The ribbon is one thing, the flat design and obfuscating tools/settings are a far bigger issue.

Flat design may be less distracting to you but that also means it’s less clear, because there are fewer obvious demarcation.

I despise flat design, it’s downright awful design, and done for looks rather than functionality.

Even saying it’s “less distractive” supports this.

Microsoft also did this to obfuscate features, which is pretty apparent when you consider new users used to “discover” features via the menu system. I supported Office for MS in the early days, and this was a huge thing at the time. It was discussed heavily when training on new versions.

It’s hell on ram for Android, unfortunately.

Still, looks very promising

Except social media is a bane for kids, even moreso than for adults.

It’s a shit show.

Samsung from a phone vendor like Verizon is bloated, but not one from Samsung (well, except the Samsung crap like Bixby).

Depends on whether it comes from Samsung or via a phone company.

Either way, Universal Debloat Utility is your friend.

Just like Robocop, right? 😆

Easier to be automated, like a Roomba.

A mall isn’t open 24hr a day, and I’m sure they know when the least riskiest hour is, probably like a couple hours before opening.

Police don’t prevent crime - their job is the grab people who commit crime.

Prevention is a much more complex issue (cultural).

Even as kids we all did shit our parents told us not to, and we just tried to not get caught.

You don’t need a stingray to simply pickup cell broadcast which has the ID in it. Technically your phone is doing this, as the tower you connect to has an ID.

I suspect it works a lot ore than 30%

As you mentioned, cell ID is there too. Pretty easy to simply capture IMSI data (don’t even have to do anything, phones are alway broadcasting their ID).

Combine IMSI, BT, MAC, date/time, and boy you’ve got one helluva surveillance device.

Add in BT headphones, watches, etc, and you have even more data points to associate.

I wouldn’t be shopping there just because of that.

I think they still have an associated number, just that it can’t be used for voice or sms (it may have changed, but the number was effectively the equivalent of an IP address in the telco system - it’s what all the switching relies on to route). They probably just don’t provision voice or sms for it.

Yet Another Call Blocker does block all calls, that is my phone never rings, and I never see any notification of a call.

Pretty simple really.

Plastic explosives has been around a long time. I could only guess what exists today.

GMRS radios (I’m assuming it was GMRS or something similar) are/can be mostly empty space.

Radios are open receivers, could easily send a signal that the hardware could trigger on, or have a timer to trigger on a certain date/time.

Just need access to the devices before shipping łor be able to intercept them).

Circling back around, I do feel like not all hope is currently lost.

My own contradiction: I feel pretty cynical about it, and yet I’m working on my own solutions for my family and friends. Part of me thinks it’s pointless, but I refuse to give in completely.

I already try to use better comms, minimize the data my phone shares (setting up a de-googled pixel now), and have always avoided most social media (never been on FB/Twitter, etc, as in never even gone to the websites).

I dunno, all my younger family and their friends are neck deep in the shit, and aren’t interested in hearing my “conspiracy theories”…despite them being front page news every day (all the ransomware, hacks, etc).

Be the change you want to see.

Since people won’t (for example) switch to privacy-respecting comm apps just because I ask them too, I’m building my own self-hosted box that I can duplicate for my family and friends.

My goal is to provide them with a single box solution for DNS filtering (PiHole), media server (including auto disc conversion and sharing between boxes), local backup (which will replicate encrypted backups to the other boxes similar to what Crashplan Personal did), phone backup and management (MDM and file management from PC), image and file sharing (something like Facebook for family only), instant messaging (most likely XMPP), etc, etc.

Yes, it’s a pretty bold plan, but my family and friends are tech illiterate, so if I want to see an improvement in privacy for myself and them, it’s on me to do it, and make it attractive for them.

Good point about platform agnostic remote for management stuff. VNC is ideal for this.

And systems like Proxmox use a web GUI for most stuff, it’s a touch slow but I think that’s mostly just waiting for the system to finish the actual changes I make, and not the UI.

It uses some form of VNC (forget the name). Performance is fine for the VMs for non-video stuff.

You can run whatever you want inside a VM too.

Works for me, but damn it’s dog snot slow. Like typing takes 1-2 seconds for each character to show up