This could very well indicate resentment of Twitter employees, they were told to change name to X, they tried and it didn’t work, so they did nothing else.
I never understood the appeal of paid programs. 7-Zip works equally well and is free and open source software. It integrates much nicer into File Explorer as well.
I agree that 7zip is great (albeit based in Russia, so not something I’m sure I want to support at the moment), but consider for a moment that winrar licencing is primarily aimed at businesses (which is why they don’t bother locking personal users out after the trial ends), and for that money you get a certain guarantee of functionality and stability over a long period of time.
There’s absolutely no guarantees that 7zip will continue to be developed, or that it will retain it’s current features and functionality - the developer can turn it into a Minesweeper clone if they feel like it, and there’s nothing a business can do but keep using an outdated and thus potentially dangerous version that will eventually become unusable.
You also get a certain level of customer service and corporate communication between the purchasing company and the production company to help resolve issues, which may not exist at all with the alternative.
It’s also not always wise to have your business rely heavily on a tool that only sees development through volunteer work by a limited number of disparate people that may come and go, and while I don’t know how large the volunteer base is that works on 7zip (it could be just the one guy, it could be a hundred people), to a company it’ll never feel as reliable an option as relying on a tool that sees development and maintenance through a paid, full time staff at an established legal entity company with an established reputation.
And speaking for a moment to that established company bit, consider that winrar’s company is based in Berlin, within the European Union and under it’s rules and laws, which is a far better proposition from a company’s standpoint than having to legally deal with an individual guy inside the Russian Federation, especially one that hasn’t actually sold your business a product at all.
Anyway, just a few potential thoughts for why tools that do the same job might be preferred by a business, sorry it got a bit long 😅
No, it isn’t! Especially if you want to edit files inside a .zip, which that tool doesn’t seem capable to do it, nor creatingmultiple individual files… Also, if you just want to browse a package to see what it’s inside, the GUI does a piss poor job showing you the files/folders.
… You can’t edit files inside a zip file. The program’s just hiding that it’s decompressing and decompressing the whole thing every time you change something.
Zip files are usually just another wrapper around DEFLATE, and compressing each block requires knowledge of the previous block’s compression (Part of LZ77). It’s a streaming format, not a sparse format.
If you edit a text file, it actually just creates a new file because inserting text in the middle means all of the text after changes position. I’d still call that editing an existing file rather than creating a new file based on the previous one plus some edits. The second description might be more technically accurate but it’s just unnecessary technical details because it’s effectively the first description.
Even going back to the original use of edit, editors would mark up books or articles and then a new copy would need to be created with those edits. I’m having trouble thinking of any cases where edit truly means “change something in place without making a new copy of it with the changes included”. I guess small edits with pencil or whiteout can sometimes work.
Your choices are basically “rewrite the entire file” or “leave the original file in place, do an append and try and hide the old file.”
Editing old data in most streaming file formats with inline metadata is basically impossible because they compact the data as much as possible and internally refer to offsets.
Appending is trivial, editing is very hard if not downright impossible.
7zip is FOSS, GPL license. Even if the author stops others can step in. Even if nobody does and it stops being actively developed you’ll still be able to extract your archives for the foreseeable future. You can still unpack ARC files from the 80s.
No, the fact that businesses pay for it for something of that guarantee despite there being free peer-alternatives means that it is a better guarantee.
When you see businesses electing to pay for something despite free alternatives, there is likely a reason (or a number of them). I've seen free tools go from active maintaining to completely dead in a single update due to the work needed to get it back up and operating with new environment-side changes.
Just because someone was born in Russia does not make them a specific type of person. Nobody chooses where or when they are born. 7-Zip has been for ages, and if something were to happen to it then im sure one of the dozen of forks around will take the role as the “main one”. However you are right, companies desire something predictable, stable. Which is why some companies like SUSE, Red Hat, etc. Manage to sell FOSS. in fact i believe some of these distros include p7zip, and they freeze it to a specific version, security updates and bug fixes are backported.
I like WinRAR for its built-in parity functionality. You can achieve similar results with 7-Zip using PAR2, but having it built right into WinRAR with two options (add a recovery record to each archive, or create separate recovery archives (basically what PAR2 does)) is so much more convenient.
WinRAR is like what…? 30-35 bucks? That’s per user, unlimited machines, lifetime license. More than fair I’d say.
WinRar decompresses directly to destination. All other I have tried does it to like c:/tmp (can probably change that though) then copy it over, which is impractical or even impossible with really large files.
You sure about that? I’ve decompressed huge files, some time ago, using a 3.5” HDD and if it were like that, it would take much longer than needed because of that overlay you talk about.
I didn’t downvoted your post, I just made a genuine question, since I’ve never noticed that. I’m just sceptic on what you mentioned. Whenever I have some free time, I’ll try to do a deep test on that one!
Edit: No need to do a test, since I never use drag n drop (like mentioned on another comment), my test would always show the same outcome as WinRAR.
Why does drag-and-drop archive extraction from 7-Zip to Explorer use temp files?
7-Zip doesn’t know folder path of drop target. Only Windows Explorer knows exact drop target. And Windows Explorer needs files (drag >source) as decompressed files on disk. So 7-Zip extracts files from archive to temp folder and then 7-Zip notifies Windows Explorer about >paths of these temp files. Then Windows Explorer copies these files to drop target folder.
To avoid temp file usage, you can use Extract command of 7-Zip or drag-and-drop from 7-Zip to 7-Zip.
This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all. I just had a small argument with my 11 year old about how not-a-big-deal-who-cares this is, and it basically ended with us agreeing to disagree since it’ll be his problem and his kids’ problem.
And the problem is normalizing the notion that an OS doesn’t need to include a non-subscription word processor. The entire point of this move is to shift the OS Overton Window in favor of consumers accepting and expecting that features like word processors, spreadsheets, etc., should be installed separately and paid for on a subscription basis despite previous iterations of the same software being feature complete on install and purchased at a set, non-recurring fee.
WordPad hasn’t been anybody’s first choice for a word processor in years, but it was included with Windows and did the bare minimum for unsophisticated users. Now we’re entering an era in which those users will as a matter of course buy off-the-shelf computers that come pre-installed without WordPad, but rather with a trial of Office Fuck-You-Pay-Me Edition. Those users may well discover that after their first six months with their new computer (that has made Microsoft more money selling their data than they paid for it), they suddenly get a pop-up informing them that their trial is up and MS wants $99.99 to release the documents they’re holding hostage.
It’s a step backwards for consumers in general, so even for the sophisticated of us who are least likely to be personally affected by this change, there’s definitely cause for alarm.
Google Docs is free and has basically become the standard word processor for the “unsophisticated users” you’re worried about. It essentially comes with your OS because you only need a browser to use it.
it still has strings attached, its not truly “free”. heck, google won’t let it be word pad had no ties to Microsoft once it was given to you. everything else but LibreOffice and some others still have its creator’s ties.
Making things in Google Docs is fine, but last I checked Google Docs just sucked at opening anything that wasn’t already a GDoc. LibreOffice Writer sometimes has formatting errors opening Word Docs, but it does a miles better job than Google Docs.
Also, I hate how normalized everything using the cloud (aka “Someone Else’s Hard Drive”) for no reason is.
Well to be fair to Google (urgh, that hurt to write) that’s by design, and LO doing so well at it is due to investing a lot of engineering time on it. Basically MS released an open standard for office documents, but refuses to use this open standard themselves, and instead keeps using an ever evolving “transitional” version of their standard that isn’t made public.
The cost of the full Mac apps and OS is in the cost of the hardware. At least it’s one upfront cost. Surely the way windows is going can’t be popular or sustainable.
piracy theme intensifies
Office is one of the easiest things to pirate. It 1. is very popular 2. has an official mass-activation way that can be easily exploited. I suspect we may have a spy in there
Or, y'know, just use LibreOffice with the tabs setting and contextual groups if you can afford experimental features
or if you still hate the UI just use WPS instead, who cares that it's awful and from China you don't have to pay
Also, why would you even get Word or PowerPoint on macOS?? Excel I understand but these two??
Let me clarify what I meant. I am saying that we pay for the OS which includes applications on both Mac and Windows. Only Mac gives us a free suite of office applications.
I’d like to normalize the notion that an OS shouldn’t include any application software except for a browser you can use to install other things. Let people pick what they want to use and install it themselves.
I think a file manager, text editor and command prompt are pretty essential too. And when you’ve added those, where exactly is the limit where it becomes “application software”?
Better yet, the OS should just include a desktop environment with simple utilities and a package manager to install the applications you want. It will make users less likely to run into malware while searching for the programs in the web
I was talking more in the lines of taking away most of the windows bloat. If someone wants to install their own desktop environment they will most likely go down the linux path.
We’re talking about Windows here, where the desktop environment is too thoroughly intertwined with the rest of the OS to ever remove it. The kind of terminal emulator environment that Linux boots into doesn’t even exist in versions of Windows that have been sold after the early 2000s.
I think it’s worth separating the two related but distinct concepts of what is a part of the operating system itself (for example, the actual file manager) and what is pre-installed or bundled with the operating system (games like Minesweeper).
I agree with you that a rich text editor definitely shouldn’t be part of the OS. But should it be a bundled part that ships with the desktop environment, the way Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS/ChromeOS all come with photo library software, basic image editors, media players, browser, email client, etc.? These applications aren’t strictly necessary to use or maintain the system itself, so maybe they shouldn’t have some kind of privileged use of the OS’s functionality, but there’s no harm in bundling in the installation defaults.
I don’t think a rich text editor is an important enough function to necessarily be preinstalled with the OS, but I can see an argument, at least. There’s a reason why Windows shipped with one since the beginning, and why MacOS and KDE and Gnome each have a default that very few people actually use regularly.
Wasn’t there an anti trust or monopoly suite against Microsoft for bundled IE back in the day? Funny how times change, though I agree it’s not easy to get a preferred browser without one. Mean it never was overly simple but they were on so many CDs mailed out back then. Think it has to do with some IE and Windows integration too so not just cause they bundled it.
The problem with IE4 is that it was designed in such a way that it was deeply integrated into the operating system, such that it could not be uninstalled.
It's completely reasonable now to ship an operating system without a browser, as long as there's some kind of "app store" or "package manager" through which a user can install whatever browser they want (provided it's available through said store, of course).
Tbh I use Notepad way more than anything for note making.
If it needs to be formatted, OneNote is free to use and can be saved in any cloud (if there is a shortcut like OneDrive or Dropbox in the Windows explorer)
If it needs to be free and not very sophisticated, I’d look around for a markdown based editor.
If all of that fails, I will use Word.
Never used Wordpad in 15 years (of 24 years of existence) except while trying to open word but Windows suggesting Wordpad first.
i use wordpad a lot for viewing docs (loads faster, uncluttered ui). occasionally writing them... and more than once instead of notepad for a text file (on a system without a notepad alternative available) because i needed more features.
i have a few clients that use wordpad as their 'word processor', lack of spelling check be damned.
microsoft must have run out of excuses for specifically not including one in it, seeing how recent windows has spell check baked-in to the os itself. so instead of losing a few dozen sales of office home and student or 365 by making wordpad just a little bit better for those who use it, they're gonna be the assholes and take it out completely and push everyone to the damn cloud app or a 365 sub. fk 'em.
It has it’s uses. Not for me but some are definitely need it. Problem is, how much effort is it to keep it around vs how much is it used realistically.
Best way forward would be to replace it with a completely different app like Word online but as an actual app lile Word Lite or something like that.
Likely scenario, honestly. I really don’t worry about it, though. Not to brag, but it doesn’t bother me. Understand, there is a solution. X marks the spot.
(Yeah, I know, that’s kind of stupid. But it seemed funny in my head.)
I used it for my damn resume because I didn’t have word, didn’t need office. I also liked it because when friends asked me to review a document I could open word documents with it, I would do that sometimes even when I had office because WordPad opened faster and I didn’t need perfect formatting.
I think it is safe to say that your 11 year old is factually wrong lol. But it is okay that they don’t understand how bad this is because the concept of how multiple businesses have switched to subscription based models even in places we wouldn’t expect, like a monthly subscription allowing already installed hardware in your car to actually function, cause it’s just 11 year Olds don’t have a great concept of bills and money at that level yet. I say wait for their first complaint of it as an adult and then put on your carefully choreographed and practiced “I told you so” dance
Okay kidding aside I think it is absolutely wonderful this is something you didn’t just have a conversation with your young kid about but that you had to agree to disagree, you sound like a fantastic parent who actually fosters a relationship with their kid. And probably only rarely says I told you so.
I disagree. I don’t think a rich text editor should be part of the OS as it’s not there to operate the computer. An OS should be the tools to run applications and manage your computer. There are a bunch of apps which are so small that it makes sense to include them - like a calculator and text editor, but everything else should be optional.
There should be an OS out there for you which doesn’t come with a rich text editor. [If there is ever a time to mention GNU+Linux in a MS thread then now is that time.] For most people however, not including it is a needless barrier to entry.
I get where you're coming from but I think you're overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it'd be a big deal. Now it's rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.
Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.
I'm less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it's products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That's the real problem - not losing WordPad.
At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it's allowed to get away with abusing it's dominant position to force it's products on consumers.
A web browser is not a word processor no matter how much they tart it up. If the thing isn’t saving a file to my local drive that is in a common format It’s not worth putting your effort into.
So many kids are going to grow up not having the concept where data lives and what the failure modes are.
Does liber office make .docx files and export to pdf?
It does. It’s fine as a replacement for Word, but no one has an answer for Excel. LibreOffice Calc is fine for a basic spreadsheet, but Excel is in a completely different universe than Calc with anything beyond that.
To be fair though, Excel is in a completely different universe than literally any other competing product.
Sheets is capable enough for the average person but a business is always going to want to use Excel because it’s the industry standard.
I can’t remember the last time I actually needed a spreadsheet for anything other than looking at a bunch of tabular data, but I’m a programmer so I’m not the standard spreadsheet user.
JSON files that get committed to a git repo, obviously. They’re in a private repository in GitHub so that takes care of security and resiliency, two birds with one stone.
Nothing compares to excel. There are spreadsheets, and there is excel. The world runs on excel, and for a damn good reason. Also, excel runs the world, literally.
They don’t. Libre Office is maintained by a non-profit called The Document Foundation. They’re funded entirely by donations. I think they make enough to have some full time employees.
A lot of open source software is created by individuals or non-profits. The Mozilla foundation makes Firefox, for instance. They make money through donations and also Google pays them a ton of money to be the default search engine.
There are for profit companies that make or contribute to open source software. Such as Red Hat. They tend to make money by selling support for the software.
Because libre office is not compatible with many others. You can open it sure but there’s no guarantee that opening .doc or .docx will have broken formatting. Not good for those in the academia or workplace where formatting are strictly enforce.
Absolute bullshit. Microsoft moved to the Open Office document standard after they were forced to and Libre is renown for its ability to open Microsoft’s documents without issue. I have opened countless personally.
Do yourself a favour and get off the junk office suite that hasn’t received a functional update in the last 10 years that wasn’t to improve its rent charging capacity.
This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all.
I am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn’t been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they’re probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.
It’s too bad Linux isn’t more normalized. For those very simple users (and for the more sophisticated) Linux is probably much better than Windows at this point.
No ads, free software, updates can be very simple and stable, less security issues.
For those oh so super valuable virtue signal points, as if most of the services and products they use weren’t created with slave labor and run by people who’ve done far worse
Uhhh...that's not a meme, as the other guy said it's virtue signalling. I don't even know why you would fallback on it being a meme since people generally agreed with what you said.
If anything I think that makes you sound like an ass but that's just me.
Please don’t tell me you wear adidas (founded by a Nazi), or drive a Ford (made by an antisemite), or listen to Wagner, (a racist), or drive a Volkswagen, or play Minecraft, or use wix, or eat at Chick-fil-A, or…etc etc
Are you seriously complaining about different comment threads within a post? That is literally how this works. Anybody who wants to talk about the feature is welcome to. You are not restricted to one thread at a time.
Be real, you just don’t like the critique of brave.
I mean, it's more like I wanted to see more discussion about brave. It's not even like it's talking about things the CEO specifically did to the browser, it's just talking about the CEO.
And yeah I'm complaining about different threads in a post, when 3 comments are about the browser and like 15 are about the CEO.
If you have something to say negative about brave from this feature, that's cool, but I'm not seeing it.
You are spending more time than anybody discussing this. The person wrote one short comment and here you are going back and forth still. If you want to talk about the removed feature then talk about the removed feature! Nobody stopping you my dude
It makes you angry, and that’s enough. I downloaded and am using it now, it works great so far. And if it is avoided by cruel people like you then all the better
Of all the reasons to choose a browser “somebody on the Internet disagreed with me and pointed out a time sink/distraction of my own making” has to be the most utterly bizarre I’ve heard yet. I’m glad it’s working out for you though. If you’ve accidentally stumbled upon a good solution, then great.
Choosing a daily browser out of spite as they remove a privacy feature is mighty perplexing, but hey, you sure showed me.
He wasn’t fired. He voluntarily left. And thus Mozilla is left with an incompetent CEO whose only aim is to increase her paycheck year after year, despite pathetic market share results for FF. Enjoy that.
That said, nobody cares about your “friendly remainders”. We’re talking about software here, not politics.
And, to stay on topic, yes, it happened to me that Strict FP broke some website, in particular those displaying a frame with a map or similar stuff. So I’ve resorted to use “standard” FP myself.
I mean, you can grandstand all you want while you have no platforms to safely do it on. Pretty sure having working products for privacy is more important to activism than one guy being an asshole.
I'm...honestly surprised you can be on lemmy when you damn products over singular people. Just cause I know there's people who have tried to dissuade others from lemmy over the developers. And in that case the people involved are even closer to the code than a CEO would be.
If someone gets fired for being a piece of shit and then hired somewhere else it’s pretty fair to assume that company isn’t great. As they presumably knew that when they hired him and didn’t care.
It’s also the person running the company not some random employee.
I’m not a shill for Brave. It has its fair share of technical issues but it’s the less worse browser for my use case (better than FF, anyway). Your (or mine) opinion on the CEO has nothing to do with the technical issue discussed in OP’s link.
And no, what MAGA are you talking about? I’m not even 'murican. Take your meds, dude.
What is beyond my understanding is why every fucking time someone posts some relevant TECHNICAL info or question about that browser there’s always someone else, which appears to be less smart than an amoeba, that feels the need to write the same exaggerate and OT bullshit about the CEO.
Yawn… I’m tired of this shit. You people are really ridiculous. I’m going to just block you. Enjoy your cognitive dissonance and your virtue signaling.
Technology and ethics and politics are not airgapped magically distinct things. Pretending that they are is a strategic political choice you are actively making.
Ok. I’m a bad person because I enjoy using a given browser. I get that.
This is a straw man argument; no one said you’re a bad person for using a certain browser.
nobody cares about your “friendly remainders”. We’re talking about software here, not politics.
This is what they are criticising you about. You could be using Edge or Chrome, it wouldn’t matter here, that wouldn’t make you a bad person. The point is that pretending there is no connection when there is clearly a huge relevance here is massive.
Oh, I know someone who adds the word “free” to various search words like “free pdf reader” or “free flash player” (happened a very long time ago). He’s also the kind of person who I can imagine having a bunch of viruses and malware on his computer.
It’s still my favorite download manager on Windows. It often downloads file significantly faster than the download manager built into browsers. Luckily I never installed it on Linux, since I have a habit of only installing from package managers.
just grabbed a gig file - it would take about 8 minutes with a standard download in Firefox. Use a manager or axel and it will be 30 seconds. Then again speed isnt everything, its also nice to be able to have auto retry and completion.
FDM does some clever things to boost download speeds. It splits up a download into different chuncks, and somehow downloads them concurrently. It makes a big difference for large files (for example, Linux ISOs).
It’s interesting to me people still download things in that fashion. What are you downloading?
I occasionally download something from a web server, but not enough to care about using a download manager that might make it marginally faster. Most larger files I’m downloading are either TV shows and movies from torrents and usenet, or games on steam. All of which will easily saturate a 1Gbps connection.
And via a website too. That’s like pushing a car. One of the main strengths of Linux are open repositories, maintained by reputable sources and checked by thousands of reputable people. Packages are checksummed and therefore unable to be switched by malicious parties. Even the AUR is arguably a safer and more regulated source. And it’s actually in there.
Gotta admit, it was me. I’ve only used a computer for short time.
I’ve got my first laptop 3 years ago, and that broke after just 2 months. And anyway, with AMD Athlon 64 it greatly struggled with a browser. So really I only started seriously using computer at the start of 2021, when I got another, usable laptop. And that’s when I downloaded freedownloadmanager.deb. Thankfully, I didn’t get that redirect, so it was a legitimate file.
My internet connection is not that reliable, and when I download big files that are not torrents (say >1000 MB) and the download is interrupted because of internet disconnect, Firefox often has trouble getting back to it while FDM doesn’t.
FDM also lets me set download speed limits, which means I can still browse the internet while downloading.
It’s not my main tool for downloading stuff, but it has its uses.
I’m not mad, but I will say I underestimated how much worse it is when it isn’t curating to me. Yeah, I’d rather not have the bad suggestions, but good lord the default YouTube suggestions are nauseatingly bad.
I haven’t paid any attention to any channels but the ones I was already subscribed to the last couple years or so (mostly watching on NewPipe and Grayjay), and whenever I look at yt on my desktop where I’m not logged in, it’s just this cesspool of clickbait/ragebait and I’m like… people watch this shit? And they enjoy it, apparently?
For anyone who wants to stay logged out of YouTube, but wants to see content they follow, I recommend the pocket tube extension for Firefox… or Chrome if you really have to… It lets you create subscription groups so you can see exactly the content you want when you want it.
I’m sure it exists outside the sphere of my knowledge, but this saga made me wonder if there’s some sort of Git/Bay-type site for software developed in the public interest, but is otherwise belligerent to corporate pressure.
Some people are saying this is good, but Microsoft recently changed my default search engine to bing “In case it was accidentally changed or changed by another program”. I have zero faith they won’t abuse this, they are becoming ever increasingly pushy about using edge and switching to bing.
Like the USSR, but somehow shittier, and expensive. And Theres human piss and shit on the streets because we don’t let the poor sleep in abandoned buildings.
BS like this has made it impossible to maintain a consistent experience for my parents who aren’t super tech savvy. It’s so frustrating helping them over the phone for hours only to realise that windows just on a whim changed major settings without any user interactions. Changed theirs OS to Debian now. Much better.
Seriously. Windows has become garbage enough that 20 years ago Linux is the better OS. Even though 20 years ago windows (well, let’s say 15) was better than modern Linux is.
I would guess probably not soon. Windows still needs to be able to comply with many industries needs for compliance (ITAR, HIPAA, Financial, etc etc.) If they remove the ability to control this, they cut themselves out of their largest profit area (corporate licensing).
Probably. They’ve managed use throughput using bots, but if the government collapsed the bit farms would stop receiving funding, and the entire project would either wither away or be wiped away by a new state trying to replace the instruments of the old.
It’s a nonsensical question, there are no communists that regularly get called a tankie who consider Russia communist. The tiny handful of instances of children that do not know better really don’t count.
People are confusing pro-china and pro-russia users as “pro-communists” even though they don’t ever mention communism and only comment things that benefit the dictators running these two governments.
Huh? The comment I replied to is about disinfo and hate in online media, Lemmy is online media. I was making a joke about the content I see regularly, and clearly it landed perfectly.
Is there a way to keep the Lemmy homepage set to my subscriptions rather than the default for the instance? I have to manually change it to the subscribed tab every time I open Lemmy
Alternatively, if you like it to be set to your subscriptions and sorted by ‘Hot’ just set those settings up and then create a bookmark and it will always take you back to the page with current content and your selected settings.
Lemmygrad.ml, I assume? I dunno if it’s “propaganda,” though, mainly because I haven’t really seen much from that instance. It isn’t defederated or anything; it just apparently isn’t popular enough to show up in Active/Hot/Top.
I see a lot of communism good/capitalism bad meme content in lemmy.ml in general. Now I’m really not against communism and I absolutely see the negative effects of western society’s brand of unregulated late stage capitalism, but political meme content in general is just entirely devoid of all nuance to the point where people are seriously dropping silly statements like “capitalism is the sole contributor to climate change”, as if if you could turn off capitalism climate change would just stop lol. It’s straight up propaganda.
That and conveniently ignoring any negatives involving China/Russia.
There are a few users on Lemmy.ml who I see all over the place. Half their posts will just be funny “lol capitalism sucks, amirite?” memes and the other half will be “Look at how China is ushering the world into a golden age of social and economic progress” or “When will the west acknowledge Ukraine’s Nazi problem?”
Agreed, seems like “capitalism” has become analogous with “greed”, which I mean, they sort of go hand in hand, but that doesn’t mean greed doesn’t exist without capitalism.
I think people also conflate social democracy with socialism, and/or communism.
And communism with Stalins dictatorship (and Xi etc etc).
The ideas behind the ideologies are all interesting but only democracy have proven “not horribly killing a large part of the population and a large part of the neighbour population” like all the time
So for me anyways, it’s full democracy, then tack on socialism (for example).
I think the discussion about democracy is also largely non present, I mean how fun is it if other people just decide what they want and you can like object every X Years?
there’s also iran, I wouldn’t be surprised if north korea and china also have bot farms, and then even in america evangelical christians fund shady hate operations around the world too
its well known china has an enormous online presence set around spreading misinformation, and of course the worlds best ‘whataboutisms’ you are ever likely to see
You can see them all over the lemmy.ml worldnews community talking about how Ukranians dying needlessly isn’t anybody else’s concern and any aid to them will immediately mean nuclear annihilation of the entire world.
As I recall there was a period a couple years back where Russia was cut off from the greater internet and a lot of interesting things got quieter, including r/conservative on Reddit.
That partially already happened at the start of the war. There was a massive "brain drain" among the higher educated part of society, which did include a bunch of hackers. Why live inside russia these days when you can move elsewhere and get paid better?
“Flipper Zero can’t be used to hijack any car, specifically the ones produced after the 1990s, since their security systems have rolling codes,” Flipper Devices COO Alex Kulagin told BleepingComputer.
"Also, it’d require actively blocking the signal from the owner to catch the original signal, which Flipper Zero’s hardware is incapable of doing.
Just politicians trying to appear to be doing something so they can keep their jobs.
Yes, but even if the base model hardware is incapable of doing something, someone savvy enough could modify it. It’s the same logic they use to ban AR-15s in some states in the US. By default, all civilian ARs are built to fire in semi-auto only, BUT, a knowledgeable individual can make it fire in full auto if they drill a hole in the lower receiver in just the right spot.
Edit: Okay, I’m getting roasted for pointing out that no system is 100% secure against malicious actors? Perhaps you’re missing my point that I disagree with banning Flipper Zero and fully believe it’s Canadian politicians looking like they’re doing something, regardless of whether or not it will actually work.
Are people downvoting this because you made a fair comparison between something they like (flipper) and something they don’t (guns)? Like are you being downvoted out of cognitive dissonance?
Good point in general, but, what they’re specifically talking about here (rolling codes), perhaps what they should have said is that no one can (feasibly) do it, not just that their hardware isn’t capable.
Edit: Oh, for the blocking signal, that part might be functionality that could be added, I see what I think you’re saying there. Still, that would be a step towards it, but it would still require serious hardware to crack a private key, as I understand.
These companies should be forced to pay big money to each and every person affected by these breaches. Not like $120. Like $10,000 per. Teach them real lessons
Instantly makes ransomware [edit 2: my brain was being dumb, I didn’t mean literally ransomware, I meant hackers blackmailing companies with the threat of releasing/selling stolen data] far more profitable.
Edit: And heavily discourages self-reporting. There’s a Schneier quote I like: “You can’t defend. You can’t prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.”
Absolutely. But the penalty does modify the cost-benefit analysis. If a hacker demands $5m or else they will release stolen data, you might be more inclined to YOLO the 5 mil on the 1% chance they’re an honest hacker if the penalty for the breach is $50bn.
The breach here is pretty minor, in my book. Name, address, specifics of computer purchased. The name and address is pretty much available and linked already. The computer isn’t, but doesn’t seem that abusable. Maybe it could help someone locate more-expensive, newer computers for theft, but I don’t see a whole lot of potential room for abuse.
afaict only if a specific hardware vulnerability was found and they cross-linked it with an online account or other network info to try and exploit it.
Or, I guess you could just assume Windows and go with one of the many zero-days that happen there. The trick is still crosslinking them tho. Presumably google has the wifi info.
It's only minor if the data points in this breach are used by themselves.
Once you aggregate this with other data breaches, you could end up with a much bigger capability to target anyone in this breach.
I do see potential room for abuse. Let say someone has the list and contact the members of the list saying that they are from Dell and it is about the computer they purchased. They have all details, spec, address, etc so it believable. Then they tell them to buy some “antivirus” or install some “hot fix” etc. Scammers are already doing this, but it is less convincing.
Exactly, a lot data exfil’d is used to enrich other sources. All data loss should be treated as a catastrophic failure of security controls. Corporate victims should pay for their customers potential loss of identity and privacy as a preemptive action, even if the data in of itself may be considered low risk. If compliance with this is difficult then executives should be forced under law to post all of their personal info into Wikipedia with audio samples of their voice, full genome mapping and mugshots. Fuck these companies and their profits over people attitude.
Even $120 would be amazing. I just got an email that said too bad. I just bought a monitor cause that’s where they sold it. Idk why they have to save my info. I just want to pay for the product. If it was up to me, they would delete all my info immediately. They only need to record when the serial number was sold anyway.
In the case of this breach, I’d be happy with a $10 payout, the consequences for me are actually pretty low here. That being said, I think we’d be lucky if Dell had to pay more than $0.50 per person, and that money will probably go to a lawyer’s fees, not me.
I agree. Even at $120 each. 120 times tens of millions is serious fucking cash. We need to have a couple of big companies go bankrupt over this shit. Then maybe they will start taking it seriously. Perhaps at that point maintaining personal data on people will be seen as a liability rather than an asset. And that’s what we really need.
Yup. We need more of the corporate death penalty. And when corporations are so big that ‘killing’ them would harm the economy, I argue we’re back to too big to fail. Maybe the answer is giant fines, and if the company can’t pay, wipe out the largest shareholders and then resell the stock over time. Make people’s personal information a giant hot potato that nobody wants to be holding.
Disagree. Breaking the corporate veil would have a whole lot of unintended consequences and would basically kill investment as a concept. I agree we need to do more about corporations that violate the law with impunity and get wrist slaps. I don’t think that’s it.
Because it would greatly increase the cost and risk of investment. Think not just for billionaires, but for anybody. Imagine somebody buys a couple tens of thousands of dollars of a stock as part of their retirement, that company does something bad, and now not only do they lose their investment but they lose the rest of their retirement also.
I am all for wiping out shareholders, especially big ones, when a company does something super stupid. There should be an incentive for shareholders to hold companies they invest in accountable.
But suggesting that company owners become personally liable for the actions of those companies, especially when those equity owners have little or no control over the decisions of the company, that is a recipe for disaster.
Isn’t that the whole point of insurance? They assess the risk of that liability and average it out over time so you just pay a little bit of your return.
Oh I’m sure there would be insurance for that, but it would be expensive. It would dramatically reduce the amount of overall investment in the nation. That is a very bad thing, it would slow down the rate of our economy and innovation. Don’t get me wrong, the current setup where companies treat your data like an asset and then lose it and nothing happens is broken. There need to be stiff penalties for it. Corporate death penalty even, especially with an ending of all too big to fail. I’m talking penalties scary to the point that whatever profit could be made from your personal information isn’t worth the risk of having it, companies are scared to collect info. This would especially be true if there is negligence involved, like when companies put their databases on open S3 buckets. Companies should be scared shitless of that. But destroying our system of investment is not the answer.
The cost of that insurance doesn’t just disappear - today it’s paid by ordinary folks left holding the bill. A company that can’t afford to pay for its expected damages is doing more harm than help to the economy.
This isn’t just an answer to leaked databases. Companies can deliver profits when things go well, and then disappear after they ruin thousands of people’s lives.
If a company ruins people’s lives, I’m okay with them disappearing and all their investors losing their shirts.
I agree that a company that can’t afford to pay for the damage it is causing is doing more harm than help and should go away.
What I think we can both absolutely agree on, is that the current system where companies forcibly collect all kinds of information on people, don’t take security seriously, get breached, and the only punishment that happens is a few million dollars fine they can just write a check for and everyone affected gets a year of credit monitoring, is a broken system. In many of these breaches, they happen because the data was stored so poorly one could make a serious argument for gross negligence. When a company does this and the punishment is a wrist slap, I have a problem with that. It becomes a cost of doing business, not something company management is actually afraid of.
Also, as somebody who actually works in IT, I can tell you cyber insurance is a thing. For small businesses it covers this sort of breach. When you sign up for it they send you a whole questionnaire that asks about your security practices. It’s all boilerplate bullshit. Real cybersecurity involves an insane amount of complexity and required understanding at every level, and the insurance questionnaire is like do you use multi-factor authentication for your email y/n?. If you check no you get a higher insurance premium.
Perhaps a solution would be a mandatory payment of $250 per person made directly to that person if their information is breached. And if the company fails to report it within 60 days, it triples. If the company intentionally conceals it, it quadruples. And should the company go bankrupt and liquidate, these payments to users will be considered the primary creditor and take priority over all others. So no more of this ‘$10 discount on your next purchase and a year of credit monitoring’ class action settlements, put some real fucking teeth in a law. People would get some real compensation. And personal information would no longer be seen as a $20/person asset but rather as a potentially destroy the company liability.
recollecting from memory: Early in the war, russian news reported they busted a nazi hideout in the occupied donbass region. The report was accompanied by a picture of swastika flags, nazi tshirts, 3 copies of the “Sims 3” game and a document signed with “Illegible”. All layed out neatly on a bed.
Apparently, the instructions for staging the photo was to include Nazi paraphenalia, 3 SIM Cards and a document with an illegible signature. And someone didn’t read the instructions properly (or took them too literal), and instead used 3 copies of Sims 3, as well as a document signed with the name “illegible”
Iirc the illegible signature part was debunked as it was a reference to some nazi group whose signature was “illegible” (don’t quote me on that, i’m recollecting from memory). But the Sims 3 cards was at some NotTheOnion levels of ridiculousness.
There was a chap on here the other day who said they hate 2fa and don’t need it because they use passwords that are 50 characters and generated by the password manager.
This is a perfect example of why you should always activate it when possible.
This isn’t necessarily true. If you are using an identity provider, you can still perform a password reset on GitLab and set a password there, bypassing your 2FA on GitHub. You usually shouldnt rely on IdP 2FA unless the destination system enforces IdP signin every time. There is a group setting in GitLab that does that, but it will only apply for that group.
Alot of people don’t like Microsoft, but they’re pushing for zero password authentication for a reason. Passwords are getting really insecure really fast.
I don’t know about windows specifically, but for outlook they’re pushing their authenticator app (you can use any) and SMS or email one time links. I think it works really well, and almost all attempts to access my account have stopped tbh, they can’t phish for my password if I don’t have a password.
Not entirely, but now MS, and a lot of other companies, are pushing passkeys. I still prefer password + hardware 2fa but it’s safer than people reusing the same password everywhere.
I am a fan of passkeys. Particularly because they essentially function as hardware 2fa, except they’re the only factor, which isn’t as big of a problem because it’s not something you can steal in a service breach like passwords. I’ve also noticed that even when using passkeys, most sites let you force a TOTP code as well anyway.
Very true, the big issue with them is a lot of popular hardware keys, including the yubikeys that I have, are limited to the number passkeys they can store (yubikey is 25 unique). Luckily password managers are starting to support them, but now you’re back to having a strong password + hardware 2FA to store those passkeys anyway.
I do like TOTP or just hardware 2FA as a backup for my passkeys. What I really can’t stand is sties that only offer SMS as 2FA, it makes me more angry than it probably should.
I just use their Authenticator app out of convenience, I get a notification when I login through it and it asks me to input the correct number given by the app, a 2 digit number.
This vulnerability has nothing to do with password strength or security and everything to do with password reset security, i.e. email and improper handling of parameters to that reset API call.
Passkeys are interesting and potentially quite strong but they’re going to have to fall back to the same old reset mechanism if you e.g. drop your passkey device (phone) into a lake.
Yeah, good luck with that. You can tell someone “if you lose this token, all data are unrecoverable”, they’ll reply with “ok, got it!” and about two and a half second later call you saying “Hey I lost my token can you recover my data?”.
Hence the “hard lesson” part. A lot of us tech-focused people learned the same lesson with our document backup systems. You lose some important documents, then you realize you really should backup your stuff. All I hope is these people learn the lesson earlier in life before the consequences become more and more severe.
One of the biggest issues with 2fa is that normally it’s either an easily spoofable phone/email or an app locked to a device.
This is why I use a password manager (pass) that is synced across all of my devices (via a private self hosted git for version control) that I can send 2fa QR codes to cameraless devices via screenshots using zbarimg and have every device capable of 2fa verification with the pass-otp extension.
I know this setup is a bit complicated as just dealing with git or importing a gpg key would give most people I know sense of existential dread. I am curious to see what others use for similar functionality.
I’m just using my password manager in place of the authenticator app.
So rather than using an app like Google authenticator or Authy to see what the new random sequence is for the MFA, my password manager stores that QR as a string and will display the same random sequence that a normal MFA app would.
They key difference is that my MFA is synced across any device that I have configured my password manager on using the same cryptographic keys and version control history.
So if my phone is dead, lost, or stolen, I can still access my banking account via MFA as normal.
I suppose it brings up the idea of what a “factor” is in how it’s used for MFA. If a factor is supposed to be a different device, a different app on the same device as your password manager, or just a different passphrase that’s constantly changing.
I see. IIRC from school, “factor” actually has a definition - it’s either something you have (keycard, phone), something you are (biometrics) or something you know (password).
For authentication to be truly an effective MFA, it would have to require at least two of those factors. And that’s also why I.e email isn’t really a MFA.
So, I guess it boils down to where are you storing your passwords. If they are also in the password manager, then, its only 1FA, because knowing your password manager password is enough to defeat it. (Or, if someone finds a zeroday in the pass manager).
It’s still two separate passwords so I think it qualifies as 2 factors.
But yes the password manager has one gpg key which only has one passphrase used to decrypt the passwords saved in the password manager. So if that was compromised then so would all passwords
I see a lot of people around me resetting passwords of services they rarely use because they forgot what password they used and don’t have a password manager (or not synced one). And I don’t understand why all services don’t propose to generate a one time link to log in instead of changing passwords (a few services do propose it already)
Passwords are useless for all users using the same password for every account they have, and i’m sure it’s a majority of users.
The idea with passkeys though is that it’s like a dongle, not just your phone number. It’s not an SMS code or link, it uses the cryptography hardware of your phone to authenticate. But the question of “what happens if I lose my phone” still persists.
"5 ways to hack 2FA" is pretty click-baity though. All of those attacks are either not exclusively related to 2FA or could target another component. If you can just bypass security altogether, instead of questioning 2FA, you should consider ditching that service/site.
All except point 1, that is. But everyone should know by now that 2FA by SMS is insecure.
If any appliance manufacturer says that accessing your own appliance (that you own) outside their software ecosystem is financially “damaging” to them, they might as well be saying “Hey, just so you know, we’re collecting and selling your data.” If you have already purchased the appliance and their software is free, there is absolutely no other way that using a 3rd-party application could damage their bottom line.
Thanks, Haier, for letting me know never to purchase your products.
The project was accessing Haiers cloud API, not just your appliance. Not that that it makes this any less shitty, but there is a difference. They aren’t saying you aren’t allowed to access a product you own, they are saying you aren’t allowed to access their servers.
Upgrade to the ultra deluxe ad free premium plus platinum subscription for an additional $3.99 per month and you can unlock the remote wipe package too!
I’m nostalgic for the day when Google was the good company. A few years before “alphabet” you could see the change coming and since “alphabet” they are worse every year.
In the future your browser will be able to remotely attest that you have no viable security solution to block the infection and no working backups as a condition for being served these malicious ads, increasing the ad value since they can now be more precisely targeted
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