I think every computer user needs to read this because holy fucking shit this is fucking horrible.
So Windows has a new feature incoming called Recall where your computer will first, monitor everything you do with screenshots every couple of seconds and "process that" with an AI.
Hey, errrr, fuck no? This isn't merely because AI is really energy intensive to the point that it causes environmental damage. This is because it's basically surveilling what you are doing on your fucking desktop.
This AI is not going to be on your desktop, like all AI, it's going to be done on another server, "in the cloud" to be precise, so all those data and screenshot? They're going to go off to Microsoft. Microsoft are going to be monitoring what you do on your own computer.
Now of course Microsoft are going to be all "oooh, it's okay, we'll keep your data safe". They won't. Let me just remind you that evidence given over from Facebook has been used to prosecute a mother and daughter for an "illegal abortion", Microsoft will likely do the same.
And before someone goes "durrr, nuthin' to fear, nuthin to hide", let me remind you that you can be doing completely legal and righteous acts and still have the police on your arse. Are you an activist? Don't even need to be a hackivist, you can just be very vocal about something concerning and have the fucking police on your arse. They did this with environmental protesters in the UK. The culture war against transgender people looks likely to be heading in a direction wherein people looking for information on transgender people or help transitioning will be tracked down too. You have plenty to hide from the government, including your opinions and ideas.
Again, look into backing up your shit and switching to Linux Mint or Ubuntu to get away from Microsoft doing this shit.
there are multiple options here depending on how comfortable you are digging into your computer's registry. You can either simply disable it surface level through settings or excise it entirely from the system registry
reblogging again as a cautionary tale to please PLEASE fucking make a system restore point before you do anything. i consider myself tech savvy and still nearly bricked my computer. and make sure you know how to access safe mode
This is possibly the most insane national security story in the last 50 years. Includes a massive text chain between senior members of the Trump admin gaming out foreign policy and war plans on Signal, and they accidentally added a reporter to the group chat.
Some of the issues:
- Signal isn't an approved govt platform for classified info (anyone remember Hillary's emails?)
- Signal's disappearing-messages feature was enabled (apparent violation of federal records laws)
- Including a journalist in the group constitutes leaking.
The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone, according to two separate people who found the vulnerability and shared it with 404 Media. One coder added at least two database entries that are visible on the live site and say “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”
[...] Two different web development experts who asked to remain anonymous because they were probing a federal website told 404 Media that doge.gov is seemingly built on a Cloudflare Pages site that is not currently hosted on government servers. The database it is pulling from can be and has been written to by third parties, and will show up on the live website.
Both sources told 404 Media that they noticed Doge.gov is pulling from a Cloudflare Pages website, where the code that runs it is actually deployed.
One of the sources told 404 Media that they were able to push updates to a database of government employment information after studying the website’s architecture and finding the database’s API endpoints.
“Feels like it was completely slapped together,” they added. “Tons of errors and details leaked in the page source code.”
Both sources said that the way the site is set up suggests that it is not running on government servers.
every time I do a web search, right at the top I have AI info dumping on me
just give me the top result please
Swear in your search request. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the most effective way I've found of it not doing the AI summary is just to add "fucking" go my search.
Holy shit
It also seems to get rid of sponsored posts
When I became freelance, one of my first marketing contracts was fixing my boss' blog posts and articles that he had 'written' with ChatGPT.
It was the single most soul-sucking task I have ever done in my life. I could have ghostwritten it for them faster than it took me to edit it.
ChatGPT would often hallucinate features of the product, and often required more fact-checking than the article was worth.
It is absolutely no surprise that 77% of employees report that AI has increased workloads and lowered productivity, while 96% of executives believe it has boosted it.
The reality is that it's only boosted the amount of work employees have to do which leads to increased burnout, stress and job dissatisfaction.