1. Personal Computers are personal. Inviting an outside observer into one is no different than inviting one into the bathroom. What I do in there is my business.
2. Friction. This is likely MS's attempt to slow-walk Windows into a subscription service. If nobody resisted, that walk wouldn't be slow.
If you're looking for a backpack, I can't recommend Osprey enough. They are still a independent US company with a lifetime warranty they actually stand by. I had to call their customer service just last week after I ordered the wrong size bag. I was connected to an actual human immediately, and he sent me a prepaid return label, even though it was my fault and I was fully expecting to pay for return shipping myself. I own several of their bags and have never had a single issue with any of them.
The same thing it was designed to do and has always done: create unimaginable sums of money out of thin air that it loans to the government, with interest.
I can't shake the feeling that the RAM shortage was intentionally created to serve as a sort of artificial moat by slowing or outright preventing the adoption of open weight models. Altman is playing with hundreds of billions of other people's dollars, trying to protect (in his mind) a multi-trillion dollar company. If he could spend a few billion to shut down access to the hardware people need to run competitor's products, why wouldn't he?
In my late teens, I worked as a bill collector. If I suspected an account owner was deceased, I'd call the Social Security Administration and ask them if they had a certificate of death on file. If they didn't, they'd tell me they couldn't comment. If they did, they'd say so, because dead people don't have a right to privacy.
Everyone has easy access right now. Everyone had easier access before the TikTok deal. That's the wrong direction for a free country and it's particularly alarming because the deal was forced by the government.
You should see what Google has done with the latest version of the Phone app. You used to be able to click on contacts and that would show you.. your contacts. Now it shows recent calls with a search bar for contacts. Say I want to call a friend named Dave. As soon as I start typing, search results begin populating, but none of the names it offers start with "D", they just contain "D" somewhere. It could be the middle of a last name. And I can't figure out why they'd fuck this up. There are no ads to be injected into my attempts to find a contact, so I have to wonder if this is just the beginning of a push to ruin every convenience so users will turn to Gemini for everything.
Payment information and license plate scans are combined with biometric data to build profiles on every individual. It doesn't matter what shade your skin color is.
>anyone being targeted by facial recognition by definition has to be known to law enforcement already
Or they could use the self-checkout at Walmart, or walk through a Target, or buy a hammer at Home Depot. The government buys data from a wide variety of sources, without warrants or other oversight. Yours too.
"Biometric Information
What Information Does This Include?
Facial recognition.
Where Do We Collect It From?
Via cameras at select stores, in parking lots, and at other facilities as permitted under applicable laws.
Why Do We Collect and Disclose It?
Fraud prevention, security, and asset protection.
Who Do We Disclose It To?
Service providers that process information on our behalf, such as security and fraud prevention services.
Law enforcement, public and government authorities, and other entities as we deem reasonably necessary to comply with law, support investigations, and protect the rights and property of you, us, and others.
Any successor to all or part of our business.
Advisors and consultants.
Our affiliates and subsidiaries."
Does anyone believe that the US regime, an entity that utterly ignores the needs of its masses in favor of a relative handful of lobbyists, is really going to install a representative government that exists to improve the lives of Venezuelans instead of enriching the same powers that it's beholden to?
I wouldn't say entirely. I had a client with a large company contact me on LinkedIn saying that they wanted to buy my product but no one would respond to their emails. Their system was nuking my responses until I set up DMARC reporting, and I had no indication it was happening on my end. No "failed to deliver" message and nothing in the logs, just email that vanished into the ether.
The excessive emojis were enough for me to move on. I haven't touched an OpenAI product in over a year. I've maintained an ad-free household for over a decade. OpenAI will not ever be a part of my life any more than it is now. Just like Facebook.