Unruffled [he/him]

Wait until you hear about the semi-autonomous killer drone swarms, designed to prevent signal jamming (by not needing an operator).

We definitely shouldn’t normalise this sort of surveillance, whether it’s simply for advertising or for more nefarious purposes. China already banned apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, so was that due to anglophobia or is it ok when China does it, but not when the US does it?

I agree with you on some level - it’s definitely not cool to only focus on TikTok, because these surveillance machines are IMO all equally problematic. But most Lemmy users have a dim view of all mainstream social media apps because they all suck with regards to user privacy. But is TikTok hated on more than Threads or Facebook? I really don’t think so. And the narrative that any criticism of the Chinese state must be sinophobic is total bullshit. The Chinese state is just as sleazy and authoritarian as any other large nation state. They all deserve criticism when they use these digital panopticons for political purposes.

From the article:

Mr. Wardle’s curiosity was piqued by recent news that Russian spies had used Kaspersky antivirus products to siphon classified documents off the home computer of an N.S.A. developer, and may have played a critical role in broader Russian intelligence gathering.

From the “recent news” article mentioned above:

Government officials, who would speak of the classified details of the case only on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Pho took the classified documents home to help him rewrite his resume. But he had installed on his home computer antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, a top Russian software company, and Russian hackers are believed to have exploited the software to steal the documents, the officials said.

Honestly, I agree, it’s a serious accusation against Kaspersky with very scant details and allegations made by off-the-record “officials”. Having said that, just because they didn’t present any compelling evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” I’m not sure where that leaves us though lol. Honestly, I don’t trust Kaspersky with my data any less that with any of the other big antivirus companies. I guess it makes sense they would want antivirus software with CIA/NSA backdoors over alternatives though :p

Not everyone has a NYT subscription: https://web.archive.org/web/20180102011635/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/technology/kaspersky-lab-antivirus.html

I think they do (or at least did) put some form of DRM on their toner cartridges, but it is fairly easy to bypass as you mentioned. There was an article about the fact they had to instruct customers how to bypass it due to COVID related chip shortages a while back. https://www.techspot.com/news/92915-canon-printer-owners-get-official-guidance-bypass-printer.html

I did like the quality and longevity of my (very) old Canon MF8350cdn from 2011 - it was a workhorse! But my new(ish) Brother MFCL2710DW has been great so far too. Only time will tell if it lasts as long as the old Canon though.

I’ve got a Brother laser printer myself last year, and I like the printer, but I’ll agree their software is bit of a hot mess. I used to have an old Canon multi-function laser printer that wasn’t locked to 1st party toner, and their software was much easier to install and use. But it finally broke down after >10 years of moderate use and the new models are reportedly DRMed, so Brother was the only decent option.

Yep - those jobs are going to be lost because of Tyler Perry seeing an opportunity to reduce production costs, not because of AI. Nobody is forcing him to use AI. It’s just classic corporate greed where he is happy to trade [other people’s] jobs for more profit. Sure, AI is enabling him to do this, but it’s greed that’s guiding his decision making here.

I agree with you that Mozilla is spreading itself too thin. And don’t get me wrong, I love Firefox and am a long time user. But they do need to understand their user base better.

They aren’t going to become a sustainable business by copying more popular browsers. It’s their differences from the mainstream that make them appealing as an alternative in the first place. I already don’t like them foisting Pocket on me, which 100% should have remained an extension. I don’t like the fact that Google is their default search engine, which goes against all their privacy messaging. I understand the reason is money, but that’s kind of the definition of being a sellout isn’t it? Their core values should always come first.

Fact is, those employees weren’t fired for any good reason other than to hop on the latest tech trend. It’s this sort of corporate “profit before people” bullshit that will erode any goodwill that people still have towards Mozilla. I couldn’t give a fuck about adding a stupid AI driven chatbot to Mozilla, and neither, I imagine, do many of their current users. Honestly, I think “AI” has ruined the internet in a lot of ways already. It’s already had a massive negative impact on the quality of search results, across all major search engines, because of all the low quality llm content that has been produced already, and it’s only going to get worse. And you can’t trust a single thing that comes out of those models, so what is even the point of them?

Sorry in advance for the old man rant lol.