Boozilla

Boozilla , 2 days ago

It's my daily driver. There are a few sites that don't work well with it, but those are very rare in my experience. Latest one to break on me was State Farm. And so what. Fuck State Farm.

Boozilla , 2 days ago

With MS you never know. They are pretty arrogant and aggressive about assuming you want things running in the background. Something you can try: Install ShutUp10 and look for things like Office Telemetry being turned on. You can switch these things off (permanently or temporarily, your choice) and see if that stops the traffic.

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

(There are other ways to do the same thing but I've been using ShutUp10 for years and love it)

Boozilla , 2 days ago

Glad you found it useful! Love your username.

Boozilla , 2 days ago

I'm pretty aggressive about switching things off, too. I will never use OneDrive, for example.

Boozilla , 2 days ago

Many folks have older PCs that won't run 11. And buying a new PC not high on the list when you're worried about paying for rent, food, transportation, medicine, etc.

Boozilla , 5 days ago

5 billion years? So you're saying there's a chance.

Boozilla , 6 days ago

I've felt much the same way for decades. I am very grateful that all the stupid shit I thought, did, or said as a young person wasn't preserved by some omnipresent archival machine. Some moments are best lost to the winds of time. People who grew up with the internet and social media don't know what life was like before. I'm not a "good old days" kind of guy, but I do think the archive-everything-forever compulsion does vast amounts of harm.

Boozilla , 5 days ago

Thanks for sharing this, it's a fascinating take. I am certainly not against archiving things that are worth archiving. And I am not qualified to know who should or should not have the authority to make such a determination when it comes to "historical things". But I do believe that individual people (who are not public figures in positions of power / accountability) should always have the option to be forgotten if they choose to be. I am average person of no particular historical interest or merit, I don't really need an expert to tell me that. If I want my shit deleted at any time, and especially after I die, that should be my right. However, "ownership" can get very murky when we sign EULAs and are talking about the costs of hosting, etc. So there are "overriding factors" that may occur, too. Those should never be deceptive or misleading. But of course, they often are. They hide a lot of evil assertions in boring legalese. Google lets you delete your digital data with them if they detect no activity within a time-frame you set. If they are not full of BS and actually honor this, I think that's pretty cool. The compulsion to archive everything is really just data hoarding. Not that different from people who live in a home surrounded by clutter they never use.

Boozilla , 7 days ago

There's a lot of tactical thinking and gamesmanship that goes into pricing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricing

As for economic theory, the value of economists, and the semantics of the word "law"... yeah....I'm not getting in to all that.

Boozilla , 7 days ago

I think there was another reddit influx. Not sure how large. Or what prompted it.

Boozilla , 7 days ago

Was talking about the general tone of Lemmy of late, not the OP specifically. This is easy to surmise from context clues...

Boozilla , 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

I honestly don't know how well AI is going to scale when it comes to power consumption vs performance. If it's like most of the progress we've seen in hardware and software over the years, it could be very promising. On the other hand, past performance is no guarantee for future performance. And your concerns are quite valid. It uses an absurd amount of resources.

The usual AI squad may jump in here with their usual unbridled enthusiasm and copium that other jobs are under threat, but my job is safe, because I'm special.

Eye roll.

Meanwhile, thousands have been laid off already, and executives and shareholders are drooling at the possibility of thinning the workforce even more. Those who think AI will create as many jobs as it destroys are thinking wishfully. Assuming it scales well, it could spell massive layoffs. Some experts predict tens of millions of jobs lost to AI by 2030.

To try and answer the other part of your question...at my job (which is very technical and related to healthcare) we have found AI to be extremely useful. Using Google to search for answers to problems pales by comparison. AI has saved us a lot of time and effort. I can easily imagine us cutting staff eventually, and we're a small shop.

The future will be a fascinating mix of good and bad when it comes to AI. Some things are quite predictable. Like the loss of creative jobs in art, music, animation, etc. And canned response type jobs like help desk chat, etc. The future of other things like software development, healthcare, accounting, and so on are a lot murkier. But no job (that isn't very hands-on-physical) is 100% safe. Especially in sectors with high demand and low supply of workers. Some of these models understand incredibly complex things like drug interactions. It's going to be a wild ride.

Boozilla , 8 days ago

Haven't used it in many years. But I remember having a lot of fun with it in the 90s. A friend from the UK told me about it, and we used it to stay in touch.

Boozilla , 9 days ago

Yes. If it was an opt-in feature and we knew beyond all doubt that it was stored locally-only, and for the user only, it could be a useful feature for some folks. Unfortunately, Microsoft has a long history of doing stupid and/or evil shit 'for' the user, with the attitude of 'Clippy knows best'.

Boozilla , 9 days ago

Assume for a moment the investigators were acting in good faith and knew what they were doing. They are still only able to find what they are given access to, and evidence that wasn't destroyed. LTT is not the most technically competent staff in the world, but I bet if those guys know how to do anything technical, covering their tracks is probably high on that list.

I'm not skeptical of the firm that was hired. I'm skeptical that LTT and gang didn't scrub everything before handing over the keys. We know LTT aren't dumb, and we know they are unethical.

I understand my argument falls into "can't prove a negative" territory. I'm going on instincts. The main dude has techbro-creep energy. Reminds me of a Blizzard executive. The whole thing stinks of a South Park apology episode to me.

I understand you can't put someone in jail over instincts. I wouldn't want that, either. That's not how the system should work.

But it's 100% OK to stop following some dumbass YouTuber because you trust your instincts.

I'd rather get my tech infotainment elsewhere. It's a big wide world out there on the internet. LTT isn't the only game in town. And honestly, they were never that great to begin with. Their methodologies are lousy.

Boozilla , 9 days ago

Yup. The weasel words are very telling (for those with eyes to see).

Boozilla , 10 days ago

The A in ANC stands for Active. It is actively listening to ambient noise in your environment to cancel it out with a waveform tailored to do so in real time. If the noise in your environment is very static (like a hum or whirring) it might be possible to embed a cancelling sound in the audio file. But it's likely it still won't line up properly to really cancel it. It's more likely to cause a worse sound because of being out of phase (like two leaf blowers going at the same time).

I hope that makes sense.

Boozilla , 10 days ago

Assuming I still have my current job at that time, this is really going to suck for me. I have an old virtual PC runnning Windows 10 that I use once in a while to maintain some shitty old software. It was a giant PITA setting it up. I regularly back it up because of that.

Hopefully I can just continue using it, but I'll need to disconnect it from the internet somehow. Will still need some limited LAN access. I guess it will require some strict firewall rules. I know just enough about networking to muddle through...maybe.

Boozilla , 10 days ago

I really hope we don't have to watch AI to go though all the various shitshow phases of reddit history, like the racist subs, fat people hate, jailbait, etc.

Boozilla , 14 days ago

ShutUp10 helps a bit. It puts a ton of settings in one place for you.

Boozilla , 15 days ago

Less doing, more being. --Mage Ged

Boozilla , 15 days ago

The Open Web is definitely dying. Some dystopian weaponized ads hellscape of an apps-required shiternet will be around for a while.

Boozilla , 16 days ago

Empathy and decency are scarce precious commodities. But the ruthless predatory "thought leaders" have been in charge ever since we clubbed the last neanderthal.

"It Was Just Business" should be engraved on whatever memorial is left behind to mark our self-extinction.

Boozilla , 16 days ago

Milk? Is this one of the McPoyles???

Boozilla , 23 days ago

I will think about this every time we have a meeting to discuss the stupid "shame and train" faux phishing attacks they run on us at work.

Pro-Tip: If you set up the right kind of filtering you'll never see those stupid things. (Fight club rules).

Boozilla , 23 days ago

The right email rule can make that easier, too. Hee hee

Boozilla , 23 days ago

It's glitchy AF. There's a known bug where it can report you if you simply preview the email, too. In some environments, anyway.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

shhhhhhh.

Good for you, though.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

Where I work, they haven't taken it that far yet. But I would not be surprised if they go to that in the future. The email rules / filters can still help with it.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

The usual "dance, monkey, dance" from corporate.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

It varies depending on your email client and the fake phishing service / implementation. (Sorry, I hate non-specific answers like this, too). For me, all I had to do was add an Outlook rule that looks for a certain keyword in the email header. The keyword is a weird/unique string that's only associated with the fake phishing company. If that word is anywhere in the email header, my rule chucks it into a folder where I just ignore it. Your client should let you view the header / raw email and you can look for a pattern that way.

It's a pretty safe rule as far as email rules go. The only risk I can think of is that it could lull me into complacency, but working for the man does that, anyway. I've been getting away with it for over a year, and it's nice not seeing the dumbass fake phishing things. Note that we are not mandated to report them, but we get assigned extra training if we click on any links in them. Your employer may have different rules.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

That's really funny. It's like you work for Dunder-Mifflin.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

Even a smart person can have a bad day / moment of weakness. If you are super busy / stressed out and some email comes that looks like a bullshit request from HR or IT or whatever, it can be tempting to just try to knock it off your plate real quick so you can get back to whatever fire you were fighting.

My tactic these days is I pretty much don't click on ANYTHING in an email, so it's an ingrained habit. If it's a link to something, it's usually one I can navigate to myself using my browser. If it's an attachment, we use a file sharing system that stores these so I can just go to that and see what's in there.

It's inconvenient, and you don't always have these work-around options, but by trying to make into an automatic habit, it has saved me a couple of times.

Boozilla , 23 days ago

I have done some minor malicious compliance / prankster sabotage sort-of like that in the past. I got called on the carpet. It was fun, though!

Boozilla , 25 days ago

I'm driven by convenience, FOMO, and peer pressure, so go ahead and destroy my privacy and security, Google!

Snark aside, it seems like a really neat useful little idea that will 100% be used for some creepy corporate shit.

Boozilla , 26 days ago

This is unfortunate. I just hope her career is perma-dead. I could see her trying to stage a Martha Stewart style comeback when she gets out, even though she's not 10% as smart as Stewart.

Boozilla , 28 days ago

Never underestimate how far they will go to track your movements, habits, etc. It's not even about "the gubment spyin' on me". It's about how valuable that data is to corporate assholes who like to target you with customized advertising, and resell your data, etc. (And yes, as a side-effect, the police can also sometimes take advantage of this ubiquitous data capture).

We live in a time when even our stupid cars spy on us:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/podcasts/the-daily/car-gm-insurance-spying.html

It's why they push the internet of shit so hard. Nobody needs a "smart fridge" but by god, they really want us all to have one.

Boozilla , 28 days ago

I use it every day and try to contribute actively. I agree it feels stagnant. I see the same users over and over (and there are some I've grown rather fond of, so it's not all bad).

I think Lemmy probably has more users than it seems, because the ratio of lurkers to posters/commentors is very high. This is also true on spezsite. But of course they have a gigantic user base, so it's not nearly as noticeable as it is here.

Spezsite gets worse all the time, but they are sneaky and introduce the suck slowly, one shitty "feature" at the time. They know most of their users are lazy and hooked, and won't bail on them unless they add too much suck too fast.

But I'm hopeful there's a gradual migration that will slowly bring in more participants. I also think the more each of us can do to contribute, the better chance of converting long-time Lemmy lurkers into participating.

Boozilla , 30 days ago

One of my coworkers and I often discuss quitting our stressful-stupid IT jobs and going to work at Home Depot or Costco or even Arby's.

Today I took my car in for routine service. A place I use all the time. Major chain.

The poor guy checking me in had to click past about 50 stupid pointless prompts on his workstation. He had serious muscle memory going on. The man was impressive, the software was not.

I can just imagine the asshole midlevel manager who made some beleaguered coder write all that pointless popup shit, to make sure "they don't forget to upsell the customer" and god knows what other inane nonsense .

It's embarassing how bad software is in 2024. Especially point of sale systems and medical records.

Boozilla , 29 days ago

Thank you.

Boozilla , 30 days ago

People can't afford that shit when groceries and fuel prices are inflated this high. And new phones have tiny incremental changes that nobody gives AF about.

Boozilla , 1 month ago

He gave them permission to use the social fabric as TP and that's what they're doing.

Boozilla , 1 month ago

Ackshualemmy....

Boozilla , 1 month ago

I hope Matthew Broderick buys it.

Boozilla , 1 month ago

Great use for an old phone! I have some lying around. This is one of those forehead-slapping moments for me.

Boozilla , 1 month ago

I like how being cautious with my biometric data is beung framed as irrational fear and paranoia. As if ID theft never happens.

Boozilla , 1 month ago

https://macsecurity.net/view/408-apple-s-secure-enclave-is-exposed-to-a-new-unpatchable-exploit

Boozilla , 1 month ago

You can change PINs and passwords, but you cannot change your biometric data.

It's about as smart as using your SSN as your username.