this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
372 points (99.5% liked)

Privacy

32191 readers
637 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 106 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Ffs. Don't you collect enough data from your users you greedy fucks?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (4 children)

If people actively pay for this, they are bloody idiots.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Well...guess there's going to be loads of people paying for this then.....

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There is literally no such thing as too much money in our society.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 102 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, I'm a lazy shite, I just did an image search for clippy 1984. I feel bad now I didn't make more of an effort 😕

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Don't feel bad. I love it! Thanks for finding it and sharing it.

[–] possiblylinux127 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's from an Apple commercial, which was an allusion to 1984

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 54 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I hate this but I also get it.

A little while ago on the TWIT podcast one of the guests, or maybe Leo himself, was talking about how this is exactly what they want out of AI, for it to be able to know how they use their computer and just streamline everything. Some people are really excited about the possibilities, and yeah, the AI needs to track whatever you're doing to know how to help you with your work flow.

That said, I don't want Microsoft keeping track of everything I'm doing. They've already shown that they're willing to sell our data and shove ads down our throats, so as much as they say we can filter out what we don't want tracked, I'm not inclined to trust or believe them.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

I'm honestly kinda excited about the possibilities in the greater scheme of things, but the fact that Microsoft will pretty much record whatever people are doing on their systems is just nuts nd slightly terifying. This is something that should ideally be done locally, without big corporations looking in - but that's for sure not what they are doing.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I've spent a lot of time with offline open source AI running on my computer. About the only thing it can't infer off of interactions is your body language. This is the most invasive way anyone could ever know another person. The way a persons profile is built across the context dialogue, it can create statistical relationships that would make no sense to a human but these are far higher than a 50% probability. This information is the key to making people easily manipulated in an information bubble. Sharing that kind of information is as stupid as streaking the Superbowl. There will be consequences that come after and they won't be pretty. This isn't data collection, it is the keys to how a person thinks, and on a level better than their own self awareness.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (3 children)

What's your offline open source AI?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Whatever is the latest from Hugging Face. Right now a combo of a Mixtral 8×7B, Llama 3 8B, and sometimes an old Llama 2 70B.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I mean this data will most likely be more useful for surveillance/ads than for AI. Nowadays with AI they can make it look like they are only a couple steps away from a very intelligent personal assistant and therefore make it seem more plausible that they need your data to make that leap. But in reality I feel like it is not the level of AI that could leverage personalization, at least not in the context of personal assistance. In the context of behavioural mapping it is of course a super lucrative deal for them. There are already very useful tons of AI stuff that they can add which does not require personal behaviour info (at least not to this generality) and yet they don't seem to spend as much effort into those and instead they are like "we need all your info stored somewhere for this very super (and mandatory) AI search assistant". Big red flag.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Yeah, maybe some kind of situation where you turn it on for "training time" with access to only specified files and systems on the computer, no internet access, etc. At the same time though, I wonder how much an AI could really streamline things. Would it just pre-load my frequent files and programs? Make suggestions or reminders on tasks? I don't think we're anywhere near the level where it could actually be doing work for me yet.

Interesting possibilities, but I'm not sure how useful yet.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This will make Windows 11 a target for hacker and government agencies, since this will be treasure of data. Windows already is bad at security. Let's see how this backfires at Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Microsoft will be the "hackers". On days when outside hackers aren't breaking in, MS will be data mining and selling the data themselves

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"But they’ll be reserved for premium models starting at $999."

Translation: "We want to start with the data of people that can spend, then we'll move to the rest".

The last Windows computer in my house was my wife's, and she's been extremely happy on Fedora Gnome for the last couple of months, asking me why I didn't tell her about it before (I did, lol).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

my girlfriends like fedora gnome too. I do all the technical stuff anyway so she really doesn't have know to know that much about the os she uses

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

In the 1990s, I transitioned from Windows to Linux as my primary operating system. Since then, Linux has consistently exhibited advancements in the desktop and software space, whereas Windows and Mac operating systems appear to have experienced a decline in terms of user experience and functionality.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

As someone regularly using Arch, Ubuntu, MacOS and Windows I agree.

The advances Linux has made, especially in the last few years is just amazing. I can run the majority of my games through Proton, there are even some preconfigured packages with Illustrator and Photoshop CC that Adobe doesn‘t seem to care about at all.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Google rolled out a retooled search engine that periodically puts AI-generated summaries over website links at the top of the results page; while also showing off a still-in-development AI assistant Astra that will be able to “see” and converse about things shown through a smartphone’s camera lens

What worries me the most is that this AI hype is coming strongly to the smartphone market too, and we don't have something solid like Linux distributions to change to and be free

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think demand will come soon for either manufacturers to open their boot loaders or new manufacturers cropping up to fill that gap.

I'm running graphene os on a pixel 8 pro and haven't looked back.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

Yeah, fuck that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes I like sitting in my Unix-based ivory tower, but then I remember my daily driver uses macOS and that it’s only a matter of time before they employ something similar/worse.

When the inevitable inevitably evits, the toughest choice for me will be fedora vs tumbleweed.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

It's not going to get better. I nuked 10 and switched to Linux permanently around the Windows 11 launch. My only regret is not switching sooner, like around Windows 8 times.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Yuuup, never switching to Windows 11 Windows 10 till something doesn't work, them back to Linux

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sounds to me like you should skip a step there

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

then law enforcement gets a hold of it

"how many cars did this user download"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Thats it! My Gaming PC is going Linux

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Is there a single person who is like “wow I love it”?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

*Microsoft to train AI chatbot on everything you do

[–] possiblylinux127 6 points 6 months ago

*Microsoft will show you ads

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

There go all the government installs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The software giant on Monday revealed an upgraded version of Copilot, its AI assistant, as it confronts heightened competition from big tech rivals in pitching generative AI technology that can compose documents, make images and serve as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home.

The new features will include Windows Recall, enabling the AI assistant to “access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory”.

Google rolled out a retooled search engine that periodically puts AI-generated summaries over website links at the top of the results page; while also showing off a still-in-development AI assistant Astra that will be able to “see” and converse about things shown through a smartphone’s camera lens.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI unveiled a new version of its chatbot last week, demonstrating an AI voice assistant with human characteristics that can banter about what someone’s wearing and even attempt to assess a person’s emotions.

Though Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI, the startup also rolled out a new desktop version of ChatGPT designed for Apple’s Mac computers.

The Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in February that it has been making big investments in generative AI.


The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

load more comments
view more: next ›