elondaits (u/elondaits)

elondaits commented on Meta announces Oakley smart glasses theverge.com/news/690133/... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

demosthanos · 2 months ago

If you can ask "Hey Meta, ..." while holding a golf club and unable to touch a button (which the promo video [0] shows you can) then the mic is always on. It may not always be beaming data to Meta, but that's a matter of trust, which I don't have much of for Meta given their history.

The camera may or may not be always on, but it can be turned on by software activated by the always-on mic (again, demonstrated by the promo video), so it would be best to treat it as though it is.

[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/introducing-oakley-meta-gl...

elondaits · 2 months ago

The “Hey *” (Meta, Siri, Alexa) is typically handled by a simpler mechanism on a short buffer that triggers the proper recording and speech recognition workflow in order to save battery. But if you’re not going to trust the company, then the fact that it responds to Hey Meta shouldn’t make any difference because it could still be quietly recording. The fact that it responds to a wakeup prompt changes nothing.

elondaits commented on We fell out of love with Next.js and back in love with Ruby on Rails hardcover.app/blog/part-1... · Posted by u/mike1o1

hijp · 4 months ago

I think if Rails had focused on giving real first party support to interoperability with whatever frontend framework you brought to the table it would be so much bigger right now. They put a lot of work into Hotwire but I just want to use React, and I'm sure others want to use what they're familiar with.

elondaits · 4 months ago

I’m hardly an expert with Rails, and I integrated React twice, on two very different sites, using API controllers. The nice thing about React is that you can limit it to an island on the page, and don’t need to buy into the router, etc. that said, I did disable Hotwire to make my life easier.

elondaits commented on Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15 lapcatsoftware.com/articl... · Posted by u/latexr

andrepd · 8 months ago

Not really. A mandatory opt-in option at the browser level would be the correct way to do it, but legislation forced instead those cookie banners onto the webpage.

elondaits · 8 months ago

No, legislation (the GDPR) doesn’t say anything about cookie pop ups. It says that private data (or any kind) can only be used with opt in consent, given freely, with no strings attached, with the ability to be withdrawn, that it will be kept secure, deleted when not needed for the original purpose, etc. All very reasonable stuff. Tracking cookies are affected, but the legislation covers all private data (IP, email address, your location, etc) … And if Browsers agreed on a standard to get and withdraw opt-in consent, it would be compatible with what the legislation requires.

elondaits commented on Grammarly acquires Coda coda.io/blog/about-coda/g... · Posted by u/Olphs

lewisjoe · 9 months ago

Grammarly has been having an identity crisis ever since LLMs made grammar checking accessible to every company at a fraction of the cost. ChatGPT is killing a lot of companies and grammarly was the first collateral.

This acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.

But it's high time Grammarly evolves itself into some other product or die trying.

elondaits · 8 months ago

The other day, Grammarly marked a grammar error in my text. I wasn’t too sure about it, so I asked ChatGPT (4o) to explain it. It agreed with Grammarly. I wasn’t convinced and didn’t understand ChatGPTs justification, so I asked again but using the more advanced o1 model… this time ChatGPT said Grammarly was wrong.

… ChatGPT is good at improving grammar, but it doesn’t “understand” what it’s doing (by design), and doesn’t have a complete and consistent ruleset, which is what you want in a grammar checker. Also, grammar and style rules change with time, and you want to have good and precise control of what rules you’re applying.

elondaits commented on Apple put the Magic Mouse's charging port on the bottom again theverge.com/2024/10/28/2... · Posted by u/miles

lovich · 10 months ago

Is there any sort of industrial designer, hardware engineer, or whatever job title is responsible for making physical product designs like this that could explain why they’ve done this repeatedly.

In the surface this seems super dumb, but I expect that one of the most successful companies on the planet hires people who have at least an inkling of what they are doing.

What is the trade off here that I am missing that makes this a choice they’ve made multiple times?

elondaits · 10 months ago

I always thought they didn’t want people keeping it wired because Apple always made an effort to minimize cables around their hardware…

…But then I read a good additional reason, which is that the mouse movement during use would quickly deteriorate the socket and maybe the cable, because they’re not designed for that kind of workload.

I guess they could have created a new type of connector… but then a non standard plug would have other negative consequences (higher cost, having to stock and sell replacements, etc.)

elondaits commented on Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it theregister.com/2024/09/1... · Posted by u/rntn

andrewstuart · a year ago

A specific license might work requiring government users to pay.

elondaits · a year ago

Governments sometimes work around limitations by using private third parties that aren’t bound to them. e.g. if they had to pay to use httpd, they would just start paying a commercial hosting company that exists solely to provide http services to that government.

elondaits commented on Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it theregister.com/2024/09/1... · Posted by u/rntn

knowitnone · a year ago

OSS developers chose licenses that allow the world to use their software for free. They can change the license any time they want. What is needed is a license that is free for non-commercial/educational use and pay if revenue exceeds a certain number.

elondaits · a year ago

The problem with “non commercial” exceptions in FOSS licenses is that there’s no good definition of “non commercial”. Interpretations sometimes includes “anything that involves money / payments” even if that’s just distribution costs, someone’s salary, etc. And even if there’s no money, someone could be profiting indirectly.

I work for a non profit that creates FOSS and we were explicitly prevented from using something published as CC-BY-SA-NC (by the author) because our completely “free to access” “not for profit” project was being developed by employees working for money (paid for by a private foundation).

So what’s “non commercial”? Someone at home by themselves? What happens if they amass online followers and then monetize them somehow? They lose the license retroactively then? Was Linux non commercial when it began? (It should have been) Is it still non commercial? (Many would argue it isn’t).

elondaits commented on 13ft – A site similar to 12ft.io but self-hosted github.com/wasi-master/13... · Posted by u/darknavi

mattbillenstein · a year ago

Counterpoint - if you like the content enough to go through this - just pay for it. Monetary support of journalism or content you like is a great way to encourage more of it.

elondaits · a year ago

I agree, but would like for a way to pay for an article, or a single day, week, or month of access. Just like I could buy a single one-off issue of a publication a couple of times before starting a long term relationship with it. Not all publications support this, and some like the NY Times require chatting with a representative to cancel the subscription. I see a lot of talk about physical media around film and music, but not being able to buy single issues of any magazine or newspaper anonymously when the circumstances call for it, is a great loss for public discourse.

elondaits commented on Apple Intelligence beta flagged a phishing email as "Priority" social.panic.com/@cabel/1... · Posted by u/latexr

IggleSniggle · a year ago

Gmail does this to me and doesn't even call the feature beta

elondaits · a year ago

Same. I get really obvious phishing emails on the “priority” part of my inbox at least once a month (although usually it’s on a burst of 3-4 on close proximity).