Aaah! Oh. Yes that makes a lot of sense indeed.

The UX (and architecture, for that matter) of the dustbuilder has been.. uh.. lacking.. due to the lack of refactoring. It evolved over all these years, and things that had a meaning once suddenly gained a different one, but are still named in the old ways.

Good point, thanks for pointing it out! I've been doing some refactoring there, actually, and there, it's named "disable cloud", but I just did that for correctness. It did not occur to me that from a user-perspective, this is not just weird but actively misleading. I mean it kinda did, but I did not make the mental connection to this specific misconception. Oh well.

I wouldn't recommend "taking my word for it" tbh.

This is something not decided by authority of a person but authority of the code - and, in turn, authority of a pcap file.

It’s just DNS based, and iirc dont require any major effort other than patching the hosts file.

Incorrect. That was technically sorta the case back on the S5 (and even there it needed firmware modifications), yes, but if DNS redirection was all it needs, then why even root the bots in the first place. Just do that on a network level and be done with it.

It’d be a pretty big feature to implement, and surely it would be something that the Valetudo author would mention in the docs for the project.

Dude. What?

It is literally the only feature of Valetudo.

Wat.

What else would Valetudo possibly be doing other than disconnecting from the cloud?

and will very likely be used to further the worldview of the creator.

This is absolutely correct. What worries me a bit is that it's also what those guys bank on. Being perceived the "less miserable" space I mean (as long as you're some white dude I guess).

I'm not sure if the.. uh.. "meme" helps in that regard, because, while the idea is to oppose them, it I think just contributes to their story and frame.

So, ideally, to be effective against (alt-)right, we would want to be the cool, capable people, you want to be around.

(This, I think, is also why omarchy is so style over substance. it's trying to own the "cool"-ness)

I think it’s possible to separate creator from work.

It's a sensible, reasonable thing to do, to which I agree in generally.

With Omarchy and DHH in particular however, I'm not so sure. Not because of "his opinions" or "him being a dick", but because just how undercooked his takes have gotten. That too reflects in Omarchy, which is style (for the lack of a better word) over substance.

And that you can indeed use to deduce that you should probably not trust it with your banking data or whatever.

So I would argue that it is a question of which part you want to separate and for what reason, essentially.

🫡

And prevents the project from becoming a community effort.

No, I am not doing that, because I cannot do that. That is the whole thing with FOSS code.

If there was a community of builders picking it up and doing something community-driven, I could not do anything about it, nor would I want to.

They would be required to not call it Valetudo + not use the logo, so that they cannot coast off the brand and reputation of course - and that I would absolutely expect from anyone -, but other than that anyone can do whatever.

Why this hasn't happened yet, I cannot say for certain, but my hypothesis is that no one actually wants to put in the work. Likely both because work is work and work is annoying, but also because what exists now just works so what would you even do other than slap another name on it and feel good about yourself.

But putting that aside, I'd like to ask a different question: Why wouldn't I want that?

If community is nice, friendly, warm and full of heart, why would I oppose that? I am, after all, just like you. A human that would like to have fun, pleasant and nice interactions with other like-minded humans. I, like everyone else, am a social creature that enjoys being seen as a fellow human and member of a group.

So why would I oppose that?

The answer to that might be, that the mental model of "community project" does not actually in reality and execution fit any of what I described right now.

Of course, I cannot and will not rule out that it is just me and that I am the problem, but even if that is the case, then I still need to exist and need space to exist. "Just be normal" just means "stop being you"

It would be quite weird to not allow me to exist within the space I created from nothing from the ground up, wouldn't it? If even that isn't a place I would be allowed to be in, then where is?