Word (about being practically useless). I have been using it to automate some stuff, like when I’m creating a json I just paste a bunch of data there and ask it to format for me, but I have to do in small batches and constantly correct the way it’s doing… Chat GPT was way better, but I don’t want to use it anymore
Sometimes I use AI to grammar check me (I’m not a native speaker) if I’m unsure of what I’m writing or I absolutely want to write stuff correctly, I did it a few times in Lumo, but I didn’t use it enough to compare with duck.ai, so I can’t say if it’s better or worse - but I always add “don’t rewrite, just point errors, ignore slurs, ignore slang, ignore informal language, ignore internet lingo” etc etc, and they go and rewrite my sentence changing everything hehe (again, Chat GPT was way better)

I’ve read this on GrapheneOS page

“Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.” https://grapheneos.org/usage

And all I use is Gecko-based hehe (although on desktop), I’m currently using Brave just to have some old/disposable accs logged, but I’m looking for Chromium alternatives… and I just looked at ungoogled git and it seems like I have to download a bunch of stuff to compile it myself, argh, I hate that :P

I’m also in no way qualified to check code, so I just trust that if something has a lot of forks it means a lot of people are looking at it.

I said American because of stuff like the Patriotic Act and crap like that :P

but would you over Brave or unGoogled Chromium?

I read it once and couldn’t find the post again, but I managed to find some stuff:

The kernel hack was in 2003:
https://lwn.net/Articles/57135/

There is no official communication between the NSA and Linus Torvalds. In 2013 when he was asked about a Linux backdoor for the NSA and said no while shaking his head yes, it’s officially considered just a joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gRsgkdfYJ8

Later that year his father mentioned it again… is it an official hearing? It seems like they are also questioning people from Microsoft, but I didn’t find info on that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRYyWn7BEo

In 2022 a lot of information about Bvp47 came to light, a Linux backdoor NSA was using for more than 10 years - I didn’t find any info about this exploit being possibly because of systemd or not.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/nsa-linked-bvp47-linux-backdoor-widely-undetected-for-10-years/

Red Hat introduced systemd in 2010. My info about it being a subsidiary of a Big Tech was incorrect and I removed from my original message. It was only bought by IBM in 2018.

From what I heard, people hate systemd because Linus Torvald was approached by the NSA to create a backdoor on Linux, he said it wouldn’t be possible to change the kernel because there were too many eyes on it, there was a mysterious hack of kernel.org introduced a mysterious code but it was spotted and removed… well, what was the only other thing common to all Linux? The sysv-init, but it was too small, too tight, too specific for them to create a backdoor there, they needed something big, bloated, doing way more than it should do, like it was just supposed to start the system but it can also do unrelated stuff like handling DNS, and an American company shows up bringing systemd, that solved all the problems the NSA had to create a backdoor on Linux, and all distros jumped into the honeypot :)

OP just deflecting and ignoring… here’s the deal about privacy:

If the company doesn’t advertise itself for not saving logs or selling your data: Don’t waste time with the ToS.
They are saving logs and selling your data.

If the company advertise itself for not saving logs or selling your data, but it’s American: Don’t waste time with the ToS.
The government can legally force them into cooperation while placing them under a gag order.

If the company advertise itself for not saving logs or selling your data and it’s not American: Read the ToS if you want, but it’s not important.
You will hardly find anything that is not open source recommended for privacy. Read independent code review of the software and third party audits of the company.

“they keep using it thinking it enhances their privacy.”
Can you give an example of stuff people use because they think it will enhance their privacy but don’t?

about DuckDuckGo https://duckduckgo.com/privacy
“We don’t save your IP address or any unique identifiers alongside your searches or visits to our websites. We also never log IP addresses or any unique identifiers to disk.”

Sure, you can’t trust American companies for shit, same goes for Brave and its ecossystem, so if you can’t trust the ToS content, what’s the point of reading it, duh :P

If a company doesn’t advertise itself for not saving logs, having no trackers, not using you to train AI, not selling your data, etc, etc, it’s because they are doing all of that, so it’s also pointless to read the ToS… if they say they don’t save logs, etc, then sure, there may be a point reading to see if there are any caveats, but I trust more third party audits (like Proton and Mullvad regularly have) and the code being open source and reviewed independently.

Can you give an example of stuff people use because they think it will enhance their privacy but don’t?
Because software and services people use because they think it enhances their privacy usually are:

Proton (mail, VPN, docs, storage)
Mullvad (browser, VPN, DNS, search engine)
Tuta, DuckDuckMail, SimpleLogin, addy.io, Mailvelope, Thunderbird
StartPage, DuckDuckGo, Duck.ai, SearXNG
LibreWolf, Tor, IronFox, Vanadium
uBlockOrigin, AdGuard DNS, ControlD, Technitium, Pi-Hole, simplewall, Portmaster
Debian, Fedora, Arch, GrapheneOS
Qubes, Whoonix, Tails
Fediverse instances that explicitly say no tracking/analytics, telemetry/data selling, ads, AI training

Reading the ToS of any of these revealed they in fact don’t enhance privacy?

I want a “target pressure wave attack” necklace

I use my cellphone only to message relatives and play some MP3s. It’s a Samsung J2 Core I bought in 2019 because it was the cheapest non-second-hand smartphone I could find at the time. Its last security patch was in 2021, and they dropped support. It’s barely compatible with the current Google ecosystem, and I’m probably getting locked out of it anytime now because apps will refuse to work… even LineageOS, which supposedly increases the life of smartphones, doesn’t support it… I’m sad I’m going to have to spend money on one of these sometime soon even though it’s still working.

Oh yeah, the only problem would be if this simply addon could turn me into an exit node (which is a more complicated thing than just running guard or middle), but being a guard-guard, well, this addon sounds pretty cool :)

My main browser is LibreWolf and I have Mullvad for some other accs. I do however have old stuff that turned disposable now, and I decided to let these logged on Brave out of convenience (since to let accs logged on Mullvad or Tor you have to enable history and cookies and it defeats the purpose of those browsers :P)
I’m also using Brave to check some stuff because all the aforementioned browsers break some canvas script and I use those for image effects in my site and I’m trying to fix the script so it works on hardened browsers.

also, if someone ends up connecting to me and go straight to cp, it’s going to be my fucking address there?? haha

Oh, sorry, if switching instance doesn’t work, here’s the original YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
ps: there is this cool addon that can change frontend and autopick instances for you so you don’t have to get tracked when browsing Big Tech sites https://libredirect.github.io/

I’m new to Lemmy. I just saw the invidious video can’t be embedded here, so just click the link :)

My father loves '00s and late '90s RTS games, so I built him a Win7 PC. I got a bit jealous of how tight its running lol
Pre-built systems, though, come with way waaay more bloat. To get a free Windows license included in the product, they shove tons of shit in. My mother had a Win10 LG All-in-One, and I recently reset and cleared it to give to my niece, I had to remove a lot of crap, but it was way worse in the Win11 Dell All-in-One she got to replace it. I’ve never seen anything like that, shit came with Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Candy Crush… and, worst of all: McAfee. This Win11 laptop I’m using right now came with Norton hehe - but those Bing News, Bing Weather, Bing Maps, Bing This, Bing That, all the Xbox stuff, which you need to remove through command prompt, they were in all of them. However, I’ve never tested a Win10 or Win11 that wasn’t on a pre-built device, my guess is that if you bought a license (or acquired some other way, I don’t judge hehe) and installed the OS yourself it is way cleaner… but also surely Win11 is worse than Win10 on bloat.

edit: I had written Avast but it was actually McAfee, it wasn’t even full license and it expired, also it constantly hijacked the browser and changed the search engine to Bing… pure malware behavior, crazy stuff.

It happened a few times to me during major updates, but most don’t restore packages you’ve removed. They do change other things, though.
I recently wrote this small guide: https://fuckbigtech.neocities.org/#06, and I was just about to re-read it to update, for example: Last time I was on Win11, the Windows Update had downloaded the HEIF and AV1 codecs, they were even listed in the app list to uninstall if I wanted, but they didn’t come with the laptop I have now, nor were they added through updating it. I just noticed folders weren’t displaying AVIF image thumbnails after I had debloated (and removed Windows Store). Then I discovered you can no longer download Windows utilities through their site, and it won’t work directly through PowerShell either because all download and installation is forced through Windows Store. I had already debloated extensively, so I decided to just factory-reset the laptop. This time, I downloaded both packages before removing Windows Store. Guess what? Removing Windows Store also removed the packages! So here I am, after another factory reset, leaving Windows Store there, hoping the lack of it doesn’t fuck me in the future lol
fun story: I also discovered it no longer comes with Notepad, Paint and Calculator! You have to download all from the Store, and they integrated with Copilot lol - it did come with Outlook, Maps, Teams and other crap, though… even some hidden legacy Zune, IE and Skype packages…

Every site was breaking, looking like they were fighting over DNS resolving, and I guess that was the problem. Once I removed Portmaster’s DNS settings, they started working together. Well, I have DNS set in the browser anyway, and I’m using Portmaster just to monitor those non-browser connections. Using Windows, it’s crazy that on startup you already have like 9 pages of random Windows processes trying to call home and tell them what you’re doing lol