They were never defeated.

When you say “defeated”, what exactly do you mean? You mean that they should cease to exist to be considered as such? If that’s the case then I would say it’s an unrealistic expectation.

I would say that they’ve been largely contained. If I remember correctly, back in the '50s almost half of the American population used to smoke. The percentage of people smoking has been consistently decreasing over the years thanks to regulation and increased taxation. Tobacco companies are definetly not as influential as they once were.

I already own a FP3 and that’s what I am going to use until it breaks.

That’s fair. I can get behind that.

I might consider Graphene in the future, but having to buy a Google phone (even a used one) already pisses me off, compared to a FP (or similar).

You’re not the only one. I loathed that I had to go back to Google to switch to Graphene, but life’s a compromise most of the time.

eOS also tries to be a “noob-friendly” distribution, that you can buy phones with and you never have to mess with the phones, which means people who don’t have the skills or don’t want to mess with their phones might trade the risk with ease of operation, and it might be the right choice for them.

Graphene does that well too. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I never had to look up guides like I’m doing for Linux.

If these two issues are what prompts you to call a “security dumpster fire”, I would say we at least have very different risk perceptions.

We do. I can’t in good conscience recommend it as an alternative to friends or relatives when even stock Android has improved security. I can’t speak for your social circle, but all the people I know update their phones accordingly. Maybe they delay the update for a few days, but they don’t stay months with their phones like that. Fairphones improve the situation a bit since you can lock the bootloader, but the substantial delay in security updates is still a major risk.

I don’t get why anyone would choose /e/OS over Graphene if they had the option. Graphene offers the highest security and privacy, it works wonderful and most banking apps support it. /e/OS just has the advantage of supporting more models, but if you can get a Pixel what’s the point?

That is not the only issue, it’s just one of the more major ones that shouldn’t be dismissed like it’s nothing. Another major one is the unlocked bootloader. You can take a look at all the Android ROMS here.

I think people should treat carefully when changing the OS of a mobile device. Changing your OS to something less secure just because you want to shove it to Google and Apple is not enough to warrant it. Better to stay with something safe that you know than with something insecure like /e/OS.

Luckily we have Graphene so you can actually switch to a more secure and private OS that is not made by an American corporation hungry for data.

My god, I just checked that site. The whole thing is a zoo. Millions of years of evolution went into this species only to go down the toilet there.

/e/os is a security dumpster fire. It’s even worse than stock Android. Stay away from it.

I don’t think there’s a financial reason for this. I think he’s willing to lose money on his AI in the short time by doing this just so he can score some points with Trump since the EU is soon going to strike his company with even more fines for breaking EU law. He probably wants Trump to stop this from happening and this kind of stuff tickles the pickle of that dingus.

or be our enemy

That would be a geopolitical disaster for the US. No matter how much he yaps his mouth around, Trump doesn’t want the EU as an adversary. If that were to happen the US would have 2 flanks to defend against instead of one. And the EU is not Russia. Collectively the EU has the second biggest military budget and the third biggest economy in the world.

Trump is trying to get us to increase centralization at the EU level which is great as far as I’m concerned. But that chucklenut is doing it in a way that will also massively sour relations in the long term. As insane as it sounds, if Trump’s successor is going to be like him, China will probably be a more reliable partner than the US. The only caveat is that Taiwan is going to be extremely vulnerable in such a situation.

I’m hoping the US will come to its senses at the next election and relations will normalize. The Americans are pricks, but they are still more ideologically aligned with us than the Chinese.

For you why did fascism emerge in the first place

That’s a broad question that has different answers depending on the time and place. There’s no single answer to this.

why did it re-emerge nowadays.

Again, it’s a broad question with different answers. However, I can definetly say that social media and selection bias play a role in pushing the average person to extreme views such as yours. Which is why I’d like to remind people to take a break and cool down every once in a while.

You think that people who actually want to learn new things are the fascists?

He didn’t say that. He just gave an example (a rather poor one given the context) of people lacking solidarity.

I’d ask you if you are dumb but you already answered that with your class skipping

Insulting people like this won’t get you anything.

Not everybody sees teachers like evil oppressors jfc

Again, he never said this. Forgive me for saying this, but it seems you’re very angry about something and you just want to start an argument. Maybe take a break from the internet for a day?

I would like to add that we should also kick out capitalism and representative democracy out of the way because fascism is a byproduct of both of them.

Jesus, it seems that nowadays wherever I go I find either reactionaries or radicals pushing their insane takes no matter the relevance. I wish moderates would comment more.

Wait, you think Putin has credibility when speaking on climate change?

I never said that. I said that to the general public he may appear as more credible based on his behavior when adressing the issue compared to Greta which would undermine environmental efforts. This is what I’m concerned about.

I can’t imagine a world where you’re calling that “petulant”. At 16 years old she had more poise and gravitas than many of the world leaders she was speaking to. You say she hasn’t done anything. I beg to differ. Further, if what she has done is nothing, it raises the obvious question: what have you done to avert climate catastrophe?

Ok, usually I welcome debates, but I can see that you were very angry when you wrote this so I think it’s better that we stop here. Before finishing off, I would like to clarify one more time that I’m not a climate change denier. I just don’t like the way Greta and others like her operate since it’s my belief that their aggressiveness undermines the movement and increases the risk of turning people into reactionaries. That’s my opinion. I’m entitled to it just as much as you’re entitled to your own.

Greta Thunberg is 22 years old right now, and was “screaming” and “blaming people” when she was 11 years old.

Expecting an 11 year old to provide answers that none of the established world has is silly.

Fully agreed.

She saw the world she was going to inherit and forced conversation to work toward solutions

I disagree. I saw her speak and the reactions to some of her speeches. Her inflamatory and derogatory speeches did nothing more than help opponents of the energy transition. To give you an example, when asked about it during an interview Putin jumped at the opportunity to discredit the energy transition. While the public saw Greta behaving like a petulant child during the speech, they then saw Putin speaking calmy, asking real questions like “How are poor nations going to transition when they need cheap fossils to sustain themselves?”. They then take this bit and plaster it on every social media site. People see it and are inclined to take Putin’s side since he appears more knowledgeable and in control of himself. And just like that he gets a boost in his reputation.

This is why I don’t like activists like her and the author of this article. They do more harm than good by expressing themselves in such a violent manner.

“listen to the experts who have been screaming at you for 50 years.”

That would be fine provided that it’s done correctly and civilized. Which is my point. Raising awarness is fine.Throwing insults loudly left and right to raise awareness is not. It only makes you seem delusional and sheds a bad light on your cause. This allows climate change deniers to take advantage of that to further their agenda.

We fully transition to clean energy like nuclear and build more power plants to allow us to store our online stuff.

The author of this article is not a serious person. He’s in the same bucket as Greta Thunberg. They just like to scream and blame people instead of providing practical solutions. It’s frankly tiring to hear them despite their honorable intentions.

It also includes the people that deleted their Twitter accounts following the acquisition. I’m one of those people and I’m especially annoyed because I only used that blasted app only to register to some giveaways when I was in middle school. I have since discontinued that email account, but still.

As someone who had a Samsung Flip3, I miss how easy it was to carry it around. It didn’t feel like a brick that I had to take out of my pocket every time I needed to check my notifications. It was also surprisingly durable. Price is the main downside of these phones.

There’s a fair chance I’ll buy another one in the future if I have enough money when switching phones.

We should be grateful for every single nation that contributed to ending the suffering in Europe at the time, so I find it a bit disingenuous to only name the US when we talk about these events.

I fully agree with this statement, just not the manner in which you express yourself when referring to these events. A lot of people would view your initial comment as being hateful over your interpretation of the word “saved”. I have no problem saying the Americans saved us. Just like I have no problems saying the Canadians saved us, or the Australians or all the other non European nations that took part in the World Wars on the side of the Entente/Allies. The people that fought chose to leave their countries and risk their lives for us. I think it’s disrespectful towards their memory to be bickering over this just because of a nepo baby that’s causing us headaches right now.

I’m also interested in hearing more updates. Last I checked, Meta said it’s planning to release support for messages this year while call and video support would be released by 2027. I should mention that this was in october of 2024, before Trump took office. There’s a fair chance that Zuckerberg will seek to delay the process now that Trump took over and is threating retaliation against the EU if it chooses to strike back against abuses from US tech companies.

If anyone has more updates, by all means respond.

It is not an arrangement, nor attachment to Zuckerberg. It is not beneficial to Zuckerberg or Meta for this to happen and I assure you that they are not fans of the ideea either.

The EU did this to break Meta’s monopoly on communication. Right now I can’t ditch Whatsapp no matter how much I want to because everything in my life is connected to that blasted app. My university, my employers, my family, my friends, EVERYONE is using Whatsapp and Whatsapp only. If I were to delete it, I would be isolated. I would be able to convince my family to switch to another app and probably a few of my friends, but I sure as hell won’t be able to convince my workplace or my faculty to do it. Allowing third party apps to communicate with Whatsapp is the only way I can ditch his app.

I should also mention that this will only apply to the European Union. Meta will maintain its monopoly everywhere else. The EU is the only one that actually cares about consumer rights enough to pick a fight with the US over them and I’m thankful for that.

Edit: fixed some grammar.