Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

  • nightsky@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    The best solution right now may be ā€œbuy a Macbook and learn MacOSā€, which is so depressing.

    Depends on whether you include ā€œmy personal data is sent to the manufacturer of the computer against my wishesā€ in your threat modelā€¦ Apple does many good things for security, and I wish PC hardware makers would take security-related things even just nearly as seriously as them. But I canā€™t trust Apple anymore either.

    (Explanation: the whole iCloud syncing stuff is such a buggy mess. I donā€™t want it, I donā€™t need it, so I want it off. But I guess Apple just doesnā€™t test enough how well it works when you turn it off, maybe they canā€™t imagine someone not wanting it. The problem is, iCloud sync settings donā€™t stay off. Settings randomly turn themselves back on, e.g. during OS updates, and upload data before you even notice it. Iā€™m not claiming thatā€™s intentional, I assume itā€™s just bugs. But Iā€™ve observed such bugs again and again in the past 9 years, and Iā€™ve had enough. Still have a Macbook around, but I use it very rarely these days, only when I need some piece of software on MacOS that has no suitable Linux equivalent.)

    While a PC+Linux setup can avoid the specific issue of ā€œdonā€™t randomly upload my data somewhereā€, the setup of it all can be a mess, as you say. And then security is still limited by buggy hardware and BIOS/firmware that is frequently full of security holes. The state of computers is depressing indeed (in so many ways, security just being one of them)ā€¦

    • khalid_salad@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      A note to the effect of:

      You have basically no control over how Apple handles your data. When iOS users opted out of data collection, Apple still collected the data, they just didnā€™t allow third-party access to it.

      is a good idea if I ever do recommend a Mac.