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fiercekitten

@fiercekitten@lemm.ee

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fiercekitten ,

God I fucking hate YouTube.

fiercekitten ,

I'm allowed to use it and be critical of it at the same time.
But I use it way less these days because adblocker or not, it's become a user-hostile and censored place and every video is following the same formula in order to get seen the most and the whole thing feels gross.

fiercekitten ,

I think IR lights on glasses can blind cameras, and there are also infrared-blocking glasses that also reflect IR light from cameras back at them. So yes, adding lights or reflectors can be effective.

But we shouldn't even have to consider these workarounds to maintain our privacy and security. And even if we start wearing these glasses or fooling the systems, governments will outlaw the use of such circumventing tech.

Our reaction to this needs to be "we will not allow this tech to be used against us, period." Ban it for law enforcement, ban it for commerce, ban it in airports and schools.

fiercekitten ,

Well in that case, one brand of such glasses is Reflectacles 😎

fiercekitten ,

I guess in this case it is profitable for the US to "help" Africa, and not so profitable to expand high-speed, reliable internet to rural America.

It feels really gross.

Reminder: The DMV uses photos for facial recognition

This is half a decade old news, but I only found this out myself after it accidentally came up in conversation at the DMV. The worker would not have informed me if it hadn't come into conversation. Every DMV photo in the United States is being used for AI facial recognition, and nobody has talked about it for years. This is...

fiercekitten ,

Or you’re willing to immolate a billionaire or a politician, as long as it’s a sincerely held religious belief.

fiercekitten , (edited )

Abso-fucking-lutely. I mean, no, not me personally.

fiercekitten ,

Good point, let me fix that.

fiercekitten ,

I stopped buying Samsung products a decade ago after getting a midrange Samsung smartphone that never got an OS update and had glaring bugs that never got fixed, as well as having bought a new Samsung refrigerator that would make an extremely loud bang sound every couple of hours because of a design flaw in the water line that goes to the freezer to make ice cubes.

I owned other Samsung products that also had problems, but these two cheesed me off the most.

Over the years I have read about problem after problem people have had with Samsung appliances, and problem after problem with Samsung smart phones. Samsung has been downright user-hostile to their phone customers for a while now.

Fuck Samsung.

fiercekitten ,

No thanks.

fiercekitten ,

I appreciated his comparison charts for various alternatives and the features they offered. I’m going to check out Ente and Stingle for self-hosted photo backup.

fiercekitten ,

Thanks for the feedback!

fiercekitten ,

Considering users can install any apps they want on most android devices, Google’s argument that it will compromise safety and tarnish google’s image seems absurd.

iPhones And Androids Can Now Warn You of 'Secret Trackers' (www.ibtimes.co.uk)

In a collaborative effort, Apple and Google have developed an industry-standard detection feature called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" (DULT) for Bluetooth trackers. This standard allows users on iOS and Android devices to be alerted if an unknown Bluetooth tracker is monitoring their location.

fiercekitten ,

Of course Google is implementing the feature via Google Play Services. I get why, but man is it frustrating for everyone who doesn't use or want Google Play Services on their phones. Hopefully other OSes can build this functionality in.

Looking for some Android apps

Having used iOS my entire life, the switch to GrapheneOS will be a big change. I have learned over the past year about Android, GrapheneOS, and apps to use. I managed to find most of the apps I was looking for, but there are some I struggled with. I had trouble finding privacy respecting, open source apps for the following...

fiercekitten ,

I use Localsend on my local network between Android and Mac computers and it works great. No complaints.

fiercekitten ,

This feels so freaking gross...

fiercekitten ,

You can't just dictate what you believe roads should be for and think everyone should agree with it as fact. Roads are for a lot of things, and even in this guy's narrow definition, people are goods, in fact they are the most important and valuable goods on the roads.

fiercekitten ,

I get what you’re saying and part of me agrees; we all want to see fewer injuries from automobiles and I hope the self-driving tech can get us there.

Another part of me is livid that any of us deem any amount of harm or death from automobiles as being “within acceptable limits”, especially when it’s used to justify the current problems, injuries, and deaths from self-driving tech.

Car companies could be making automobiles [for the US market] much safer for everyone but they refuse to do so. They could:

— Make smaller vehicles

— Make vehicles lighter in weight

— Stop making oversized trucks and SUVs

— Lower the front bumper height and hood height of trucks and SUVs so that pedestrians who are struck are thrown onto or away from the vehicle instead of being smashed into a 6-foot tall grille and then run over.

— Limit the max speed of the vehicles

— Cease putting touch screens in vehicles and go back to physical and tactile knobs, buttons, and switches.

Government policies and regulation could be addressing all this and more as well. Again, they refuse to do so.

Coming to terms with no longer having privacy and control over my technology

I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a 'user...

fiercekitten ,

My university forced me to have a free email through microsoft. They also forced me to other privacy-invasive services and store my coursework on insecure servers. Sure, I could refuse to go to college and get a degree, but the reality is that if someone doesn't participate in higher education, or own a smartphone, or avoids any newer car that spies on you (at least in most of the US), being part of society and life in general is more difficult.

fiercekitten ,

Yes, but this is not the way. The US needs federal privacy laws that would regulate all these tech companies. Instead, congress shows that they don't care about the privacy of US Americans; they just don't trust China.

Then, in one of the biggest FUs ever to the constitution, they expand the FISA amendment.

fiercekitten ,

I’m of the opinion that we need to start calling NSO Group a terrorist organization.

fiercekitten ,

Watching the video showed me just how half-baked this product is. So many basic features are not supported yet. It’s honestly laughable. The tech industry keeps pushing the envelope on how soon they can “sell” you any type of hardware with unfinished software.

fiercekitten ,

Parts pairing is prohibited only on devices sold in 2025 and later. And there are carve-outs for certain kinds of electronics and devices, including video game consoles, medical devices, HVAC systems, motor vehicles, and—as with other states—"electric toothbrushes."

What’s a good-faith argument for exempting these devices? Or was it simply successful lobbying in protecting corporate interests.

fiercekitten ,

Okay, which one of you is the weirdo?

ajsadauskas , to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?

"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.

"In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not."

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-03-07/microplastics-may-be-risk-factor-for-cardiovascular-disease

The research is particularly noteworthy, given that one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution is the synthetic rubber in car tyres: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112015017609398126

So it's not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that's causing health issues.

And it's not just exhaust fumes either.

There's also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.

Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn't going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769

@fuck_cars

fiercekitten ,

Opt to use a bicycle over a car to reduce your footprint in tire use (it's still the same rubber but two less tires). Biking has the added benefit of no exhaust.

Absolutely, and not only do bicycles have two less tires, the tires are way smaller and have less road contact and overall wear. The difference is huge. I would love to see the numbers on average car tire microplastics pollution vs bicycles.

fiercekitten ,

I.e. If you have a plastic water bottle and you drink the water, you aren't going to get any significant micro-plastic just because the water was stored in plastic. Same with PVC piping for water, or whatever.

Are you sure about that? I’m asking because I recently saw a story where they measured microplastics in a beverage from a plastic water bottle and found that it was a lot higher than previously thought, but I don’t remember reading how harmful it is.

fiercekitten ,

Could be dehydration or kidney dysfunction.

fiercekitten ,

Wait, what? Candy canes have pesticides?

fiercekitten ,

As an optical media enthusiast, I’ve done a fair amount of research into how, why, and when discs fail. Because the discs use two or more polycarbonate layers pressed together, moisture can sometimes work its way between the layers and speed up degradation, especially if a disc has been overly flexed at the center. Heat and UV can also speed up degradation.

Another problem is that plastic is petroleum-based and it breaks down over time. A lot of people think that the reflective layer (the metal layer) is actually the data layer but it almost never is. The data layer itself is polycarbonate, sandwiched between the reflective layers and more polycarbonate layers.

The newer discs like blu-ray movies are made with better plastics that should last at least 100 years. Depending on the dye layer of writable and rewritable blu-rays, they should last either at least 25 years or 100 years.

Waymo issued a recall after two robotaxis crashed into the same pickup truck (www.engadget.com)

Last year, two Waymo robotaxis in Phoenix "made contact" with the same pickup truck that was in the midst of being towed, which prompted the Alphabet subsidiary to issue a recall on its vehicles' software. A "recall" in this case meant rolling out a software update after investigating the issue and determining its root cause....

fiercekitten ,

People have been hit and killed by autonomous vehicles on public streets due to bad practices and bad software. Those cases aren’t hiccups, those are deaths that shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t have been able to happen. If a company can’t develop its product and make it safe without killing people first, then it shouldn’t get to make the product.

fiercekitten ,

I’m all for making the roads safer, but these companies should never have the right to test their products in a way that gets people killed, period. That didn’t happen in this article, but it has happened, and that’s not okay.

fiercekitten ,

I don’t see Wire listed. Do you plan to add it?

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