Boozilla

Turbo Encabulator vibes from the LLM.

Eric Kripke: We need a cutaway kissing scene. No! Not like that! Wait, wait, wait…yes…exactly like that.

I’m a gnu/linux noob. I recently installed Pop OS on two older laptops. Am loving it so far. Going to work on getting games functioning on one of them next.

Was blown away when the built-in Disks program was able to easily fix a couple of thumb drives I have that were suffering from logical corruption. They were completely unusable in Windows 11. I tried 4 different methods in Windows 11 to fix them, with zero luck. Disks fixed them in 2 clicks. They are nicer thumb drives and were somewhat expensive. I am very happy to have them back.

Invest in aluminum foil now.

Good advice already replied. Definitely have a business-only phone and a personal-only phone. I’d consider two different phone OS’s if you can. Keep crossover data as minimal as possible.

Would love to read a follow-up post from you 6-12 months down the line. Best of luck. It’s absurd how difficult this is in 2024.

I’m pretty aggressive about switching things off, too. I will never use OneDrive, for example.

Glad you found it useful! Love your username.

With MS you never know. They are pretty arrogant and aggressive about assuming you want things running in the background. Something you can try: Install ShutUp10 and look for things like Office Telemetry being turned on. You can switch these things off (permanently or temporarily, your choice) and see if that stops the traffic.

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

(There are other ways to do the same thing but I’ve been using ShutUp10 for years and love it)

Yes. If it was an opt-in feature and we knew beyond all doubt that it was stored locally-only, and for the user only, it could be a useful feature for some folks. Unfortunately, Microsoft has a long history of doing stupid and/or evil shit ‘for’ the user, with the attitude of ‘Clippy knows best’.

I’m driven by convenience, FOMO, and peer pressure, so go ahead and destroy my privacy and security, Google!

Snark aside, it seems like a really neat useful little idea that will 100% be used for some creepy corporate shit.

Never underestimate how far they will go to track your movements, habits, etc. It’s not even about “the gubment spyin’ on me”. It’s about how valuable that data is to corporate assholes who like to target you with customized advertising, and resell your data, etc. (And yes, as a side-effect, the police can also sometimes take advantage of this ubiquitous data capture).

We live in a time when even our stupid cars spy on us:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/podcasts/the-daily/car-gm-insurance-spying.html

It’s why they push the internet of shit so hard. Nobody needs a “smart fridge” but by god, they really want us all to have one.

Great use for an old phone! I have some lying around. This is one of those forehead-slapping moments for me.

Stuff people do online is potentially public forever. WCGW?

I really hope it becomes the new normal to stop posting everything about ourselves non-anonymously online in general. But especially photos and information about kids. I am hopeful that in the near future, we’ll all look back and say “What the fuck were we thinking? We all looked like narcissists exploiting our kids for likes!”

Pitcher’s mounds. When you watch a baseball game on TV, they often super-impose an ad on the damned dirt. Also graphics at the bottom of the screen will often have an ad box.

Every available inch of visible space must be covered in an ad. It makes me resent those brands.

In particular, I stew over insurance companies spending millions on celebrities in commercials and prime time slots. That’s money that could have gone to pay claims that were denied, or lowered their ridiculous premiums.

And I’ll never understand people who purchase expensive t-shirts or caps with some corporate brand’s logo splashed across it. They are paying more to be a human billboard. Are we supposed to be impressed with their taste in something millions of others have bought?

Yes, I was trying to be funny. The place where I work has a goulash of mismatched old and new software, too.

Do we work for the same place? 😆

I understand, and we’re basically on the same page. I’m not fully anti-AI, either. Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil. And you are right to have concerns about data stored in the cloud. The tech bros will mock you for it and then… oh look, another data breach has it been five minutes already. :)

I agree with you but that ship has sailed. I work with big medical data and it’s shocking the stuff that gets stored and passed around. The really big players like PBMs and major insurance providers are supposed to abide by HIPAA but they do not fear enforcement at all. Only the small fish like doctors, etc, need fear HIPAA.

It is true that Dragon and similar apps have been used for years. But I don’t think it’s fair to say OP is being paranoid and a luddite. Data breaches in the cloud are a weekly occurrence, and OP wanting to protect their voice / biometrics is not foolish it’s smarter than the average bear. You can change a compromised password. You can’t change your biometrics or voice.

Also, those products were used on local networks for many years before they entered the cloud. They gradually reduce our privacy over time, getting people numb to it.