sconosciuto

AniMill said:

The original Roomba was one of the first robotic products I ever purchased that did exactly what it was advertised to do. Our 860 is still going strong, and I hope we never have to replace it…because no way I’m letting Amazon have access to our home this way. I’m good with them knowing what I order, just don’t want them in my house (wrapping tinfoil over my head).

it's not tinfoil, man. It's being smart.

Amazon turns over Ring videos to the cops without a warrant. Yeah I know, they claim they only do it when someone's life is in danger or shit like that. Sure, I believe them *eyeroll*. When has Corporate America ever led us astray?

They listen to us with smart speakers that people willingly put in their homes.

And people will continue to buy Roomba's and not GAF that Amazon is mapping their house and using that data to sell them shit and maybe even turn THAT info over to government.

People are just going to accept all of this because - at the risk of sounding like a tinfoil-hat nutjob - they are sheep.

Don't even get me going about Ancestry.com and their ilk. I will never give any company my DNA for any reason whatsoever, no matter how noble sounding the reasons.

I can no longer edit my comment upthread so here's a new one re: my experiences working with FB.

Focus group. In the course of a discussion, one of the respondents brought up the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Although the person couldn't fully articulate what it was about, they knew it was bad.

The scoffing and contempt for this person's concerns on behalf of the FB folks was disgusting.

JCS, I've worked with folks from FB... several times. Nice folks (except for one, looking at you Melissa), very talented, but goddamn it listen to me when I tell you this... THOSE PEOPLE WILL HORK UP EVERY BIT OF DATA ON YOU THAT THEY CAN. YOUR KIDS AS WELL.

i was horrified when I found myself working on a project related to Messenger for Kids.

DO. NOT. TRUST. META.

How TF do you think they pay for all the servers and high-priced talent? A service that millions of ordinary folks use for free?

I recently had cause to start a new FB page with an entirely different handle and entirely different circle of friends. Completely separate from my OG FB acct. It was very interesting to watch the interaction. For instance I found out very quickly who in that new group was doing a search on me; those people very quickly became suggested to me as new connections on my OG account. Watching how the ads and news feed changed in my new acct as I did this and that online was also very interesting.

ANYBODY who purchases any hardware from Meta (Portal, whatever) is a bloody fool.

See Kamil Galeev's Twitter feed for a well-informed view of what's happening in Russia from an academic. Not saying he's right about everything but he makes very good points. https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

There's not ever going to be a popular uprising against Putin. That's just not how things work in Russia. For one, the deaths are disproportionately low in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the two main population centers and of course Moscow is the seat of power. That's not at all a coincidence. Putin is perfectly happy to sacrifice the lives of young men in distant areas of the vast Russian territory. Their families are too far from Moscow to do anything about it, and for decades Russians have had any notion of asserting themselves ground the fuck out of them. First by the Soviet regime, and now by Putin's government. (If anything, Russia is more dangerous than the USSR because at least the Soviet Union wasn't a one-man show.)

Cincytee nailed it. If Putin is ever brought down, it's because he's losing. I was talking to somebody last night who was worried about Putin and his nukes. I told him, look buddy: Putin is aggressive but it's calculated aggression. He's not going to invade NATO territory, we've already proven in Ukraine that NATO weaponry in capable hands can defeat Russia on the battlefield. Actually taking on NATO forces - with their superior training and strategy and tactics and morale - would be disastrous for Russia and for Putin himself.


Putin is not suicidal but if he ever came to the point that he was thinking of lobbing a nuke or two in order to avoid definitively losing in Ukraine, I'm certain that he would be removed by others who don't share his death wish.

I owned a Canon ImagePrograf 5000 for several years. Very nice printer, pro quality. Printed up to 17" wide to museum-quality archival paper.

BUT it became obsolete after about six years because Canon refused to keep the drivers up-to-date. I couldn't even download the older ones to put on an obsolete Mac that had the OS necessary to run the printer/software.

Otherwise the printer had many years of life left in it.

FU CANON YOU ARE DEAD TO ME