• 0 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: September 12th, 2023
  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafetoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying
    5·
    11 days ago

    FAANGs = Facebook, Amazon, Apple, NVidia, Google - ie the big tech companies - technically it’s kinda out of date because Nvidia isn’t doing much (any ?) creepy shit whereas Palantir are the worst. However the acronym was actually an investing one as short hand for high capital gain tech stocks

    TLAs are “Three Letter Acronyms” - a short hand way of referring to the govt dept’s who tend to use TLAs - CIA, FBI, NSA, MI6, MI5, BND, etc.

    Technically a lot of them are FLA (four letter acronyms) CIA equivalents are CSIS for Canada - ASIO for Australia, DGSE for France and GCHQ is the UK equivalent to NSA for example

  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafetoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying
    57·
    11 days ago

    Using a VPN may subject you to NSA spying.

    NOT using a VPN WILL subject you to NSA spying.

    Might as well make their job harder.

    Edit to add

    Everyone on the internet in any country should assume their local spy squad is spying on them plus the Americans & the Chinese. You’ll rarely be wrong anywhere in the world, and they have a lot of backdoors via network hardware (among other ways).

    You can potentially have privacy from the FAANGS if you are careful. TLAs not so much.

  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafetoTechnology@lemmy.world•Right to Repair Gains Traction as John Deere Faces TrialEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    But help me understand how it’s possible that our “free market” is enabling this, unless it’s just a controlled market charading as free?

    • There are very few markets in the US that actually achieve Adam Smith’s “perfect market” (perfect competition)

    • The more expensive the individual item, the harder it is for there to be competition (costs of standing up factories, distribution and support, low volumes of sales etc), it’s extremely expensive to set up in opposition to John Deere

    • There are other market statuses other than “controlled” and “free” - the vast majority of US markets are Oligopolies (few sellers many buyers). Processed / packaged foods for example - 99% of market volume is done by a couple of players.

    • A century ago there were many farm machinery manufacturers - the individual machines were less expensive in real terms, and the complexity much lower. A virtual monopoly (one very large and a few smaller players) has formed through insufficient regulation to protect competition - the big ones gobble up the small and competition gradually dwindles

  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafetoTechnology@lemmy.world•Microsoft’s Recall feature is still threat to privacy despite recent tweaksEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    Setting aside the fact that legally a corporation actually is a person, there is such a thing as a corporate culture, and a corporate ethos.

    Let’s start with an old microsoft ethos: embrace extend extinguish

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

    Now don’t try to tell me I made it up, there’s enough evidence for it to have its own wiki page.

    Similarly there’s FUD an approach they most certainly didnt invent but did an excellent job of weaponising to a fine art.

    And so on and so forth. Those of us who have been around a while know the true shape of it, and that leopard has never changed its spots.

    I got my MCSE on NT4 back when CNE was much more respected. I still work in IT so yes I too use both windows & linux, that doesn’t stop me having a clear eyed view of them.

    They’re also not the worst by a long chalk, google, meta, palantir are all far less principled and far more detrimental to society.

    M$ still arent good though, and its woven into their culture