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cley_faye

@cley_faye@lemmy.world

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cley_faye ,

I'm trying a new approach. Since I won't touch anything beyond W10, and W10 is getting officially phased out, I just informed people that I won't provide tech support for W11 and beyond.

CEO of Google Says It Has No Solution for Its AI Providing Wildly Incorrect Information (futurism.com)

You know how Google's new feature called AI Overviews is prone to spitting out wildly incorrect answers to search queries? In one instance, AI Overviews told a user to use glue on pizza to make sure the cheese won't slide off (pssst...please don't do this.)...

cley_faye ,

The "solution" is to curate things, invest massive human resources in it, and ultimately still gets accused of tailoring the results and censoring stuff.

Let's put that toy back in the toy box, and keep it at the few things it can do well instead of trying to fix every non-broken things with it.

cley_faye ,

ProjectM is a thing :)

cley_faye ,

What a coincidence. I had to install a W11 machine for a relative. The amount of backward decision in the first 20 minutes of checking the settings is mind boggling. Really? Can't open the start menu on "all apps"? Not even an option?

cley_faye ,

It already exists. Most of the requirements that break with current W10 machines are artificial and can be removed at install time with rufus (memory requirement, secure boot, TPM2, microsoft account).

Still not a solution; you should not have to fight against your OS design choices that much.

cley_faye ,

Can I dsable all local AI features

Hopefully

Or better yet not have that functionality installed?

Unlikely. Firefox has long been gone down the way of "everything included". They started bundling extensions and peripheral features into the core of the browser long ago, and despite backlash kept going that way. We're already in the "I have to disable a lot of stuff when I install Firefox" territory.

cley_faye ,

That's a very important distinction. While the first part is, to put it lightly, bad, I don't really care what people do on their own. Getting real people involved, and minor at that? Big no-no.

cley_faye ,

I'd usually agree with you, but it seems he sent them to an actual minor for "reasons".

cley_faye ,

Apparently he sent some to an actual minor.

cley_faye ,

"Freeing up memory and eliminating unused apps and files" sounds like the kind of bullshit app we have on Android already. Why bring that to PC.

cley_faye ,

My music library is hosted on my server, automatically synced locally on fixed devices and played from local files most of the time. Streaming services combine the advantage of sometimes disappearing, altering, removing content with the other advantage of needing an active internet connection at all time. That's neither a good thing nor an efficient thing when the alternative is cheap and works all the time from everywhere.

Of course, I know this is not the most common use case; most people usually don't care about any of this (and usually complain when something break). But it exists.

cley_faye ,

People keep arguing about this or that distro.

Linux distributions are just a collection of software, initial settings, and sometimes online repository.

cley_faye ,

Not at all. I'm arguing that often, the issues, and fixes, are not distribution-dependant. Which is a good thing; it means we can go to arch forum and find fixes that can be applied in other distros most of the time, for example.

But people keep pitting them against each other like they're some form of evolved lifeforms that necessarily have to erase others, when a lot of the issues are just generic software issues.

And, since this is already a justification post I'll take the lead and note that it does not mean that there is no distribution-specific issues. Of course there are. The point is that most software issue in distribution X will have the same cause and fix in distribution Y, and often have nothing to do with either specific distributions.

Firefox 126: New Search Data Telemetry, Improved Copy Without Site Tracking, Security Fixes, and More (www.mozilla.org)

Telemetry was added to create an aggregate count of searches by category to broadly inform search feature development. These categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports,” "business," and "travel". This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP...

cley_faye ,

A few months ago, I had trouble with Firefox on Android, so I started looking again in the settings; something you really rarely do in a browser. Finding a few things like data collection, usage data, marketing data, and "occasional studies" being all enabled by default sure reminded me that Mozilla isn't what it used to be.

cley_faye ,

Collecting usage data and "running some occasional studies" should never be "opt out", always "opt in".

cley_faye ,

There's no "initial button". Installing Firefox on mobile you'll have technical data collection, marketing (with a third party) data collection, and "random studies" enabled without a clue. As someone that is very wary of this, I can assure you that at no point I was asked anything about sending data to "Adjust" (marketing partner), Mozilla, or allowing random, unknown at the time, studies.

cley_faye ,

You're conveniently missing the point that there is an actually labeled telemarketing partner that is opt-out. That's not user habit collection. You're also missing that "random future studies" should not be auto-enabled by default either. Finally, the topic of this particular post is about categorizing search queries, which as far as they describe it isn't something your browser should care about.

The only thing that may be legitimate is, as you say, actual UX and feature usage. But for that to be done properly, you have to ask and make it opt-in, as with any data collection scheme. It's actually a requirement in some places.

The point is, people give shit to chrome because "evil google collects your habits data and monetize them", while people like you are a-ok with Firefox openly sending data to a third-party marketing partner on opt-out conditions and, as demonstrated by today's post, adding more collection that have absolutely nothing to do with the behavior of the browser and all to do with user habits.

cley_faye ,

Hyperloop? The failed project he pushed just to make sure other possible projects that would just work would not be done? Yeah, he was better back then… not.

cley_faye ,

You can build "vehicles" by gluing parts together. The koroks are little criters you have to move from point A to point B to "save" them. And they act as a vehicle part.

The rest is history.

cley_faye ,

Ah, change.org. I remember when they said "you can sign a petition without an account, just a mail validation", immediately followed by "if you don't create an account, the validation link in the mail will not work, fuck you".

Guess they didn't really want people to engage.

cley_faye ,

People that can't use their brain should not be our baseline for making stuff.

cley_faye ,

Or just, putting the cap on the side and never have it be an annoyance whether you drink from the bottle, pour it in a glass, or whatever really. People complaining about that have issues.

cley_faye ,

I know. It's still sad this is encouraged, but there is little incentive to move in the opposite direction. Better to have a lot of braindead customers I guess.

cley_faye ,

"New device detected: mouse. Please wait…"

But the mouse is already working dude.

cley_faye ,

Heck, I have errors in windows log that are just "sure, let's move on".

cley_faye ,

In addition to being able to run the exact same thing on that phone you already have, too.

Their device does not have any specific hardware for their usage. Even if Google and Apple don't bring any improvement to their own solution, soon enough someone is bound to just provide an "assistant AI app" with a subscription, proxying openai requests and using the touchscreen, camera, micro and speaker that are already there instead of making you buy a new set of those.

cley_faye ,

Yes, there is. And yes, it would be huge. I know a lot of people that are staying away from all this as long as the privacy issues are not resolved (there are other issues, but at this point, the cat is out of the bag).

But running large models locally requires a ton of resource. It may become a reality in the future, but in the meantime allowing more, smaller provider to provide a service (and a self-hosted option, for corporation/enthusiasts) is way better in term of resources usage. And it's already a thing; what needs work now is improving UI and integrations.

In fact, very far from the "impressive" world of generated text and pictures, using LLM and integrations (or whatever it is called) to create a sort of documentation index that you can query with natural language is a very interesting tool that can be useful for a lot of people, both individual and in corporate environment. And some projects are already looking that way.

I'm not holding my breath for portable, good, customized large models (if only for the economics of energy consumption) but moving away from "everything goes to a third party service provider" is a great goal.

cley_faye ,

I'm sure these "engineers" were confused everytime they saw an elevator door not mercilessly crush people.

cley_faye ,

They sure did not know about the "not crushing human limbs" part.

cley_faye ,

You're missing the point of a safety feature. The car shouldn't, by itself, close the lid if something's in the way. It should allow the user to push it down, or disable it temporarily, to do so.

The point of a safety feature in any system is to prevent unexpected situation from having unexpected consequences, not to be a magic solution that accommodate for brainless people. In one direction, you can make the judgement call and force the thing down, in the other direction you lose a finger.

cley_faye ,

It's ok, they just started the "security first" initiative, we're all saved.

cley_faye ,

It does not need much to upload data and play audio. They could probably have gone even lower.

cley_faye ,

No, revealed to not be specific design at all. The device is actually a terrible phone with less feature than a phone, nothing more. The app would likely run as-is on any Android phone with 100% of the feature provided.

Paying $200 for a bottom of the line smartphone that can't smartphone is a bit much.

cley_faye ,

Having seen what this device does, they may not even have had to alter anything to the base AOSP image. Just set your app as the launcher and you're good to go.

cley_faye ,

This is not about the programming language nor the OS. It's about masquerading a cheap butchered android phone as a brand new device. If it was some custom, optimized hardware to connect the main I/O (camera, touchscreen, buttons) to a piece of software that communicate with a remote server, it would justify the price. But as it is, it's a borderline refurbished weak phone hardware sold for $200.

cley_faye ,

Asking chatgpt for information is like asking for accurate reports from bards and minstrels. Sure, sometimes it fits, but most of it is random stuff stitched together to sound good.

cley_faye ,

There is no software solution that protects from a crowbar, you have to go to the hardware side.

cley_faye ,

I've read that headline a few times recently, and I'm wondering if they can't replace floppy drive with sd-card based reader exposing the same interface. I know we did that a lot with floppy back when it was still a thing.

cley_faye ,

And nothing of value was produced.

cley_faye ,

Out of curiosity, what GPU do you have that is not decently supported? Both the latest AMD and NVidia stuff is, at least for the general public stuff.

cley_faye ,

They didn't even do that here, they just flat out blacklisted old CPU in the installer.

Roku explores taking over HDMI feeds with ads (www.lowpass.cc)

Roku is exploring ways to show consumers ads on its TVs even when they are not using its streaming platform: The company has been looking into injecting ads into the video feeds of third-party devices connected to its TVs, according to a recent patent filing.  ...

cley_faye ,

Exactly what people want: more ads.

cley_faye ,

Because they want to "protect" you from "yourself". Imagine, you could scrape your own data that you can already see.

I'd be really worried if the security of server operation for my bank depended on the client-side. But playing devils advocate, some people will most likely point out that a root exploit on a phone may be unintentional and used to spy on people, to which I answer:

  • show me a big scary box where I can "accept the risk" and move on
  • keep in mind that if I am root on my phone, I can hide the fact that I am root on my phone and you'll be none the wiser

Currently, option 2 is in effect, sadly.

cley_faye ,

Root access means any app installed could potentially access sensitive banking

That's not how it work. Having a rooted phone does not turn it into a digital farwest were every application can do anything. It becomes a permission like everything else; if you only grant it to safe stuff (like, for example, not granting root to a single app but using it to customize your phone through ADB), there's not much to see here.

cley_faye ,

As long as we'll have control over the software, it'll be there. If we reach the point were you're not allowed to own computers, we'll have bigger problem.

cley_faye ,

So? If I, the customer, want to access my banking info, on my phone, with whatever means I want, I should be able to. As I said, it's not like every app gets root access, if I, as the owner of the device, explicitly gave root access to something, it's for a reason.

And the main point that a rooted phone can basically hide itself from any app remains; these "detections" are trivially bypassed in the exact situation they're supposed to detect.

cley_faye ,

You really are missing the point that if the device is rooted there is nothing an app can do to protect itself. Defense in depth is layering (sometimes overlapping) solutions that do something. Detecting root and saying "nuh-uh" is not doing anything.

cley_faye ,

Standard authenticator (software or hardware) are, well, standard. You can pick anything compliant and use it with any compliant service. Requiring a specific app means that you have to install yet another app, which may or may not be well made, and may or may not snoop on you, and usually will only work with one service, assuming you have a compatible device to run it to begin with.

It's more than an inconvenience; not insurmountable, but way more work than just having a standard thing that works perfectly well and is based on known and proven algorithms.

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