AskLuke.Tech (Freedom Tech Solutions) FTS.info

Last one at the old price 💻 RAM and SSD prices have gone through the roof recently. apparently, AI data centres are buying up memory faster than it can be made, and laptop prices are following and likely phones will also impacted - and it looks like this will be the case until at least 2028 with no signs of slowing... New stock now actually costs me more than I was charging, so i've had to raise the prices. I have exactly one laptop left that I bought before the surge, and it goes for the old price: $1,650. - Business-grade Lenovo ThinkBook, Intel Core Ultra 5 - 16GB RAM, fast Gen4 NVMe SSD - ZorinOS set up by me: no Google, no Microsoft, no telemetry - Personal after-sales support, like everything I sell One unit. When it's gone, the new pricing applies. 👉 Tap here and hit send to claim it SOLD

the "AusAlert" test just went off and I ran it across two degoogled phones to see what actually happens. CalyxOS phone, on silent: popup labelled "Presidential alert" (the US naming leaks straight through on AOSP), a vibration, no sound. That's it. GrapheneOS phone, silent off, airplane mode off: full alarm that followed the phone's volume, vibration, and it even read the whole message out loud with a text to speech voice. Did not expect that one. And the big one: airplane mode only blocks it while it's on. I left the graphene phone in airplane mode for the first 2 minutes on purpose, and when I switched it off the alert still came through - twice, the towers kept rebroadcasting until about 12:10. So if you ever want to dodge one of these completely, stay offline well past the event, not just through the moment. Honestly it was way overhyped. It respects silent mode on calyxos, airplane mode kills it entirely, and there was a plain toggle in settings asking if you want to keep receiving wireless emergency alerts at all on grapheneos. Your phone is still yours. Video and screenshots above from both phones. Let me know in the comments; Did you get the alert? and what phone do you have?

Need a professional website? You might've noticed askluke.tech got a full makeover. I built it myself - nobody else - and I pay $0 a month for hosting. Not joking. Go poke it on your phone and see how fast it loads. Agencies quote $5k-15k for sites like this, then bill you monthly forever. I'm opening up a few client builds, and to kick things off the first site is completely free. One spot. All I ask is an honest testimonial I can show the next person. *EDIT: FREE OFFER IS TAKEN* After that spot's gone: I'll mock up your homepage free, and you don't pay a cent until you've seen the finished site and want it. Tap here and hit send - or DM @ftsdm. First in, best dressed.

AskLuke.Tech (Freedom Tech Solutions) FTS.info pinned a photo

My knowledge base got a complete rebuild. 👉 kb.askluke.tech It's not a pile of copy-pasted forum advice. Every guide is tested by me on a real de-Googled Pixel before it goes up. I run the steps on the phone, screenshot them, and if something changed since last month, the guide gets fixed. 49 guides and counting, including: 📍 Navigation without Google Maps (yes, Waze works fully signed out, tested) 🚗 Android Auto on GrapheneOS, every hidden setting screenshotted 📲 Installing and updating apps the private way 🔒 Backups, messaging, and the stuff people actually ask me about If you bought a phone from me, check the KB first next time you're stuck. Most answers are 2 minutes away, with pictures. - You can even search across the entire knowledge base. kb.askluke.tech

🚨 Every phone in Australia goes off Monday 27 July 2pm AEST, 1:30pm SA/NT, midday WA. It's the national test of AusAlert, the new emergency warning system, and there's a lot of privacy misinformation going around. The short version: How it actually works AusAlert uses cell broadcast. Authorities pick an area, every tower in it broadcasts the message, any phone in range picks it up. Like an FM station: the tower has no idea who's listening. No recipient list, no numbers, no location lookup, and your phone sends nothing back. The EFF reviewed this exact tech during the US test and found the same: there's no channel for it to send data about your phone anywhere. The old Emergency Alert system located your phone to SMS it. This one doesn't. Anyone claiming it tracks you has it backwards and i have the sources to back this up. The test itself It's a Critical Alert: siren and vibration for ~10 seconds, even on silent, and it can't be toggled off in settings. If any toggle in your alert settings is greyed out, that's the tier you can't disable. Don't want to hear it? Just turn your phone off or flick on aeroplane mode before test time and leave it that way for at least an hour. On de-Googled and older phones It may show up titled "Presidential Alert" or "Extreme Threat Alert". Nothing sinister, those devices just fall back to the US heading instead of the Australian one. Same message. ⚠️ The one real safety issue The silent override means hidden phones will sound too. If you or someone you know keeps one because of a DV situation, turn it off well before the test. Share that. After launch (October) Two tiers: Priority Alerts, which you can turn off in your phone's emergency alert settings, and Critical Alerts, which you can't. The top tier has no off-switch on any stock phone, only aeroplane mode. The one exception: GrapheneOS adds a toggle for even the highest alert class under Wireless emergency alerts, one more reason it's the gold standard for controlling your own device. What I'm actually watching Not tracking, scope. This should carry emergencies only. If it ever starts carrying general government messaging, that's when to push back, and I'll be watching.

🚨 Google's app lockdown now has a date. From September 30 this year, Google starts blocking Android apps from developers who haven't registered their ID with Google. It kicks off in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, then rolls out to the rest of the world (including Australia 🇦🇺) through 2027. 📵 This hits every "certified" Android phone: Samsung, stock Pixel, Motorola, all of them. Even apps you install yourself outside the Play Store get checked. There will be an "advanced flow" for installing unverified apps, but it means enabling developer mode, restarting your phone and sitting through a forced one day waiting period. They're making it painful on purpose 🐌 ✅ Here's the good part: de-googled phones are completely outside this system. The verification only applies to Google-certified devices, so on GrapheneOS nothing changes. You install what you want, same as always 🕊 If you're still on a stock phone and this bothers you, now you have a deadline to work with ⏳ 📖 Straight from Google: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification

⚠️ WhatsApp’s “End-to-end encryption by default” claim is a giant consumer fraud. 📖 ~95% of private messages on WhatsApp end up in plain-text backups on Apple/Google servers — not E2E-encrypted. Backup encryption is optional, and few people enable it — let alone use strong passwords. 🔑Even if you encrypt your WhatsApp backups with a strong password, your messages still end up in unencrypted cloud backups — because 90%+ of the people you message haven’t done the same. Add the fact that WhatsApp stores and discloses who you chat with, and the picture is dire. 📤 Apple and Google disclose backed-up WhatsApp messages to third parties thousands of times per year. Meanwhile, Telegram hasn’t disclosed a single byte of users’ messages in its entire 12+ year history 💬

would this help anyone? Considering making a full rundown video of how to setup, use and maintain a de-googled phone so you can really get the hang of it faster. Let me know if interested by reacting to this post! 🙏

AskLuke.Tech (Freedom Tech Solutions) FTS.info pinned «Where do you stand with AI right now?»

I'm trying to get a clear picture on where my subscribers sit with AI right now. Pick any that fit your thoughts, you can choose more than one.

Apple Forces UK iPhone Age Checks in iOS 26.4 https://ift.tt/zEh1oIW - FOLLOW: @reclaimthenet

🚨 SCAM ALERT If you get a message like this randomly, Please block and report. Someome is impersonating me I will never reach out first like this. no message history + new account = scam 99% of the time guys. be careful.

Local AI voice to text transcription with minimal setup. includes text polishing phase and customisation. https://github.com/OpenWhispr/ requires a decent computer for higher accuracy models though. 💠 For those who regard themselves as "tech savy" In simple terms: This allows you to simply speak what you want to type.

Android is being pushed further away from openness. This site explains Google’s planned developer verification system and why many see it as a threat to sideloading, independent developers, and user control. Worth reading. https://keepandroidopen.org/

Mullvad was censored in the UK. The United Kingdom is escalating its censorship and mass surveillance. When Mullvad tried to address this with the TV ad “And Then?”, it was banned on British television. The outdoor ad campaign meant to criticise the TV ban was also largely halted. Here, you can watch the banned ads and explore the entire campaign. https://mullvad.net

Search Engine Age Verification FYI, if you aren't logged in you will be treated as a minor, if you are you will soon need to submit to biometrics scans and or ID request tying your identity to your traffic. It only makes sense if you don't think about it! If you value your privacy and an open internet, use more privacy respecting search engines such as presearch.com and gibiru.com You may also benefit from using a trustworthy VPN such as mullvad.net to change your geo-location to a different country/jurisdiction.

Someone mentioned they had some success with opting out of digital iD "requirements" by using these resources: https://realitycheck.radio/digitalid-au/resist-kit/