherever possible because AI is the new blockchain.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

Most people I know who have any trouble tolerating advertisement use Newpipe. I don’t understand how the official Youtube client is even relevant anymore.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

Big tech companies have sunk billions into the latest new fad and now they’re inventing as many use cases as possible to justify the expense.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

I use this OpenBoard fork:

github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/releases

It has Swype-like gestures and it’s very accurate even if you swipe fast and without paying too much attention.

ExtremeDullard , 8 months ago

I predict this man will get killed by someone who lost his job to AI and fell into poverty as a result.

ExtremeDullard , 9 months ago

Wow… 15 years of mobile corporate surveillance and erosion of privacy already. How time flies…

ExtremeDullard , 9 months ago

This would not be needed if the stupid Android security model didn’t prevent people from running their OWN phone with full rights and doing full backups and restores easily.

Hint: the Android security model isn’t for your security, but the security of the data that third-party apps put on YOUR phone - that is, consequently, not truly yours.

ExtremeDullard , 9 months ago

You are free to fork AOSP and maintain your own fork if you have the resources.

Unfortunately not many people / organizations do or have the stomach to commit to doing that, and that’s how Google is able to maintain a tight grip on what is supposed to be an open source project.

ExtremeDullard , 9 months ago

Not quite: Google is quietly but very definitely busy gutting AOSP of anything nice and up to date. The dialer for example is becoming hopelessly outdated. And the reason for that is because they’re trying to transition as many nice, free default AOSP services to their non-free, functionally better but Google Play Service-tied equivalents.

The problem with that is that nobody really has the resources to counter their efforts and come up with good open-source alternatives to what Google is slowly removing or letting rot in AOSP. As a result, AOSP is slowly becoming more and more unappealing.

Of course that’s exactly what Google wants: they milked open-source for all it was worth to drive the wide adoption of Android, and now it’s in their way. They would like nothing better than to kill off AOSP tomorrow but they can’t do that. So instead, they’re boiling the frog slowly until it’s too late to do anything about it by the time it notices that the water is too hot.

ExtremeDullard , 9 months ago

GrapheneOS itself is great, but the GrapheneOS community is toxic. Something to consider. If you want deGoogled Android without the drama, consider CalyxOS.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The thing I don’t miss from Reddit is the constant nagging.

Visit a subreddit about skydiving for 5 seconds? Suddenly you get skydiving-related suggestions of communities ALL OF THE TIME. Forever.

No, I don’t want to get notifications so I never miss news from this community /Dismiss popup

New notification? Let’s see who posted something! Oh… It’s just a Reddit feature ad. Yes I got it. /Dismiss fake notification.

And on, and on, and on. You can’t spend a quiet 5 minutes reading things that interest you without your flow getting disrupted by pointless attention-grabbers.

That’s something you don’t get on Lemmy: it’s opt-in, not opt-out: unless I look for something, it won’t suggest anything to me or push anything on me that I have to dismiss.

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

Well it isn’t: when I enable File Transfer by default in the Developer option, it works fine. I can copy files to/from the phone. And USB debugging works fine too. It’s just that the options are greyed out in the menu.

But for good measure, I did try 3 or 4 other cables I had lying around, and my other USB ports, and the problem doesn’t go away.

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

Wouldn’t this just be the default android safety feature that disabled data transfer via cable by default now? You need to enable it each time

Yes, disabled by default and having to enable it each time is exactly what I want! But I can’t because the options are greyed out, is my problem :)

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

Data transfer does work. It’s just that I can’t enable it using the notification menu thing.

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

I use Linux. There is no driver to install. But I just tried on my wife’s Windows PC, which doesn’t have any Android tools installed, and it’s the same thing: all USB options are greyed out.

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

I would try it, but it took me several hours of trying just about everything to finally manage to flash this (unofficial) LineageOS ROM onto the phone, I almost bricked the phone several times until it finally worked and installed properly at some point, and I’m not sure what I did exactly to make it work.

I don’t really want to ruin the installation at this point :) I’m not sure I’ll be able to re-flash the stock Nokia ROM again safely, and I’m certainly not sure I’ll be able to return back to LineageOS. I think I only got lucky once with that one.

But I don’t need to do that: I used that phone for a very long time with the stock Nokia ROM and it worked fine.

I’ve been reading reports of this problem also happening in other brands of phones with the stock ROM also. Like this one for example: the guy has the problem with a stock Redmi phone and solved it by installing a custom ROM. Kind of the reverse of my experience :)

I think maybe it has something to do with latter revisions of Android: the last Nokia ROM my phone ran was Android 10. This LineageOS ROM is Android 13. I have a feeling the Android version number is the clincher here.

I thought perhaps Google in their infinite wisdom unilateraly decided to disable something useful in AOSP like they usually do, and perhaps there was some adb trick to bring the usefulness back. Hence my initial question. But come to think of it, my Fairphone 4 running CalyxOS is also Android 13 and it works perfectly fine. So maybe not…

ExtremeDullard OP , 8 months ago

No. Sadly I never found out why my phone is misbehaving. But this isn’t my primary device: it’s just a test cellphone so it doesn’t matter too much to me. It would certainly be a showstopper if it was my daily driver.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

I believe in paying for the things I use - unless there’s no practical way for me to pay. See below - because if I don’t pay, whoever supplies the service I use is either an idealist and I’m a freeloader, or they’re milking my private data for money.

That’s why the Fediverse instances I use are hosted on SDF and I pay SDF for the privilege.

There are also cases where I would like to pay for the service but I can’t. For instance, Youtube: I would gladly pay for Youtube. I literally consume hundreds of gigabytes worth of video every month. $10 for that is very cheap.

But I can’t because paying Youtube means having a Youtube account, and there’s no way in hell I’m opening any account with Google and help them track me and monetize the shit out of my viewing habits even more than they do. So I don’t.

I wish I could, but Google is so invasive that it’s a better option to freeload off of them than pay them the money they legitimately deserve.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

If your phone can’t do charge control on it’s own, Chargie is totally legit: I have 8 of them - As and Cs - and they work great.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

You my friend are obviously not old enough to need reading glasses or progressives. There comes an age at which bigger screens are better. You will know one day :)

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

What I want a phone to be:

• Thick with a (reasonable) bezel, so I can grab it easily and not activate the touchscreen at the edges of the screen
• Reasonably usable with one hand
• Sturdy, somewhat shock-proof and waterproof
• As serviceable / repairable as possible
• Long battery life (not use time, life of battery before it needs replacing)
• Built to last

Basically everything a foldable phone isn’t.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

I have a Ulefone Armor 3W . It’s MIL-STD-810: built like a tank and waterproof. And that ain’t no marketing: I dropped that thing on the road while riding my bike so many times, and it just doesn’t care. And I use it regularly to take photos underwater. It’s fairly repairable too: it’s held together with a truckload of little Torx screws, but once they’re all out, the innards are easily accessible - and from what I can see, the battery easily replaceable.

My only problem with that thing is, it’s not deGoogled. And it’s Ulefone, so there’s a non-zero chance that it’s running Chinese spyware too.

So I retired it, much to my chagrin, and I’m currently rocking a Fairphone 4 running CalyxOS. I’m a bit more careful not to drop that one, and I can live without the waterproofness. Small price to pay to free myself from Google’s corporate surveillance to some extent.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

• On Android: K9Mail. By far the best.
• On Linux: ThunderBird. It’s bloated like an obese whale on cortisone but I’ve yet to see a better client.

ExtremeDullard OP , 10 months ago

I don’t know… I use FediLab every day to check out new videos on the bus to work (it’s a very short bus ride :)) and like it. Maybe I’m easily pleased.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

There is a strong suspicion that the TOR network has been turned into a NSA honeypot by virtue of the NSA running more than half of the TOR exit nodes. Do you really want to take that chance?

Not to mention, pretty much the only thing most honest people use TOR for is to defeat geoblocking, and most geoblocked sites of any importance blacklist TOR exit nodes. So it’s not even that useful.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

I said suspicion, not evidence. The suspicion arises when you try to answer the following 2 basic questions:

• Who wants to deanonymize TOR users the most?
• Who has the resources to run TOR servers and provide the service for free and why?

Or put another way, apart from a few idealists like the Calyx Institute, nobody in their right mind would foot the bill to run servers mostly used by hackers and pedos. Therefore, the most likely operators are law enforcement and nefarious barely-constitutional three-letter agencies.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

Is there evidence that the data is being used to prosecute/harass/intimidate people?

So you’re okay with the TLAs snooping around and watching what you do provided they don’t act on it? I’m not, if only as a matter of principle. To quote the great movie Anon, it’s not that I have something to hide, it’s that I have nothing I want them to see.

Besides, remember, this is the United States: just say terrorism or national security, and due process and habeas corpus go out the window - in which case, you may not hear about somebody being harassed or prosecuted at all.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

Of coure! Google doesn’t deliver messages to Turkey anymore: it’s Türkiye now.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

why is a private US company supposed to take care of the communication of such events to Turkish citizens?

Because Google has established itself as one half of a de-facto worldwide cellphone duopoly. It vets and serves the vast majority of the apps that runs on its platform from its app store, it puts a large majority of the world’s population - including Turkish citizens - under surveillance without their consent, and all the push notifications from all the apps running all over the world are sent through Google’s servers.

When you set yourself up to corner a country’s citizens, limit their choices and exploit their private data to that extent, you owe a thing or two to that country in return at the very least.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

From TFA:

This was during the glorious dawn of the Web 2.0 revolution—an era of unbridled Obama-era optimism

So the web two-oh started in 2009 now? I’m pretty sure I first started getting the telltale nausea circa 2000.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

Can you get Obtainium to scan a simple HTML page full of links to APKs and extract the latest versions of each APK in the page? It seems to work fine on Git repos, but I can’t get it to watch simple pages listing APKs.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

Yeah but my issue is that it doesn’t work :) I point it to a simple HTML page listing only links to APK files in it (namely, the Aurora Store nightlies) and the only thing is does is show a black bar for a couple of seconds and nothing happens.

ExtremeDullard , 10 months ago

I probably should, but the truth is, the app doesn’t interest me enough to bother. I wanted to use it to automatically track Aurora Store nightly builds for when the stable version gets broken by Google, as Google regularly does. But when it happens, all I have to do is open a link bookmarked in my browser.

I figured I’d ask here to figure out if I missed some configuration or something. If it’s a bug, I’ll just uninstall the thing and forget about it.