TipRing

ChromeOS is Linux.

“We are sorry you noticed, we didn’t think anyone would read all that.” -Adobe, probably

I know it’s WindowsCentral but the article has some pretty naive takes. Given the propensity of threat actors to target Windows due to its market share it’s impossible to not see a system that records user activity as a huge treasure trove for both malware and hackers.

It also doesn’t mention that Microsoft claimed that it would be impossible to exfiltrate Recall data and of course researchers found it not only possible but trivial, with the data lacking even basic protections. Assurances that there are mechanisms to prevent Recall from secretly monitoring you mean nothing when prior assurances about safety have been found to be paper thin at best.

Further it ignores that telemetry gathered by Windows has dramatically increased in the last several years with methods to disable it being eliminated or undone by OS updates. Microsoft is hungry for user data and it would be absurdly naive to think that Recall won’t be a tool they use to gain more of it. If not now, then definitely later.

The author does point out that Recall has been weirdly under wraps, avoiding the usual test bed for new feature rollout. Microsoft has been acting shady about the feature and then the feature itself does shady things (like record PII, credit card data, etc.), of course users are going to think the worst. At this point it’s a survival tactic.

Microsoft doesn’t have trust issues because of bad PR or a few missteps. Microsoft has trust issues because they have violated user trust repeatedly for decades. They have done nothing to make users feel like they care at all about keeping Windows secure and safe and they clearly have no regard for user privacy. This only question is whether this backlash will do anything to make Microsoft reconsider the way it treats its users. I predict they will learn all the wrong lessons from this.

I’m considering moving one of my retired friends to Mint after cleaning 43 threats from her Windows PC. All she does is browse the web and word process. I can set her up with Firefox and uBlock Origin on a Mint install and she likely will never need to worry about malware.

Thanks to the Steamdeck Linux users on Steam now outnumber Mac users. Still a tiny percentage of total Steam users but if developers increase support we will hopefully see that number take off.

Gmail is probably the hardest one to kick. I’m fine with paying for an email service if it’s functional and doesn’t siphon my personal data, but finding a quality trustworthy provider and then migrating 20 years of data to it seems so overwhelming.

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This just results in deniable encryption.

It would be a catastrophe for sure, but there are some reasons to be hopeful:

Researchers have been studying this bug for awhile and human vaccines could be ramped up more quickly than with COVID.

Further, there are specific mutations that would be key for rapid human-human spread and the variant infecting these cattle don’t have those mutations (yet).

Cattle are not as good a transition species to humans as, for example, pigs. So while we should be watching this, it’s not quite as alarming as it could be.

Timothee Chalamet as Data (he’s in everything).

For me it was just the emotional tone. I only watched the first 5 episodes, but one of the things that makes Star Trek enjoyable for me is its optimism about the future. Discovery was really bleak (at least to start) and I couldn’t keep watching it. I’ve heard it gets better, so maybe I should give it another shot.

Of all the big scary things in the universe, this one scares me the least. Even if it does happen and is the worst-case scenario you just cease to exist at the speed of light before you even know something is happening. No pain, no dread at your inevitable demise, you just are living your life normally and in a nanosecond you are gone. Not a bad way to go, imo.

Munchkin soured me on Take That style games for years. My friends loved it, but I did not.

Probably Scythe. It was fun the first couple times when we were figuring it out, but very quickly every game ends up feeling the same.

At the start of all this when Christian first posted I figured I would just use some sort of workaround like old.reddit in mobile browser; the official app and new reddit are non-starters for me, it’s just not how I browse.

However, in the days since I have been increasingly dismayed by Spez and the rest of the leadership response, a lack of interest in even engaging on the subject and outright hostility towards a community that has been dedicated to reddit for years. I can’t see myself going back there, it’s been poisoned for me.