I often disable my adblocker on sites of smaller and more independent news companies, if they don’t run Google ads (I’ve heard them getting dropped in countries like Hungary and Russia for obvious reasons).
They don’t, because it would be an insane proposition. The point of the meme is to say that asking to disable my ad blocker is like asking me to disable my antivirus.
Ad companies don’t or very poorly vet their submissions, and it’s incredibly easy for malicious actors to slip hostile code in through ads. Ad blockers prevent that and are a first line of defense.
A good Adblock is a digital equivalent of an armored car. You can go everywhere, comfortably. Visit the most terrible sites or places. All this time protected from the bullets of capitalism.
The adblock stops malware, makes my browser perform better, and stops things from disrupting me. The most common result of anti-virus the complete opposite of each of those 3.
simple, don’t use an antivirus, stick to windows defender (before the linux crowd comes in yes I know there are basically no viruses threatening you chill), your own brain, and also not an admin account!
Don’t download shady shit, and if your PC asks you for some mysterious admin permission - the answer is “no”. If something does slip through windows defender will most likely handle it no problem!
Linux gets viruses too (see recent xz-utils vulnerability that almost got into production environments) and its kind of a shame that corporate antivirus software like Norton and McAfee end up ruining the reputation of antiviruses. In theory the idea of having a software that can scan for common viruses is a great way to increase security, even if it shouldn’t replace common sense. I’m not too sure if there are any good FOSS antiviruses, but if there aren’t there should be.
we’ll never be a 100% safe, no matter what OS we use. We can’t defend ourselves against backdoors and newly abused vulnerabilities in any meaningful way
That’s partially my point. You can never be 100% safe, but there’s a lot you can do to increase your safety besides just relying on intuition (edit: because intuition is usually the weakest link, see social engineering/phishing tactics). Anti viruses (when they aren’t just bloatware) are part of that.
Your second point about not meaningfully defending against backdoors and vulnerabilities is kind of against the point. You can totally defend against backdoors by not giving apps admin privileges, limiting network access, etc. so that damage can be limited even if an exploit happens. Then, if some backdoor or exploit is discovered, it’s only as dangerous as the permissions you give that app.
I used to have it on my Raspberry Pi to test some shady files. Besides of the Linux thing, they’d also need to get around the fact I was running things on AArch64, which is a rare combination. Maybe Windows on AArch64 would have been an even safer choice.
I cannot express how much I loathe antivirus software. Mostly it’s been because it has been nothing but trouble in my work environment, without ever catching anything, for over twenty years. It’s the modern corporate snake oil.
Good for you. If your company is regularly the target of industrial espionage and your coworkers have a hard time detecting phishing mails, you’re happy to have a good AV suite as a further security measure.
Yes, I’m well aware security is a team sport. All it takes is one person to make a mistake, once. I still remember that the Iloveyou virus penetrated our network back when I was in university, through the Unix lecturer…
Still fucking annoying though.
Although I do realise most of my annoyance comes from shitty configuration and poor human decisions. Oh, let’s run a full deep scan at 15:00 everywhere Friday. It’s not like the students will need to use those machines during their Comp. Science lab, right?
Back in the days it was a regular feature of pirated software, and worst part is, in many cases it was legit as some antiviruses like Kaspersky seemingly went for full on crusade against piracy
To take that a step further, it hates key server emulators for Microsoft products more. To the point that AutoKMS and the like are listed multiple times and periodically get relisted as something new so that even if you’ve flagged it as being allowed it will still eventually get re-blocked in the future.
That’s not advertising, that’s prosthelytizing. Advertising has to be for goods and services. And just telling someone about something isn’t advertising. It’s when you spend money or resources to bring attention to that thing that it counts as advertising. People keep saying that putting a sign on your building stating the company name is advertising. It’s not.
Yes, this isn’t advertising. It’s proselytizing. Advertising has to be for goods and services and it has to be explicit. Me telling you about the company I work for isn’t advertising.
With that, you could sue Google and other companies pushing anti-adblocker tech for discrimination, just bring up all the cases when the supreme court sided with cristofascists to oppress other people.
When apps have code obfuscation in use, injects into dlls, and has detection for when running in a vm when it has no business doing any of these things then yes I think I can complain to the devs about it.
Why is the antivirus software detecting my Cortex-M3 binaries as dangerous to an amd64 computer? Happens on Windows 7 through Windows 10, across 3 different employers.
And how do I submit my builds to Virus Total if they’re getting deleted as soon as they come out of the linker?
Antivirus programs are way too inaccurate to be used authoritatively, especially for developers. It’s not uncommon that some virus will use a well-known open source library or packaging tool, and then the antivirus decides that any binary with that same library or stub from that packaging tool must also be a virus. When your program depends on it, if you can’t turn the AV off or make an exception, you’re just fucked. Also, programming is an iterative process. Make a small change, test, repeat. Requiring that developers upload and wait for a scan from some third party for software that they compiled locally and have no intent to distribute is a giant waste of everybody’s time, especially the developer’s. It’s a huge drag on productivity for the sake of bureaucracy.
I swear I’m about done with YT. The ads are long, overabundant, irrelevant, and timed specifically to fuck with people in the middle of specific segments of content. I mean, I keep getting ads for Oppenheimer for the past four days. I already own Oppenheimer - and Google knows this. My Google account is linked to my MoviesAnywhere account, they have this information. What is the point of “targeted” advertisements if they net the advertiser zero value? Is Google just messing with users trying to block their ads at this point?
Half the point of ads these days isn’t to advertise to you, it’s to piss you off enough to upgrade to a paid plan. If they happen to also make money from the adverts, then that’s just an added bonus.
I’ll never pay. I’ve spent so much money of failed Google products at this point they owe me YT premium for life. If they make bypassing ads impossible I’ll just stop watching.
I feel the same. I don’t do ads. If a product doesn’t have an ad-free product that I’m willing to pay for, then that product doesn’t exist for me. Similarly, if a paid product decides to introduce ads (I’m looking at you Amazon) I’m immediately cancelling.
You’re not kidding. My girlfriend started talking about this until I straight up told her to stop. She already has ublock on pc she knows there’s a way, she’s just willing to pay to not have ads on her YouTube TV app because they’re frustrating.
Eh I get what you mean even if it does sound sorta mean and I don’t entirely disagree. I would just call it ignorance, she wasn’t aware that you could get cracked apps for tvs or that just hooking up your pc to the TV is an easier alternative to all of that. Now she knows and she’s all about it.
Were planning to move in together soonish and I told her I would handle all the techside of stuff and that she can just let me know what she wants and I’ll do it.
Smarttube works well on my android TV. Comes with adblock and sponsorblock enabled. I’d bet my TV is spying on me in some way, so yeah, PC and TV disconnected from the Internet would probably be better.
She has a roku TV which I’ve read a bit about cracking but it sounds sorta annoying. Once we move in I’m planning to get a projector and hook it up to a mini pc with a wireless small mouse and keyboard. We mostly use it for movie nights anyways.
That is essentially the existence of marketers in general.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve bought a product because a commercial was successful in getting me to. Every commercial anymore is just to annoy. Annoy you with things you obviously wouldn’t want to buy. Annoy you with the knowledge that instead of paying the people running the company fairer wages, they invest millions into making said stupid commercial. As well as not improving the product or service in any conceivable way. That’s all it is.
I was watching a video on a timeline of events with Puff Daddy and it hit this one part that went something like, “the young man said that Diddy wanted to play with his anus. Which reminds me of our sponsor, the law offices of so and so. Life is unpredictable and you or your loved ones could get molested too. If that happens you’ll need legal representation! Our sponsor will represent you…”.
I don’t need “grounds” for ad blocking, and neither do you. My property rights say that I’m entitled to modify the computation my system is doing as I see fit.
I swear I will just stick with paperback books for all entertainment if they continue to further infect my current forms of entertainment. Lets seem them try to insert an unskippable ad into a paperback book.
I will stick to emulating 30 year old video game consoles and fan reimplementations like OpenMW and OpenRCT2. I am driven by pure spite. They will never get me!
We already have ad books. They’re called magazines, just give it a couple more years and regular books will be filled with ads too. I’ve already encountered some regular books that have an insert talking about another book from the same creator. Sure it doesn’t seem bad now but soon it’ll be an insert about a friend of the creator, then about the same company that did this book, then in similar genres, then more inserts about products that might make your book reading experience better, etc etc.
Reminds me, the box a pet rock came in that my brother gave me this last Christmas has the frigging minions logo on it. It says ‘as seen on [minions eye logo]’.
I’ve already encountered some regular books that have an insert talking about another book from the same creator.
Oh, those? We call those reading snacks. You just rip them out and dip them in a blend of extra virgin olive oil and nicely reduced balsamic vinaigrette. Perfect pairing with a nice drama or thriller.
Jokes on you, I pirate my books. No idea if the book youtubers I watched were paid but their sensibilities are similar to mine and so far they haven’t lead me astray. I like supporting my book writers directly instead of giving money to corpos whenever possible.
Property rights are those rights, and we already have them. The issue is that the copyright cartel is trying to take them away from us. They are colonizing our devices with DRM + the DMCA anti-circumvention clause in an attempt to reduce us to techno-serfdom.
Ad-blocking, Free Software, Right to Repair (also a right we already have, not a new one we need), “you will own nothing and be happy” propaganda , etc. are all just different aspects of the same issue: the corporate war against property rights.
To be clear, property rights don’t come from laws; they are natural rights. “Property” as a concept stems from the fact that when Caveman Oog gets himself a neat tool-shaped rock and is holding it in his hand, nobody else can use it because he’s the one who has it, and the only way they could use it is for him to not have it anymore. He controls it and its use is exclusive to him. The rock is his property. The law doesn’t create that concept; it only codifies it so that the rock can remain Oog’s when he sets it down, instead of him having to guard it all day.
“Corporate” “property” “rights” are a whole different thing:
Contrary to the Dred Scott-level bullshit the SCOTUS excreted in Citizens United, corporations are not people and don’t even have an inherent right to , let alone any other rights. A person (i.e. a sole proprietor) has rights. People associating with each other (i.e. a full-liability general partnership) have rights. A group granted the privileges of limited liability and taxation as a separate entity via incorporation exists at the pleasure of the State, and the State has every right to impose conditions on that existence in exchange for granting the privilege.
Copyright is not “property.” A copyrighted work is an expression of an idea, and ideas are as near to opposite of property as it is possible to be. Not only does an idea stand in stark contrast to Oog’s rock in that it can be freely shared to the other cavemen without Oog losing possession of it, the value of it comes from the act of sharing. A creative work that never leaves the creator’s head is worthless, while a work shared with the whole world is incredibly valuable. (Don’t take my word for it, though: Thomas Jefferson – the guy who wrote or helped write the Copyright Clause, BTW – made a similar point, more eloquently explained.)
Copyright isn’t a “right” either. It, like incorporation, is a privilege granted by the State (or more specifically, Congress, but Federalism is beside the point). It does not exist because the creator of a work is somehow entitled to it, or even because the People wish to reward creators for their work. Copyright exists for the sole and express purpose “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” – in other words, to enrich the Public Domain. The mechanism of copyright, granting a temporary monopoly in order to encourage the creation of more works than would otherwise exist, is nothing more than a means to an end. The goal of copyright is for it to expire!
Anyway, point is, I’m kinda already making that distinction between basic human dignity (natural rights) and artificial laws (copyright). The situation we find ourselves in today, where actual property rights of actual people are being subordinated to Intellectual “rights” of imaginary “people” is some pants-on-head stupid, ass-backwards, Bizarro-world bullshit!
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