I am mostly concerned with tracking from the private sector; I see privacy as more of an ethical dilemma than an immediate threat, although the corporate surveillance business model is contributing to problems in the real world (data drives social media algorithms which brainwash and radicalise people, leading to increased violence and social chaos). If there is a better alternative to some privacy-invasive big tech app or service then I will make the effort to switch to that. I am willing to sacrifice convenience to support projects that I believe are doing things the right way, or at least putting some effort into being better. However the reality is that most people, whether it’s my friends and family or just acquaintances, do not share my ethical concerns and/or are unwilling to make personal sacrifices and this means I will always need to remain open to compromise to avoid isolating myself socially.
When it comes to the public sector, I am mostly interested in circumventing the federal government’s mandatory data retention laws. which were imposed by a conservative government I didn’t vote for. Again, this is more of an ethical decision; I believe I should have the right to opt out and if the government won’t allow me to do that then the next step is to use tools like VPNs to ensure that data is less personally identifying than it otherwise would be. And again, like data collection from the private sector, my attitude towards government data collection varies depending on whether I see a reason for it to exist. Mandatory data collection of lawful civilians for vague “national security” reasons is overreach and doesn’t have an obvious practical benefit, but during the worst of the COVID years I was okay with the compulsory government tracking of where I had been and when. I saw the pandemic as an immediate challenge we needed to overcome as a society and I was willing to sacrifice my privacy to contribute towards the collective effort.
Due to the recent announcement of Proton moving to a non-profit structure (although not becoming fully non-profit) I’ve decided to take another look at them and really, Proton Unlimited is an enticing offer. However, the fact of everything from mail, to accounts, to storage being in one place is somewhat disconcerting. Also I...
For my threat model, yes they are trustworthy enough. I am not concerned about concealing my identity from a government investigating me for some alleged crime, but rather just transitioning away from Google and investing my time and money into a company that better respects my privacy. As a result, the centralisation doesn’t concern me as much as it does others and I am fine using Proton for VPN, email, calendar and storage. I also use SimpleLogin, which is now owned by Proton. All their applications are well designed and reliable for basic use in my experience, and it is more affordable for me to bundle these services together. I would definitely recommend them to people like myself, but your threat model sounds a little more complicated so you might want to do some further research and see what else is out there.
According to that article, he and the owner of the business patched things up and reached a positive resolution. Continuing to be mad about it 10 years later, particularly when no one involved actually cares, is the most terminally online behaviour. Switch off the phone, go outside and breathe some fresh air.
Totally valid? Getting mental health advice from an AI chatbot is one of the least valid use cases. Speak to a real human @earmuff, preferably someone close to you or who is professionally trained to assist with your condition. There are billions of English speakers in the world, so don’t pretend we live in a society where there’s “no one to talk to”.
There is nothing “dismissive” about offering advice to people who clearly need it. In actual fact, you are the one who was dismissive of the issue here by offering some cowardly “feel good” reply instead of opening up and sharing your honest thoughts. Stop tiptoeing around issues and enabling harmful behaviours. Relying on AI chatbots for mental health advice is very dangerous, and it’s absolute madness to encourage this as a primary form of treatment when you are seemingly aware of the dangers yourself.
I love the moral grandstanding from virtue signallers like yourself when you get called out on how utterly useless and selfish your behaviour is. I’m still the only one to offer genuine advice here; advice I know to be backed by academics and science. You have literally done nothing other than to encourage this person to continue a form of treatment you know to be dangerous, all to appear empathetic on social media.
I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc.
Did you make a mistake here? You are describing an Android device. You can even remove apps entirely from a device with a tool like Universal Android Debloater, and Android allows alternative app stores so you don’t need to rely on a heavily limited selection of proprietary apps.
The problem with iOS is the lack of freedom and control you have as a user. Yes, Apple may be “better than Google” when it comes to some aspects of default privacy on their devices (being better than the worst is hardly something to brag about), but as a user the level of privacy you can achieve on your iPhone is always limited by the design of the operating system, where you are just a user with no permissions and no ability to modify or even replace the operating system entirely. You are locked into a proprietary ecosystem that you cannot get out of.
How does it come “clean out of the box” when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?
at least there’s no vendor garbage
Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you’re lying about that).
unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.
GrapheneOS is available as an option because Android has an open-source basis. Remind me which alternative privacy OS Apple allows third party developers to create for iPhone? Which iPhone did they allow users to install this imaginary privacy OS on?
You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access
Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.
In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.
Hopefully this doesn’t go the Apple direction where “security” becomes the catch-all defence for anti-consumer business practices.
As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in...
Yes, I always get the feeling that a lot of these militant AI sceptics are pretty clueless about where the technology is and the rate at which it is improving. They really owe it to themselves to learn as much as they can so they can better understand where the technology is heading and what the best form of opposition will be in the future. As you say, relying on “haha Google made a funny” isn’t going to cut it forever.
But even if you don’t, have some respect for the AI artists out there who put time and effort into their craft.
What kind of time and effort? How is AI art a skill that is comparable to real art? I am genuinely asking here, I’d like to understand your work process.
I am not a visual artist, but I have composed my own music and the amount of time and/or effort needed to create a comparable piece using generative AI is not even close to being the same. I think there is a place for AI tools that assist artists, but people generating entire pieces using AI and then referring to themselves as “artists” is honestly delusional and sad. I hope that’s not what you are referring to here.
No, I’m sorry but those are terrible examples. Synthesisers still require full creative control and an understanding of sound production techniques to create a custom sound. Some musicians rely on presets and samples, but even then they still need to be capable of actually composing a piece of music. Also, the debate was largely about whether synthesisers could be considered real instruments, not whether the music created by synthesisers was real music. The Hip Hop comparison is completely irrelevant and an even worse attempt at conflating genuine criticism of AI “musicians” with “old people are just mad”.
I don’t know anything about AI music generation
It’s literally just prompts AFAIK, so the people making it don’t require any musical talent, ability or creativity. They are just asking someone/something else to make them music that has a certain sound. It’s the equivalent of a monarch commissioning a piece of work from their court musician and then claiming they are a musician too.
visual art can be generated by AI models on local machines with a great amount of fine tuning and depth.
Are there specific pieces of AI art software people use? Any popular ones you can recommended to help me understand the process better?
You keep using the word “vision”, but I have a hard time understanding how an AI artist has a vision equivalent to that of a traditional artist based on the explanation you’ve provided. It still sounds they are just cycling through AI generated options until they find something they like/that looks good. That is not the same as seeing something in your mind and then manually recreating that to the best of your ability.
You’re sort of stepping around the issue here. Are you confirming that AI art is about cycling through options blind until you stumble across something you like?
Err, you admitted yourself that you are absolutely clueless when it comes to AI music generation. So yes, your “point” was a bad one and clearly came from a place of complete ignorance.
How is stacking 10 buckets of sand and letting them fall in an art gallery, comparable to real art? Dunno, but they call it that: “real art”.
Your insinuation here was that AI art is “real art” because someone once stacked 10 buckets of sand and called it “real art”. It comes across as pretty desperate that you relied on a comparison with something as questionable as this to argue that AI art is the equivalent of traditional art. As you said, there will always be artists and “artists”. Sounds like AI “artists” fit in quite well with the latter group.
With the recent WWDC apple made some bold claims about privacy when it comes to so called Apple Intelligence. This makes me wonder if they did something to what Microsoft did with Recall feature, would people be less concerned and to an extend praise their effort?...
“People” would be, yes. Apple is continuously praised by its rabid fans for engaging in anti-consumer practices disguised as “courage” or “security”. There will always be a very vocal group who believe it is the greatest, most humane and ethical company on the planet. Whether the same people who criticised Microsoft would be criticising Apple is another question.
I have been considering replacing my nearly 7 year old iPhone (although very reluctant) and I was checking for options. Really the only phone that caught my eye was the Sony xperia 1 V, but I found no information about how to degoogle and lock down the device. I really like the features and the built in camera apps, etc. Is...
The 1 V is officially supported by LineageOS. Installation instructions can be found here.
EDIT: I will add that support for this device is quite recent, and it is still very expensive even second-hand. You are relying on a volunteer maintainer who makes no commitments about how long they will support the device for, so I think it’s financially risky to buy the device purely based on it having LineageOS support now. You might want to consider the Xperia 1 III, which is two years older and significantly cheaper on the seocnd-hand market, but is otherwise quite similar to the 1 V. It has also received official LineageOS support for a longer period.
You can use Universal Android Debloater (updated fork here) to remove some applications, but it’s nothing on the level of a custom ROM. If you are really set on the hardware of the Xperia 1 V then I would recommend taking a look at this guide, written by @TheAnonymouseJoker. It has some advice for how you can achieve greater privacy on a non-Pixel Android device.
That has been my experience with Sony phones, too. And as you (and I) pointed out, that device already has official LineageOS support so clearly it can be unlocked. I can only assume this is a regional problem or something. I know Japanese and American variants can have permanently locked bootloaders, which sometimes catches out second-hand purchasers who haven’t done their research.
Sony Corporation (which includes Sony Mobile) is not the same subsidiary as Sony Interactive Entertainment (which owns PlayStation). There is no reason to just blindly assume that the two companies have the exact same business structure. You talk about snake oil but the only one making baseless claims here is you.
Another fundamental misunderstanding of how conglomerates work. There is not one person right at the top telling every single subsidiary to follow their evil master plan to the letter. Each division will be formulating its own strategies to meet whatever targets have been set.
And this is only the times I could find him tweeting about it on his personal account. It doesn’t include any of his multiple retweets of other people who were arguing in support of his position (including comparisons to Nazi Germany and Hitler), or any statements he gave directly to the media. It is rather ironic that you went after the previous person for some supposed “hatred” of Musk - maybe we need to be questioning your bias as well, considering you just straight up lied about his involvement in the saga.
I don’t hate the project but I do find its users to be among the most annoying within the privacy community. They seem to have absolutely zero understanding of threat modeling and will get very dismissive and condescending the moment you mention a project other than GrapheneOS.
I think this is likely just a result of GrapheneOS being the most well known privacy ROM; it’s just naturally going to attract the type of person who watches a single YouTube video on a topic and then acts like they are now an expert who deserves to be respected and listened to at all times. Sorry, but if all you can do is parrot dot points from the project’s website and spout some security theatre gobbledygook that has absolutely zero relevance to my personal situation then I’m probably not going to be taking any of your unwarranted advice.
Also like, not that it’s necessarily a bad thing that I can see his muscle veins through his shirt, but that’s often a component of that particular corner of Joe Rogan-NFT-Bitcoin-Tesla.
This is such a strange take. Presumably he works out, as do many other people around the world who have absolutely zero connection to “bro-y tech”. I don’t understand why you would let something so irrelevant affect your judgement of a person you clearly know nothing about. It’s almost like some kind of reverse fat-shaming.
Graphene seems to be the real outlier in terms of its community, which I guess comes back to the tone set by its founder. No other project (in terms of privacy ROMs) has such a toxic culture.
Yeah, although I don’t want to assume that person’s intentions or appearance. Speaking more broadly I do agree that there is this sort of counter-movement happening in the online space where people who are insecure about their own body are hitting out more and more at those who have clearly put more time and effort into maintaining conventional beauty standards. Maybe this has been driven by social media absolutely blasting society with images of beautiful people 24/7; the insecure among us assume those who are fit or work out have some kind of ulterior motive or character flaw, like we see with the narcissistic influencer culture, as a way of coping with their mounting insecurity.
It’s frustrating to live in a world where streaming is the main way to consume music. I found this German band from Berlin called “Von Wegen Lisbeth” because of their son “Wenn du tantzt” which has great music and great text: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JRghbgeYw...
The one holdout among the console makers is Nintendo, whose PC strategy is still to threaten fan projects with lawsuits. Perhaps I do not have to hand it to Nintendo for this, but as a result of its obstinance, the Switch is the only console I’d consider buying as a PC gamer. Nintendo remains a one-of-a-kind gaming company, whereas Xbox and PlayStation feel less and less distinguishable from gaming at large—aka PC gaming.
I’m not sure about this analysis of the Switch’s success. The “lawsuit” argument is pretty irrelevant; the console would sell regardless of whether emulation existed (as it has, for most of the big titles and for much of the console’s life). I think the “one-of-a-kind” argument is accurate, but I’d also suggest that the very wide library of games is a major reason why Nintendo has performed so well in this generation. The Switch appeals to almost every single type of gamer - there is so much variety there. Additionally, the portability is clear point of difference: for many, the Switch is more like a handheld that they can occasionally play on the TV, rather than a traditional home console. And finally, the Switch is just a more affordable option and that has mattered a lot since 2020.
Young voters in key election battlegrounds are being recommended fake AI-generated videos featuring party leaders, misinformation, and clips littered with abusive comments, the BBC has found....
Did you read the article? The student in question is guilty of the exact thing they criticise politicians for. “Well they did it first/more so it’s okay if I do it too” is the argument of a 4 year old.
This was always dickhead behaviour, but not for the reasons you guys are circlejerking about. Often the answers to these questions are extremely easy to find online (even today, Google is nowhere near as useless as people make it out to be). But the entire point of asking other people through social media or a forum is because you want to engage in discussion with other humans. That’s literally the entire point of these websites: to foster discussion, both for the sake of learning and for the social entertainment we all need. People who sign up to them and then completely shutdown attempts to start discussions are absolutely braindead and don’t understand any of this. Modern forms of social media only encourage this kind of performative social interaction. So many people seem to think the sole purpose of discussion-based social media is to dunk on others with a vicious reply and “win” by earning more points (ratio) instead of having an actual back and forth discussion with another human.
Sure, I completely that it has declined significantly. I think the comments in this thread about it “sucking cock”, being “just ads and SEO crap”, or a “bloated, shit site” are hyperbole though. It is still the best search engine for most use-cases and queries, including finding answers to “how do I do X” type questions. I use DuckDuckGo (AKA Bing) but only because it gets close enough to Google’s results to be a superior choice for me overall when I take into account its massive privacy advantages. In terms of results, there is still enough of a gap that I will occasionally need to rely on Google’s results for particular queries. I actually used to use StartPage for this exact reason and only switched because it had issues with VPNs.
Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”...
I think you’re imparting your own biases on the article here. The reporting on the “Chinese roots” of the company is provided as context for the reader because, as I explained above, China’s alleged influence over American society and politics is very relevant at the moment - regardless of whether you agree that it is happening. As far as I know, there was also zero evidence provided by the US government of CCP-guided interference by Huawei or TikTok, yet it moved ahead with bans anyway. Particularly within the context of the reasoning for banning TikTok, NewsBreak’s connections to China are extremely relevant. Note, in particular, this line from the article:
In February, IDG Capital was added to a list of dozens of Chinese companies the Pentagon said were allegedly working with Beijing’s military.
You accuse the outlet/journalist/editor of xenophobia and quote their findings of zero links to the CCP as evidence of this, but I would argue that this is actually evidence of the complete opposite. They are doing their best to provide a balanced view of the situation by reporting the lack of connections in contrast to the allegations or implications. If they actually had a genuine xenophobic intention with this reporting, there would be absolutely zero reason to include that line.
It is not an outrageous thing to say: being Chinese does not make you a CCP operative.
The article doesn’t state or imply that, though. What it does do is provide information to the reader that is, again, relevant because of the current situation in US politics where you do have politicians alleging or implying that being Chinese, even ethnically, equates to being a CCP operative.
I just wish they would stop saying “China” or “Chinese” as shorthand for “CCP”.
This is standard in the field of international relations, though. We always use the name of the country or the capital city of the country when referring to it on the international stage. You are suggesting that we should refer to China as “the CCP”, the USA as “the Democrats”, Australia as “Labor”, etc. That is obviously an extremely confusing and illogical way of presenting information to a global audience.
I think the fact that you are so concerned about how Trump might hijack this type of balanced reporting is a massive tell that you are not reading it impartially. You are approaching it from the position of “the West has an anti-China bias” (a position I don’t necessarily disagree with) and are then trying to link the dots between the information provided in the article and your world view. You need to understand that reporting facts, that may be parroted in bad faith by political groups and their supporters to reach an inaccurate/unsupported conclusion, is not the same as an opinion piece where the objective is to emotionally manipulate the reader or lead them to a particular conclusion. Reuters has an extremely good reputation for highly factual and unbiased reporting and there is nothing in this report to suggest otherwise.
There is not a single attack on your character at all in that reply. If you don’t want to engage, fair enough. Just be honest about it instead of trying to smear others so you look like you “won” by default due to some imagined moral high ground.
I don’t think they’re likely to do a better job than humans any time soon.
Sure, assuming the human is actually putting effort into the task. But we know that able-bodied society is generally, at best, dismissive of the needs of the disabled and, at worst, discriminatory. I very much doubt that the majority of fully sighted humans working in this area are taking the time required to view the problem from the point of view of the visually-impaired minority and then putting in the effort required to deliver the best possible solution for them. Not every website is run by some massive company with employees specifically dedicated to this task. For many it will be an afterthought, and that’s where AI descriptions will shit all over the lazy human ones. Additionally, alt text contributes to SEO which means many will be tailoring it to their search ranking instead of the needs of the user.
That you can straight-up comment “AI doesn’t get better” at a tech literate sub and not be called out is honestly staggering.
I actually don’t think it is because, as I alluded to in another comment in this thread, so many people are still completely in the dark on generative AI - even in general technology-themed areas of the internet. Their only understanding of it comes from reading the comments of morons (because none of these people ever actually read the linked article) who regurgitate the same old “big tech is only about hype, techbros are all charlatans from the capitalist elite” lines for karma/retweets/likes without ever actually taking the time to hear what people working within the field (i.e. experts) are saying. People underestimate the capabilities of AI because it fits their political world view, and in doing so are sitting ducks when it comes to the very real threats it poses.
What would you consider your threat model?
I was watching Eric Murphy’s video on “Privacy faigue” and it certainly provided some food for thought. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab6ryHD_ahQ)...
Is the Proton (Mail, VPN, Password Manager) ecosystem any good?
Due to the recent announcement of Proton moving to a non-profit structure (although not becoming fully non-profit) I’ve decided to take another look at them and really, Proton Unlimited is an enticing offer. However, the fact of everything from mail, to accounts, to storage being in one place is somewhat disconcerting. Also I...
Snowden: "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products" (twitter.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.smeargle.fans/post/182373...
Why don’t you like Apple?
Real question. I would like to know what drives you to hate Apple? (In terms of privacy of course because in terms of price it’s another story).
Microsoft in damage-control mode, says it will prioritize security over AI (arstechnica.com)
'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement (www.theatlantic.com)
As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in...
Do you think people would be okay with 'Recall' if Apple did it?
With the recent WWDC apple made some bold claims about privacy when it comes to so called Apple Intelligence. This makes me wonder if they did something to what Microsoft did with Recall feature, would people be less concerned and to an extend praise their effort?...
Google is Working on a Recall Feature for ChromeOS - Thurrott.com (www.thurrott.com)
De-googling and privacy on Sony xperia
I have been considering replacing my nearly 7 year old iPhone (although very reluctant) and I was checking for options. Really the only phone that caught my eye was the Sony xperia 1 V, but I found no information about how to degoogle and lock down the device. I really like the features and the built in camera apps, etc. Is...
Win for Free Speech! Australia Drops Global Takedown Order Case | Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org)
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How to buy music?
It’s frustrating to live in a world where streaming is the main way to consume music. I found this German band from Berlin called “Von Wegen Lisbeth” because of their son “Wenn du tantzt” which has great music and great text: www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JRghbgeYw...
Hello, PC gaming here: Are the consoles OK? (www.pcgamer.com)
UK election: TikTok users being fed misleading election news, investigation finds (www.bbc.com)
Young voters in key election battlegrounds are being recommended fake AI-generated videos featuring party leaders, misinformation, and clips littered with abusive comments, the BBC has found....
death of the ruleternet (pawb.social)
NewsBreak: Most downloaded US news app has Chinese roots and 'writes fiction' using AI (www.reuters.com)
Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”...
Mozilla Firefox new alt-text generator powered by "fully private on-device AI model" (hacks.mozilla.org)
New accessibility feature coming to Firefox, an “AI powered” alt-text generator....
OpenAI Insider Estimates 70 Percent Chance That AI Will Destroy or Catastrophically Harm Humanity (futurism.com)