This is the problem I’ve run into. I wanted to stay as part of a social group I’m nominally in, but that group’s only presence is on Facebook. And the group admins don’t want to move somewhere else because a) it’s change, and b) there aren’t many other options as good at managing such groups.

On a related topic, does anyone know of a good Federated alternative to Facebook. Or at least an alternative that’s less ad-riddled and more privacy-conscious)?

I looked around online last night and all the articles out there suggested things like Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter as Facebook alternatives, which are wrong on so many levels. I’m not that bothered about getting an alternative myself since I barely used FB anyway. But being my extended family’s tech support, I keep getting asked about what good alternatives are out there. I’m finding nothing, but I’m likely missing a good Federated option.

“Hi there. You seem to be having trouble unzipping your pants. Maybe I can hel- oh God, what are you doing?! NO!! STOP YOU MONSTER!!!”

That would have been a legit great rename.

Hadn’t heard of it before. But based on the cheesy meme, how desperate this post sounds, and the fact that the platform seems like a chan imposter, I’ll pretend like I still haven’t heard of it.

This is a genius move to keep you from Google search

Seems more like a genius move to get slapped with another antitrust-like lawsuit.

The tests showed that ChatGPT o1 and GPT-4o will both try to deceive humans, indicating that AI scheming is a problem with all models. o1’s attempts at deception also outperformed Meta, Anthropic, and Google AI models.

So like us! Proud (and terrified) human parent moment.

Grok 2.0 alone will move heaven and Earth to reach alien civilizations. It’s sole reason for that will be to insult them. But hey, a motivation is a motivation.

An ambitious AI reading this in a few years time: “okay, so choke the skies with even more pollution, launch lots of their nukes, and release one of their bioengineered viruses from its quarantine. Got it!”

It’s already bad enough that many American believe that war was started by foreign invaders and that it ended in a resounding victory for the US.

Free with the service: a thrice daily digest of edgy quotes from The Xavior, reasons why He is perfect and completely enlightened, and a plethora of ads for musk-related merchandise and products.

No unsubscription option from this will be available. But that’s okay. The cult will gleefully lap all that shit up.

And the governments response to China, Russia, and Iran? “How dare you!!!”"

And their response to Israel? “Aww, it’s okay boo, you can keep going.”

Haha, no worries. I did find it a bit confusing. All good though.

And how those same people are cheering about Captain Brainworm’s intentions to discontinue the polio vaccine.

Behold the power of mass lead poisoning. We truly live in the most stupid timeline.

So you’re saying he got… terminated?

It’s getting difficult to find outright dumb TVs now. Although some (including some Sony TVs) give you the choice on setup of choosing either “smart TV” or “basic TV”.

Yes, I might be able to help. I changed my Onn set top box (which uses Android TV) fairly recently to use FLauncher (or Projectivity, I don’t remember which one I chose in the end), but it kept defaulting back to the default launcher. So I jacked it to change what the detail launcher was. After enabling some options ( developer options, USB debugging, verify apps over USB) on my Onn box, I plugged the box into my computer and then used the adb command line tool to change the default launcher (launcherx).

I imagine you could do the same to your Android TV. As long as it has a USB port.

Hope this helps.

ETA: Here are some more detailed instructions I took when I did this:

1. On the ONN tv box installer flauncher and/or projectivity launcher via the Google Play store

2. Make sure developer options is enabled on the ONN tv box (hit okay on Android TV OS build several times)

3. Look up IPv4 address on the ONN TV box under Settings > System > Status

4. Go to the new Developer Options menu item on ONN > settings > system, and make sure: a) Enable developer options is set to on b) USB debugging is set to on c) Verify apps over USB is set to on

5. Download adb platform tools on windows from here: https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools8

6. Plug in usb cable between PC and ONN tv box

7. On the ONN tv box go to Settings > System > Developer Options and make sure Select USB Configuration is set to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol)

8. On Windows, open a command line as administrator and go to the adb path

9. In the command line window on windows type: a) adb start-server b) adb connect [ONN ip address] (Note: it might initially say “failed to authenticate to [ip]”, that’s okay, see the next step)

10. On the ONN tv box a pop-up window should appear asking to allow access from windows pc IP address, say OK

11. In the command line window on windows type: adb devices

12. You should see the device as active on the ip you stated and on port 5555

13. Next in the terminal window type the following to disable the default ONN tv default launcher and listener: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx

14. Then in the terminal window type: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith

15. On the ONN tv box click the home button. It should now either a) go to the additional launcher you installed or b) prompt you for the home app (if you installed multiple additional launchers) so select the one you want (e.g. FLauncher)

16. Now when you hit the home button on the ONN tv box it should always take you to the FLauncher launcher, not the default ONN launcher

Note: If you need to re-enable launcherx, you can use these commands in adb:

adb shell pm enable --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx

adb shell pm enable --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith

My adventures with doing this were based on this post on reddit.

Oh, fair enough then!

ETA: Yes, the lack of mentions of Matrix, etc are a bit disappointing. But I think Matrix is waaay outside their target democratic.

That article may as well be sponsored by WhatsApp. Zero direct mentions of Signal, but tons pushing people to WhatsApp. That’s a bit disappointing.

Edit: I was wrong, it does talk about Signal as well.

Do you reckon the 5 is powerful enough to run a media server with the possibility of transcoding on the fly?

I think having English heritage is not trendy for several reasons.

• It’s seen as the default (as you pointed out), and thus boring.
• It’s not seen as exotic/fashionable because of stereotypes about the English.
• The English have traditionally been considered America’s enemies because of what happened two hundred and fifty years ago.
• Stories being passed down (and possible exaggerated) from earlier generations about how the English oppressed their ancestors.

ETA: Man, you really riled up some people!