Humanius

The countries that oppose Chat Control are:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Czechia
• Finland
• Germany
• Luxemburg
• Netherlands
• Poland

Supporters are:

• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Denmark
• France
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Malta
• Portugal
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sweden

All other countries are currently undecided

Source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Contact your representatives and tell them they should oppose Chat Control. The link above lists who they are and provides some templates for emails you could send them

I’m at the “I’d like to ditch Windows, but whenever I try another Linux distro there are too many little issues really consider it a viable alternative” stage.

Funnily enough that is roughly the implementation the EU seems to be working on.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification

On a side-note. I do not consider the government to be a trusted party. Whatever solution gets implemented needs to not provide the government any information that they can use for mass surveillance.

The two main requirements in my view are:

• The website that needs your age shouldn’t get to know your identity. They only get to verify your age.
• The government age verification shouldn’t get to know what service you are requesting access for. They only provide age verification.

Edit: You mention the certificate being short-lived, but one of the concerns mentioned in the proposed implementation for the EU age verification states that if that window is too short it can be used to determine identity.

While I agree that the cost of operation and yield are a valid concern, the same argument could have been used against renewable energies like wind and solar only 30 to 40 years ago.

The price of these energy sources has come down a lot since, for a large part thanks to the modern day widespread use. We have a lot of experience generating power this way which drives down cost, and increases yield.

Novel techniques like the one described in the article don’t yet benefit from that experience and scale. And if we don’t try new things every now and then they never will.

That is not to say all novel techniques will be equally fruitful, but if you don’t occasionally try new things you will never learn.

Edit: Misspelled “energy” as “energie”

I’m currently using Ecosia as well, because they are working together with Qwant on a European search index. I want to support that.

Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive…

Citizen’s Initiatives are great, but I’m not sure they are the right mechanism in this case.

They are meant to make parliament address a concern, and not to inform legislators how you feel about a law proposal that is already on the table. All a Citizen’s Initiative does is force the European parliament to address a concern if a certain threshold of signatures is met. They will be doing that anyway when the law proposal is being voted on.

And on top of that, the time frame for a Citizen’s Initiative is too long (over a year) to be a meaningful shield against Chat Control.

Contacting your representatives to the European Parliament is probably the best way forward at this point.

I’m not sure how contacting my representatives in the European Parliament over something that I am concerned about, would be spam.

I don’t care what party they are from, or what part of the country they are from. They are still my representatives.
They sit there to represent the concerns of their constituents in parliament, and they cannot effectively do that if they do not know the concerns of their constituents.

If you have good ideas for collective action I’d love to hear them, but until then shooting an email can never hurt.

Edit: Just so there is no confusion, I don’t think signing a four year old change.org petition is any more effective than directly contacting your MEPs

Instead it might be more helpful to directly contact your representatives.

This website can help you figure out who they are, and help formulate an email send to them:
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

(Obviously it is best to write your own response, or at least update the text to be your own, but it could be a good springboard)

The EU is a democracy.

While it’s not perfect (no system is), each of the bodies that make up the EU legislature are democratic:

• The European Parliament is directly elected in European elections every five years
• The European Commission is made up of commissioners from each country, which are in turn appointed by their democratically elected governments
• The European Council consists of the heads of state or governance, which are also democratically elected in the respective countries.
• The Council of the European Union is made up of government ministers, which are appointed by the democratically elected governments.

Not every body is directly voted on, but each body comes forth from a democratic election

Edit: The message I responded to originally made the claim that the “EU is no democracy.”

This looks like an AI generated article

OS: Unraid

It’s primarily NAS software, with a form of software raid functionality built in.
I like it mainly because it works well and the GUI makes is very easy to use and work with.

On top of that you can run VMs and docker containers, so it is very versatile as well.

I use it to host the following services on my network:

• Nextcloud
• Jellyfin
• CUPS

It costs a bit of money up-front, but for me it was well-worth the investment.

I wish there was a good alternative to YouTube. I’ve been meaning to host a Peertube instance but that process is really not as straightforward as it should be if they want the platform to gain widespread adoption

Google Maps has pretty decent alternatives though:

• For simply browsing the map I use OpenStreetMaps on desktop, and Organic Maps on mobile.
• For navigation (by car) I used to use Waze (which is also owned by Google), but I’ve switched back to good ol’ TomTom

As for iPhone… personally I have a Google Pixel which I’m going to keep using till I can’t anymore. After that I’m probably switching to Fairphone. They’re a European company and their phones are right up my alley

Not op, but for me the main problem with Authy is that it is owned by an American company.

It’s not the worst offender, but any American company is subject to the whims of the current administration. As an example, we’re currently seeing how American sanctions lock people out of their Microsoft accounts at the International Court.

I’ve slowly been moving over my 2FA codes to Aegis.

That is not what the eligibility tool for the battery program is telling me.
And Google Support told me the same thing when I asked for clarification about how the eligibility is determined.

Edit: The email says Pixel 7a, but that is a mistake on their part. I have a Pixel 6a.

Not OP but it would appear that any phone that is out of warranty will be denied a repair or refund.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with Google support about this issue for the past two weeks, and thusfar the only information I’ve gotten is that the reason my phone is denied a repair or refund is because the warranty expired in 2024.

I don’t even have information on whether my phone contains a defective battery in the first place. Since the refund eligibility tool doesn’t say that, and I haven’t received an answer to that question yet from support.

Given that the Pixel 4a came out in 2020 and the Pixel 6a in 2022, with warranties generally lasting 2 years, most phones will be out of warranty.

Edit: This is the most recent response I’ve received from Google Support.
The reason why the terms “eligible” and “impacted” are used like this is because I was trying to figure out the reason for the inconsistencies between the terms on their support page

I am very disappointed with the way Google appears to be handling the issue. They ship their phones with defective batteries, and are now not really doing anything to properly communicate the problem and fix the issue.
Instead we get a mandatory update and no real information

I’m a bit baffled by his hostile response. All I said is that I host and pay for my own server.
Nowhere did I claim that I host YouTube videos on that server, or that it is open to the public. I host that server for personal use, and for me and a few friends of mine. At most there is going to be two people connecting to it at once.

I have looked into hosting a peertube instance, but I’ve not really gotten around to figuring out how to set that all up.

Not op, but I pay for my own server, domain and IP (though it is not a static one). And I’ve donated to some of the fediverse platforms that I use, like lemmy.world.
I’m not sure what you are trying to get at?

Google is not offering me a no-cost battery replacement.
I’m not eligible for any replacement or refund according to their own support page

Edit: Here’s proof.

On the one page they are talking about “impacted devices”, but on the other page they say I’m not “eligible” for a refund of repair.
So they do not confirm whether my phone is unaffected or not. They only say I won’t get a refund.

I’m highly skeptical when a massive corporation uses inconsistent language like this. Especially when they don’t clearly define what they mean with the terms “impacted” and “eligible”.

Are there situations where impacted devices may not be eligible?

I own a Pixel 6a, and I’m not happy about the whole situation for several reasons:

• The update is mandatory and instant the moment it is received. You don’t get a choice in the matter.
• The only reason I am aware of my battery being nerfed is because I had read this article and because I paid attention during the update. There is no clear indication after the update that they might have nerfed my battery life.
• Google is not communicating clearly whether my phone is one of the so-called “affected devices”. There is a tool that allows you to check “eligibility”, but it only reports eligibility for a refund. My phone is not eligible for a refund, so does that mean my phone is not an “affected device”? It doesn’t say.
• After calling support Im not much wiser. All they told me is that “if my phone gets warm sometimes, or the battery drains too fast” that might mean my device is affected. But clearly they should know whether my device is affected otherwise they wouldn’t be able to determine whether I’m eligible for the refund.

This is also not the first time Google burned me with a bad quality battery. This just strengthens my resolve that my next phone won’t be a Pixel. Which is a shame, because I like these phones otherwise.

The Fairphone is looking quite interesting.