I’m not a lawyer, but I find the dismissive tone in the article misleading. The article quotes a former lawyer who says that a more simplified version of terms retains the same amount of rights for companies providing services - specifically regarding AI/ML. I’m not convinced. We are probably going to see a lot of litigation and legislation about this kind of thing in the future. It is reasonable for users to protect themselves right now.
Apparently the TOS can be edited at any time to say anything without notice.
It’s worth mentioning that per this agreement they can still do almost anything else with that data. They could put your face up on a billboard if they wanted to.
I’m out. I was a paying user. Can’t run fast enough from ever doing business with them again.
Per the agreement using the service can probably be considered consent. Ie “we won’t use your data without your consent” translates to legal code “if you accept the TOS which you do if you use the app, then you’ve given consent”
Unfortunately it's like Gmail. Even if I'm not using them, enough other places do that it's not feasible to totally avoid them without adding complications to my life. Those complications might be worth it to you, but eg my therapist's office uses Zoom for the backend of their app. You'd never know it unless you're the kind of person to dig into that.
This is not true. At least in the US you are required to notify customers when you change the terms of service, and as far as I know in the EU as well.
I'm well aware of the US court ruling in the early 2000s that declared the users must be notified of ToS changes. And yet, companies frequently change ToS without providing such notification in a way that customers will actually notice anyway, so it doesn't seem to matter much.
If you don't need the "advanced" zoom features, I can highly recommend Jitsi. Free public service and you can self-host if you need it. We have been running a fully remote company with 90% of meetings via Jitsi since COVID with great success. I recommend Chrome over Firefox though, as FF's WebRTC support is behind Google's.
Yeah, though I don't really understand your privacy/security model. If you are worried about being targeted directly by Google or some three letter agency, you certainly should not use any of this technology. Instead, you need to go back to the basics, to something running on a physically segregated network, with a much smaller attack surface area. If you are just worried about being dragnet tracked, you are way better off with Jitsi than Zoom even if you end up using Chromium to connect to the session.
Well for me it does, at least to some extent, as I use Chromium built by Arch Linux and run a new clean profile for each call. I highly doubt Google is collecting my actual data (not metadata), like AV streams or even web history, in this configuration.
Most "free markets" in the US -- certainly all that matter -- are dominated by 2 or 3 players, and when they all agree to do the same sorts of anti-consumer things, there's nowhere to go. Even if Teams or some other small player has better ToS now, who's to say they won't do the same thing tomorrow? Or do it anyway, without telling anyone?
Is following this kind of info a hobby of yours? I find it fascinating, but I can’t imagine how learning enough to have a truly informed opinion about these topics could be actually useful to me.
Eh, I mean I guess ultimately I’m just kind of a nerd.
I will say that understanding a modicum of finance (I’m certainly no RenTech quant!) is basically a prerequisite for understanding politics, sociology, war, energy, technology, pretty much everything.
One doesn’t need a ton, but being able to give or take eyeball whether the market believes e.g. Powell is kinda table stakes.
And it’s just insane this isn’t taught broadly. I learned even just my modicum mostly by improbable random chance.
Buy a company with debt (leveraged buy out). Hand that cash back to the "private equity investors". Let the company go bankrupt and the debt magically dissapears.
Agree. One of the most infuriating things we tolerate as a society. The number of good and solid companies adding value to society that have then been raided in order to line the pockets of a few is such a disgrace.
Takes somewhere between 48 hours and a week to generate the first invite codes, though. (Those are the two closest moments at which I checked before and after I had invites available)
This is a plot point in the Orson Scott Card novel 'Ender's Game'. Ender plays a generative video game on an iPad-like device that responds to his decisions and incorporates people/events from his personal life, to the point of manipulating his subconscious thoughts and dreams.
A game like this could be interesting, but you would not be able to discuss it with others as a shared experience that has fixity the way you can with any modern media, and it could certainly be used to manipulate people.
Been listening to these songs for quite a while now - amazing songwriting. A mysterious, tragic tale, too.
On Spotify there is an album called “Connie’s Piano Songs” that purport to be through-composed (as in, pen to paper notated music) art songs. I’ve unsuccessfully tried to find more info about them and there don’t seem to be any scores are available. I’d be interested if anyone has any more information about them or has the scores. Part of me wonders if they are actually songs about Connnie Converse and not composed by her…
Fishman discusses this in his recently released book (which is highly recommended, although it left me a bit depressed.)
Basically, he got the music from her brother, and organized some singers and recorded it. There are no known recordings of Converse herself performing them.
tldr; Connie Converse wrote the music/lyrics, but “Connie’s Piano Songs” are performed by other artists.
There may be a way to collapse comments, but I didn't try it yet. If there's no complete page refresh on click, it could be Javascript manipulating the DOM, and that may not work on lynx.
I couldn't tell which are replies versus standalone, since everything is left-indented. However, some comments are definitely replies if there's ">" for example, or abbreviated and curt. But I found this "contextual friction" let me be more forgiving in a way.
The comments all seem to float in the ether, utterances in the night. The extra effort to traverse to each comment--arrow, arrow, arrow, arrow--somehow made the whole thing like an exercise in deliberate consciousness: I was seeking after content, rather than having it just be laid out and scrollable.
I was also using the framebuffer. It didn't take much to fill the screen. Moving to the next page happens more often and is so manual; you almost want to wring meaning out of every screen.
I also developed celiac disease recently - it is tough to deal with. Since diagnosis, meal planning, shopping and cooking have become tasks that require a lot of mental energy. Normal things like going out to a show or commuting to work are logistically difficult when you’re unable to eat at any restaurants. I am trying to get a WFH job to curb some of this difficulty. Good luck with everything.
Sadly chain restaurants are your friend now. PF Chang's has never poisoned me with their gluten free. Red Robin's are pretty good about their gluten free but ask them and make sure they know you are actually celiac, the waitress will normally tell you if the place is safe for celiac or just kind of 'gluten free'. Make sure they have a dedicated fryer for their frys, the whole swapping it out is not good enough for celiacs. No other chains have been consistently safe enough 'gluten free' to risk on a business trip for me. Big surprise is the Thai places around me don't have gluten in their soy sauce so they are safe if you order smart/tip well enough that they make sure not to cross contaminate, so you might check with them to see if they will let you look at their soy sauce label, but obviously don't try out places like that on work trips. 'The sickness' in a hotel with jet lag and having to be 'on' to meet clients sucks.
Be careful with things you think are safe. Tortilla chips can have too much cross contamination so experiment when it's safe to 'get the sickness' and find what works for you. When my daughter and I were first diagnosed we couldn't drink coke because the carmel color supposedly had gluten. Some craft rootbeers/dark sodas still have the 'bad' natural color not the 'good' artificial one. Another tricky one that got me a lot until I figured it out, red wine can use a wheat paste to seal the barrels. So cheap steel aged reds only. Red wine is the only thing that gets cheaper when you go gluten free :)
If it makes you feel any better my wife has celiac and it gets easier with time. Eventually you get pretty familiar with things and figure out where is good and where isn't. We mostly do GF in our family cause it's easier to just do GF than try and mix and match.
Also I hope you like Mexican food corn tortillas and chips are a life saver.
