deweydecibel

Do I trust them? Sure, I guess, when it comes to privacy from other entities.

Do I trust that I will have privacy from Apple? Hell no. What does “local” even mean on an iCloud connected iOS device anymore? Because there’s nothing on that phone Apple can’t access remotely if they want to, and if any of the AI cache is backed up on iCloud, that’s not local anymore.

Do I trust them with the data they’re absolutely gathering? No, but I don’t trust anyone with it. But I also think that data would be relatively safer with Apple than their competitors.

If Apple announced Recall? Apple wouldn’t announce Recall, that’s the whole point. Apple wouldn’t be so brazen and stupid to push a tool that is so obviously invasive and so poorly implemented. Apple earned its trust by not making those mistakes.

But if they did decide to say fuck it and implement something like Recall, of course people would trust them. That’s what trust means: consumers take them at their word. But if it’s as bad as Microsoft’s Recall, Apple would burn all that trust when people found out.

People don’t believe Microsoft because they have long since burned any trust and good will for most of their consumers. They have proven time and time again they don’t give a shit about users’ wants or needs, and users have felt that. So when they announce Recall, they have no earned trust. No one believes their assurances. There’s no good faith to cushion this. And it turns out everyone was right not to grant them that trust.

Does that mean I’d ever use an Apple device? Hell no. I value my privacy, but I value it on my terms, not Apple’s, and I will never use a device that creates privacy through taking power from the user.

And the fact they provide those configurations is important in and of itself. Configurable software is falling more and more out of fashion.

The value is likely that they’re selling it. Because they’re a non-profit, and they have to make money somehow. Or they’re using it to develop some kind of ai search function.

But the important, critical fact here is that Mozilla has routinely demonstrated that they can be trusted when they tell you “You can turn this off, and if you turn this off, it is actually off, and it will stay off.”

You will never see that from Google or Microsoft or any of the others.

Look at the part where they mentioned that if you already disabled telemetry, this new telemetry is also disabled. Think about how rare that is nowadays with any consumer software from most big for-profit tech companies. New bullshit is always on by default, even if you disabled it previously. The fact Mozilla respected that puts them miles ahead of any of their competitors.

As for the “path they’re going on”, I don’t know what to tell you, man. Every company is on this same path right now. The economics of the internet and the tech industry have gone to absolute shit, where privacy, user choice, competitive markets, and non-profits are all dying a slow painful death to enrich wall street. Mozilla will probably get caught in it too, but the best we can hope for is they hold out the longest.

Are we ignoring the part where you can disable it the same way you always could?

They even when out of their way to assure you if you already had telemetry disabled, absolutely nothing is changing for you and no data is being collected now.

I understand your feeling, but I think massive advertising is needed.

Why is it “needed”?

This is high level marketing, basically telling the general public there is another way other than big tech

Why do they care about attracting all these people?

Every one of them increases their operating costs, and doesn’t provide revenue if they stay in the free tier. Why do they want to increase their numbers so badly?

Why isn’t it enough to just make a good product and let that be what brings people in?

The only reason for this kind of aggressive advertising is because they’re making a push for growth. They want to become one of those “big tech” companies.

Let me be clear, I’m not shaming them for advertising their services. But I’m uncomfortable with the scale and aggression with which they do it. They are putting money into this, and a lot of it. It’s not like they’re a non-profit, the end goal is pretty obvious here.

We’ve been through this before with so many other tech companies, Proton will be no different. It’s just entering the honeymoon phase, is all.

This is honestly what puts me off using Proton. They advertise way too much and way too aggressively. It’s just a bad vibe for a company that’s trying to set itself up as an alternative to Google.

I use Tutanota but I’m looking to find something else because I’m sick of platforms that lock you into their ecosystem, and the fact they don’t provide any means of using other mail clients like Thunderbird has become a deal breaker.

Problem is there doesn’t seem to be consensus on third place.

At any point in the process, does it warn you about setting up recovery with personal email addresses?

Feels like with as much as Proton advertises nowadays as a privacy protecting service, they need to be taking into consideration that a lot of their customers now are going to be average users who don’t know anything about proper OpSec. They should be much clearer about what things they can’t protect you from.

It shouldn’t be in a press release like this, they should be explaining the difference between privacy and anonymity to the customer. It’s not like their marketing team isn’t aware of the fact most people don’t know any better.

It’s in their best interests, too, because it doesn’t matter how many times you say “we provide privacy not anonymity”, the headlines are a bad look.

My Jellyfin is also running media from recycled HDDs from work. No where near this impressive haul, but it was nice to be able to get a solid 10 TBs for free to get my server going.

Other problems include newpipe having an old material interface

That’s a selling point for me.

Oh I know, I’m still on Motorola because they have unlockable bootloaders and SD card slots. But in recent years they’ve started taking them out of some of their mid-range models.

Point is there should be more options. Removing the SD card slot is just a bullshit way to push cloud storage.

I know, and I do, but the point is choices shouldn’t be so limited. They should be standard.

Now can we please get them back in phones?

Recently discovered it myself. Absolutely excellent.

They say that, but I’ll believe it when I see the implementation.

It’s still going to artificially inflate Edge’s numbers from tech illiterate users that don’t know how to change it. There’s a significant number of users out there that will put up with Microsoft shitting down their throat before bothering to expend the few minutes it would take to learn how to change the settings themselves. The few that do try to figure it out will find Edge directing them to Bing which will make every effort to convince them not to do it. Meanwhile, Edge will steal all their bookmarks and tabs from Chrome, in order to further encourage users to just give up and use Edge.

It’s all calculated “dark patterns” shit, and it works. Microsoft counts on these people being so easy to corral.

And you can bet your ass after they implement this, they will push an update that “accidentally” resets the default back to Edge for everyone. Just to “clear the board”.

it stops malware from doing it

There are many different ways to prevent that apart from straight up removing the functionality. Another tactic Microsoft uses is trying to convince you there is only ever one way to secure the system and they “have no choice” if they want to keep their users safe.

It’s like saying the only way to keep a plane from being hi-jacked is to handcuff every passenger to their chair. It’s bullshit.

As Android becomes increasingly hostile to users who want to control their own device, and without Google bullshit, I’ve grown to accept that I’m basically just going to have to carry two phones.

Rooted/Lineage phone is main, if something refuses to work (which is rare for me), I kick on the hotspot and pull out the “clean” one.

Been doing it for a year or so now. It’s annoying but not that big a deal, honestly. I’ve gotten used to it.

I’d probably end up having two anyway for work stuff. This way Verkada and Microsoft’s garbage can stay on the “clean” phone too. I’m not about to tolerate Outlook wanting device admin privileges on my personal phone, but if it wants it on the “clean” one, go for it.

This isn’t the first time Google plays at making non-normies’ lives difficult.

I agree with the tone of this, but are you seriously using “normies” unironically?

Which is a problem given it’s a media player, and AndroidTVs still on Android 11 or earlier would be denied updates.

Or winget if they provide it.

Who do you think makes the decisions for a bank?

The person writing the Android app?

Or the person who just wants customers to be able to access the app and use the services?