Nobody uses cinnamon? Honestly - I really like using cinnamon with Debian. I heard that they promised not to fuck with the UI for no reason unlike… everyone! @Mwa Cinnamon is a fairly nice, easy to use desktop - I don’t really care which is better, but if they change it, you have to re-learn it. Top tip for UI design - don’t think that your users want to re-learn how to interact with your UI - they might go outside, or elsewhere.

That is quite a journey! I hope that it wasn’t too fraught (learning shouldn’t have to be). Well done on making good of it!

Surprise! :D The project was called ‘making tax digital’ it was expressly to remove paper forms for VAT.

This is interesting, and meets my needs. I tried Gnucash, but the double entry bookkeeping was a bit to advanced for my small-business’/smooth-brain needs (amortising my stock of utility bills seemed a bit excessive! - though I am sure I was doing it wrong)

This is not tangental - I am heartened, my hope is that this would become normal. Despite my moan, it isn’t that bad and I’m sure I would have had different IT headaches on windows - security comes to mind.

I still use proprietary android software on my phone, but I try not to do anything secure on my phone (this is also getting harder as banks are insisting that I convert to apps)

yes it is. I have tried messing with user agent now. Chromium works on linux, not firefox. :(

Which is?

It works on chromium, not firefox. I guess I should be more flexible. It is likely that the bug is in the bank’s site, so I wasn’t sure about putting in a bug report. The website pauses on the ‘loading’ animated icon, when you try to navigate away, it tells you ‘Your session has expired’. It hasn’t been fixed by changing the user-agent (assuming I got it right). I don’t know if the bank would give them a dummy account for testing, but I’ll file a report anyway.

I’m not worried about privacy, it’s a business not a person. If the government want to look through my business’ data, they just need to arrange an audit. I like good security, but am a small target.

It’s about free as in freedom.

My worry is that if linux is allowed to become just a hackintosh of steamdeck, rather than an actual operating system. It will go the way of hackintosh.

[edit: apostrophe, edit2: added last paragraph]

I don’t know if the UK is worse than anywhere else (?)

This sounds smart

Thanks - I had not thought of this. I’ll give it a go… [edit: no dice :(] It works in chromium, so there is a solution… its just tiring to remember which browser to use for which site.

Also, please feel free to answer if you aren’t based in the UK, I assume this isn’t a UK only problem, but I’m based here.

Yeah, Zoneminder is pretty mature software. I would say that this shouldn’t be an impossible DIY project.

I have thought about this from time to time. I want good surveillance, but I also don’t want to lose control of the video.

I think that the solution that I favor right now is a Wyze cam V2 or similar flashed with openmiko. edit:(I had to buy wyze v2 cameras from the US on ebay to get v2 versions, user:@ashok36@ashok36@lemmy.world suggests in this comment to use v3 and Wyzemini firmware - this might do the job. clarification: the point is to replace the manufacturer’s firmware which will phone home with something open source that you could audit)

These can be attached via USB or wifi interface to a server with zoneminder (https://zoneminder.com/) From there you could think about offsite records too and motion detection etc. [edit: wifi is useful as I don’t want to rewire the house - though could be blocked (or the router could be unplugged!) if you are expecting technically savvy criminals. A solution here would be to use an old router on a separate wifi network, put somewhere where most of the property would have been traversed before it could be accessed (e.g. upstairs).]

Having said this, the setup is just fiddly enough that I keep to finding myself finding other stuff to do. [edit: ‘Fiddly’ is the wrong word, I think its pretty simple, I just find myself wanting more features until the project doesn’t happen at all. I’d be clear that this is a feasible DIY project, so long as you accept that ‘done’ is better than ‘perfect’]

[edit: One last note - if you host the video yourself, you take responsibility for the security - this means keeping zoneminder and the OS up to date and offsite backups/networks/cameras secure. This is possibly something that a company is better at (but don’t bet on it!). However, you are also a smaller attack target (because bad actors only get your video) so blackmailing you with whatever you do in your surveilled place is less valuable than having the same data for 1000s of people. Also, if someone has access to your home network - they can set up man-in-the-middle attacks and steal your bank details - you have to be doing something interesting in front of those cameras for it to be worth more than the contents of your bank account.]

edit:clarity/details

Thanks for your response - I think that we agree. My point was just that your post was about being decent, then you randomly dunk on a group.

It’s not that your personal experience isn’t representative - I think that there is a contingent of privileged people who feel left out by progress towards a level playing field. That sort-of makes sense, right? There are also strong echo chambers pushing those people towards radicalization. I suppose I’m asking you to feel empathy for these, very privileged, victims of a society that doesn’t know how to engage with them. Egalitarianism has to bring everyone along - I don’t know if that can be done.

It’s usually straight white american males too.

Can I ask why you wanted to add the last sentence? You might be right, statistically, but the tone sort of implies that you judge the group rather than the behavior. (apologies if that was the joke).