BluescreenOfDeath

That raises a fundamental question to me:

Are companies required to get permission to get data from people?

Because currently, they sure seem to think they need permission, except when it suits the company's interests (IE gathering data from people who explicitly reject their services and choose not to use them).

And while I understand that not everything is private, we have laws against gathering public data about people but only if you're just one person. Stalking is a crime, unless you're Facebook apparently.

That choice is called not using their service.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

Turns out, that isn't enough.

EDIT

See also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

The health insurance lobbyists won't hesitate to inject money into a local election for a candidate that agrees to keep things as they are.

But hey, I remember being naive and idealistic once, too.

You have a lot of faith in the US government's willingness to solve problems for people vs for companies.

We have a gun violence epidemic because gun manufacturer profits matter more than children's lives. Forgive me if I'm skeptical that congress would do anything other than protect big business. Health insurance lobbyists will make sure of it.

You don't care about your data because you don't realize how valuable it is, and how bad the deal is that in exchange for not being able to control your data, you get to see some cute cat memes.

We're headed to a world where your health insurance company can pay a data broker to get access to data Kroger collects about what you buy when shopping. Imagine your health insurance going up because you buy real butter vs margarine. Or not enough vegetables.

But hey, at least you get to see your friends vacation pictures for free on Facebook. Totally worth it.

I can guarantee that all these people complaining about "muh privacy" would not like having a paywall restricted internet.

As one of the privacy zealots on the internet, I'd gladly pay for services if it avoids advertisements. But I should get a choice in who gets my information.

As things are now, I'm not in control of any of it unless I fight tooth and nail to retain it, and even then I can only limit what they have access to. Facebook tracks my browsing habits and builds an advertisement profile based on it even though I explicitly deleted my accounts almost 10 years ago.

And this information isn't just kept by Facebook. They have the right to sell it to anyone, including the government. Who needs a warrant when your local PD can just pay a data broker and get access to your GPS logs? After all, you consented to that website's EULA that said they can sell that data to any other entity.

People who don't care about data privacy don't understand how much you can learn about someone just from 'anonymized metadata'.

If it was a person wanting to know that much about you, you'd call the cops for stalking. But because it's a multimillion dollar company with a profit motive, it's suddenly okay?

It's the constant war on end users that chased me away from windows.

You can't say no to their relentless advertising. It's "maybe later". The pushing to require a Microsoft account. Ads in the start menu. Windows Recall.

The list goes on. You get as much agency as Microsoft allows, or you violate your eula and modify the os to remove things you don't want.

We didn't know it at the time, but windows 7 was peak windows.

You're the one who brought him into the conversation.

Fucking same.

I deleted my main account once they first came out with the reddit recap, and deleted my replacement when they fucked RIF, never to return.

I still lurk without an account sometimes, but that's all they'll ever get out of me.

What I want is a way to answer the phone like a fax machine. Just press a button and the call gets answered and immediately starts playing that fax machine sound.

I'll bet that would stop calls. Surely they have something that can tell if they're calling a fax machine over and over.

I think the example you're using is closer to emulation.

I'm not an expert by any means, most of my technology experience comes from hardware. But Proton isn't changing the Linux ecosystem, and the programs are still expecting a windows environment when they're run via Proton.

From what I recall, Linux and windows can both do the same stuff, they just have different names or different ways to ask for resources. And Proton receives the request for whatever and converts it to the Linux equivalent.

It's not nearly as bad as it was in the past, now that the graphics APIs are system agnostic.

Most simply put, it's a layer that allows a computer program expecting windows to run on Linux. It isn't emulating anything, just sorta like translating.

Think of it like a language. Windows speaks English, so a program expects to talk in English. But let's pretend like Linux talks Spanish. Proton translates the English commands to Spanish for Linux to understand and execute, and then Proton converts the responses back to English for the program.