Yeah. It’s grift. They want a privatized solution.

What does “opinionated” mean in this context?

It’s not just about the mics. The location data, microphone data, and accelerometer/vibration data are also important and the phones are likely cheaper than other specialized equipment, which may have factored into it. Especially if they bought them a generation or so behind.

Oh, one of the first things I did was group policy edit anything to do with tracking, ads, or AI.

This week the big news is that the government is selling off all EV’s bought by the previous administration and shutting down all the federal owned charging stations used to charge these vehicles. So this right here is Trump taking something Biden tried to do and using it to line Elon Musk’s grubby pockets and that tracks.

Yeah. This is why I’ve disabled copilot and Gemini on my devices altogether. It’s not worth it to have this nonsense filling up everything you use or rely on on a daily basis.

I don’t understand why people ask this. Most people you talk to on Lemmy will say they don’t want the userbase to grow much more than it has because with that growth comes the other problems that larger platforms like shitter and reddit have.

That’s true by and large and we also don’t have enough moderators here as is.

And for reasons I don’t understand, people keep asking why mainstream media outlets, influencers, and other trusted accounts don’t transition to the fediverse, as if they won’t bring with them an influx of users (at least a fraction of which would be considered undesirable).

Why do you want them to come here? (As someone who would like to see Lemmy grow, I’m curious about how you think this will rollout and what the consequences will be). I would like to see Lemmy grow but I’m not sure all of that growth will have solely good follow-on effects.

“But it turns out that, while this screenshot is indeed real, those eagle-eyed enough should already be able to tell that something isn’t quite lining up here. In fact, nearly any Windows 11 user could open up the fully updated Notepad without getting this pop-up at all, even if they aren’t already signed into a Microsoft account. So, what’s the deal here?”

“The key is in the exact wording, identifiable within the first sentence: “Sign in with your Microsoft account to use Rewrite and its features in Notepad.” This is a prompt that exists, yes, but one that’s exclusive to Copilot+ PCs and explicitly requires the user to trigger it by clicking the Rewrite button, as confirmed by our own testing.”

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/no-notepad-for-windows-11-doesnt-require-you-to-use-a-microsoft-account-unless-youre-trying-to-use-ai

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/seen-those-complaints-online-about-having-to-sign-in-to-your-microsoft-account-to-use-windows-11s-notepad-app-its-all-a-load-of-hot-air

Please read the article. No. My access to notepad is not restricted. I also don’t run any copilot features of any kind on windows 11. Yes, I believe Generative AI Copilot is enabled by default, but in this case the only time you get prompted to login is when you use a feature in notepad that directly needs copilot in order to work and you the user have to select that feature. Meaning you can use notepad without it entirely and never even see this prompt at all.

Microsoft is a tech giant with all the bad crap that implies. They do enough terrible things that we don’t need to lie to make them look bad.

This is misinformation. They added the login requirement for their Generative AI and the actual notepad doesn’t require a login. But I guess we’re ragebaiting today.

Or they just didn’t know how. Which is a distinct possibility. Some devices these days even let you share the Wi-Fi password through QR code or similar. So you don’t have to enter it into every device.

I don’t understand why they’re considering a ban. People should be changing the default password on their router. If they aren’t and they leak information that isn’t theirs, tough shit, fine them. If they leak their own information, let them deal with the consequences.

The point is that while there are definitely downsides, there are also fairly painless ways to use fingerprint blocking on reputable browsers, and that it doesn’t “break half the internet” it just might have a slight learning curve. Just because something isn’t just plug it in and forget doesn’t mean it doesn’t work or isn’t accessible.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/block-fingerprinting/

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Fingerprinting-Protections

I’m still curious to see the actual proposal and other documentation, but I can’t really refute this so, I concede the point for now.

I am positive that the government does want armored vehicles. But like I said before and like it says in the article, this was a call out out to all automakers by the federal government during the Biden administration. This isn’t something Trump started when he got into office. Further, it’s important to note that the article claimed that Tesla was the only car manufacturer that showed an interest.

I’d like to see the document because it’s not clear from the article if this was a proposal or an order. And all of my reasoning for it not being a thing from before this article was posted still apply.

Did you read this article?

“Trump administration says it has no plans to fulfill $400 million ‘armored Tesla’ contract” - thats the headline.

And it doesn’t specify which kinda of vehicles, nor does it give anything other than a general timeline of interest.

Basically sounds like the government put out feelers to see which automakers were interested in potentially making armored vehicles for the government that were electric and only Tesla responded. And further, it doesn’t say why that plan was scrapped, but it literally also started in the Biden administration, not the Trump administration. There’s a lot of supposition in that article. I wouldn’t call this conclusive.

Those companies so far aren’t in conflict with Tesla. Bear that in mind because it’s important to the conversation and the topic at hand. I doubt Facebook gives a damn if Tesla can skirt recalls. Ford or GMC or Dodge would absolutely care, especially if it’s preferential treatment which it invariably would be because of Musk’s “position” in the government. He’s got a conflict of interest that stacks things against other automakers and they would be stupid not to counter that any way they can.

At this point, my dude I feel like you’re just looking for a reason to be offended. If that’s the way you’re going to take what I said, I’m definitely done with this conversation.

I was in the military from 2010 to 2022. If all you’ve known is living on post then you weren’t trying to be a member of the community and that’s at least part of the problem here. When you live “on post” you’re isolated and that’s at least partially about control (and damage control).

I’ve served both active duty and as a reservist and I gotta tell ya, the shortest I ever lived in one place was about 6 months during C-school. You don’t make a whole lot of connections in 6 months, but you absolutely can in 4 years and my first duty station was literally a 4 year stint. It is what you make of it, but it’s also down to what kind of person you are, where you’re from, hundreds of other things besides.

The people I have known (deployed and from my home town) who were Guard rather than military seem to have had similar experiences to me. Not all of them are even stationed in their home towns. Plenty of the ones I’ve known have been deployed.

I was also stationed in CA. I hate the state, but the community where I lived and worked wasn’t the worst. I had neighbors and friends, people who gave a damn. That’s perhaps rare in the military, but for the purposes of the conversation about the differences between the Guard and the Military branches, I can’t say that I would consider the National Guard to be a Civil Service, even if on paper it might technically qualify. The National Guard has more in common with military than it does with just about any other civil service and bonds to the community don’t do much to protect you from living in a hut in Djibouti or a tent in the sandbox.

I wouldn’t be so quiet to discredit sacrifices those people have made just to make a random claim online.

Joining the military, you would expect to be living separate and apart from the local communities.<<

As someone who joined the military, that’s not really how that works and if you’re getting your information from memes and content creators, perhaps it might be a better idea not to continue this conversation because I really don’t want to have to go into detail about how flawed that first sentence is, let alone the rest of it.