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1. Embed this notice
   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 11-Jan-2025 21:18:00 JST Charlie Stross

   Most tech these days, and especially most software and operating systems, are guilty of persistent sealioning.

   Good tools don't sealion their owners.

   • 10π🍇 likes this.
   • Peter Krefting and Mark von Übelgarten repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Henri Verymetaldev (verymetalsite@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 11-Jan-2025 21:24:31 JST Henri Verymetaldev

     in reply to

     @cstross That guy has more food for thought:

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 11-Jan-2025 22:21:00 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Henri Verymetaldev
     • Mans R

     @mansr @verymetalsite I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how I manage to survive without a TikTok account. No, really. Life is so drab and miserable without having to worry about the slavvering hordes of springfluencers stalking my follower count …

   • Embed this notice
     Mans R (mansr@society.oftrolls.com)'s status on Saturday, 11-Jan-2025 22:21:12 JST Mans R

     in reply to

     • Henri Verymetaldev

     @verymetalsite @cstross The sequel has the finest description of Tiktok I have ever seen.

     https://wondermark.com/c/1551/

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Saturday, 11-Jan-2025 23:51:19 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     @cstross I think the point is that if you ask "Do you want an upsell/AI/unnecessary feature?" enough times, the user will eventually accidentally press the wrong button and "consent" to whatever it is.

     Happened to me last week. Opened the photos app on my phone because I needed to find a pic I took of a sign I urgently needed to ask an airport staffer about, and accidentally clicked the "Yes, store all my photos on your cloud" dialog I'd declined 5,000 times before.

     Peter Krefting and Charlie Stross repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 00:33:28 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow
     • Oggie

     @Oggie @pluralistic Yeah, but you can at least see the business model at work there ("store photos in the cloud" = "pay us rent for cloud storage") and there *is* a tenuous value proposition ("make it easy to share photos with other cloud-connected devices"). Whereas the AI-with-everything is transparently a grift. And most of the sealioning devices are pitching for permission to do something you didn't buy them for (your smart fridge wants to subscribe to the weather channel).

   • Embed this notice
     Oggie (oggie@woof.group)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 00:33:29 JST Oggie

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @pluralistic @cstross I fucking hate that I have done this a few times. They ask every time when you say no, but only once if you say yes, and clawing any of it back is at best difficult, arguably impossible.

     Cory Doctorow repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Pier (pier@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 01:19:52 JST Pier

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @pluralistic @cstross Hi, this is Con-rad, your virtual personal assistant! I see you have searched “How to disable AI”. Thank you for your interest, I know you’re going to love the new features. I have now enabled AI for all products. You will be charged an additional $50/month going forward. Please note that this change is permanent. Thanks for being an awesome customer! Made with ❤️ in SF.

   • Embed this notice
     beeznatch (beeznatch@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 02:05:18 JST beeznatch

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow
     • Oggie

     @Oggie @pluralistic @cstross This feels exactly how I've heard cyber security works versus attackers: the defender has to be right/correct everytime always forever; the attacker only needs you to fail once.

   • Embed this notice
     Log 🪵 (log@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 03:47:10 JST Log 🪵

     in reply to

     @CaffeinatedBookDragon @cstross @Oggie @pluralistic Honestly most appliances could be made smarter just with a notepad holster and one of those space pens attached to a ball chain and sticky pad like they use at the credit union to keep the pens from walking away. Plain old notepad paper recycles better than e-waste.

   • Embed this notice
     Teedi P. (caffeinatedbookdragon@nerdculture.de)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2025 03:47:11 JST Teedi P.

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow
     • Oggie

     @cstross @Oggie @pluralistic

     Honestly, I can't understand "smart appliances". Other than the home thermostat, I just don't get the appeal. I want to run a load of dishes, why do I need to do some status upgrade? I just wanna put the veggies away, or get some out to cut up... the doors open and close and it keeps the food cold. It's smart enough, honestly. A post-it note and paper work fine if I need a shopping list to work from. And i have stainless steel doors on my fridge, dry-erase markers work fine on the surface for reminder notes or the menu for the week (except for green, it doesn't show up well enough).

     That's "smart" enough for me. Just another costly thing to break down and replace, having all that extra crap in there.

     Cory Doctorow repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 02:21:13 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow
     • Oggie
     • Sabrina Web :privacypride:

     @sabrinaweb71 @Oggie @pluralistic Obviously an IoT fridge can bulk-order ice cream when the outdoor temperatures goes over 5℃. (Or not, if you pay your monthly subscription the fridge manufacturer to *not* be spammed with unwanted frozen goods.)

   • Embed this notice
     Sabrina Web :privacypride: (sabrinaweb71@sociale.network)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 02:21:14 JST Sabrina Web :privacypride:

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow
     • Oggie

     @cstross @Oggie @pluralistic what's the point of a fridge subscribed to the weather channel? So that it knows when it's cold enough and it can tell us to store the food outside?