If you don’t need voice, there are a lot of options. Matrix has IRC support and encryption, and has voice options if you self host.

Riot is… A Discord clone without working voice and I found it to be an odd duck.

There’s RocketChat… More Slack like.

Mattermost.

I replaced my voice/video chats with Nextcloud Talk and/or Steam, based on the scenario. Outside of those, Matrix is good for community needs in my mind.

We interacted on the internet for years without discord.

It is far from essential.

Most of the american companies are using Chinese manufacturing for much of the devices. Fairphone is European, but same manufacturing sources.

In 2026, as a Canadian… Choosing between a country that is adopting nazi practices and threatening us with annexation, and one who has a questionable history but is overall doing more for climate change and global stability right now than the other… The choice is easy. Anything but american.

Sure, but then you are also not funding Google’s competition in order to help improve choice.

Buying second hand might make you feel better because you didn’t directly fund Google, but you’re still helping them maintain their position.

The Graphene devs explicitly only support Pixels. Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware.

/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.

Now there’s a fucking Darwin Award

Kube makes it easy to have a lot, as a lot of things you need to deploy on every node just deploy on every node. As odd as it sounds, the number of containers provides redundancy that makes the hobby easy. If a Zimaboard dies or messes up, I just nuke it, and I don’t care whats on it.

Uh… Probably somewhere around 150?

Because fuck AI, that’s why.

You’re mixing the Signal Foundation up with the original creator of Signal who has stepped down and is no longer involved… And is off…

checks notes

Building fucking AI bots apparently? Thank goodness he’s not involved with Signal anymore.

Canada is in this boat too.

This is exactly my problem with BCs stupid laws. Kids can’t be without their parents until 11.

ELEVEN!

Christ. How do they ever learn independence when they spend all of the most crucial years of their development forcibly tied to the parents hip?

I was allowed to go to the corner store at five. By ten I was completely independent and mowing lawns as an afterschool job.

In Canada, the only province that historically has a rate that high is Ontario, and that is because they use Nuclear power, which is more expensive to maintain, and also they have no protection laws for consumers. So residents of Ontario pay what the US companies are willing to pay for power.

The neighbouring province, Quebec, uses primarily Hydro Electric dams, and has protection laws that restrict pricing for hydro power for residents of Quebec to a reasonable margin above cost, regardless of what the US is willing to pay for the power.

When I lived in Ontario, the price was $24c/kwh, while Quebec was $8/kwh

Ontario has had new laws passed with the energy board and now it appears their price is down to $14c/kwh according to this site, but I’m willing to bet that is highly dependent on surge pricing. Getting straight answer on costs is difficult these days with all the tiered pricing.

Apparently Alberta is more expensive than Ontario now… Must be all that “freedom” they have… Did they privatise electric in addition to everything else there? I’m not familiar with how their grid is powered… Maybe its oil/coal based. Which would be unsurprising.

Was super interested right up until the AI recommendations bit.

Fireplaces have a flue. If you close it the smoke has no where to go but the house.

The whole idea still smacks of dumbfuckery, don’t get me wrong; but its not as much of a lost cause as you’re thinking.

Oh, go to your DDG options and turn the AI slop off.

I have run Pihole on 2 physical Pi 4s (DietPi OS) with config sync for 3 years now. Core to the house. Very reliable.

Don’t use Google. DDG works with keyword searches and you get exactly what you expect.

For horribly inaccurate results that sound like they were written by a $5 SEO article writer.

Ill stick with key word search and skipping over all the SEO crap for.real results.

Forgejo and self hosted action workers.