Not wanting to be exploited by tech coorporations, technological literacy, is not a boomer thing.
I mean, have you met zoomers? Technological literacy as we knew it is dead.
but also have you met boomers? Tech literacy as we knew never existed.
Born too late to be blissfully unaware about technology
Born too early to be blissfully unaware about technology
Born in just the right time to have the cursed knowledge on how all of the cobbled together tech stack out there barely works
Every time I use an ATM I get the mental image of a 70 year old COBOL programmer desperately trying to patch holes in a sinking ship with a roll of duct tape.
Boomers were the generation that invented a lot of this tech. Most of them weren’t literate, but I have known quite a few who were. Honestly same with Gen x, we grew up with it but, a lot of the good tech didn’t come until later in our lives. There are tons of illiterate gen xers and millennials and gen y and z. Some people care and some people don’t.
Laugh it up now. When we’re 50, our holoshere is going to require us to submit to genetic modifications to get our next soylent nutrition paste to dispense. God only knows how we connect to a person young enough in 2040 to know if it’s even possible to bypass. That kind of stuff was laughed at the last time we tried.
just keep an eye on pirate forums or learn how to steal ig
Gen X and Millennials to the rescue
Quick, invent everything before we get too old!
Gen X would like a word
nobody cares about Gen X
How is this a boomer complaint? Why does everyone need my email and info?
So they can sell it to spam companies obviously.
Er I mean… For better customer exploitation!
Shit, I’m really not good at this but they’re going to send me to the
to exploit you. not being exploited at a molecular level is boomer shit.
now, are you an old, or are you gonna send me a copy of your social security number and complete sequenced genome?
now, are you an old, or are you gonna send me a copy of your social security number and complete sequenced genome?
Does email work or do you have a mailing address? I’ll spit in a cup and send that to you if I need to but I’d rather not have to go to the post office.
do you have like a cloud storage with at least 1TB? if not, we’re gonna have to sneakernet this.
I lack that much cloud storage, I’ll see if I can track down a station wagon I can fill up with tapes.
I very much appreciate this. I mean, you are proving that you’re not an old, but I won’t be sure until you do it.
Ok boomer.
Lol jk
What I love was it is boomers that allows these changes so they gotta live with it. It’s not like we all woke up and decided to start asking for emails for everything. It was sitting back and being cool with letting ads take over everything until they started needing more and more data so they weren’t paying 30 million for beer ads to people who don’t drink
Any beer paying millions in ads isn’t worth drinking.
Anything paying for ads shouldn’t be worth it. We should be hostile to any advertising as stealing from us. They don’t pay us to take our free time yet tell me anytime of your day where you are not experiencing some type of advertising.
I gotta go to work 1/3 my day. 1/3 I’m sleeping. 1/3 I get to myself except that 1/3 for me is taken up by lunches, kids sports, prepping for tomorrow’s 1/3 work day. So of that 1/3 maybe I get a few hours to relax and enjoy something. So I sit down to the streaming service I cut cable for and and still get chunks of that time giving to company’s Hawking me stuff I don’t need wasting my free time. It gets worse when you think how much-needed of our day is being in front of some type of ads. Radio, TV, bus stops, magazines, going to kids hockey games, browsing the internet, watching movies. Even viral videos often are just paid commercials made to circumvent ad regulations and laws and to not pay websites for server time and big fixes.
It is insidious. We have been corralled into something we don’t even know we’re in. Like cows that don’t realize are in a pasture. It all seems innocent like “I’ll just ignore that thing I don’t like” but deep down that thing is affecting every part of the society we are in and it’s a root cause for most of what we complain about today.
For me it’s that I don’t want short form video anywhere near my view.
I went to a bar for a drink the other day. They had TVs all over the place which I normally don’t care for but it looked like golf or something I could just ignore. After I ordered my drink I realized how wrong was.
It was actually some weird short form video TV channel. They croped the 16:9 screen into a 1:1 square with moving neon lines in the “empty space” where there was no video. Each video was about 5 seconds long and showed brainless content of people using a Rube Goldburg machine or doing card tricks and other such nonsense.
Once I realized what was happening it was too late as I got my drink and I felt compelled to finish it and pay. I tried to ignore the 5+ screens in my view but they were too big and eye-catching to really ignore. I kept catching myself looking at one of the screens after a minute or so. I felt like I was getting serotonin raped between ads.
Eventually I moved to sit by a window and stare at a tree. I’ll never go back to a bar like that again.
This reads like a cyberpunk vignette; I enjoyed it. Thank you. I’ve started to take note when something decidedly cyberpunk happens in day-to-day life. I make a lot of notes.
I could increase the cyberpunk feeling by turning the TVs off with a flipper zero. I haven’t felt the need to yet but it’s always an option.
Remember when phones had ir transmitters
I was so jealous of my dad’s HTC one, haha.
that’s the direction we all need to be moving, if we’re going to survive/avert the water wars.
That’s an idea…
Extrapolating a bit, here are the next steps
- screens in places where people might look at an ad will all have built in image recognition and eye-tracking.
- an algorithm/model will calculate the number of people within view and an acceptable level of eyes on screen per minute (or some other time increment tbd by an industry leading marketing psychologist) depending on the task they are doing.
- the algorithm/model can also calculate the local demographic
- the short format video content can be easily tweaked to improve engagement. If the racing crash clips aren’t generating enough engagement, then it can try indoor cat clips.
- when the eye to screen levels are at or above minimum advertising levels, display an ad that would best match the target demographic that the advertiser set. The ad contents will also match the actions of the local population.
Certainly. Having worked in advertising for 25 years, that’s probably just phase one. Those short videos will eventually be different for each person seeing the screen… and largely A.I. generated with few humans in the loop. In the flip side, people will probably be able to program their smart glasses to hide all that shit. It’s an arms race over our attention already. See: Trudell’s “mined mind.” Or Bo Burnham, for that matter.
CHILI’S IS ABLEIST AND HAS LITTLE SCREENS KN EVERY DAMN TABLE THAT DISTRACT ME.
I went to a restaurant awhile ago and they told me to order using the little screen on the table. I said “no thanks” and left.
I’m a grumpy bastard and hate similar things but honestly, this doesn’t sound so bad that I’d be particularly bothered by it or leave if I hadn’t already ordered that beer. It’s just wallpaper. If I was by myself I’d probably appreciate it on some level and if I’m with other people I’d likely stop noticing. Overall I think I’d probably prefer the bar not have them at all but it’s really not that bad.
Loud sports or music that can fuck right off but otherwise, meh.
Normally I would agree with you. But they had these 50" screens in every direction except for down. I was literally staring at the floor in an attempt not to look at them. The swirling colorful “boarders” of the short format square video was eye catching enough. But with the video changing scenes every 5 seconds it was a similar effect to the Eisenstein editing style in Battleship Potemkin. The screens were screaming at you to stare at it.
It was also just total garbage content, the type of stuff I left reddit for. It was just a step above what Americans of the future watched in Idiocracy. It was truly a bizarre experience for me and also one of the most “boomer” moments I’ve had. Although out of everyone else in the bar, only the boomers were happily watching the short format video.
I have this exact same reaction.
It’s like a race to the bottom.
That’s my pet hate with everything.
A mouse doesn’t need an account. Just let me install the shit and configure it you fucks.
Linux has built in drivers for most shit with no account necessary. Logitech (for example) has a third party app called Solaar that does everything Logitechs own crappy mouse/keyboard software does.
Getting away from the endless hassle of popups and drivers was my biggest motivation for switching to Linix way back in 2008.
Does it work with the g pro mice? I fucking hate the logi app
I used it with a G503, it should work.
You just connect them as everything Bluetooth in Linux and they work
Then I though it would be nice to see battery levels and stuff, and installed Linux solar and now I have dumb pop ups every once in a while.
Sure, but it’s not exactly easy to remap all the extra non-standard buttons on my g602 & g604
Not only an account. The Razer Naga needs connection to the cloud so the macros work properly
Outrageous. Do the macros get processed in the cloud or what?
Cheaper than putting the hardware for it in the mouse.
They get processed locally. It’s just that some macros are stored in the cloud (except the simple remapping s). So Razer synapse downloads them every time you turn on the computer.
I didn’t make a razer account, therefore I had to remake every macro that wasn’t a remapping.
Well that is honestly so dumb. Why not just store it locally somewhere?
I had the same question.
I tried so hard to ask razer support. But I couldn’t get a reasonable answer out of them.
I would have returned that instantly upon discovery. I’ll add Razer to my denylist of brands.
Bro we need to track you in every way possible so we can sell you even more shit, what’s the big deal?
Um, how about no Scott, okay? You got my money, if you wanna keep pestering for more money, I’m gonna return this original item and you aren’t getting shit.
Ladies and gentlemen, Scotty don’t.
Scotty n’est pas
The Olympics required four apps. Five if you count Visa Go, which just outright didn’t work. All of them want you to make accounts and send you shit.
- Itinerary, account optional
- Tickets, account required even though the tickets were on the phone
- Transport, account required even though the tickets were in the
- Metro app, for which it told you to NOT DELETE THE DATA BECAUSE THE TICKETS ARE ONLY ON THE DEVICE
No, lightbulb, I won’t give you my location
(actually happened)
I think it was requested on mine for the sunrise/sunset feature, but let me just put in a zip code after I declined location access
That and they can turn on when you get home after sunset. But they could do that with simple wifi connection or something. Unless your wifi is unstable I suppose.
Or, you know, a photodiode.
Or you use a VPN on your router
For Android, the location permission was(is? not sure right now) basically required for anything that wanted WiFi or Bluetooth. As getting access to that, could in theory be used to locate you
Not that this was necessarily the case here, but an explanation
“required”
Required by Google, yes, but not actually required in any functional sense of the word other than the function of spying on you in another insidious way. It worked without invasive permissions for a long time and you absolutely won’t convince me it wouldn’t now if data collection weren’t a priority.
(This isn’t directed at you personally; apologies if it seems like it is.)
Yeah, but the problem is, that app developers abused the WiFi/BT permission to locate people, without them knowing about it. So at some point the permission was changed to reflect the theoretical real world potential of abuse
The downside is, that apps that don’t actually require your location, will still need to ask for it
Yep technically it’s called coarse location which in theory tells apps what neighborhood you’re in, but can be exploited by marketing to know if you’re in front of a shop stand. At least it won’t drain your battery with GPS usage.
It works without it though. 🤔
Lots of times devices need access to a thing called location just to detect certain kinds of Bluetooth. I don’t know the specifics but it’s a trend I’ve noticed. It might not be the fault of the light.
Over my dead body
Fighting side by side with a boomer?
What about side by side with a friend?How about side by side with your mother?
It means the fight may continue well over 10 pm. I’m in.
That’s not even a boomer complaint. Zoomer here. I fucking hate how everything needs an account. I recently started cleaning up my mail box and this shit makes that nigh impossible. I especially hate it when it’s just a shitty novelty site, if it needs an account, you bet your ass I ain’t ever using it, piss off!
make an email for different things, such as one for subscriptions, one for things like this, one for professional use, etc. it’s annoying but also helps 🤷🏻 i hate that we’re at this point lol
My trick is that I use a domain name I’ve bought for my personal emails which is a catch-all address, and I sign up to websites with “(websitename)login@domain.url”, so I’m assuming I’ll know who the culprit is when the time comes and I can do something about it with relative ease. I don’t know if that’s actually smart or not but I’ll see how I get on.
I do the same and use simple login as a service to manage the emails. They all get forwarded to a single mailbox, but I can easily activate/deactivate individual addresses. Also, I have all incoming addresses blacklisted by default, unless they match a particular regex. That way, I can create new email addresses as needed without needing to pull any levers, but im still protected against someone spamming my domain (unless they figure out my regex)
I just auto tag using the term “unsubscribe”. It tags as “automated/spam” unless another filter such as banking, games, or in contacts triggers
That’s really clever, I’m stealing that.
The real solution: Buy your own domain name, and make a catch-all email address. Every account gets a new address with that account’s company in the email. Target is target@[your domain].[tld]… The benefit is that you can see exactly who is selling your info to spammers, and easily burn those accounts. You start getting spam sent to that target address? Congrats, now you know Target has sold your info and you can set a rule to automatically send any target@ emails straight to your trash. Also, get a damned password manager so every account has a unique password.
Create a fake persona. This persona has a fake name, birthday, favorite food, first pet, etc… Memorize everything about this fake person, or even just make a note about them in your phone. And none of it is real. This fake person’s info is used for all of your signup info. So when shitty fucking companies get hacked and lose all of your info, the hackers never actually got any of your info. And if you ever see spam addressed to that fake persona, you know you can immediately discard it.
Between the catch-all email address and the fake persona, you’re basically immune to all of the typical ads, phishing, data breaches, etc…
That’s a massive ballache
Bitwarden can do both automatic email creation and also store the identity(s) and fill them in for you.
So it doesn’t need to be a ballache, can be one-click transparent.
Commercial email providers will typically provide some number of aliases aimed at doing this for you.
Proton Mail’s a popular provider in Switzerland, for example:
https://proton.me/mail/pricing
Their $3.99 /month service provides 10 aliases.
Their $9.99 /month service provides unlimited aliases.
And will work with a domain you own, so it’s not like you’re locked to them if you want to move to somewhere else down the line.
Abine (now IronVest) just sells the privacy aspect. They aren’t an email provider – that is, they don’t give you an email box – but provides this “masking” service to forward it to your regular email provider, if you already have email service.
Their $39/year service provides 50 aliases.
Their $99/year provides unlimited aliases.
They also do some other stuff like provide masked phone numbers that forward to your real number. They have provided masked, temporary credit card numbers with charge limits and a bogus name and address, so you don’t even need to give your real name to someone you purchase something from online (though it looks like that’s currently not available, says that they’re bringing it back. I have used a masked credit card number from them in the past, so I know that at least some merchants will accept it, though I’d think that it’d tend to trip anti-fraud stuff at merchants, but…shrugs).
That being said, while I think that this sort of thing is a way to reduce the increasing degree of data harvesting – you can’t always choose whether-or-not to use certain services – I think that if you have the option to choose a product or service that doesn’t harvest data on you in the first place, that’s really a better option.
Fyi, this can be done with Gmail as well. Just add a plus sign at the end of your email. I.e. your_email+target @ Gmail.com
Except most companies have wised up to this, and automatically scrub anything after the +. Because why wouldn’t they?
You can also do this with dots in various places in your email with gmail. Not as descriptive as the plus sign thing but still can be useful as you can create different filters based on the location of the dots.
What service do you use for the catch all emails? I use “simple login” currently with my own domain. But, I’d love to look at other options.
It depends on the mail server/provider. As a datapoint, I use Zoho Mail with 4 of my domains and they all have a catch-all that points to a single inbox.
Using Zoho, too. Unfortunately, the free version does not have IMAP or POP3. (Still does hate SMTP, though, which is fantastic for my self-hosted services)
I have one of the yearly deals on MXRoute. Unlimited domains. Been using them for almost 3 years.
https://www.migadu.com/ is a cheap and reliable one. Used YandexMail for years for free before, but they were shameless about reading the contents of emails and then had the audacity to remove the free tier and demand money for it.
That’s a great idea! The fake information won’t work for things that require real information, but it’s otherwise great! Is there any retaliation you can take against companies that sell your information? I guess you could forward all of those emails to their sales address.
Or just stop buying useless products that demand internet access when they dont need it, and stop making those accounts.
How do I make a spam email address using my own domain name?
If you set it up as a catch-all email, then anything going to the domain will hit the same inbox. From there, you can set filtering rules to send emails to whichever box you want.
How do I set up any email using my domain name?
Or better yet try making your accounts for fake characters like Goku or ash catchem so with enough people doing the same thing we can get spammers to look at the data they bought and think hey wait a minute I’ve been scammed
“Or sign in with your Facebook account”
No, this isn’t Facebook!
I was going to buy a really sweet drone. Then I watched the Getting Started video and there was an app and an account thing, and I realized the second they shut down the service, that drone would be a paperweight.
I’m back to building my own because I’d like to use it for more than a year or two.
That’s not a boomer thing. Boomer will be like “sure, I’ll give you all the informations you want, even the name of my dog and my credit card number”.
Far from being a boomer, but 100% agree with it.
It is sad to think there are people who don’t think this is ridiculous and are just accepting that.
That’s not really a boomer complaint, that’s just a pro-privacy pro-internet security kind of complaint. Everyone of all ages hates having to have an account for everything and its mother
