Doug7070
@Doug7070@lemmy.world
- Comment on Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’ 3 weeks ago:
Mr. Torvalds is truly a generous man, giving the current AI market an analysis of 10% usefulness is probably a decimal or two more than will end up panning out once the hype bubble pops.
- Comment on Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all desktop users worldwide | It is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created 2 months ago:
But it’s not a “major browser.” It’s a niche fork that has valuable adjustments for power users, but would be unusable for your average non-technically inclined user. I use Librewolf myself and appreciate it, but it’s not something you can just drop on an older relative’s machine and expect to work fine. Firefox has plenty of issues out of the box with sneaking in ads and telemetry, but at the same time you still have to understand that it’s an important player in the market despite its flaws because it’s the only real mainstream competitor to an entirely Chromium-based ecosystem, and despite the issues it does have, it’s still lightyears ahead of Chrome.
- Comment on Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all desktop users worldwide | It is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created 2 months ago:
You’re aware that LibreWolf is a Firefox fork, right? The quote is literally “major browser”, which obviously precludes fairly niche forks.
- Comment on Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future 8 months ago:
There are in fact a huge number of reliable counters to drones, including but not limited to anti-aircraft gun systems, anti-aircraft lasers, RF jamming devices (especially effective against cheap/makeshift drones), and several more. Drones are currently an emergent threat without a robust countermeasure scheme, but given their massive role in the Ukraine war that is not going to go unaddressed for long. From a purely mechanical standpoint, small drone munitions are also physically very vulnerable, making them readily destroyed by anti-air autocannon fire or even laser weapons if you assume RF jamming will not solve the problem.
- Comment on Dear server admins, please defederate threads.net. Dear users, ask your server admin to defederate threads.net. 11 months ago:
Meta has had plenty of chances in the past as a massive leader in the social media market. Those chances have been used to conduct illegal violations of user privacy, monopolize multiple market sectors, and ultimately go as far as actively abetting crimes against humanity. It is entirely reasonable and I think fundamentally imperative not to give them any more chances.
- Comment on Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data 11 months ago:
This is the crux of it. Should people expect actual unlimited data? Maybe not, if you’re tech savvy and understand matters on the backend, but also I’m fairly sure there’s a dramatically greater burden on Google for using the word “unlimited”. If they didn’t want to get stuck with paying the tab for the small number of extreme power users who actually use that unlimited data, then they shouldn’t have sold it as such in the first place. Either Google actually clearly discloses the limits of their product (no, not in the impossible to find fine print), or they accept that storing huge bulk data for a few accounts is the price they pay for having to actually deliver the product they advertised.
- Comment on Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data 11 months ago:
For people authoring original content who may end up having the only copy of a given piece of news-relevant data in their possession, using a lossy compression method to back it up sort of defeats the purpose. This isn’t stashing your old DVD collection, this is trying to back up privileged professional data.
- Comment on Scarlett Johansson hits AI app with legal action for cloning her voice in an ad | An AI-generated version of Scarlett Johansson’s voice appeared in an online ad without her consent. 1 year ago:
There’s a very obvious distinction between satire, I.E. imitating a public figure to make a joke about them, and using their likeness for marketing, I.E. making it seem as if that public figure endorses a product/service/etc.
One is legally protected free speech, the other is illegally misusing a person’s likeness, and regardless of whether or not they are a celebrity should be protected against because it is deceptive to the public and violates the person’s inherent right to control of their own likeness.
Regardless of your views on celebrity in general and the merit of famous figures in society, it’s quite clear that this kind of AI mimicry needs to be stomped out fast and early, or else we will rapidly end up in a situation where shady scam artists and massive corporate interests will freely use AI zombies of popular personalities, living or dead, to hawk their wares with impunity.
- Comment on Firefox will have a built-in ‘fake reviews detector’ — Amazon is in trouble 1 year ago:
Then you can ignore/turn it off? It’s also a function to protect users from malicious online behavior, dunno how that could be interpreted as a nanny, unless you also insist browsers shouldn’t warn you when accessing known malware links or similar. If you really insist on having the absolute freedom to not be advised about it when you’re being scammed then go off I guess.
- Comment on Windows 12 May Require a Subscription 1 year ago:
Microsoft has a long and storied history of doing the worst and dumbest possible things with Windows as a platform, so, it’s pretty easy to see why people find it very easy to assume the worst here.