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CrazyLikeGollum

@CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world

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CrazyLikeGollum ,

So, not graphic, just verbose.

pegging -v

CrazyLikeGollum ,

I’m currently using this. It doesn’t appear to have a way to auto import a list of subscriptions. But it fits all of OPs other requests. It also has a jellyfin add on to import the videos into a library there with title and thumbnail.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

If it’s been more than 30 or 60 days (can’t remember which) you will be unable to sign in if you don’t have an active internet connection. I found that out in 2022 when I had to travel for work (90 days in a fairly remote area) and the only internet connection I had was at the worksite on a company computer.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

I like to be able to sing along to songs when I'm alone in the car, so even if I don't understand the meaning of the words, I like to know the words.

I also enjoy word play, and Du Hast has some of that. So knowing the bit of trivia about 'Hast' and 'Hasst' being homophones in German and meaning 'have' and 'hate' respectively, and the main portion of the lyrics being wedding vows adds a layer of enjoyment to the song for me.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

So, between the inherent security nightmare that is this feature and the myriad of other things in Windows that push ads, steal user data, and generally make the simple act of using the computer less secure, when do we give Microsoft an APT designation and start treating them as the world's largest vendor of malware on the planet?

CrazyLikeGollum ,

The candy crush thing, or more generally the fact that since Windows 8 they preload third-party applications, is a relatively speaking small problem. However, the fact the specific applications that get preinstalled are based on a targeted advertising profile for the user signed into the PC, assuming you sign in with a Microsoft account is a bigger problem. While I'm sure they take every possible effort to make those profiles anonymous the data in aggregate is impossible to anonymize. There is a setting in Windows to disable that data collection, at least for advertising purposes, but it gets toggled back on "accidentally" after some updates.

They also have a number of features, like copilot (the chat bot), previously they had Cortana, that do similar kinds of data extraction. Mostly, in order to actually process the user request, but also to be used to train the model. They store it in an anonymized form, but again, it's impossible to actually do that in practice.

That's just two things that are installed and enabled by default that: collect user data for, what I and many others find to be unwanted purposes, don't give the user the option to disable that data collection (only limit it), and seemingly doesn't even consistently respect the users choice in that matter. That is by definition spyware.

They also place advertising on the desktop for things like OneDrive subscriptions, MS Office, and other paid Microsoft services. Those preinstalled apps I mentioned before are effectively ads for those applications, many of which are paid apps or have paid components to them. That is by definition adware.

Spyware and adware are forms of malware. Which makes Microsoft a malware vendor.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

They mention in the post that they have a list of official clients you can choose to donate to.

So, if there’s a client you use every day and that you love, consider finding it’s author in our list of official clients, and sending them a little something instead (or too).

It would probably be helpful if they included a link to that list in the post, though it is just one click from the projects homepage, and made it clearer that the list does include at least some subset of third-party clients. Though it would also be reasonable to infer that from the quote.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Pennywise kills a handful of people every 27 years and has been doing so for 300 years or so. He probably has kill count under 100.

Between the kills he gets that are directly shown on screen and the number of casualties you could reasonably assume were the result of his actions, Heath Ledger’s Joker probably killed a few thousand people.

Ronald McDonald on the other hand, was the main marketing vehicle for a company that sells food products that are incredibly unhealthy and addictive. He is probably indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

Heart disease kills several orders of magnitude more people than extradimensional demons or psychopathic clowns.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

He's right though. Macaroni and cheese is kind of mid, a solid 4/10 for cheese based dishes.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Bacon would be a slight improvement, jalapenos would be a downgrade. I'm not a huge fan of the texture or flavor of jalapenos.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

It would make it more filling and carb heavy, not much else. Rice doesn't have a strong flavor and the cheese would overwhelm it.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

…I do like my fish raw…maybe not wriggling though.

Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims (krebsonsecurity.com)

Virtual private networking (VPN) companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a target’s traffic off of the protection...

CrazyLikeGollum ,

I couldn't quickly find an answer to this, but would setting the "UseRoutes" option in systemd-networkd to false prevent the dhcp client from using the option 121 routes?

If so, would this be a possible mitigation for linux devices using systemd?

CrazyLikeGollum ,

This is beautiful

CrazyLikeGollum ,

As others pointed out, you're missing Vista from your list. You're also missing Windows 2000 for Workstations (between 98SE and ME) and 8.1 (between 8 and 10) both of which were pretty good releases.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

The game in question is Fallout 4. It's a single-player game with zero online components.

Just like with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, as well as Fallout 3 and New Vegas mod support is an actual feature of the game with officially released tools and documentation for creating mods.

Given that, the fact that mod support was a major selling point for the game (IMO the only selling point), and the age of the game, it would have been better if Bethesda stopped supporting the game altogether rather than push updates with no meaningful changes that break a feature that for some people is the primary feature of the game.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Pretty sure you’d run afoul of some kind of federal cyber crime law if you did that.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Steam and some of the drivers for valve developed hardware (like the controller) are the only closed source parts of SteamOS.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

I wish an official SteamOS 3 existed with hardware support for anything other than the Deck.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

I (obviously) hadn’t realized that. That’s awesome that valve has done that.

Though my point was more that there’s very little in SteamOS 3 that’s actually proprietary.

As for patching in drivers to a different distro for the Deck, for me that’s not a huge concern since I don’t own a Deck. I’d more so like to see Valve release SteamOS 3 for general use rather than only providing images for the Deck.

It looks like Bazzite is a good third-party option for that though, and I intend to try it out when I get home from traveling.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Running SteamOS 3 on the Deck is like running AOSP on a phone with Google Chrome installed. You have an entirely open OS running a singular proprietary application.

In both cases you could pretty easily uninstall that app and replace it with something else.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

In either of those scenarios what power would the application developer have over the owner of the device? If the owner doesn’t like what the app is doing they’re free to remove it. There is no obligation to use that particular application to use the device for any purpose the owner sees fit.

AOSP is full open source mobile OS and uninstalling Google Chrome is as easy as uninstalling any other app and it can be replaced with any browser of the owners choice.

Similarly, SteamOS 3 is full Arch based Linux distro and uninstalling Steam is as easy as removing any package installed in Arch. Actually the immutable root file system does make it slightly more difficult, but it’s far from hard, and it can be replaced with a game launcher of the owners choice.

Proprietary software only becomes unethical when it is designed in a way that gives the device owner no option but to use it for their device to function as the owner desires.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Do you know how many times Microsoft has had a supply chain attack inject a critical vulnerability into Windows? Or how many times a malicious insider at Apple has added a backdoor to iOS?

Nope, and you cant possibly know because those systems are closed.

With open source software you have the ability to audit the code for vulnerabilities. We have the ability to reasonably state that that incident was an exception to the rule because its so easy to see the available code and major security incidents tend to become major news.

CrazyLikeGollum ,

https://uwuntuos.site

CrazyLikeGollum ,

Wizards can definitely be femboys. Sir Ian McKellen still looks good in a dress.

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