nightsky
The best solution right now may be “buy a Macbook and learn MacOS”, which is so depressing.
Depends on whether you include “my personal data is sent to the manufacturer of the computer against my wishes” in your threat model… Apple does many good things for security, and I wish PC hardware makers would take security-related things even just nearly as seriously as them. But I can’t trust Apple anymore either.
(Explanation: the whole iCloud syncing stuff is such a buggy mess. I don’t want it, I don’t need it, so I want it off. But I guess Apple just doesn’t test enough how well it works when you turn it off, maybe they can’t imagine someone not wanting it. The problem is, iCloud sync settings don’t stay off. Settings randomly turn themselves back on, e.g. during OS updates, and upload data before you even notice it. I’m not claiming that’s intentional, I assume it’s just bugs. But I’ve observed such bugs again and again in the past 9 years, and I’ve had enough. Still have a Macbook around, but I use it very rarely these days, only when I need some piece of software on MacOS that has no suitable Linux equivalent.)
While a PC+Linux setup can avoid the specific issue of “don’t randomly upload my data somewhere”, the setup of it all can be a mess, as you say. And then security is still limited by buggy hardware and BIOS/firmware that is frequently full of security holes. The state of computers is depressing indeed (in so many ways, security just being one of them)…
And people believe this … why?
Maybe people believe that all the AI stuff is just magic [insert sparkle emoji], and that can terminate further thought…
Edit: heh, turns out there’s science about that notion
screaming about “theft!” and “hacking!!”
Sounds plausible. Or maybe they will go with a don’t use it, because privacy! take. Funny thing is, I actually agree people shouldn’t give them their data. But they shouldn’t give it to OpenAI either…
This shows the US is falling behind China, so you gotta give OpenAI more money!
Fear of a “bullshit gap”, I guess.
Oh, and: simply perfect choice of header image on that article.
As a fan of physical media, I recently bought another drive as a spare, currently is IMO a good time for that. They still make really good drives in large enough quantities so they’re cheap, but that could end any time. Once production stops, they will vanish silently. Learned that lesson back then when floppy drives were suddendly gone… kinda wish I had stocked up a few new ones (for retro computing purposes) when they were still available.