As much as the Slack UX has somewhat enshittified at this point, the UX of Matrix is still so so so far behind Slack that it's often not even worth considering.

I hear Zulip could actually be a real alternative, though I have no experience with it.

I get the frustration, but this is how pretty much all of the connected home devices on the market work. Sure, there are local-only versions of many of these things, but that sort of design is in the minority both in number of products and in sales.

And it makes sense: most people want this stuff to just work, and be accessible when they aren't at home on their WiFi network. The only reasonable way to do that these days is to have a central server that both the devices and the control apps connect to. Very few users (and yes I am one of them) are going to set up a local control server and figure out how to securely set up remote access to it.

It's a crappy situation that leads to security incidents like this one, but that's just where we are right now.

Regarding cleaning frequency: no need to repeat what the sibling commenter said, but I will say I suspect your cleaning needs are much lower than those of the average person.

There are many laws in many jurisdictions that are immoral. Following those laws would be an immoral act. Legality and morality should be aligned, but in the real world they often aren't.

If Jesus (assuming he existed, even, regardless of any sort of divinity) tells us that following the law is always the moral thing to do, then he was wrong.

For me, the showstopper would be NFC payments. From what I understand, Google Pay doesn't work on Graphene. I have all my credit cards in GPay, as well as a transit card. I use it for boarding passes when I fly, and any other tickets/passes that support it, since it tends to be much more reliable than the airline or ticketer's app. I've come to heavily rely on it, unfortunately.

I haven't tried this, because I try to minimize Google exposure, but I think Google Wallet (minus NFC payments) works on GrapheneOS. So, tickets, boarding passes, etc. should work fine.

Web browsing (like right now), photos, e-books, lots of messaging, music, sometimes video.

I use NFC payments often, but I wouldn't say that amounts to more than a few percent of my total usage.

Everyone uses their phones differently, of course. I don't think your use is unbelievable or odd, but I do think your use patterns are not the common case.

For someone who claims to take a principled stance on these sorts of things, it feels very unprincipled to leverage the risk that others take in e.g. carrying a cell phone.

Consider that there are two components here: one is that Stallman is uncomfortable with the risk of carrying a tracking device (aka cell phone) around with him. The other is that he wants to make it known that people shouldn't carry cell phones because of that tracking; part of his platform is advocating for and against things like this.

If he was merely worried about the risk, and was just out to protect himself, then using someone else's cell phone (which would be at hand regardless of whether or not he used it) would be a perfectly reasonable, pragmatic thing to do. Transferring the risk, as you say.

But using someone else's cell phone is a violation of the principle. How can I take his advocacy seriously if he freely admits that we need cell phones out in the world, otherwise it's even too inconvenient for him to go about his business?

He does leverage the risk that others take, but those others are also the people who collectively build society so as to require taking that risk. It's kind of tit-for-tat in a way.

>How can I take his advocacy seriously

You could just listen to what he has to say and consider whether or not it's true. His personal behaviour at the end of the day has little bearing on that. "He doesn't even do XYZ therefore I won't believe him" feels more like a rationalization one comes up with because one doesn't want to believe him in the first place.

It's not setting an example if you shift responsibility to someone else.

Setting an example would be just doing without the things he doesn't agree with. Need to make a call but only other people's cell phones are available? Well, you don't make the call. Need wifi but no open networks are available? Well, you don't get wifi. Is this even more inconvenient than the already-inconvenient use of other people's cell phones or wifi logins? Absolutely. But it's actually sticking to your principles.

I really want to disagree with this, and have more faith in humanity, but I suspect you are more or less right. Even if it's 1,000 or even 10,000 or 100,000 cameras returned, it'll likely amount to a nothingburger for Amazon.

To make a real statement here, we'd probably need several million returns in the US alone. (A quick search suggests more than 20M installs in the US.)

It is far, far, far, far more likely that this sort of mass surveillance capability will be used for bad purposes (even by law enforcement) than it will be used to find an escaped child murderer. (Hell, I am convinced that this sort of thing is already more frequently used for bad purposes than good.)

Also like, how many escaped child murderers are there per year in the US? Like... one? I don't think that's worth pervasive mass surveillance, though I would understand how a parent whose kid had been abducted might believe it would be.

I'm that guy following at 3 or 4 car lengths in heavy traffic an people are constantly funneling in front of me, all to go exactly the same speed they'd be going if they were behind me.

It's arguable that their average speed must be ever so slightly higher than yours if they passed you. ;)