d-RLY?

I also see a lot of people that come in to have their PC’s fixed because of “viruses” that I am able to make go away by just turning off browser notifications. Which I also just install uBO or uBO Lite on almost 100% of browsers on PCs I work on (even if not related to the task at hand). Also I disable lots of the notifications for browsers and other programs in the Windows 10 and 11 notification settings.

Though I have been seeing an uptick of fucked up malware browser extensions that set themselves as “Your organization” policies that are getting harder to remove. In most of those cases I have found that they replace the shortcuts for the browsers to first launch shit from a self-reinstalling location in the root of C drive and/or in AppData. Shit is very frustrating. Mac OS also has some motherfuckers of hijackers that are even worse to get rid of.

Aside from those, the really fucked notifications come from the AV programs that can’t stop themselves from freaking out users. Like even if the user has for some reason paid for every single up-sell because of those notifications. They still show them shit like “You MIGHT be infected.” Though seeing those things have been great for me to point out how the user should actually cancel their subs since at that point it is just scare tactics and adware (which slows shit down).

For real! Every time I spend real periods of time with Linux (and a random year with a MacBook Pro a friend wanted to get rid of). It always hits a point where I need to view images and can’t find anything that matches IrfanView. I have tried XnView and it is way too much with regards to the UI and features I don’t need. The most frustrating thing (and this applies to most others I tried) is handling going through a folder of images that are different resolutions. IrfanView has the option to both scale the program’s window based around the image size, and also be set to scale images if the are larger than my display resolution.

It is a very weird combination of those two things that drives me nuts. There are settings in XnView that kind of work but break. Like it might adjust the image that is large, but then the program’s UI will not shrink to fit a small image (the window will just stay large and have large black borders). Or it will shrink the window to the width of a large image, but not scale and the height will still require scrolling up and down to see all of it. The funny part is that I don’t even look at my saved images all the time. But shit is like a hard slam on the breaks at high speed.

I did end up just dealing with the kind of weird clunkyness of running it via WINE while on the Mac as it was my only PC at the time. Which was still better than not having it for my use-case. Just weird how it has been the only image viewer (with mid-level editing options) that has “felt” correct ever since I first tried it out over like 17 years ago.

What we are constantly bombarded with in the capitalist hype train bubble is fucked. Just watching so many corps tripping over themselves to force shit into things that really and truly don’t need (or in shit like health insurance to auto-deny life saving care) is maddening. It is being used without concern over if it is even more than alpha stage. Just like how we see stuff like the games industry just launching games broken as hell as if they are completed and for full price. The stealing of work is very much in-line with capitalism, just as it always has been with regards to physical resources.

But it can have benefits beyond the above stated bubble cashing in and out. It could be very useful in socialist/communist nations. That is because under those systems, the ownership would be collective and benefits shared right back to everyone. But should be carefully applied and not for profits over lives. So really such advancements would make more sense in socialist/communist settings.

Also places like China actually do apply the death penalty to greedy leaders of companies. Which helps compared to the US and other capitalist nations that place those same greedy leaders on pedestals beyond true punishments.

If it was or wasn’t him (and was someone else), it doesn’t change that the action (or PotD) was the correct move imo. “Correct” forms of protests and legal actions only work so much in a system rigged against the working class. But the “peaceful” options never work against the rich/corporations. So I kind of hope more CEOs in all industries meet the same punishment for all lives that they have played with. Even if we are shown that dude hates leftists, doesn’t change my critical support of his (or whomever it was if not him) action. But it will be very important for leftist orgs/groups/collectives to start going hard for waking up the masses while there is such a good point of unity to work from.

Everyone does know. I can’t speak for all states/counties/cities/etc, but the brown bag thing is mostly a legal grey area for allowing folks to drink in public. Most of the time drinking isn’t legal to just do while walking around and can be given fines by cops. However this can be problematic for additional resources being redirected from more important crimes. So as long as the cops don’t see a label or the whole bottle/can, then they can ignore it as “it could be anything.”

For example, in the summer people in my state like to go tubing down sections of rivers. While tubing you can have coolers and stuff, however open drinking of beer or other such drinks isn’t legal. So if cops were to be watching the river and clearly see the labels it can mean that they order you to get out and hand them over and/or be fined. But everyone makes sure to put their cans/bottles in foam cozies, and therefore it is a low-key unofficial understanding that as long as you aren’t smashed and/or causing lots of problems everything is good. The same also applies to other places like lakes and the beach (at least in my state). But if you are super drunk and/or being an asshole, then the cops will use that as probable cause to actually search the bag/cozies and all that.

A messaging app/service that can work via both regular stable connections but also via non-online. Briar is kind of similar to what I am talking about. But it can’t/doesn’t go as far as I mean. It can send messages via cell data, WiFi, and Bluetooth but as far as I am aware, it can’t do a mix of them. And it would still require the person being messaged to be within range of my phone’s Bluetooth if not on cell/WiFi. So it doesn’t do the hopping I am really interested in (to my understanding).

So I am wanting to be able to have basically zero cell or WiFi signal on my phone, but be able to just have shit be able to bounce around via all methods to get to the person I am trying to reach. So like I could be in a no service spot for my carrier but maybe a friend that also has the app and does have a signal be used to bounce my message from Bluetooth to their cell or WiFi that is working. Then it either get to the final person from that bouncing, or maybe still get it if they are also in a no-signal area but still near another friend that does and is also in their Bluetooth range.

So the message would just hop whatever chain of devices and connections even if it takes a little more time (like if it just had to keep hopping from a number of phones completely through Bluetooth jumping. Would also be cool if it could jump even if the other devices didn’t have the app and was just encrypted text-only blobs hopping like how data hops around various servers when online. But aside from the fact that data costs money and would mean basically everyone’s shit would get used at all times. The nightmare of how the messages/service would know how to get places, or if maybe it already arrived via one method while a different chain was still trying would be massive. In addition to literally all the other things that would have to be figured out. And that is all before making sure it could be still private in any real way.

For real! One of the things that made using Signal a non-issue for me was due to it being able to use SMS as a fall-back and therefore didn’t need me to push friends to also install another message app. I really only first installed it because it was the messaging app my local chapter of the SRA was using. I was excited that it did the shit I loved about the old Google Hangouts before they unnecessarily chose to break shit back out into three replacements. Being able to use a more feature rich messaging service when the people I am messaging also have it is awesome. But being able to still send a basic SMS from the same app without leaving is super nice. It is the main thing I always envied about how iMessage has worked basically forever.

Fortunately some of my friends and co-workers also have needed to install Signal for similar reasons I did or for remote therapy stuff. But it is so hard to get others to just install it just because it is privacy focused and since we already have Facebook Messenger/Discord/Snap/IG/Line and of course SMS. Also hate feeling like I am being pushy or annoying unless I am directly asked about apps to try or some specific reason.

I also have fond memories of using Gaim/Pidgin back in the day for being able to just have one IM client that could work with basically whatever any of my friends/contacts liked using. A universal chat/message client really seems like something that would be cool to see come back.

True, it is really up to the instance to decide if they want to stay small and turn off registrations or big and keep them turned on. So long as the instances of all sizes stick to the official standards of the Lemmy codebase and respect the specs of the various other federated systems. It is not really an issue that the average user should have to worry about (for most issues at least).

Just going to just preface this with a heads-up that it is all just a rant about how much I hate that the “reopen everything” box is defaultly checked.

Also it being the default setting for Mac OS means that people just never actually quit out of programs (though being fair most normie Mac users don’t even seem to know that just closing a window doesn’t quit the program). Which leads to just massive slowdowns and weird errors that they just turn around and pay way too much money to “fix”.

I have had so much success with just immediately restarting them and just making sure to uncheck that stupid box so most shit finally is fully closed out when it powers back on. Which I also make it a point to tell everyone I help to actually reboot their shit even just a couple times a week (since most users also seem to never use either the shutdown or reboot and just always close the lid) to keep things more or less okay. I also educate them on how to actually quit out of programs.

I shit you not that I once just did the whole “uncheck the box and reboot” shit and completely fixed a weird webcam not being detected problem within less than 2mins total. Made my boss happy that I was able to help that fast, but was very frustrated to hear that the person had actually been to the Apple Store before coming to us. They (the Apple Store) ran some super quick diagnostic and it came back as not seeing the webcam. To which they had quoted the person like $500~$600 to for the parts and labour.

Coming to us was just a last attempt to make sure and the MacBook Air had been at least turned off and not just put to sleep before coming over. But the main factor was that stupid box being defaultly checked, and just everyone ignoring it and just keeping the problem around. The average person I can understand either just not really noticing or just being scared to uncheck it for fear of somehow messing something up. As they just assume that it wouldn’t be already checked if it was “correct”.

So at least I was able to fix an issue that really wasn’t an issue, and the person walked away not having to spend a dime. And they learned to only check the box if they need it and will just uncheck it the rest of the time. Which also makes me happy to have helped and have taught them something they didn’t ever think to question.

There is a pretty similar looking and function called Revolt that could be useful for getting people that are used to Discord to switch. I think they also have a long goal of being able to send and receive messages and calls with Discord. Obviously they don’t have that atm, but it is open-source and nice to at least know about in the event a quick exodus of Discord is needed.

Not providing any channels (the ones I know the most about are listed by OP and commenters), but more about non-YT versions of channels about privacy being on YT. For people that use YT but are open to LBRY/Odysee/PeerTube. I have found these extensions to be great for quickly seeing if a channel is also on those services. If anyone knows of others like these, I would like to know about them. And for anything that isn’t also on them of course Invidious instances are great for at least having some amount of privacy while dealing with YT (at least until Google finds some way to stop them from working).

Disclaimer: I am not a dev (or these or anything) or an auditor of security, so I can’t say how good or bad these are outside of personally finding them useful. I also am not affiliated with them and again just find them good for seeing if non-YT versions of channels exist.

For LBRY:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-lbry/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-lbry/jjmbbhopnjdjnpceiecihldbhibchgek?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

For Odysee:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-odysee/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-odysee/kofmhmemalhemmpkfjhjfkkhifonoann?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

For PeerTube:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/peertubeify/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/peertubeify/gegmikcnabpilimgelhabaledkcikdab?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US

It doesn’t definitively prove openAI didn’t pay for the works.

But since they are a business/org and has all of those works and using them for profit. Then it kind of would be provable if openAI did or didn’t pay the correct licenses as they and/or the publisher/Stephen King (if he directly were to handle those agreements) would have a receipt/license document of some kind to show it. I don’t agree with how copyrights are done and agree that things should be public domain much sooner. But a for-profit thing like openAI shouldn’t be just allowed to have all these exceptions that avoids needing any level of permission and paying for ones that ask for it to use it. At least not while us regular people that aren’t using these sources for profits/business also aren’t allowed to just use whatever we want.

The only way that (I at least) see such an open use of everything at the level of all the data/information being fine is in a socialist/communist system of some kind. As the main concern for generally keeping stuff like entertainment/information/art/etc at a creator level is to have money to live in modern society where basic and crucial needs (food/housing/healthcare/etc) costs money. So for the average author/writer/artist/inventor a for-profit company just being able to take their shit and much more directly impact their ability to live.

It is a highly predatory level of capitalism and should not have exceptions. It is just setting up a different version of the shit that needs to also be stopped in the entertainment/technology industries. Where the actual creators/performers/etc are fucked by the studios/labs/corps by not being paid anywhere near the value being brought in and may not have control over it. So all of the companies and the capitalist system are why a private entity/business/org shouldn’t just be allowed to pull this shit.

ME

It might be a good idea to get a good VPN for any of those sites (even the streaming ones). No hate if you ran into an issue with FF. Every now and then I do see some PCs act weird with FF DNS options. Never able to figure out what causes them to not work correctly while most other PCs are working fine on the same local network. Opera and Opera GX “feel” too “busy” for me personally with just all the random things on the UI and features. I support people using anything that isn’t official Chrome at this point.

If you don’t already have a VPN, here is a list article with more than a few options and give some basic info on stuff like if they keep logs of IPs and for how long. Some of them also have additional DNS options for removing ads. https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/

There are .deb and .rpm versions of Edge for Linux. Doesn’t get mentioned on the main download site until you scroll below the Mac/iPhone/Android options.

The Chromium Edge really started to win me over a bit with how well they have done vertical tabs (Brave only just recently got something even close). Was cool up until Microsoft really seems like they have gotten insecure about trying to be popular again. I fix people’s computers so I see it more than a normal user would, so I will just say that now. But it feels like every time I open Edge it seems to just bukkake my eyes with “helpful” pop-ups trying sooo bad to trick me into turning on more and more data collection “features”. It is already annoying that they try to cover up the area where the download starts if it detects that it is on the Chrome download page.

But they took what was looking to be a shockingly good alt to Chrome, and I have even gone out of my way from time to time to let customers know that they don’t really need Chrome and Edge. Instead I try to at least offer Firefox as a second option. As I do find that if a site is messed up for Chromium based browsers FF might at least give them a usable site until Edge/Chrome starts working again.

That being said, I am really curious how the original Edge would work if they had kept at it. It sucked at first because all browsers suck for awhile when new. The extensions being through the app store seemed about as normal as what Apple does with Safari. But the Edge extensions didn’t require first signing into the store in order to get free ones. So that was much less frustrating. Jumping to Chromium just further enabled Google to be on more fuck shit.

I scrolled through so many comments to see if anyone was just going to let that one go un-asked! I started reading the chart from the bottom and got to chaotic good last and went from leaning back in my chair to fully forward when I read it. Was like car tire screech “What the fuck is the bottle hack?!?!?” lol

Slight modification to my point as I think I was meaning to say that they could have a separate system in the first sentence. Like maybe there isn’t one right now (as you point to by stating that folks have fully disassembled current cars), but they could add one or more as they gain profits from either directly using the data or (more likely) from selling the data.

As for the later point you made about them not bothering for the <0.1% of people. How long is it worth just assuming that they won’t do it as they try to find any and all ways to generate profits? They could start moving to the Apple repair tactics of requiring parts to be paired to the vehicle and require “calibration” using their tightly controlled systems in order to have very basic things work correctly. Which removing fuses to those data mining “features” could start shit like a constant system error check light or artificially disable unrelated things.

Honestly feel free to just stick to the top two paragraphs. I went down a rant rabbit hole beyond my initial point. But leaving it here as it still has some amount of value (not sure how much and to whom).

To use Apple again, if you replace a display with a third-party or even a real part but not one they sent you directly (and therefore isn’t a valid repair listed for your phone). You all of a sudden get a list of “scary” sounding warning alerts all the time about how the parts can’t be verified or calibrated. Which then leads to shit like auto-brightness, truetone colour, and even one or more cameras not working or pictures taken not saving/not being post processed with their software that makes the images look as good as they do. All that because the screen was replaced that they didn’t approve of. Sure some things like bio-metrics might make some sense to be disabled due to the non-zero chance that someone could put a hacked part on that could maybe possibly steal your shit for gaining access to your device/account/money. But shit can’t dim or do basic shit (even if the replacement is a real part).

Given how drastically so many companies of all kinds are finding it harder and harder to make numbers go up for the shareholders (which is a legal duty to do literally everything possible to do so). Especially as prices for everything are being artificially upped under the pretend guise of “inflation”. But it is really more about how they have to charge more so that those shareholders and the top level people can keep making more (but not workers). The level of data mining for passive income is invading all of our shit at levels that really should be freaking more people out. More of these car companies that were bragging about having built-in CarPlay/Android Auto a couple of years ago are now removing them in order to artificially require using rebranded access to them. Locked behind yet another subscription that they can just stop allowing to work every few years. Got to install their apps on your devices. Going to get worse as they find more and more things to “require” having their app. Even if not using your car at the time, it can try to find out what you do and where.

We at the very least need to have all that shit controlled in the interest of users/buyers with very clear legal requirements that at least it be very easy to see a full list of what is, how it is, why it is, and where it is being collected from. And it needs to be legally required that these lists or whatever are written in ways that someone with an 8th grade level of education can read and understand. So no just having an insane amount of super micro tiny legalize TOS stuff like we see with everything currently and hidden away in some cases. Each model of every car with every trim/add-on package should have that list in both print manuals in each car, and have it permanently (and very very easily to locate) on that manufacturer’s site.

But it is also likely that the car companies have a separate system in the car’s computer that acts independently of the main infotainment system for sending data. Even if you aren’t paying for any of the “extras/add-ons”, it could still get information from your phone just being used with Bluetooth or ping your WiFi if it is on and your phone visible. Also given how much more actively these companies are all trying to get passive income from our data. I wouldn’t be shocked if the other commenter’s point about getting all kinds of “errors” popping up if disabled (especially if a fuse is pulled/modified). We already see that non-car companies like John Deere go to some big levels to remove your control over something you bought and DRM shit that has zero reason outside of forcing us to pay only them for repairs. We as people aren’t allowed to control both our physical devices or our data, and big corps are just allowed to skim everything and sell it to any other parties that pay for it. Hell even our legal system and enforcement are allowed to bypass our rights that prevent search and seizure by just going to these companies instead of us.

Yeah but those supposed companies that “needed those malicious practices to stay competitive” also could have done the thing Mozilla is now doing. Could even use direct knowledge and proof of those practices in a big ad campaign about how they actively don’t want all your info. This “doing it because everyone is doing it” headspace is one of the many corpo versions of “just following orders.” I understand the point you are making, but it isn’t like any of these companies are too small to fight back. Allowing this kind of thing (beyond just this specific instance) just further gaslights us at a consumer level into continued abuse being normalized and okay. Which makes it even harder to do anything about it.

Just like with how we see that a major amount of voters literally just give up and see everything as pointless in doing anything (and that is assuming that they even know about any information at all). Or how we are trained to only see one or two day polite marches in protest of something as being the whole “fight” and just go home. But when people don’t just go home or “stay out of normal people’s ways” it is seen as those protesters being “unrealistic” or even “assholes in the way.” The whole point of protests is to literally be as in the way of “normal life” as possible to push whatever change they are fighting for.