Unruffled

From the article:

Mr. Wardle’s curiosity was piqued by recent news that Russian spies had used Kaspersky antivirus products to siphon classified documents off the home computer of an N.S.A. developer, and may have played a critical role in broader Russian intelligence gathering.

From the “recent news” article mentioned above:

Government officials, who would speak of the classified details of the case only on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Pho took the classified documents home to help him rewrite his resume. But he had installed on his home computer antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, a top Russian software company, and Russian hackers are believed to have exploited the software to steal the documents, the officials said.

Honestly, I agree, it’s a serious accusation against Kaspersky with very scant details and allegations made by off-the-record “officials”. Having said that, just because they didn’t present any compelling evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” I’m not sure where that leaves us though lol. Honestly, I don’t trust Kaspersky with my data any less that with any of the other big antivirus companies. I guess it makes sense they would want antivirus software with CIA/NSA backdoors over alternatives though :p

Not everyone has a NYT subscription: https://web.archive.org/web/20180102011635/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/technology/kaspersky-lab-antivirus.html

This dude is getting legitimately downvoted for JAQing off. Also, his home instance is explicitly anti-corporate and anarchist, so defending right wing billionaires is against our rules. You are correct that Lemmy is generally left of centre, depending on the instance, so JAQing in defense of billionaire assholes is never gonna go down well.

Those imperialist western dogs! Imagine providing a deterence and actual consequences for Xi’s planned invasionreunification of Taiwan. What were they thinking? That countries have the right to choose their own form of government and who their allies are? If they are allied with Western liberal democracies, then it stands to reason they are Nazis, anyway. Xi should really send in the tanks asap to kill anyone doesn’t agree with uskill all the Nazis and re-educateliberate the people!

– typical-user@hexbear.net

I don’t know what to tell ya, I don’t find the word that rhymes with “hanky” offensive at all, especially when it’s applied to someone who seems to fit the bill. I think the main difference between MLs and liberals is that liberals are well aware their governments are flawed and are willing and able to criticize them and protest against bad policies, whereas the MLs are dedicated to the idea that it’s wrong to criticize non-Western governments, because “left unity”, “critical support” etc. This, despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that most of the governments they defend are totalitarian states where government criticism lands you in jail, in a re-education camp, or falling out of a window. This quote sums it up nicely:

Authoritarians, having argued so doggedly for the domination of a paternalistic state and having therefore turned themselves into ideological infants, then develop a hyper-reductive view of geopolitics; precisely the one, in fact, that a state would like for them to have. “Socialism” becomes pathologically confused with “opposing capitalist nations” or more appropriately, “opposing all states aligned with the United States.” They attempt to simplify the struggles of the entire planet down into two camps, the “bad guy imperialist states” and the “good guy anti-imperialist states.” In doing so, worker emancipation is simplified into a single question: “do you support the imperialists or the anti-imperialists?” Woe be to those who do not submit to their reductive understanding. The statists who advocate this position are completely incapable of even understanding what an “anti-imperialist” entity might look like. They, in fact, simply support one imperialist bloc over the other in a battle of two power-hoarders.

Daniel Baryon

Checks out

Their mod actions usually do federate out, but their outgoing federation is a bit borked right now with some instances, perhaps due to the recent upgrade to Lemmy 0.19.4-rc.6. I believe they are at least aware of it now, though they have been basically non-responsive to the issue so far.

I think they do (or at least did) put some form of DRM on their toner cartridges, but it is fairly easy to bypass as you mentioned. There was an article about the fact they had to instruct customers how to bypass it due to COVID related chip shortages a while back. https://www.techspot.com/news/92915-canon-printer-owners-get-official-guidance-bypass-printer.html

I did like the quality and longevity of my (very) old Canon MF8350cdn from 2011 - it was a workhorse! But my new(ish) Brother MFCL2710DW has been great so far too. Only time will tell if it lasts as long as the old Canon though.

I’ve got a Brother laser printer myself last year, and I like the printer, but I’ll agree their software is bit of a hot mess. I used to have an old Canon multi-function laser printer that wasn’t locked to 1st party toner, and their software was much easier to install and use. But it finally broke down after >10 years of moderate use and the new models are reportedly DRMed, so Brother was the only decent option.

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It’s not free of corporatist behaviour though, especially on the large instances. This is a classic example. I guess at least people can vote with their feet, and still stay on the fediverse.

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Yep - those jobs are going to be lost because of Tyler Perry seeing an opportunity to reduce production costs, not because of AI. Nobody is forcing him to use AI. It’s just classic corporate greed where he is happy to trade [other people’s] jobs for more profit. Sure, AI is enabling him to do this, but it’s greed that’s guiding his decision making here.

I agree with you that Mozilla is spreading itself too thin. And don’t get me wrong, I love Firefox and am a long time user. But they do need to understand their user base better.

They aren’t going to become a sustainable business by copying more popular browsers. It’s their differences from the mainstream that make them appealing as an alternative in the first place. I already don’t like them foisting Pocket on me, which 100% should have remained an extension. I don’t like the fact that Google is their default search engine, which goes against all their privacy messaging. I understand the reason is money, but that’s kind of the definition of being a sellout isn’t it? Their core values should always come first.

Fact is, those employees weren’t fired for any good reason other than to hop on the latest tech trend. It’s this sort of corporate “profit before people” bullshit that will erode any goodwill that people still have towards Mozilla. I couldn’t give a fuck about adding a stupid AI driven chatbot to Mozilla, and neither, I imagine, do many of their current users. Honestly, I think “AI” has ruined the internet in a lot of ways already. It’s already had a massive negative impact on the quality of search results, across all major search engines, because of all the low quality llm content that has been produced already, and it’s only going to get worse. And you can’t trust a single thing that comes out of those models, so what is even the point of them?

Sorry in advance for the old man rant lol.

Lol this is the person who was trying to argue the other day that narcissism was a disability that should provoke sympathy, rather than a negative trait that should be called out and worked on. So according to that logic, we should we feel sorry Donald Trump because of his narcissism now and not despise him, to use a topical example. I guess it’s subjective but I’d call that sort of argument a form of gaslighting. Like they’re saying, it’s not the narcissists who are the problem, it’s the people who don’t understand the narcissists who are the problem. Keep yelling into the wind buddy.

I’d maybe be willing to pay $12-15 per annum for no user tracking. But that price per month is a joke. They just want to deter people from paying by offering an inflated price, so they can turn around in a few months and argue there is no demand for it.