lattrommi

now is my chance to brag that I've been running HML on a eee pc netbook that's mounted on a wall in my bathroom, for about 4 years now, as a music player and in case of emergency internet searches when showering and it does its job wonderfully.

your comment is innacurate and does not add to this discussion in my opinion.

i do not trust ford for many reasons beyond the invasion of privacy outlined here. while i never stated it explicitly as the reason for my mistrust of ford, i'm well aware that all car companies do data trading/selling and that details of the extent are largely unknown outside the shady data brokerage world. at no point did i state that they did not or that there are companies that do not.

this example is an example of what i feel is a company that went too far, by extracting data from the vehicle without informing me they were doing it. a vehicle which was brought to their authorized dealer, to repair their faulty parts, which they were deemed responsible for after numerous complaints and fatal accidents, some involving children falling out of the vehicle after the doorsprings malfunctioned, even when the doors appeared to be locked, while the car was moving in excess of 60mph. this was not the first recall for the issue either. it was the second for all doors except for the back/trunk door, where it was the third.

that is still irrelevant information though. the car was no longer under their warranty, it was purchased used. i gave no permission for them to do anything beyond the necessary and required repairs which came about due to their negligence. i signed no contract with them. i was supplied with no terms or conditions.

if i went to the doctor to get my appendix removed, i would not expect to wake up and learn the doctor decided to do a colonoscopy just for shits and giggles, even if it did detect something critical. if i mentioned my grandparents address while going under with aenesthesia, i would not expect the doctor to send them an offer addressed to me, to purchase my tonsils.

at no point did i make the claim that anyone could buy a car without it selling data of the purchaser. until now, where i will state that yes, you absolutely can buy a car that is not selling data. any car being sold that isn't younger than me will not be selling any data, unless major customization was performed because they would be far too old. the technology didn't exist 40+ years ago.

what motivation was behind your assumptive and half false comment?

I see this post is old enough that my comment is less likely to be seen but i feel this is a somewhat relevant anecdote regarding the sale of automotive data.

last april i bought a used car. i had not owned or driven a vehicle in well over a decade. i had never operated a vehicle with a computer, not like the kind this car had at least with its 'infotainment' console and numerous digital featrures. one such 'feature' was the navigation system. a map on the little tv in the console would show me directions after i entered an address into it. how useful!

i was taking a trip to visit my grandparents not long after buying the car and to test out the navigation system, i entered their address into it. it failed to give me correct directions however, since the nav system was ran off an SD card inserted into a port inside the storage space between the driver and passenger seats. the car was made in 2013 and the sole previous owner had never used the nav system. the SD card was in its original packaging, unopened and in the glove box.

i ended up visiting the grandparents by finding their home by memory, the way i normally navigate, and went on with my life. after that weekend, i learned the car had a recall. i could take it to a authorized dealership and have the faulty system replaced at no cost to me. so i did just that. the recalled part was supposedly fixed and all seemed well.

a week or two passes and i get a call from my grandfather. he recieved mail addressed to me, asking if i wanted to sell my vehicle. my name, his address. i have never searched for his address on the internet, i know it by memory. the only place i have ever entered the location was in that car navigation system. i have never even spoken the address out loud nor heard it spoken in several decades, so those who believe phone are always recording with their microphones.

i believe the only way that mail could have been sent in my name to their address, was through the navigation system data being downloaded from the car and sold to third parties. my grandparents have recieved several pieces of mail addressed to me since then. always, it is referencing my vehicle, with the correct make, model and year showing.

i will never trust ford or purchase their products ever again. i should have known better than to have purchased this car, but it was a very good price with only one previous owner and a great carfax report.

sl -alFc | lolcat -itas 819

rainbow snake train

i recently learned on my android phone that after i disabled the default mapping app [google "maps"] it gave me the option to open maps from websites and other apps in one of the different mapping apps i had installed at the time: StreetComplete, Organic Maps [both OSM-based] and Randomnautica [which defaults to and re-enabled google "maps"] and gave options to open once in app chosen or to use it every time.

i am not sure if you use android, this is moot on desktop and others. commenting with the hope it might help someone someday. i hope this post isn't too old to be commenting on.

I have a similar, but different setup for similar, but different reasons. Some call it ADHD. That's a terrible term for it but that's another conversation. I get sidetracked easily, so multitasking is risky. When that happens, I forget everything. If I get distracted, it can lead to hours, if not days, of forgetting to do critical things like: sleep, bathroom, eat, bathe, reply to texts from friends, family, bosses etc. An innocent wikipedia link can cause me to lose a day or two. So I use the virtual desktops as a way to 'break away' from whatever meaningless distraction has pulled me away from whatever i was doing. More on that in a bit.

Other important notes: I am left handed. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It effects both hands but my right hand is much worse. Keyboard shortcuts are not friendly to people who are left hand dominant. Keyboards period, are usually not left hand friendly. I have 2 monitors always and sometimes 3 or 4. I recently got an ultrawide and have been using just 2 lately. The 2nd monitor, the smaller one, is where I usually put things that are always running like chat clients, music player, daily agenda, timers for cooking etc. If I have a 3rd, it will have a text editor, firefox or things i read to assist with whatever i'm working on.

I have 4 virtual desktops. They are arranged and named like so: | Main | System | | Art | Porn |

Don't let the names fool you.

"Main" is what it sounds like. It's where I do most of my work. It's also where I keep my 'to do' list. The list keeps me organized somewhat. It's a shortlist of important things I need to remember.

The other 3 are where my biggest sources of distraction go.

"System" is where I put anything related to the tools I use. This is not limited to the operating system, it includes software and hardware troubleshooting stuff but also things like the manuals for my car, planners for building computers, electronic schematics, health related stuff like insurance crap or research papers and plenty more. Stuff that I need to be operational. It's also a week/month/year planner and where I keep phone numbers, notes for projects, all sorts of stuff.

"Art" is mostly for image and video editing software. If I get frustrated by something, it becomes a vacation spot. A zen garden of sorts. Occasionally I will run "feh -rzsZFD 5 /path/to/my/shittyart" which starts a nice slideshow of images and watch it for awhile.

"Porn" is for anything that is not important. This is where wikipedia lives if it's not related to anything important. This is where the youtube videos go, that friends/family send me that i'm worried they will distract me. It's more of a 'to do later' section. That's part of the choice in name for the desktop, 'do' sometimes used as a euphemism for sex. Another way of putting it, it's the "fuck that for now" desktop. Also, I quit watching TV and movies and also playing videogames, as a new year resolution back in 2020. This is where those things used to go. Also, this is where I watch porn.

Keyboard: I remapped a lot of keyboard shortcuts. I wont list all of them, just the important/relevant ones. CTRL+[F1..F4] These switch to the virtual desktops. F1 is Main, F2 is System, F3 is Art and F4 Porn. CTRL+[top row 1..4] These send the currently focused window to the corresponding desktop. Most useful when I catch myself getting distracted by something. I can CTRL+4 to 'throw it away for later' Meta+top row 1/Meta+ top row 3 Moves current focused window left or right in regard to which monitor it is on. Meta+ top row 2 Maximize toggle focused window. Meta+4
Meta+WSAD Tile ↑↓←→ F1 Application Launcher (because I don't need help lol) F2 Window menu F3 Krunner F4 Yakuake toggle

This allows me to use my left hand almost entirely by itself, useful when my right hand is locked and curled up in a clenched fist from the rheumatism. Another part of the reason I named the 4th desktop what I named it, because i've become really good at typing with one hand.

There are a lot of F row combinations that are unused. F5-F8 with shift, alt, meta and ctrl can be done with either hand once you do it a few times and understand how your hand can reach them. F5 alone is refresh. meta+f5 and f6 do mouse focus stuff i don't really understand or use. I don't use or know of any programs that use any combinations of them. To me it means there are 30+ shortcuts that could be made if i include shift+another modifer key.

I also made caps lock the 3rd level chooser, pause/break the compose key, mousewheel on the desktop switches desktops, mousewheel on the titlebar of any window moves that window and switches desktop, alt+menu (the keyboard menu button) and crtl+menu to open the emmoji picker and special character select dialogues.

I originally designed this with the KDE desktop cube switcher. It really helped the ADHD aspect of things. Something about being able to mentally 'put stuff on the cube' helped keep me focused. The visualization itself also worked as a distraction, one that I could use to help break away from my distractions. Convoluted way to do things, I know. Losing that silly cube animation really messed me up for awhile. I can't wait for it to return, although I doubt it will have the same functionality.

Like you mentioned at the end, I am probably forgetting to talk about something.

This is a low quality gif I made, when I was first working out the shortcuts and stuff. Felt relevant.

https://imgur.com/SQsqa6C