As someone born and raised in Russia now living in the US as a naturalized citizen I still see a lot of difference, but not going to lie, it's shrinking quite a bit faster than I'm comfortable with.
> They shipped a metric ton of new features in 1.4 and it seems relatively stable enough that it doesn't require too much hot bug fix releases.
Nonsense. They paused releases to get the rewrite out, and following the rewrite it was rather obvious they lost the ability to release production-grade software.
It would have been trivial to release patch versions with little cleanup work, but evidently the project isn't even able to put that together.
You guys should stop to hear yourselves talking about these vibecoded projects. How come they can simultaneously do major rewrites but be completely useless at refactoring and maintaining their own code?
It collects the data about your home appliances and personal devices. This data can tell a lot about your income level and spending habits. This is extremely useful for advertisers for obvious reasons.
This data is used in aggregate to decypher household penetration and refine known data about demographics and household income.
Here's an example of the sorta-end-game:
Currently they can know how many kind of "devices" are in your household and using probabilistic statistics give a decent n value of how many "devices" are in a certain zip code. Using that, your advertising can become more efficient by only buying ads in zip codes that contain certain "devices".
I say Zip code because that's what I've worked on in the past at the most granular level for Marketing Mix Modeling or MMM. You can easily venn diagram your first party data with 3rd party brokers, and you can cleanroom the whole thing to get a decent venn-diagram of the overlap.
Why tf we allow whatever protocol was used. Like, why does my phone reply to a request for its information without letting me know ? It should be all off by default.
You can block scanning by using e.g. WiFi client isolation or for LAN-connected devices using separate VLANs, etc.
The problem is that most ISP (modem+)routers are bottom of the barrel devices that do not allow users to configure such features. Even worse, some ISPs also scan the user's network and sell data to analytics companies [1]. This is a very good reason to always use your own router. If you want something with an Apple-like experience (mostly), Unifi gear is quite good. If you want something open source, then a router with something like OpenWrt or OPNsense + an access point with OpenWrt will do the job.
If the device does anything with network, other devices can likely sniff a lot of information about it with high degree of accuracy based on how they react to certain network probes. But also lot of useful protocols rely on devices explicitly announcing themselves and their capabilities, like Bonjour or Chromecast.
That's not really a good solution though. For most people, setting up devices with mDNS would be it's own kind of hell. Also, some other standards strongly rely on mDNS to even function (like Matter devices).
You need a router that allows you to configure strong policies, such as client isolation, what data can flow between VLANs, etc.
More broadly you cannot solve every with technology. The most effective route would be to simply outlaw such analytics without informed consent. This is basically what the GDPR does, but it takes a while before enough companies get fined before the industry understands. That said, the last few years, products sold in the EU are starting to get toggles to request analytics that are _off_ by default, etc.
But blocking that device at the home router cannot prevent the radio on the device to keep using the Wi-Fi bands or creating it's own access point and in both cases pollute the spectrum and slow down every other Wi-Fi device.
If the device does anything with network, other devices can likely sniff a lot of information about it with high degree of accuracy based on how they react to certain network probes.
and my point was that you can prevent this by using e.g. WiFi client isolation and isolating VLANs (while still using the 'smart' features of said device).
I am not sure how your comment is a reaction to what I said?
When I give something a "Full Disk Access" permission, I expect it to have full access to what's on my disk, including "files, mail, messages, and even (gasp) browsing history"! Who are those mysterious people who expect their browsing history to be magically excluded from something called Full fucking Disk Access?
The problem isn't people who intend to provide full disk access. It's the people who unthinkingly grant full disk access to, for instance, Codex, because the AI asked them to.
Those people simply cannot be helped. At the end of the day, you can't stop people from hurting themselves by being too credulous, not without taking away their freedom. Those are the choices: either you accept that some people are foolish and will make bad decisions, or you circumscribe their ability to make decisions. There's no third option, because any halfway measures you take (like what Apple has done with these full disk access permissions) will be mindlessly ignored by someone who is too lazy or foolish to actually think about what they are doing.
I disagree. When done right, tab management can make or break the browser. Extensions can't do all the things a native UI can. See Arc for example. Aside from amazing tab management story that made it hugely popular, it was a pretty uninspiring Chrome clone overall.
I'm currently using Zen since it's the closest thing to Arc with full MV2 support. If native Firefox with the new UI can do what Arc/Zen can do, I'll switch to it probably.
As you approach, the dashboard starts showing the mat position on the ground relative to your car and helps you align perfectly. There's a longer youtube video explaining a lot of the tech in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMQfA45LN8
This seems especially cruel in the wake of recent tech layoffs where you can find out that you're no longer employed while riding a corporate bus to work in the morning without any warnings or time to prepare.
Can you imagine living here for many years, having a rented house with all the furniture, a car, bank accounts, gym memberships, friend groups, kids enrolled in local schools, and then suddenly being thrown out of the country without even having a chance to liquidate any of it just because Meta or Amazon has just dropped another 10k people layoff and and you're unlucky to be a part of it?
Aren’t most tech companies subject to WARN act requirements of a 60-day notice period before layoffs? As I understand it, you’re technically employed during the period between the termination notice and official end of employment, even though you’re not working.
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