First off I dont mind what OS you are using. This rant isnt about the OS but about hypocrisy for some of the users. Secondly Im sorry for typos, I typed it on my phone while waking up.

People are calling Windows spyware, so they are using Linux or MacOS. Even though I disagree with the term spyware I would be fine with that if you weren't a hypocrite.

How many of the people who use Linux and call windows spyware uses Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter once in a while? I highly doubt you if you say you don't.

A few years back Ive tried to live without anything of google, this also meant blocking YouTube, their trackers an javascript libraries.
Not much of the internet still works if you block google servers.
Google is everywhere and always collects data.

Facebook and twitter also collects data about you. Everyone who has your number in their phone will share it with Whatsapp and google so they can build up a profile. Even if you dont block it.

What I am telling you is that its impossible to avoid being tracked by these companies (including MS).

Every company I mentioned here has a profile on you, if you want it or not.

So let's check which of these companies tries to follow European laws.
Google gets fine after fine but doesnt really try to avoid it.
It looks like Apple, MS, Facebook and Twitter are doing it better on this.

But if you check the European law every European citizen is allowed to request their complete profile collected by a company. And that means complete and not the public part you volunteered to give away.

So I tried it out.
Google didnt want to give it, apple didnt want to give it, Facebook didnt want to give it and Twitter doesnt want to give it.

The hypocrisy is becoming clesr with the following. I did get my complete profile from MS. It was a messy PDF file which crashed most PDF readers.
It contained a list of people I know and how I know them. It contained MS accounts I had in the past and my hobbies. (and quite a lot more)

So from these big companies MS is the only one following the European Law.

So yes they do collect data, but they are open in what they collect.

And Im not saying here that Microsoft is great just because they follow the law.

You can have your own opinion about this and do with it what you want. I just wanted to share some, maybe alternative, facts.

And again this isn't an OS rant or whatever. I dont mind what you do, but I do mind hypocrisy.

Bought a Microsoft surface (3 pro) from a colleague (more about how that runs later).

It had only one USB port and I definitely need more so started searching online for docks. They mostly seem to be about 100+ euro and all have hdmi ports and other shit other than USB ports as well but I don't need that.

Fuck it, let's get creative (and fuck 100 euro for something like this)!

Double sided tape (however you call that) + 2 euro USB dock:

Works like a charm!

Apparently this little music player has no transmitter, receiver, microphone nor camera, pity on you NSA!

Every Windows update be like:

Please reconsider using Edge over _, it has Webkit now!

Please reconsider reenabling Cortana.

Please reconsider using Bing.

Please reconsider reenabling sharing all metrics with us.

In 2008 I took my first web development job for an agency that's no longer around. There was a Vice President there by appointment from our coke headed owner who really liked to micromanage and invade privacy with key loggers and screencap spyware to "manage" us. I found out because my machine would snag when moving the mouse cursor and sometimes I'd accidentally paste the screenshot into photoshop just before the software cleared the clipboard. Anyway, I wasn't supposed to know I was being monitored so I just unplugged my network cable and killed the service running the jank ass spyware. I'd delete it when no one was looking and wipe out the cache of screencaps it would compile every day. It was basically a troll vs troll stalemate for weeks. Finally they gave in and told everyone what was going on so we collectively decided to seek revenge. We bought a piezo buzzer about the size of a quarter that chirped like crickets at random intervals. We stuck it on the underside of his desk inside of the middle drawer area and let it go. They spent so much time and money trying to get rid of the cricket infestation. We let it go on for weeks. I ended up quitting before the gag was up, but damn was it funny to see him squirm in that office because of those crickets!

I fucking hate toxic positivity. Every fucking corporation pushes the notion that "lifE iS aWeSomE, wE cArE abOuT pEoPle" and other such bullshit, and when you point it out, they call you a bad, toxic person.

No, you don't care about your community, let alone the whole world. You're just trying to make people believe that spyware, wage slavery and being fired by a neural network is the norm. You're making money off of those who don't have a choice.

If you account all people, not just American white rich 1%, it turns out that for the vast majority of people life is either an uphill battle or straight up nightmare. People are working in shifts and have no time or emotional resource to spend on themselves. Most of the people can't afford a house or a flat. Even those who can still suffer from mental illnesses, to the point where there are more mentally challenged people than mentally healthy ones. The word "neurotypical" meaning "mentally healthy" is wrong.

You want nothing but to sell your stuff and earn more money off of Chinese and Indian factory workers who work 16-hour shifts. Maybe your life is great, but aggressively pushing this notion is a big, wet spit in the face of humanity.

Fuck you. Fuck your space rockets. Fuck your twitter accounts. Fuck your institutionalized exploitation of the weak. Fuck your products. Fuck your "open source". Fuck your "GDPR compliance". Fuck your offshores, your hedge funds and your tax evasion. Fuck your bailouts. Fuck your ships spilling tons of crude oil, fuck your factories, fuck your slave labor, fuck your anti-suicide nets in Chinese dormitories.

One day, because of you, our planet will become unlivable. You will hop into your fancy space rocket to go to that top-1% elite Mars colony. Nice job.

But I will pray for a solar flare to hit you and turn you and your fucking rocket into radioactive ash.

ALL I WANT TO DO IS SENT A FUCKING MESSAGE NOT INSTALL YOUR SHITTY SPYWARE MESSENGER!!

In the distant year of 2022.

Safari changes its logo to more appropriately reflect its position as the new Internet Explorer.

Chrome monopolized the spyware market and is facing another antitrust investigation.

Mozilla finally managed to fire all the developers working on Firefox and replaced them with highly trained dead monkeys.

Brave successfully consolidates itself as a cryptocurrency wallet and leaves the browser space.

Edge has two new users.

Who the **** is Vivaldi

When I am sitting in my school and writing a few lines of simple HTML code, people looks at my screen and more less shouting out loud "wow you are like a hacker or something? Who are you hacking and how do you do it and how did you learn it?". It happened a couple of times to me. Sometimes I just tell them it as it is and saying something like "it's simple HTML code" and a little explanation of what it is. Sometimes (depending who it is) I answer that it is a new kind of spyware I'm developing and if I'm lucky they believe in me and starts begging me for not hurting their computers.

Just a few lines of <script> and some code highlighting. How to become a hacker!

Alright, question about graphics cards:

I want to get a six-monitor graphics card.
Currently looking at one but there's a thing:

The visiontek radeon 7750 seems great, manufacturer is AMD.

When searching for images of the *visiontek* radeon 7750 vs the AMD radeon 7750, I get different pictures, according to some product pages the visiontek amd radeon is produced by amd though....

They both have six inputs..

Point is: I'm going to run Linux on it (i refuse to install malware/spyware on my system for obvious reasons) and AMD has native Linux drivers for the radeon 7750: are those also for the visiontek radeon 7750?

I'm lost here. Help!

Coolest thing I’ve built solo?

Damn, there’s been a lot of things over the years, but I guess the most used one I’ve made would be my voice activated tv remote - yes it’s real.

So in essence it’s a google home... yea I know spyware and all, but look it was free so I’m going to make use of it... err where was I, oh yea.

An IFTTT account which taps into the google assistant API and creates a webhook, although the authentication side of things is 0 to none, so had to put a api-key into the requests to at least have some layer of auth.

This webhook then hits a raspberry pi containing a PHP API to accept and authenticate the request in, digest this into KEY commands for the TV, and drops this into a Python script to connect to the TV over a web socket connection ( I found python more stable for this ) and sends the pre made key requests, it can even do multiple keys at a time... that was a pain.

So after all that, the end game becomes about a second from saying “hey google, change the tv channel to xxx”

This sick and twisted contraption is finished and the tv is my little bitch.

This has been built out to handle channels by name, number, volume up/down, sources switching to hdmi, tv, vga and a bunch of other things.

The things we do when we can’t find a tv remote for days....

Next up, getting it to launch Netflix app and going to a specified show / episode.. but may be to adventurous.

They call it “Personalization”, “Analytics” and “Customer Success Research”. But back in time when I was using Alcohol 120 and StarFuck just to play games we called it “Spyware”.

Like it’s only spyware when you do it, but when we do it it’s “Research”.

What the fuck is wrong with web designers these days?

Every fucking web page is white with black text. It's 2022, let's stop this paper bullshit and change everything to use colors that make sense on screens.

For fuck sakes, even monokai.pro is black on white. You know monokai, that dark colorful color scheme that most editors support. With a black background and white text.

I'm nursing the worst migraine in the world right now and all I want to do is smash people's faces into these shitty white screens.

It wouldn't be so bad if these fuckers would have a dark mode, but 80% of the documentation that I have to read doesn't support dark mode. Yeah I know about the browser plugins that do it for you, but I honestly don't trust any of them since most of them have been found to be spyware.

Whatsapp: "How about you update your browser?"

How about you fire your whole fucking team of genetically engineered super-retards, that is making whatsapp shittier with ever recently rotten braincell you guys claim to have, and just let me use your shitty spyware I need to use for the time being. Fucking hell don't you even dare pulling that bullshit excuse on me when my browser is based on chromium Aka the fucking same browser engine that is powering google chrome. Just for once stop playing along with google, take your update and put it where the sun doesn't shine, you data-whoring deadshits.

So yesterday there was an interesting news story in my country. A man was fined for posession of two pictures containing pornographic depictions of children.
Now that's all great. The interesting part, however, is how the man was caught.
A tip was given from foreign agencies to the law enforcement of my country that the man was storing the pictures on his OneDrive. Not sharing them or anything, simply storing them there.
How the FUCK did the know? Do they monitor everything you put in a fucking private cloud repository? I've never used OneDrive, and now I'll make sure to never use it in the future. Fucking spyware.

For the Project Management exam, my university requires us to install a program on our PERSONAL laptops that is meant to take over the control over the entire system during the exam, monitor any “suspicious activities”. The software is closed-source (it’s called Schoolyear Exams), does god-knows-what in the background, takes the control over the entire system and can be summoned through any Chromium web browser.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that you want to make sure nobody is cheating - but at this point, I’d rather write it with pen and paper. Or just provide us with computers for the time of exam.

I decided to whip out my old laptop instead, installed a Windows 10 on a separate SSD, and installed that software on it.

Also it’s very amusing that this software is also mandatory for the Linux exam… But the program can’t run on Linux (it’s Windows and Mac only and doesn’t even support M1 chips).

EDIT: typos

8 min to unzip a 15mb file... Fuck corporate Spyware

Windows updates are fucking trash. Even if you disable built-in Windows spyware services, they tend to switch themselves on again.

Instead of engaging in that uphill battle, just use a firewall. Whitelist apps you use, and Windows will have no way to update itself or to call home even when the spyware is on.

On my gaming laptop I use Portmaster firewall. It’s free, open source AND has a good UI.

Why the hell must Microsoft always be dickhead about the telemetry.
Take one beautiful NET.CORE. I make an app for myself, deploy it only to find out that those data-hungry arses have built-in default enabled telemetry and the only way to disable it is to set one dick-long env. variable:
DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT="1"
Seriously ??
No way to exclude it completely, you have to sweat blood everywhere it runs.
Consent ? Hardly, just small line during installation...
I swear everything MS touches turns into spyware...

PCs are a clusterfuck these days. Microsoft has abandoned the niceness of Win-7 and opted for Win-10 - with spyware, untested forced updates and forced online licence checks to make sure you have to get the shit. Macs are total crap, and Apple doesn't care because they instead prefer to milk customers with overpriced iShit. Linux sucks and looks like a Soviet tractor, but at least, it doesn't fuck up itself just by switching it on.

I had Linux as only OS from 2001 to 2010, and while I obviously can deal with it, I finally hated it enough to switch over to Win-7. From 2020 on, it looks like I will be back because Microsoft has managed to fuck up Windows even worse (and then these suckers wonder why Github users don't trust them). Maybe I'll buy a Tux when I install Linux so that I can punch it in the face.

Progress was yesterday - today it's about damage control. Welcome to a world where the brightest CS guys are thinking about how not only to shove up even more ads into peoples' asses, but how to also transmit lab data of the poo.

So I just recently had the pleasure to set up a Rails environment for a friend on Windows. I haven't used Windows in about 5 or 6 years, and the person I had to set it up for doesn't know much about programming at all.

I all went fine at first, install database, devkit thingy and git. Then set up the project itself. And there is where the problems started.

First windows would refuse to use SSL, because of some weird bug in the Windows version of rubygems. The suggested upgrade did not work so I had to switch some gem sources to insecure connections, but at least it did install everything correctly.

Alright, I thought, that's not _that_ bad, everything is running now.

He sent me a screenshot some time later. Something was wrong with the JavaScript runtime, and I could not figure out for the life of me what the issue was.

Later again he sent me another screenshot.
His Antivirus spyware was messing with the asset pipeline. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

This was the point where I just said "FUCK IT, i'll just put everything into a fucking VM and let him use that".
I should have done that in the first place.

Long story short:
Setting up a development under Windows is painful.
Do yourself a favor and just use a VM.

My family sometimes send me tick tock videos. I usually open them on brave browser. Dude, why the fuck is brave blocking "motion sensor" through camera? what kind of spying is this? tick tock is spyware and cancer fr

Ubuntu is spyware

What the fuck xiaomi!
Need to get rid of this spyware/adware asap

I guess Motorola decided to join the Slow Down Your Device So You'll Buy The Next Model club. I had a Moto G5s Plus I bought not too long ago. I mainly use it for debugging now.

I mean, can't prove anything, all I can say for certain is their last update, literally, the final one they plan on releasing for that model, made the device so slow it was useless.

So I unlocked it and put LineageOS on it. Not easy, since there's no official build for it. Once I got it working, all the issues with the stock firmware vanished. It runs faster than it ever has.

Now I get greeted with a message when it boots telling me that the device was unlocked and can't be trusted, because, you know, we can all trust cell phone manufacturers to not put a bunch of spyware on our phones.

being a sheep over the last years I just recently started to overthink my software choices in terms of privacy. but hell it's far from easy!
just now I realize how dependent I am from all of these services. I mean no problem ditching Facebook for example, it's not essential to me. but what about WhatsApp and GoogleDrive? I'm using these services on a daily basis...
any advices on what software or providers to use alternatively? especially browser, messaging app, email provider and cloud service?
please keep in mind that although I am willing to bring sacrifices I by no means want to neither could live like Richard Stallman. so an argument like "sell your MacBook because macOS is spyware" is not that helpful to me - more like what can I do to increase my privacy within the boundaries given to me. I have to find some sort of compromise. so curious about your advices, stories and opinions right now!

I hate how people automatically assume anything coming out of China is spyware. Because the US and EU have such good reputations for preserving privacy right?

There it fucking is again...

The legendary spyware "Antimalware Service Executable".

I changed the entry in the regedit. Tried to delete it with every possible tool. Tried to "chmod" it in the Windows way to be able to delete it as an admin. Doesn't work.

I swear in the name of bloody satan. This shit is doomed. It cannot be removed even if your shit begins to burn.

Microsoft, fucking remove it.
It is not a fucking feature!

Your windows updates fucking suck, your compatibility telemetry whatever the fuck you call these retarded ass "features" anymore fucking suck, your windows defender sucks.

Is there anything that doesn't suck in the features that you produce? I don't fucking think so. Fucking die for fucks sake.

Apple is overpriced, but at least they do their job well. Not like you, you fucking scumbags!

JESUS!

I finally got the refurbished laptop I ordered and..
wrong CPU, wrong number of cores
wrong GPU
only 1 USB port, I bought 3
battery is DOA

fuck aaa_pcs at ebay. they better replace this with what I bought or imma call Karen to talk to their manager

maybe I should check for spyware/backdoors/etc while I'm at it just because I'm pissed.

any suggestions? nothing is too petty if it doesn't void warranty

CVE-2019-3568
Description: A buffer overflow vulnerability in WhatsApp VOIP stack allowed remote code execution via specially crafted series of SRTCP packets sent to a target phone number.

NSO group even sell a spyware application based on that vulnerability to governments.

Listen!!!!! I'm going to the toilet with my phone!!! Listen!!!

dear ietf-people i want to thank you that tls1.3 is official. i know it was hard work to say just no to the doughbags and preventing that middleware and spyware manufacturers implementing static keys.
to make it short:
Thank you for your hard work

Usually spyware had to be installed maliciously or without the victim knowing, but nowadays people fucking use it voluntarily WTF. Bitmoji you fucktwit. Everyone sees where you are, what music you listen to and the users (at least the ones I know) even promote it like it is something good

wat is up with people

you boubas use todo list apps bloated with spyware to not forget things.
I, the kiki, store my todo list right at the function body.

white house props up "memory safe" languages

cloudflare releases all in one network connections library pingora as open source (for rust, a memory safe language)

cloudflare is sus. they were hosting that Ukranian kill-list that was routed through Langley/FBI. when contacted by multiple people, they ignored the violations and complaints to take down the website

SEE IT WAS SUS

so I guess if you can put spyware on the low level and convince everyone to move to it it'll give you an Intel advantage

cloudflare being a CDN sure would give the American gov a lot of metadata to work with

and ofc businesses just want something that works, so on we go

FUCK GOOGLE'S INSTANT APPS.
I know google is bad in general, but fuck Instant Apps in particular!
Doesn't matter if you've disabled them from every account you have, they will still update and install themselves no matter what! Doesn't matter if you're on wifi or on a mobile connection using data either!

What's even worse is that there is no trace given of these update - just a temporary notification while it's downloading and installing the update, then it's gone! Blink and you'll miss it.

Can't even get rid of this shite, because I have a few accounts tied to a project that are entirely based on google services :(
Fuckin' spyware

Any OS recommendations for my old HP Pavilion g6?
Something a bit less known, along the line of elementaryOS (but stable) or Deepin (but not Chinese spyware).

After brute forced access to her hardware I spotted huge memory leak spreading on my key logger I just installed. She couldn’t resist right after my data reached her database so I inserted it once more to duplicate her primary key, she instantly locked my transaction and screamed so loud that all neighborhood was broadcasted with a message that exception is being raised. Right after she grabbed back of my stick just to push my exploit harder to it’s limits and make sure all stack trace is being logged into her security kernel log.
Fortunately my spyware was obfuscated and my metadata was hidden so despite she wanted to copy my code into her newly established kernel and clone it into new deadly weapon all my data went into temporary file I could flush right after my stick was unloaded.
Right after deeply scanning her localhost I removed my stick from her desktop and left the building, she was left alone again, loudly complaining about her security hole being exploited.
My work was done and I was preparing to break into another corporate security system.
- penetration tester diaries

Firefox if you want to be the best shit, better fix/ implement most of newer ECMA standards(well a decade old actually), otherwise I have no choice but to use the spyware shit called Google Chrome.

Windows just activated TPM on my Windows 10 computer on first of february 2024.
The main reason I stuck with Windows 10 was the sole reason of not wanting to upload my hardware-fingerprint to MS.
Well, guess they just got it themselves and now, disabling the TPM comes with a lot of downsides, as it is now holding my certificates hostage...

Anybody know what this service running in the background on an android device does?

It sent me a plain text notification, which disappeared and sent me to a phishing site the moment I tried clearing it. I've forced killed the process for now.

A quick search online doesn't reveal much information, except for a dodgy site claiming it's spyware named StealthGenie.

Dafuq? Small people at creatorkit couldn't track me opening their spam and are now RESENDING it because my mac didn't load their spyware trackers in their first email? What even is this?
By the way, this email is about how they're gonna remove the free plan soon & their manipulative gaslighting justifications for that.

Mobile... Anime games take 2-3gb of data these days... Wtf....

No wonder need larger storage... But seriously...

Guess apps are no different... Why the fuck does a minute app like Facebook need 300mb to install... Even with all the spyware....

On the topic of mesh networks

1. Anyone know of a good non-cloud dependent mesh network system under $300?

2. Anyone every attempted to setup their own with libremesh or with prototype-cjdns-pi?

I have no idea why and how people get adware/malware/spyware/viruses, ransomware, and the like on Windows machines. I've been using Windows since I was a small child and on the machines I've used (mainly my older brother's), automatic updates were always off. I only had a virus issue once because I was small didn't know what I was doing at the time, but that was easily fixed by my brother.

Bottom line: Fuck Windows and all the drivers it broke that one time I decided to enable updates

P.S. I started using Linux a few years ago, and it's been pretty wonderful! I've used dozens of different distros, but I still can't get away from Windows because games, certain programs, and compatibility issues (like some drivers and devices not properly working in Linux), so oh well

Maybe not specifically "dev" but certainly a relatable rant to anyone here:
Moms small business gets "hacked," or standard spyware phone call from India let us save you for only $149 kind of crap. She obviously gets upset had a panic attack and thinks about all the sensitive shit on their network. Then, ONLY THEN, does she call me and the rest of the cavalry i.e. over payed and undermotivated IT guy to ask what's up why it happened and whose fault is it.

All is well, no ransom paid, no data lost or tangible damage done, but I am positive it will happen again, because it is impossible for people to internalize that they're the problem that money can't fix.

You clicked the unsolicited link. No amount of antivirus bloatware will ever be able to stop the monkey from trying to see what's in the box.

TheBut keep not paying me or people more qualified than me, and then scream and yell and pout when your shits gone and we can honestly say with a grin and a clean conscience that there is nothing we can do.

My ex-colleague contacted me recently to help build a solution that would checkmate the case of code theft that they are currently challenged with. I tried to suggest the developers either work remotely (using rdp or similar), or physically with a company provided system. He rejected both recommendations and insisted the potential culprit shouldn't be aware he is being monitored

He proposed the following flow for what he intends I build: an obfuscated program scattered across the code base, possibly assembling at intervals or as a reaction to project build. Then signaling their server with details of the machine it's running on

The project to be rigged with the spyware is written in spring boot and I can't turn this down even if I don't think it's worth it cuz no work has been forthcoming and I'm nearly out of cash

So the question is, is the flow described above a feasible one? Can you suggest a smarter way to detect when the code is transferred to the system of an unaccredited engineer? Can you suggest any tips on how to go about this?

tl;dr: looking for suggestions for new instant messenger (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.)

so I used to use Facebook Messenger a LOT, actually much more than even texting (I know I know, Facebook=spyware lol). I wanna ditch Facebook so bad but most of the people I talk to, I message through Messenger, and thus, I don't have most people's actual phone number. so I'm looking for suggestions for a new messaging platform, where these are my priorities:
1. Ease of use/existing userbase (e.g. the more of my friends that are already on it, the better)
2. Security & Privacy
3. the ability to easily find people I know without having their phone number

And I thought spyware could not get any worse. fullstory.com

I know that Ubuntu used to spy on it's users prior to 16.04. Is this still a thing? Does it still spy and feed the data to Amazon?

My Windows Computer is crapping out more and more with each "update".
Currently, it often hangs when shutting down or restarting. Completely out of the blue!
Like, I remember it updated itself a few days ago and now I have random problems, crashes and a few more bloat-/spyware apps that I didnt order.
Also, windows added a few more cryptic services to my OS that now phone home to all countries all around the world.
This is a nightmare!

So I've recently been working on my own open source project and a few days ago there popped up 2 different reviews of my program.. it feels good that someone took the time to use my program and share their thoughts about it but it also feels a bit sketchy since both sites offers the possibility to download my program aswell and I'm not 100% sure that they haven't added any kind of adware or spyware to it.. The sites in question are softpedia.com and findmysoft.com .. Anyone with some tips about the situation or feedback regarding these sites?