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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: September 7th, 2024

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  • The best solution right now may be ā€œbuy a Macbook and learn MacOSā€, which is so depressing.

    Depends on whether you include ā€œmy personal data is sent to the manufacturer of the computer against my wishesā€ in your threat modelā€¦ Apple does many good things for security, and I wish PC hardware makers would take security-related things even just nearly as seriously as them. But I canā€™t trust Apple anymore either.

    (Explanation: the whole iCloud syncing stuff is such a buggy mess. I donā€™t want it, I donā€™t need it, so I want it off. But I guess Apple just doesnā€™t test enough how well it works when you turn it off, maybe they canā€™t imagine someone not wanting it. The problem is, iCloud sync settings donā€™t stay off. Settings randomly turn themselves back on, e.g. during OS updates, and upload data before you even notice it. Iā€™m not claiming thatā€™s intentional, I assume itā€™s just bugs. But Iā€™ve observed such bugs again and again in the past 9 years, and Iā€™ve had enough. Still have a Macbook around, but I use it very rarely these days, only when I need some piece of software on MacOS that has no suitable Linux equivalent.)

    While a PC+Linux setup can avoid the specific issue of ā€œdonā€™t randomly upload my data somewhereā€, the setup of it all can be a mess, as you say. And then security is still limited by buggy hardware and BIOS/firmware that is frequently full of security holes. The state of computers is depressing indeed (in so many ways, security just being one of them)ā€¦













  • So much wrong with thisā€¦

    In a way, it reminds me of the wave of entirely fixed/premade loop-based music making tools from years ago. Where you just drag and drop a number of pre-made loops from a library onto some tracks, and then the software automatically makes them fit together musically and thatā€™s it, no further skill or effort required. I always found that fun to play around with for an evening or two, but then it quickly got boring. Because the more you optimize away the creative process, the less interesting it becomes.

    Now the AI bros have made it even more streamlined, which means itā€™s even more boring. Great. Also, they appear to think that they are the first people to ever have the idea ā€œletā€™s make music making simpleā€. Not surprising they believe that, because a fundamental tech bro belief is that history is never interesting and can never teach anything, so they never even look at it.