Bobby Brown @bobbyd0g@hellsite.net

ars technica: we don't know how they did it but google chrome now extracts a pint of blood every time you log on

chrome user, dizzy from blood loss: I swear to god I am like this close to switching to firefox

another chrome user, on the verge of fainting from severe blood loss: no need to resort to that, just switch to [insert today's trendy chrome fork here] and be smart like meeee

the politico nazi apologia piece is a great example of pseudo-nuance

like, the underlying fact of ww2 is that millions and millions of people were party to mass murder and genocide in all kinds of complex ways, and there was absolutely no way they were all gonna get punished for it — not by the western allies, not by the soviets, not by their own neighbors who also did the thing

which gets flexed into "well anyone who wasn't explicitly charged and hanged is pretty much clean"

A new low, even for #Google. Giving Google permission to share information about you with third-party websites is being falsely advertised as an "ad privacy feature". This is privacy washing at its most extreme. But it gets even worse.

There is a dark pattern on the second screenshot. It isn't just informing you about the fake privacy features. Clicking on "Got it" actually turns on these features that allow Google to use your recent browsing history for ads on third-party websites:

This sucks so much. I kept telling numerous people " #discord is NOT a forum, it is an IRC app, stop building your communities in it around stuff that needs to be found with a search engine and archived, it's a bad idea for numerous reasons including the overpopulation of server topics in an app that has a 100 server limit" but nobody listened. I hate being right.

We're about to have yet ANOTHER internet library of alexandria situation assuming this shit retroactively applies to existing stuff.

the tabletop rpg hobby is funny because people will write sprawling "reviews" that don't do anything but summarize shit, and then once in a while someone in a chat will just say a single sentence about a game that completely changes how you understand it

Instead of being intimidated by a dauntingly large project, try breaking it up into small tasks and being totally overwhelmed by them.

Chrome is designed to let google spy on you in order to serve behavioural ads. So it should be no wonder third parties are using it to inject malware into your devices. The only reason these are "exploits" is because someone other than Google, the world's largest advertising company, is using them.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/chrome-flags-third-zero-day-this-month-tied-to-spying-exploits

This is incredibly cool. #Firefox adding on-device translation is a huge step forward for #privacy, and eliminates one of the last reasons I had to use a chromium-based browser.

https://liliputing.com/firefox-118-brings-browser-based-website-translation-no-cloud-servers-required-for-a-handful-of-supported-languages/

SCOOP: Footage from a food delivery robot in Los Angeles was given to the LAPD and used to secure a criminal conviction, according to internal emails I got using a public records request

https://www.404media.co/serve-food-delivery-robots-are-feeding-camera-footage-to-the-lapd-internal-emails-show/

This lightning-to-HDMI adapter designed to look like an Apple product is the worst gadget I have ever tested: It demands your location, browsing data, access to photos, and spams you with ads. Requires power and is detected as a "computer."

It's so bad that I am actually impressed a product like this actually exists. These things are actually out there in the wild. Lots of people say they inadvertently bought on Amazon

https://www.404media.co/i-tested-an-hdmi-adapter-that-demands-your-location-browsing-data-photos-and-spams-you-with-ads/

Ugh. Google has patched yet another 0day in yet another media-encoding library that's nearly ubiquitous. Libvpx is in a ton of Linux projects (citation: https://pastebin.com/TdkC4pDv). Wikipedia says it's used by YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, JW Player, Brightcove, and Telestream. It also appears to be used in iOS.

If anyone has reasons to think this vulnerability is limited to Chrome, please let me know. Preliminarily, though, I'm inclined to think this is yet another vuln under active exploit that's going to make a ton of software vulnerable to RCE exploits.

The 0day is tracked as CVE-2023-5217.

https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2023/09/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_27.html

This is important. My mother is currently facing substantial issues regarding her arms, making it difficult for her to effectively operate her keyboard for work. Her computer is running on Fedora Kinoite, and she's in need of reliable voice dictation software to facilitate her job comfortably.

While I'm currently assisting her, it's not really a sustainable long-term solution. If anyone is aware of a high-quality speech-to-text software, preferably one that can function offline and is open-source, please do let me know. This is crucial because the content of her work is confidential, and we need a reliable and secure solution.

Boosts are welcomed.

#Accesibility #AskFedi

Has anyone started an "enshittification watch" website?

Like, just list every notable company or service with a slider bar showing where along that curve they currently fall, with links to notes, analysis, and receipts.

Who is resisting, who is at risk, who is sliding, and who is too far gone.

It's clear that it's gotten much riskier to rely on quite a large swath of the commercial tech landscape. If that's the game they're going to play, seems like we should at least be keeping track with intention so folks can make informed decisions.