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As a home user the OS thing is preference, some prefer Windows, some Mac, some Linux, etc.
Your post however raises a good point, and it certainly makes me form an opinion in a greater context. Thanks for making me think about this, genuinely - it’s good to have opinions challenged.
My wife and I just had this conversation a couple days ago where she pointed out that she has all the same documents as me on her computer and she uses Windows. I had to acknowledge that was definitely a hole in my privacy, so we concluded the conversation with the decision that she will start using Linux too. But you’re right, the solution needs to be bigger.
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i use linux and don’t have family or friends or get any kind of medical care ☺️ checkmate
Using Linux in America be like
The failures of the United States healthcare system are compatible with the Unix philosophy due to its emphasis on doing one thing poorly and leaving the rest for the user to figure out. Like Unix tools, each component—insurance, billing, and treatment—functions independently, refusing to communicate effectively while relying on the user to “pipe” themselves between endless calls, paperwork, and escalating bills. Debugging your health, much like debugging code, requires advanced knowledge, infinite patience, and a willingness to accept that nothing will ever be fully resolved.
This very succinctly explains why I, with AuDHD, find it practically impossible to get anything done as I slowly rot from untreated chronic illnesses.
Audhd?
Autism + ADHD
So that’s why they named it Wine.
And most servers do too.
God save ASP and .NET applications
Most sociable Linux user.
human relationships are antithetical to the unix philosophy
i just like linux, I am not cool or edgy using it but its a cool os :(
That’s why I demand (nag constantly) that everyone around me run Linux 🤣
Jk we’re all doomed to live in an Orwellian dystopia
What drives me nuts about this subject is rarely spoken about.
No single company can properly compensate all of their users for the damages caused by mishandling their personal data.
In fact the damages may even be too great for the government to properly compensate said users.
No, you need to demand that government organizations use Linux or other open source systems as well, there is no other way.
You can require Microsoft to comply with rules, it won’t. It doesn’t care, it wants money, and more money, and that is it. It’s been like that since it’s inception. The same goes for all other tech companies
You know what brand doesn’t careuch about money and will respect your privacy?
Open source software. Linux. Firefox (eh, mostly) with plugins, mariadb, etc…
We can’t even get the government to stop using Twitter.
If you believe the duly elected people have less power than a corporation, well, that’s also a “we” problem
You speak the truth.
privacy is scary stuff if you think. it’s like, i care so i dont share my phone number with facebook, but someone out there may have my number/address/name on their contact list and chances are big that they have no problem sharing with zuck. so i’ll still end up on zuck’s database.
I just activated my checking account with PayPal and one of the questions from the verification battery was asking me which email I recognized. They were different domains of my mother’s ISP email that she uses only with Amazon.
I had the urge to answer incorrectly as if that would remove their association.
I made a similar point in one of My blog articles
I like your writing style. Nailed it.
Don’t forget with the Recall feature, you may be on Linux and are using a secure communication application, but if who you are talking to is on windows your conversation can be scraped.
How’s this different from someone just record your call? The thing you are worrying about has been possible long before Recall is a thing.
So it’s not enough to brag about being on Linux ourselves, we should be encouraging our friends to switch to Linux as well?
this goes for pretty much every single chat app out there. most of the popular ones are proprietary and go through private servers.
privacy is important kids.
Same thing with email. It’s all well and good if you’re using ProtonMail or Tuta or Posteo, but you’re still cooked if the other side is using Gmail.
Old problems, new modi operandi.
You can send self destructing messages with Protonmail
Good morning, Mr. Phelps.
Do Proton remotely erase the message on the recipient’s email server? Even if it’s not a protonmail server?
They burn down the datacenter if they are not deleted in time.
Afaik, with proton you can send messages that won’t open through gmail if you protect them with a password. The other person receives a message with a link to open the mail in a browser after entering the password. It’s not the easiest solution but if you want to avoid gmail from knowing the contents of a message, you can do that.
But windows recall scrapes your screen, so even that wouldn’t work.
“But they are stored locally! Certainly, Microsoft won’t have access to those, right? Right???”
True
It’s not like companies that use Linux don’t get breached either. Your personal data is in thousands of databases that have varying levels of security. Personal choices don’t affect any of that, regulations like GDPR are what’s needed.
getting breached is different from using spyware.
GDPR has much the same problem: it can only actually be enforced against entities with a presence in Europe. When Europeans do international business, the GDPR only protects them if that foreign site has a business presence within Europe. When they have no bank accounts or business assets inside the EU, they are not subject to the GDPR.
Even though the GDPR covers your side, it doesn’t always cover the other side.
That’s why I said “regulations like the GDPR”. The US and other blocs need similar regulations. Especially the US is important, as they’ve shown that they’re willing to stretch the size of their jurisdiction to sometimes absurd lengths.
That’s usually a bad thing, but in this case that might be good.
I think you missed my point…
I am not subject to the GDPR. I don’t have to abide by it. Even if my country adopted a GDPR-like regulation, that regulation would only apply to my privacy. Not yours.
Microsoft has proven themselves overtly hostile to privacy. Yours, mine, and everyone’s. The available options are:
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Attempt to regulate them into behaving like decent human beings.
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Avoid their business.
When my therapist is using a system that is overtly hostile to their privacy and mine, the solution is not to ask the government to chastise their attacker. The solution is to eliminate their reliance on their attacker, and get them in a system the attacker doesn’t control.
I’m not saying we should avoid GDPR-like regulation altogether. I’m saying that at the OS level, Linux is intrinsically compliant with the intent of such regulation but may not comply with the letter, if the letter requires some sort of affirmative confirmation or certification of compliance that would be complicated for the developer to implement.
Microsoft will be able to be technically compliant with the law, but will definitely subvert it’s intent and purpose however it can.
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“does your medical clinic do”
Bring back grammar nazis
This is common in British English.
For example, the question “Are you going into town?” might be answered by an American with, “I might,” and by a Brit with “I might do”. In past tense it would be “I might have” vs. “I might have done”.
This is all perfectly systematic and grammatical - this person just has a different grammar than you do. Though I guess that’s what Nazis do best: enforcing arbitrary standards in systems they don’t understand to destroy diversity to everyone’s detriment.
Could you give some more examples of this? Because I don’t think I agree that it’s even technically correct, though I don’t have a proper argument as for why. I feel like this is more likely a non-native speaker picking up on a structure like “does your X do Y?” and repurposing it incorrectly.
Wow that’s standard? It was the most awkward thing I’ve read all day. I feel bad for you guys out there…
Do you mean us guys where the language originated?
The uk didn’t invent English. The German ancestors did hence the term grammar Nazi.
Not a native speaker here, what would be correct?
Assuming you’re asking about American English. Here is the revised scenario.
“I use Linux”
“Does your medical clinic?”
In this example the response is in a new sentence. So one should also include the subject in the new sentence.
“Does your medical clinic also use Linux?”
This is common and considered correct in British English.
“Does your medical clinic use Linux?” or just “Does your medical clinic?”
“Do you do” is redundant. Of course you do do if you do. You just do.
How do you?
Howdy
That was not the question though.
They might not be native English speakers.
Clearly this post was written by Tim Robinson.
Best I can do is actual Nazis.
But does your medical clinic do?
No, they don’t, and it pisses me off. Every time I see it, I think, Well, there goes my medical privacy.
But where else can I go? There’s only one health company in town, and they bought all the doctor’s offices.
Who can I complain to? The doctors and nurses are visibly frustrated with Windows every time I see them use it. If they can’t change it, how could I?
I work for a healthcare company and when we launched we made a huge deal about only using Linux on our backend and only giving Macs to employees. It’s been almost 10 years and we’ve hired a small army of morons since then and they fired our CTO. These idiots have demanded windows so they can “do analytics” despite all our analytics being in looker and dbt and a bunch of fucking business bros in the csuite and vp level who demanded windows laptops because they just like it. They eventually canned our head of IT ans well and replaced him with a dumbass and that guy is currently trying to take MacBooks away from engineering. Then the head of “cloud engineering” just started outsourcing half our shit to consultants who keep building one off snowflake windows machines because nobody gives a shit anymore. So what used to be a clean ecosystem is now a giant botched pile of lowest effort garbage.
Stay away from this entire industry. There’s some brain rot where they only hire people with healthcare backgrounds even if the role has nothing to do with healthcare. What that turns into is people from ancient out of date orgs who have no idea what they are doing being hired over people from legitimate tech roles or any other background that is more advanced in other fields and the company will always slowly roll backwards into stupidity.
That ship has sailed anyway. I’ve had no less than 5 breach notifications show up in the mail from things related to my health care in the last 2 years, and it’s not like I’m constantly at the doctor. The whole system is a disaster.
They might not know there are alternatives. So they likely do not ccomplain to their IT person.
Dont be a “jUsT uSe LiNuX” guy, but when you see them frustrated maybe say “hey I see you are frustrated as well and I as a patient are concerned about my medical data privacy. You know there are better and safer alternatives, maybe you could ask your IT if it would be possible to switch to Linux?”
Realistically, they can’t switch because the software to use some $€1m medical device only runs on windows.
I’ve had the se thought as expressed in the last paragraph the other day and isn’t the anwser in compatibility layer? Like can’t they install and run windows medical software using WINE?
Having worked in healthcare IT. Adding more complexity will only make things harder for them. A lot of healthcare staff can barely operate the Windows PCs and applications they’re used to. Change anything and they act like the sky is falling.
That opens up a legal liability for the people creating the compatibility layer. You’ve gone from two points of failure (the doctor and the machine) to three.
For sure it can be done but most people / companies won’t want to take on that liability.
Demand it from who? With what power or leverage?
Not to be defeatist, but I’m just a guy. Nobody’s gonna listen to my demands. I’m surprised privacy notifications say anything other than “You don’t have any” with two buttons that both say “OK”. All I can do is selfhost as much as possible and decline to use tons of applications or services that underpin modern societal functions or social activities. So I do. But it sucks ass and I don’t have any power to change any of it.
Legislature. GDPR was a good step.
Yes well my government is about to be run by a bunch of techno-nazi’s so that’s a non starter.
Where I am, unlike climate change, the privacy issue is not discussed properly so just explaining it to people that trust you can boost any future systemic action.
No, but the point they’re trying to make is, I think, that the more you complain, the more other people complain and the more other people start complaining and unless we have enough complainers and people switching, nothing is gonna change.
Our power is imperceptible but not non-existent
