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Microsoft’s Recall feature is still threat to privacy despite recent tweaks

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  • Well:

    1. MacOS is not malware
    2. Apple doesn't make a habit of blatantly lying about their security
    3. As you said, it doesn't actually exist

    Ah, so Apple just happens to be one of the good massive megacorps routinely deploying anti-consumer practices. Gotcha.

    See, it's that gap in perception I'm interested in. Microsoft wants nothing more than having the closed ecosystem Apple has. From their Surface line to their much maligned store to their subscription-forward, always signed-in account environment.

    Why they suck so much at selling that where Apple can get away with murder is much more interesting to me than the perceived differences between the implementations, which I would argue in a number of cases are worked backwards from the brand perception anyway. Part of it is the implementation and the execution rakes Apple chooses not to step on, but certainly not all of it, and that's fascinating.

  • Ah, so Apple just happens to be one of the good massive megacorps routinely deploying anti-consumer practices. Gotcha.

    See, it's that gap in perception I'm interested in. Microsoft wants nothing more than having the closed ecosystem Apple has. From their Surface line to their much maligned store to their subscription-forward, always signed-in account environment.

    Why they suck so much at selling that where Apple can get away with murder is much more interesting to me than the perceived differences between the implementations, which I would argue in a number of cases are worked backwards from the brand perception anyway. Part of it is the implementation and the execution rakes Apple chooses not to step on, but certainly not all of it, and that's fascinating.

    M$ is trying to take an open system and forcibly close it - after driving their user base by force into an unstable OS

    Apple were smart enough to start locking their shit down before home computers became an absolute necessity ...and do it with a functional OS

  • so Apple just happens to be one of the good massive megacorps

    No they're just a different type of shitty.

  • Programs ran through Flatpak can only access permissions and directories that it has explicit permission for. This is perfect for a very small program that only does one thing, it can get rather awkward when you need it to access multiple storage volumes. For example, I wanted to have my Steam games stored on different hard drives, but they were never visible through Steam. I had to override the Flatpak permission to give access to my mounted disks for it to work.

    The fact that we can choose to enhance the permissions beyond their default scope on a case by case basis is powerful.

  • M$ is trying to take an open system and forcibly close it - after driving their user base by force into an unstable OS

    Apple were smart enough to start locking their shit down before home computers became an absolute necessity ...and do it with a functional OS

    Apple locked down their shit way after home computers were a necessity. I'd argue it was the rollout of handheld devices that needed a home computer to fully work that made their walled garden viable.

    And Windows is the main player in home computer OSs. You can take issue with their choices, but it's certainly functional. I'd argue Win11 is annoying, but not even in the top 3 least functional versions of Windows. I mean, I was there for Me, 8.0 and Vista.

    But yes, Apple successfully deployed a locked-down, closed space, and I'm curious about why people are ok with it. That they did it early is... a solid hypothesis, I suppose.

  • so Apple just happens to be one of the good massive megacorps

    No they're just a different type of shitty.

    Right. But the reaction they get to their shittiness is very different, which is the thing I keep wondering about. Everybody keeps telling me why Microsoft is shitty and how Apple isn't shitty in those ways specifically while conceding they are in others.

    I want to know why Apple's shitty doesn't make them the poster boy for shittiness but MS's shitty does. And it does. As far back as Windows 95, Windows is the thing you use that you hate to use and love to hate. That takes work and luck. I want to know how you can dig that hole so effectively while your competition can be just as overtly crappy and still come across as sleek and all the way above good and evil. There's a fundamental truth about branding and squishy human brains buried in that phenomenon.

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    Another great reason to switch to Linux. Fuck this shit

  • Right. But the reaction they get to their shittiness is very different, which is the thing I keep wondering about. Everybody keeps telling me why Microsoft is shitty and how Apple isn't shitty in those ways specifically while conceding they are in others.

    I want to know why Apple's shitty doesn't make them the poster boy for shittiness but MS's shitty does. And it does. As far back as Windows 95, Windows is the thing you use that you hate to use and love to hate. That takes work and luck. I want to know how you can dig that hole so effectively while your competition can be just as overtly crappy and still come across as sleek and all the way above good and evil. There's a fundamental truth about branding and squishy human brains buried in that phenomenon.

    I want to know why Apple's shitty doesn't make them the poster boy for shittiness but MS's shitty does

    It doesn't. They're both shitty.

  • This is just a thinly veiled ad for AdGuard.

    If only we could have a response from an independent security researcher instead of a product, that would be great.

  • Apple locked down their shit way after home computers were a necessity. I'd argue it was the rollout of handheld devices that needed a home computer to fully work that made their walled garden viable.

    And Windows is the main player in home computer OSs. You can take issue with their choices, but it's certainly functional. I'd argue Win11 is annoying, but not even in the top 3 least functional versions of Windows. I mean, I was there for Me, 8.0 and Vista.

    But yes, Apple successfully deployed a locked-down, closed space, and I'm curious about why people are ok with it. That they did it early is... a solid hypothesis, I suppose.

    Nah, that shit started to creep in with the imacs - when system 7 became macos.

    Win 11 really isn't functional. There is a serious brain drain problem in microsoft, and as a consequence they've broken some seriously fundamental shit (see: alt tab debacle) made some seriously stupid staff decisions (see: guy responsible for win11 start menu and how it's coded) and somehow even managed to break their own printer spooler.

    Vista at least had the woe that it was forced into hardware packages that weren't powerful enough to handle it, win 11 is just a steaming pile of garbage code.

  • So you’ve never wanted to find an article/headline that you vaguely remember seeing? Or a product that you looked at? Or a picture that you looked at?

    There absolutely is a use case for full reachability of everything you’ve done on your computer. Git commits and terminal history and “recent” files list don’t even come close to providing the same thing lol

    It's true that there's some usefulness in recollection, but geez I find myself digging through my browser history and being absolutely lost... whether it's an article, video, online store product, anything. Then I usually just re-search for whatever it was from scratch 🤷♂

  • China's Robotaxi Companies Are Racing Ahead of Tesla

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    I
    It could. Imagine 80% autonomous vehicle traffic, 30% of that is multipassenger capable taxi service. Autonomous vehicle lanes moving reliably at 75mph. With this amount of taxi service the advantages of personal vehicle ownership falls and the wait time for an available pickup diminishes rapidly. China has many areas with pretty good public transportation. In the US, tech advances and legislation changes to enable the above model is better suited to the existing infrastructure.
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    drdystopia@lemy.lolD
    One runs a mailbox app on any old disused android phone, it temporary stores content and deliver it to the main unit once the connection is restored. Bit simpler to install an app and scan a qr code for the average user compared to even configuring an XMPP client IMO.
  • EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule

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    A
    I just can't get over how little we hear from academics RE: AI. It shows a clear disinterest and I feel like if they did bother to say anything it would be, "Proceed with caution while we study this further." Instead it's always the giant corporations with vested interest in this technology succeeding. It's just so painfully transparent.
  • AI search finds publishers starved of referral traffic

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    alk@sh.itjust.worksA
    They really do! It's nice to read something that's clearly hand crafted and high quality, especially the big news roundups that you do, as opposed to the usual SEO slop most news sites have. It's a treat every time a new one comes out.
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    Same, especially when searching technical or niche topics. Since there aren't a ton of results specific to the topic, mostly semi-related results will appear in the first page or two of a regular (non-Gemini) Google search, just due to the higher popularity of those webpages compared to the relevant webpages. Even the relevant webpages will have lots of non-relevant or semi-relevant information surrounding the answer I'm looking for. I don't know enough about it to be sure, but Gemini is probably just scraping a handful of websites on the first page, and since most of those are only semi-related, the resulting summary is a classic example of garbage in, garbage out. I also think there's probably something in the code that looks for information that is shared across multiple sources and prioritizing that over something that's only on one particular page (possibly the sole result with the information you need). Then, it phrases the summary as a direct answer to your query, misrepresenting the actual information on the pages they scraped. At least Gemini gives sources, I guess. The thing that gets on my nerves the most is how often I see people quote the summary as proof of something without checking the sources. It was bad before the rollout of Gemini, but at least back then Google was mostly scraping text and presenting it with little modification, along with a direct link to the webpage. Now, it's an LLM generating text phrased as a direct answer to a question (that was also AI-generated from your search query) using AI-summarized data points scraped from multiple webpages. It's obfuscating the source material further, but I also can't help but feel like it exposes a little of the behind-the-scenes fuckery Google has been doing for years before Gemini. How it bastardizes your query by interpreting it into a question, and then prioritizes homogeneous results that agree on the "answer" to your "question". For years they've been doing this to a certain extent, they just didn't share how they interpreted your query.
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    It was very boring.
  • My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

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    J
    I did read it, and my comment is exactly referencing the attitude of the author which is "It's good enough, so you should use it". I disagree, and say it's another dumbass shortcut to cash grab on a less than stellar ecosystem and product. It's training wheels for failure.
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    lanusensei87@lemmy.worldL
    Consider the possibility that you don't need to be doing anything wrong besides existing to be persecuted by a fascist regime.