So I’ve been watching the news regarding some of the Bike lane drama in the US, but as an active bike user I have also noticed something weird happening around the city (Hamilton)
A number of the bike racks appear to have been removed from outside some of the larger stores
Now this may seem something small, but there is apparently some part of the planning form overseas to be pushing for vehicles that are able to be tracked via GPS etc
And it has me wondering if it may be part of making something harder to use by making these areas unfriendly for use to push for things that people pair their phones with that are harder to steal because they are digitally lockable, and are also track-able because of the pairing, like e-scooters and e-bikes
What’s the term? **Planned obsolescence **of items that don’t require a digital connection
Has anyone else noticed this happening in their area?
NZ is part of the Five Eyes intelligence network along with Australia, Canada, the US and the UK; and it’s not just GPS that is tracked but pretty much everything they can get their hands on.
I could see removing bike racks from areas could encourage people to use cars and collect more data; however, I think it’s just good ol’ anti-bike mentalities. Ask your city why racks are being removed; maybe the same rich-asshole owns the land the stores are on and decided to remove them by themselves.
As an aside, google is going to lockdown android in September sometime. Look into installing Linux on your phone to keep everything on it private and away from googles data collection.
GrapheneOS or some other Android fork seem more practical. From everything I’ve read (mostly people’s opinions here on Lemmy), there’s no Linux phone ready to be a daily driver.
Yeah, I’ll be installing postmarket on my old motorola soon which honestly scares me, but better to do it now then have to jump through all of the dumb hoops google engineers are dreaming up.
I haven’t found a linux OS that supports any phone I have, or I might have considered it as a test on a second phone. But those postmarket wiki pages are a bit scary. I wouldn’t want a phone where I can’t see how much battery I have, or the wifi has “extremely short” range, etc. One day it will be the year of the Linux Phone! But I don’t think it’s today 😆
Yep. I think I’m lucky that my particular phone is well documented.
Hopefully there wil be a bigger market for open bootloader devices once google destroys thier app support… 🙏
Graphene os seem to be shooting themselves in the foot with a bit of a toxic max security type attitude ☹️
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/01/05/grapheneos-delays-non-pixel-flagship-to-2027-rules-out-clicks-communicator-support/
LineageOS seems like it might be a good alternative for non-pixel devices, but it also has very limited device support ☹️
I kinda understand that it’s what GrapheneOS are going for. They are specifically trying to be a very secure OS. When Cellebrite has their device list leaked and it shows they are unable to break into the Pixel phones before they have been unlocked after reboot, this is the kind of phone they want to use. Supporting more devices would hurt this aim, but we also can’t forget that there are a huge range of devices and they don’t have the time to support them all. I support them in their choice to keep a narrow focus, and then I buy pixel devices second hand so I can use it.
But of course the conversation started around how existing phones are going to get locked down by Google, so there isn’t really an easy option unless you have a phone supported by one of the de-googled Android forks like LineageOS, /e/, etc.
Ultimately all Android forks will have limited device support because they don’t have the manufacturer creating the drivers and things needed to make it work, and everyone has limited time.
@Dave @Venator , why not just run a Linux OS?
Many phones have enough RAM to run smaller OSs totally in RAM for speed plus there’s a plethora of apps available.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/linux-on-android/
Sounds like a bad user experience from what I’ve heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTK6TS3pXgc
@Venator , might just be how you use it.
I find Mac and Windows OS a terrible user experience, even most Linux Desk tops so I run a window manager in Linux and keep the skeleton OS to a minimum for what I use it for.
I’m aware of the limitations and might have to settle with a Pixel and Graphene (mainly for the Pixel’s camera) until hopefully there will be more open phones and FOSS developers come up with a more ideal OS.
Honestly, if I could have that experience she had I’d be pretty happy with it as a second phone. Ultimately I haven’t been able to source a supported phone and the three spares I have are not supported by any linux phone I’ve had (and they aren’t that unusual. One is a Pixel 7 pro, ones a Samsung S10+, and one is some sort of OnePlus, a 4 maybe?) They are all flagship phones but I haven’t found any linux phone OS that is supported.
I’ll have to investigate @Antigrav@mastodon.nz’s suggestion of a full Linux OS, though that’s not going to be the same experience it might be fun to play with.