• 0 Posts
  • 86 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: October 9th, 2023

help-circle





  • Edit: forgot OP asked about IOS, not desktop…


    That is a fair point.

    Firefox profiles is not well integrated or known.

    On windows, in the run dialog (win+R) type firefox.exe -p to open the profile wizard. You can also make custom shortcuts but I don’t recall the exact command.

    If you sign in with the same Firefox account on both profiles to sync bookmarks and stuff, the only thing different would be what ever you’re signed into.



  • You should probably get a louder smoke decetor if you can barely hear it upstairs.

    I’m going to go with the DIY approach;

    For the water sensor, I’d look into the possibility of linking the basement alarm to a speaker upstairs. I’ve no idea what kind of alarm you’re looking at or what the electronics are like. Theoreticaly, you can jump off the audio signal just before it reaches the speaker. Send the audio signal through an amp (located close* to the alarm, preferably where it won’t get wet) and connect it to a speaker upstairs.

    I would never try to mess with a smoke detector I rely on, but a water sensor…buy two and have fun.

    *the amp is to overcome voltage drop in the new cable, I doubt that the sensor electronics will be capable of driving a seperate speaker with at least 30 ft of cable between it.




  • Would a compromise be to simply archive them but not make them freely availible until they enter public domain.

    For more current book; if they are out of print then they can be made availbe for limited loan, like any other digital library. If a digital copy is avalible for purchase from the original publisher/author, than its not fair game. Unless they come to an agreement, perhaps add supported for freely accessing a book otherwise available for purchase.

    If they got rid of the download option, it would make it much more difficult to just use a DRM stripping tool (a friend told me about these terrible pirating tools, I certently don’t know how to use then). A lot of digital libraies have a dedicated app that you can only view content from. Utilize whatever anti-screen capture systems banks and Netflix use to protect from simply taking screen shots. Make is easier to access the books legitimatly than it is to pirate them.

    Lastly, don’t just make everything freely availible next time there’s a world crisis.


  • Remote software repairs are definatly good, pretty cool and worth bragging about. If you have to do a physical repair, you’re probably better off just sending a new probe [citation needed], but as I said the time investment is huge.

    It is a legitimate question, however the way it was asked has a negative vibe, intentional or not. You pretty much gave a good option and bad option and said “pick one” - generally when that’s asked, we assume the asker assumes the negative is true (it’s hard to explain). To me, it could be interpreted as “just curious, I assume this probe is only taking pretty pictures, so why do you bother repairing it?”.

    Personally, I’ve been trying to avoid jumping to those types of conclusions, but its not easy. Text has no tone, and phrases sometimes have a secondary tonal meanings that people will insert. “Just curious…was it you that didn’t refill the coffee machine this morning?”



  • I’m going to copy paste a reply I left somewhere else. This was for iOS AI, I’m unsure what the implemention for macOS is. If they are scanning everything then I do not support it.


    From what I saw,

    MS Recall is a 24/7 AI monitor system that captures everything you look at and saves it for later. They didn’t even do the bare minimum for protecting the data, it was just dumped in an unencytped folder where anyone get wholesale access to the data. All trust has been lost.

    Apple is using AI as a tool to improve specific tasks/features that a user invokes. Things like assistant queries and the new calculator. They have said some promising things in regards to privacy, specificly with the use of ChatGPT - any inquiry sent to ChatGPT will ask the user permission first and obscure their IP. This shows they care enough to try, they have not lost our trust - but we remain skeptical.


    If apple tries the same thing by scanning everything wholesale, then that’s getting over shadowed by the promises made by the implentaion on the much more popular iOS.



  • The way I see it, if they’re too young to have scocial media, they’re too young to be on scocial media.

    It’s real odd when you consider how society is now okay with parents posting pictures of our children openly for the world to see. Yet when the kids start sharing pictures of them selves to friends it’s super dangerous for them.

    The sad part is now private photos are at risk with all the cloud minning and “AI” crap. The idea that no matter how much I lock down my privacy, simply sending a picture of my kid to their grandma, who will save it to her auto-cloud phone gallary, is still going to feed that picture to the collective is sickening.


  • From what I saw,

    MS Recall is a 24/7 AI monitor system that captures everything you look at and saves it for later. They didn’t even do the bare minimum for protecting the data, it was just dumped in an unencytped folder where anyone get wholesale access to the data. All trust has been lost.

    Apple is using AI as a tool to improve specific tasks/features that a user invokes. Things like assistant queries and the new calculator. They have said some promising things in regards to privacy, specificly with the use of ChatGPT - any inquiry sent to ChatGPT will ask the user permission first and obscure their IP. This shows they care enough to try, they have not lost our trust - but we remain skeptical.



  • This raises an excellent point not considered. This goes for all texts as well if the other person uses the “your phone” app. Discord, matrix, signal, telegram etc are all compromised by this existing on a system.

    Will my browser’s “private mode” be respected or it is going to store every inappropriate thing I search?

    Are password managers safe? How about bank security questions? How often are those actaully obfuscated. The last 4 digits of social security numbers are usually unobfuscated, which is also what a lot of intuitions (stupidly) use to verify your ID over the phone. What if I want to look at the PDF of my tax documents?

    What if my HR manager has this enabled and starts viewing PDFs containing private information about employees, payroll data, finances and whatever else is sellable on the dark web.

    How about govermnet data? Sure maybe the pentagon IT staff will completely block it, but what about local gov committee ABC that’s collecting voter information?

    That type of data is valuable enough that it will be targeted regardless of what protection MS attempts. Based on the fact they didnt bother encytping the data from the start, my faith is low.

    The implications of this are insane.