Fastmail provides an easy way to migrate [0]. I setup a label in my Fastmail account that will tag all mail coming in from Gmail. Then you go through that list at your leisure and make the requisite contact with the people or services emailing at the old address. It's really not difficult at all. I've been on Fastmail for ~4 years now, and haven't once considered looking back or regretted it. Good luck.
Exactly this! After ~3 years I rarely receive an email with the Gmail tag now that all contacts/services have been switched over (or unsubscribed). Fastmail is easily my most valued paid service, and yet I never have to think about it. Just works very well.
Another happy Fastmail user here. Other than for email, great perks of Fastmail are that it lets me mount my own domain(s) for email and I can even host simple static websites for those domains.
So if they are using information people freely share to social media sites as the seeds for their investigatory and enforcement actions it follows that there is a simple trick people can employ or minimize their effectiveness.
They do, but some seem to be gradually removing functionality (like check deposit via scan + upload) in favor of using their amazingly convenient (/s) app.
> Judge me if you must, but the only reason I recently bought a Pixel was because of the intention on sticking GrapheneOS on it the second I got it out of the box.
The only judgement is a positive one. I thought this is what one does now that we all understand just how broad and deep the tracking is at nearly every level. Buying a Pixel and immediately flashing GrapheneOS has been my default mode of operation for years now on all cellphones in my home (wife and myself). No Play Services, Google apps or uninstallable Facebook...no problem!
I'd rather my life not be turned into an open book for targeted advertisements and whatever other purposes every detail of my existence is used for now or in the future. It's mind boggling to me how many seem to simply not care.
> I thought this is what one does now [...] No Play Services, Google apps or uninstallable Facebook...no problem!
I applaud your ability to do this (seriously, genuinely, I do), but if you truly believe what you do is normal, just "what one does now", I must inform you that you live in a very small bubble.
I would like to run GrapheneOS on my phone, but I like being able to use Google Wallet, among other things. If I look at what I use my phone for, way too much of it relies on Play Services, and (critically) the SafetyNet (or whatever Google is calling it now) checks passing.
This situation blows. I really don't like these trade offs, and iOS's trade offs are different but no better.
Admittedly, that part was a bit tongue in cheek. Rather, I wish that is "what one does now", as I think we might live in a somewhat nicer world rather than one driven by whatever has been happening as many of us get sucked into our algorithmically-driven feeds across various web properties and apps.
Also, fwiw, you can install Play Services after installing GrapheneOS[0]. It runs in a sandbox without the same deep system access that it has on less secure versions of Android. There's no requirement here to authenticate with any Google account. You'd just have the Play Services running/available, which can be a requirement for some apps.
Once I figured out my local ROCm setup Ollama was able to run with GPU acceleration no problem. Connecting an OpenWebUI docker instance to my local Ollama server is as easy as a docker run command where you specify the OLLAMA_BASE_URL env var value. This isn't a production setup, but it works nicely for local usages like what the immediate parent is describing.
"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug.
Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and the normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.
It really does seem like structural cracks are widening rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy, deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about what's going on right now.
The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book taking time away from everything that is happening right now.
If it was such a big deal, why did they wait to publish it in a book about a guy who will never see elected office again? They do this a lot and it damages their credibility.
Also, the current guy is not exactly that sharp, or improving with age, either. But age seems to no longer be of interest to the press.
I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?
You need broad support and to recruit. It is hard to do those things while being highly secretive. Besides, who's going to read a 500 page book? They'll read parts, but all of it? Of course not. By just using parts it is easier to dismiss. People don't want it to be true in the first place, so it's easy to buy the lie.
The truth requires understanding a lot of moving parts.
The lie is simple. We hate complexity (and long comments ;)
Some people they'll never convince, but they don't matter because they'd resist no matter what was proposed.
I mean look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's a major logistical effort to invade a country. They amassed military forces all along the border. The whole time saying "nothing to worry about" and "if we were really going to invade we wouldn't be so obvious about it!" It was happening for months! (Starting in March!) Meanwhile lots of people, including news outlets, bought the lie. Everything was there plain as day, but it's easy to buy the lie. No one wanted to see war break out. Every day they didn't proved they were right too! Sure, plenty of people asserted that the attack would happen and time showed them correct. But that doesn't change how many misses there were nor did it actually stop the attack.[0] Being right didn't matter
But it's impossible to make an attack without telegraphing it. Same thing here.
[0] certainly all the military leaders responded appropriately. You don't take those risks, especially when so blatant. But that also doesn't mean they aren't going to lie through their teeth trying to prevent public panic. Not when there's the faintest of hopes that a war could be stopped before it happens. Again, you can see similarities
That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency.
At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors.
The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy.
Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perfection through it's entire history.
That is no reason to set the perfect as the enemy of the good. Simply declaring "every form of government is (or all parties are) awful" is a cop-out, and the logical conclusion of that is a complete power vacuum which leads only to the population being ruled by rival gangs & fiefdoms.
My Dem senator from a “very blue state” described the US economy with decades of forced austerity and rising inequality as a model for the world and then Trump ruined our credibility.
Let that settle in; our credibility is was built on growing inequality. Decades of austerity being cheered on behind closed doors to leave a left wing senator believing austerity politics, gentle eugenics is a model for the world.
The problem is not the parties. It’s the people in power.
I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when people stop emphasizing "the current administration" when it's not relevant to the topic. Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally. If you criticized Biden in his tenure it was still Trump's fault. Believe me, I tried. It's Logical nonsense.
No, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is quite small.
> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on
As a bystander I can say on behalf of the ones that have been "othered" by means of political marketing, there is no guy. The pressing issue at play is the rule of law, separation of powers, due process, fair elections, and basic respect for human rights. If anyone feels they should continue to shout while waiving the merchandise of their favorite team, if anyone thinks this is the right moment to continue behaving like a spoiled hooligan, then they lose the aforementioned basic prerequisites of democracy, and with that, the democratic constitutional state.
Why would I hate Trump? He is a minor player. His role is to play the chaos actor, to divert attention. Just useful. For the people with real, material influence he is delivering.
The spell is broken if the press can stop wasting our mental bandwidth on the day to day distractions, and start to open themself to the big picture. And yes, doing a postmortem of how they got there is going to be an exercise in self-confrontation across the whole political spectrum.
> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally.
So, your solution here is for people who think the current administration is particularly bad to either not complain or accept any whataboutisms you have?
Your ‘both administrations’ quip is a vacuous justification for the current administration’s actions. If this is the basis for your justification, then, regardless of the truth of your claim, you’d be inconsistent to then praise this specific administration for anything positive. Thus, outside of nihilist generalizations about the overall structure of the US, you can’t meaningfully contribute to this conversation. Without giving a positive justification for the administrations behavior, your contributions are ‘logical nonsense.’
I’d rather simply complain about the doublespeakers in office at the moment and say it is wrong to do so, and there is no ‘logical nonsense’ in that.
Is my reading of your comment accurate? If not please let us know.
"The party not in power also has been doing similar things(in regards to the article) if not worse over the past couple of decades but lets completely ignore that, not criticize them at all, don't even bring it up and blame only the current admin because...<party currently in power is baddd>"
I'm not the parent, but that seems like a pretty bad misread.
But to answer, you worry more about the guy waving a knife in your face than other people who have knives and may have waved them in your face in the past.
I'm curious what the worse one is. The Clipper Chip? Seems like a light pleasantry compared to what's happening now.
No. It is so inaccurate that you either have serious problems with reading comprehension or are being deliberately disingenuous in order to destroy the conversation as if your Red Team is right.
The GP comment was about both the specific "Flood The Zone" strategy promoted by an advisor to the current administration and the overall and absolutely unprecedented assault by this administration on democracy and the rule of law itself.
Yes, I made a reference to the historical fact that the ideals of American democracy have always been aspirational. That is NOT license to whataboutism or claims that "everyone does it".
In a democracy, all the branches of govt (exec, ligislative, judicial) and the institutions of society (press, industry, academy, finance, religion, sport, charity, orgs, etc.) are ALL independent, balance power throughout society, and work for its advancement as best they can.
Under authoritarianism or fascism, all those branches and institutions are coerced or corrupted to concentrate power and serve the executive.
Never in the history of this country has any administration even come within orders of magnitude of this regime's attempt to cut off democracy. They are abusing the power of the state to coerce an corrupt every single branch and institution they can, starting with the judiciary, lawyers, press, and academia.
If you have actually "won young", you should take your gift of time and freedom to learn some history. Particularly relevant are how democracies are converted to autocracies, and it did not just happen in Germany in the 1930s, it happened today in Russia (ya, short weak democracy, but it didn't have to go that way), Venezuela, Hungary, and more; and the current party in power is abdicating it's legislative responsibilities to try to make it happen here. You might think you are safe because of your privilege of wealth, but if they succeed in their efforts to kill the 14th amendment and Habeas Corpus, you are not. Again, history is a guide, and the bog-standard authoritarian playbook is being run in broad daylight and secret Signal chat groups.
You must have misspelled government waste. All of this was exposed by doge and trump and the first thing you did was start minimizing the damage, saying we waste way more in other places, and telling me that the world will end if these lazy wasteful socialist institutions get their fat lips yanked off the teat. I didn't believe your lies then and no matter how much you squeal I don't believe them now. Your whole party has perfected it's use of language control, redefining words, and catastrophizing everything. These aren't MSM viewers in here, you're not fooling anyone. Fix your party by delivering social improvements not just fantasizing and warning about the "end of democracy", and minimizing waste. Fear mongering is not helping your situation if you have any hope of your candidates ever winning again.
The President makes a direct threat to Apple, that specifically their products will be made in the US or he will put a 25% tariff on them
This is nothing resembling policy or democracy. This is straight-up autocracy — an autocratic leader with zero input, specifically ordering a single company to take specific actions or he will personally set penalties.
So, which version of "government waste" propaganda do you believe? The $2Trillion, $1 Trillion, $150 Billion (7/1000 of the initial claim), or any of the other mostly disproven by their own documents claims in the few $10b range?
Do you believe the Musk's line that "40% of all calls to Social Security are fraudulent", or what he actually found after creating massive IN-efficiencies, both drastically worsening service AND costing more, that only 2 in 110,000 calls might have fraudulent indicators. [0]
The examples would go on for many pages.
And what institutions do you think are actually wasteful? All the scientific research that creates most of the advances that employ most people in this forum, medical research that saves lives every day, disaster recovery programs that restore distaster-hit economies to productivity more rapidly, initiatives to re-shore manufacturing to the US and build infrastructure for the next-generation economy, or just programs to ensure everyone actually has healthcare, or predict the weather so people can get severe storm warnings in real time instead of the next morning after their family got killed?
>>delivering social improvements
OK, do you not consider workers' rights, 40-hour workweek standard, overtime pay, ending child labor (remember, 5-year-olds working was common) and building education programs and requirements kids stay in school, requiring a level of workplace safety actual social improvements? Because those were NOT brought by "conservatives", but by "liberals".
Without liberals fighting, and often dying, your life would 99% likely be born poor, to a mother who bore a dozen other siblings, you get no real education, start work in a factory by age 5, and you are lucky to survive to adulthood, as only 1-2 of your brothers and sisters make it. That was life 120 years ago before work standards, education, public health, and many other "liberal" innovations happened. Just got look at an old graveyard and notice the ages on the tombstones - they are overwhelmingly infants and children. And those are the ones wealthy enough to have marked graves.
But evidently, you think it is less "wasteful" to just let 85% of the humans born work from the age of 5, have nearly no education, and die before adulthood.
All this is reality, not some linguistic trick, and if all you have to deny reality is a claim that reality is some linguistic trick, you have a very weak argument.
>>aren't MSM viewers in here
I'm no MSM viewer either, and if you think the MSM is "liberal" you are at least several decades out of date. Just look at the ownership, where 90% of the MSM and all local media outlets are owned by just six major corporations, who are all-in on promoting oligarchy.
I concur. I own a System 76 laptop, and it runs PopOS. It's been stable for years (taking the regular updates). They make a variety of hardware products ranging from portable/lightweight laptop to beefy engineering workstation.
(also not affiliated with them, just want to support good products/company)
Networking perms seem to be required on initial startup of the app.
I just installed the apk on a GrapheneOS endpoint (old Pixel 7 Pro) without the Google Play Services installed. The app requires network access to contact Hugging Face and download the model through your HF account. It also requires some interaction/permission agreement with Kaggle. Upon install _with_ network perms the app works, and I'm getting decent performance on the Gemma-3n-E2B-it-int4 model (5-6 token/s). Ok, cool.
Now kill the app, disable network permissions and restart it. Choose one of the models that you downloaded when it had network access. It still works. It does appear to be fully local. Yay.
Solution - Refuse to purchase property subject to an HOA. I realize this might not be a tenable solution for some people, and I find that to be a very unfortunate situation. We should really educate our friends, kids, neighbors on the perils of these often-broad and legally binding agreements that seem to be sneaking into real-estate contracts/deeds at an alarming rate nationally. If you aren't comfortable with each and every provision being enforced upon you, don't purchase!
Regarding the grass lawn situation, there are alternatives like mixing in clover varieties which actually fix nitrogen (e.g. improve soil health) while requiring considerably less water than most lawn grass to survive. Here in urban Denver my wife and I have opted for a 100% "mini clover" lawn in both the front and back yards. It's already green and growing while neighboring yards are still dead winter brown grass. It also stays nice and green well into the late fall after most grass is dormant/dead.
I realize this doesn't do a lot to address the biodiversity angle the article took on, but it's a potential alternative for those seeking options. If you allow it to grow a bit you'll get flowers that are helpful for pollinators in addition to the healthier soil. I can attest that after you give the clover seed 6 weeks or so to set roots and sprout (no walking on, keep it moist) it will serve you for years. We're on year 4 at our house. No regrets.
It’s even worse. Sometimes you can be comfortable with all provisions at signing, but then the provisions change or the interpretation of them can change. It does not take much to elect some nut jobs to HOA board - especially that most owners don’t vote and even smaller portion run in HOA elections. Sometimes it’s not even HOA board that changes but the management company. And those management companies tend to be incentivized to find as many violations as possible.
No state in the US has the majority of its population living in HOA communities. There are choices but some people want all the upside of HOAs (imposing rules on others) and none of the downside (rules imposed on them). According to the Foundation for Community Association Research, Florida and Vermont are the most HOA focused states, with 45% of the population living in HOA communities. New York is only 18.8%, Oregon 13.1%, Wisconsin 12.7%, Georgia 21.8%, Arkansas 3%, and California 35.6%.
It's 100% true that you can avoid HOAs by simply not buying into one. No need for bureaucrats in DC to parachute in to run everyone lives for them. If you want to "opt-out" you can easily do so by not buying in an HOA. That's what the majority of people do. Having the government mandate the ability to opt-out is simply another way of denying others the ability to freely come together and decide rules for themselves instead of having people in DC decide for everyone.
It's entirely possible for someone to buy a property which is subject to an HOA, a well run respectful one. Then over time as "leaders" change, the HOA could become a poorly run one.
Tax foreclosure generally leads to a property free and clear of all encumberances. It's a bit of a pain to arrange though. :P
A federal opt out would be a huge intrusion into contract law, IMHO.
It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed. It may be hard to buy where you want to buy and avoid HOAs though. But my parents' house doesn't have an HOA (but does have pretty picky city code enforcement), and the two houses I've owned didn't either; although the first did have a dry covenant that everyone I talked to said is unenforcable and I found amusing. Tends to mean older lots or more rural, because new developments like to setup HOAs, presumably because the buyers of new homes don't reject them.
Some sort of association is also more or less required if there's any form of shared responsibility, like in a condo.
> It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed.
This is why I always cringe when my neighbors on social media bitch about HOA. It just floors me that there are people who simply do not read HOA covenants before they buy their homes.
It wouldn’t be bad except that the board and the members can change the bylaws and rules at any time. I would be fine with an HOA where no power existed to change the rules but they’ve never been like that.
Exactly. I’m no fan of them and have had a battle or two in the past with a previous house I owned. My issue was not due to ignorance, but a weird interpretation of a statute. I had a tree die. I removed it because it was unsightly. I was dinged because I wanted to replace it when the season was appropriate for planting another tree. Had I left it in I wouldn’t be in violation. So I had to plant a tree (that subsequently died), just to plant another when the season was right. Just dumb.
I swore I’d never buy in an HOA community angain after that, but around me, non-HOA communities are crap. I want to maximize value and opportunity to resell so, HOA it is.
A bit of common sense and understanding would go a long way to eliminating half the complaints you hear about HOAs.
If you know the tree is going to immediately start dying, you're just going to find the cheapest, least healthy sapling at the nursery. Had they let you wait until the tree is more likely to survive, there's a better chance you'd be willing to spend a bit more to buy an older/larger sapling that'll look better and provide more shade from the start. Plus, the temporary tree slowly dying would probably be less visually appealing than an empty spot for a few months.
There are reasons why we plant street trees: improved aesthetics, increased home value, shade along the street and sidewalks, traffic calming effects, etc. By ignoring the reason behind them and just focusing on checking the box, your HOA was just begging for some malicious compliance that undermined the benefits of the replacement tree.
I am surprised by this negative attitude towards HOAs. In my experience they have been absolutely necessary and helpful. I own a condo. The HOA maintains the exterior of the buildings, the shared driveway including snow removal, the landscaping. Every cent I pay in HOA fees is accounted for. The HOA board are other owners who work for free.
I have also heard of badly run and even fraudulent HOAs, that take money and then don’t use it for the good of the homeowners. But I doubt this is the norm.
Condo HOAs serve a very different function to suburban HOAs.
Suburban HOAs essentially function only to browbeat everyone into maintaining their property according to arbitrary standards. While usually well intentioned, initially, because these standards are arbitrary, they often result in abuses of power.
In either situation, condo or suburban, the politics of an HOA often result in the HOA becoming dominated by bad actors, increasing the propensity for abuse.
[0] https://www.fastmail.com/features/migrate/
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