I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

Can’t see myself using this software anymore…

In my early days of Linux, I royally fucked up a USB thumb drive (back when they were expensive) using dd and as a result do not trust myself with it.

I would use Hannah Montana Linux if it was the only GUI option to burn a USB ISO.

Weird. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve used that command. But it’s probably been several thousand. And I’ve never screwed up a flash drive that way.

There has been once or twice where I’ve pulled the flash drive out too quickly after it finished writing and it actually hadn’t finished writing and had to redo it, but other than that, I’ve not actually screwed up any drives beyond repair or anything.

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

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