SapientLasagna

SapientLasagna , 12 days ago

Like most of Microsoft's more odious features, this one can be turned off through GPO/Intune policy across an organization. As such, the liability will mostly fall on the organization to make sure it's off. The privacy and security impacts will be felt by individuals and small businesses.

They claim that the data is only stored locally, so far. We'll see, I guess.

SapientLasagna , 1 month ago

And their conclusion was completely wrong.

Because unless you’re a journalist, a lawyer, or have some kind of role with sensitive information, the access of your data is only really going to advertisers. If you’re like everyone else, living a really normal life, and talking to your friends about flying to Japan, then it’s really not that different to advertisers looking at your browsing history.

These days, a private conversation about pregnancy, abortion, voting, or your feelings about geopolitical stuff like Gaza or Ukraine could absolutely be used against you, depending on where you live.

SapientLasagna , 1 month ago

Wireshark may or may not help you here. The proposed mechanism is abusing the wake words, which are processed locally on the device. Each marketing wake word could be processed, set a flag and go back to sleep with no network activity. Periodically a bit array of flags would be sent to the server with any other regular traffic (checking for notifications, perhaps). The actual audio never gets sent. I'm not saying that Facebook actually does this, but it's a reasonable explanation for the behaviour seen in the Vice article.

SapientLasagna , 2 months ago

Canada has ~1/4 the firearms per capita compared to the US. My guess is that doesn't matter, as you go over 1 gun/resident the added guns probably don't have much of an impact.

However, most shootings in the US are with handguns (restricted in Canada), and a bunch of high-profile shootings with ARs (prohibited in Canada). Concealed carry is practically never allowed, and open carry isn't either. Safe storage is required, so you can't carry unsecured guns in your car either. Storing loaded firearms is forbidden. Owning firearms for self defense is forbidden by law (using them as such may or may not be, depending on the circumstances).

TL;DR: it's not just how many guns, but also what you're allowed to do with them.