I made joyful meat sounds reading this.
-Sentient Meat, reporting from Meatspace
hansolo
joined 1 month ago
It's like a mashup between Wall-e and The Matrix.
But like, a gross mashup of only the worst parts.
Breaks rule 3. Report this spam as spam.
It's worth it to pay extra for anything that doesn't need an app or WiFi connectivity.
Those are huge red flags. Avoid anything "smart" like the plauge.
Appliances with "smart features" are simply scraping your whole home, not just your phone, for data to sell to advertisers. Very often the app or even the company won't outlive the appliance itself, so as happens frequently, in 2 years you'll be stuck with a perfectly workable appliance that refuses to work because some server in China went offline.
Aside from the Ars Technica article in the xpost, there's a lot of "it depends."
It depends on not just the OS, but if it's a custom image built for Dell or HP or Asus etc. computers, what settings are on, what settings were on by default, what bloatware is pre-installed, etc.
Typically, all MS or Apple really want are to know what apps you have installed, zip code, email address, IP address, crash reports, and possibly keywords they can associate with advertising. That's their baseline wish list, which is all advertising fodder, and depending on your settings, that can quickly expand to "anonymized" (it's not) cookie use, tracking of websites visited, etc.
If you have a custom image (i.e. a Dell specific version of Windows) the laptop manufacturer will look for access to roughly the same data.
With the whole Copilot fiasco, recording things like keystrokes and screenshots really are potentially in play now. But, again, only if you have foolishly installed Copilot and turned that stuff on. And that only after huge public outcry. So there's always a non-zero risk of that, but do your due diligence to know you settings.
Can you strip out bloatware and tighten down Windows to a reasonable degree? Sure. But because MS can and does change system settings without your consent, you might find in 6 months an article about a setting you turned off, that they turned back on and you had no idea.
"Just" as in nothing that demands a phone number to validate. Meaning that OP will be asked to enter a phone number when signing up and may not have to worry about it being the same one as their email account.
I'd be a dolphin, because dolphins aren't shy about getting their dicks out to fuck this exact shit right here.
In /r/privacy they started implementing the new social credit system where not only do you need karma, you need fresh karma, called a "Contributor Quantity Score." So my usual aged, pop in every few months account with decent karma is effectively banned for being (actual term) "lowest value" because I'm not on Reddit commenting every day.
As for their plans, seems like a probability where they just want us to pay $5.99 a month to make the problem (they created) go away.
Namecheap let me register with just a Tuta email. Payment could maybe go through an online prepaid debit card. Never had a human check AFAIK.
A cure is petty much the only thing that will prevent the end of PEPFAR not turning into a backdraft style resurgent AIDS epidemic in southern Africa.
I used to use Power Delete Suite to nuke Reddit comments.