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Platform27, in Can I edit .docx files without a Microsoft 365 subscription and if not are there any alternatives

Due to its proprietary nature, finding software that can properly read those files can be tricky.

LibreOffice is the usual go-to for folks wanting an office suite, that respects privacy, and FOSS. It can read docx files, but it can mess up formatting. Still, for many it’s the preferred choice. It’s got the best reputation.

Now if formatting REALLY matters, take a look at OnlyOffice. It handles those MS formats so much better. It’s not a bad suite, but it’s hard to beat the good reputation Libreoffice has gained.

FlihpFlorp,

Oh this is helpful

Yeah another person said it gets funky with formatting but that’s not a huge deal for me as the most complex formats for the class syllabus I like to just have a copy but probably nothing I can’t do by saving it as a pdf

And like I said in those comments my own documents aren’t complex mostly just using tab and enter to make my documents more readable for myself

TCB13, (edited )
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t use complex formats you say… just don’t forget that LibreOffice thinks bullets points are “complex formats”:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1ef94126-115b-4a4b-8207-84bca7387e49.jpeg

What OS are you using?

FlihpFlorp,

Ah I see good to know. For me formatting issues aren’t a super big deal and sounds like it’s outweighed with its reputation here. I guess if it does become an issue I can simply hop over to open office but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

LibreOffice and OnlyOffice will certainly be better than OpenOffice.

FlihpFlorp,

Also didn’t see your bottom question at first but I’m on windows and edit documents both on my home laptop and one I bring to my classes which is why being able to play nice with proton drive is a must for me.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

So why not simply use MS Office? Way less hassle to deal with. Licenses are available for cheap on eBay or pirated form reputable sources.

FlihpFlorp,

I was planning on using MS Office originally when writing the posts but 1) I didn’t know if it was going to work after my subscription expired, and 2) I wanted to see what else is out there

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Seriously, download MAS and choose Ohook. Enjoy your permanently serialized and activated MS Office. :)

takeda,

So in the description you said edit, but here you say read (syllabus). If just reading is the requirement, there was a word reader, not sure if it is still available. I also believe once subscription expires, you still will be able to view, just edit.

Also what’s wrong with your school requiring word document and not providing a free license for the software? My college at least provided free license during my class.

As other alternatives I don’t have better than libre office (at the time I was using, libre office didn’t exist and I used OpenOffice, I still was using it, primarily, because of using Linux on my laptop) and submitted my work as PDF and didn’t have problems, but my class were requirements in computer science so I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doing it.

FlihpFlorp,

Yeah that’s my bad I just couldn’t think of an example where there was formatting in the document

Yeah I’m definitely going to try libreoffice

infeeeee,

Docx is not a proprietary format, it’s a standard, it’s called Office Open XML: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

And M$ published its specifications, so Libreoffice devs could support it. But here comes the funny part: M$ (deliberately?) doesn’t follow the specification it published. So the formatting problems of LibreOffice come from M$, because they don’t follow their specs, but M$ can just do whatever they want because of its market share.

I read this story a long time ago, and I’m paraphrasing, but on this wiki page you can read a lot of controversies related to this format: en.wikipedia.org/…/Standardization_of_Office_Open…

HumanPerson,

Aren’t the specifications also insanely long and complicated for good measure?

infeeeee,

Yeah, wiki says it’s 6000 pages. But that’s not that long compared to other similar file standards, and it also contains pptx and xlsx.

For comparison PDF standard is about 1000 pages, HTML (without CSS, just pure HTML) is 1500 pages.

unrelatedkeg,

Not only are they insanely long, MS strategically doesn’t follow its own specs in places so other software using the specs “fuck up formatting” even if they follow MS’s specs perfectly.

grue,

Docx is not a proprietary format, it’s a standard

It’s a “standard” only in the sense that Microsoft took the MS Office binary file formats (which are basically just writing the internal state of Word/Powerpoint/whatever to disc), serialized it to XML, half-assed some bullshit documentation for it, and bribed the standards body to rubber-stamp it. It’s still, at it’s core, basically defined by whatever nonsense Microsoft’s implementation does.

Cwilliams,

M$ is the best abbreviation for Microsoft yet

ieatpillowtags, in I deleted all my post from my reddit account, can they still monetize them?

I think it’s enough to stop engaging with Reddit, there’s not much point in worrying about what you’ve already posted there imo.

RedditWanderer, (edited )

You’re saying there is no point, and the comment below agrees with you, because the only point is that it removes threads and that’s getting old.

No it’s not getting old, that’s the entire point of deleting posts. Reddit should not get post traffic through google for something I did, and I can take that away. Me alone won’t have a big impact, but if we all do it Reddit will have more struggles.

In order of efficacy:

  • Don’t post to Reddit: this is what reddit needs to keep going. Reddit doesn’t produce anything.
  • If you have popular posts people come back to (like help communities) delete them, this still drives traffic and app downloads for reddit.
  • Commenting/upvoting/downvoting on posts drives engagement. If you have to visit reddit, don’t click on votes and don’t comment.

A reminder that reddit is still struggling to IPO and sell off, in large part due to the.exodus.

cyanarchy,

Dude I’m not interested in going scorched earth on one of the most useful repositories of practical information and discussion, and I’m disturbed that you’re so zealous to do so.

HiT3k, (edited )

For fucking real. If I ever come across a niche question about some obscure router setting and the only answer on the internet was some comment in a ten year old Reddit post and the comment says “DELETED BY SUCH AND SUCH APP - fuck u/spez” I’m gonna cry.

solrize,

“This post has been moved to Lemmy at url xxyyzz, fuck spez” would keep the info around, if that makes you feel better.

Land_Strider,

That should be the only way, but I seriously doubt that Reddit admins would keep the links intact in that case. Out of their greed and malice they would probably mess with the Lemmy link, then put the blame narrative on the poster for deleting/making the information unavailable.

It can be a bit annoying like how c/hackernews post only external links with topic titles, but that is the (temporary) cost of freedom and privacy.

solrize,

Maybe you’re right but at least you will have tried.

retrieval4558,

Yeah as someone who has gotten into Linux and DIY computer builds in the last year, I’ve been pretty sad at some deletions. Ultimately the fault is on Reddit itself but still pretty sad.

octobob,

Yeah, looking up how to do something on an 8 year old post and finding deleted comments is getting really old. It’s even worse now that Google’s search engine has gone down in a bullshit flaming AI crapshoot and adding reddit to your search is the only way to find a human answer anymore.

RedditWanderer, (edited )

Personally it brings me joy to see that you’re falling on empty posts from top google searches, and hope you find many more in the future. You’re just saying that you prefer to give money to Reddit if it’s convenient for you.

That’s the entire point of leaving reddit with our 10+ years of contribution; leaving reddit wasn’t convenient for me, I’m not gonna help it be convenient for you. Get rekt spez.

datavoid,

How does looking at reddit from a search, not logged in, and with an ad blocker, give reddit money?

RedditWanderer,

Your ad blockers and “not logged in” protections aren’t actually protections. You’re still tracked on VPN and icognito. Sure now it’s not necessarily your account (although they can make good guesses), but to them it’s someone. Every month youre making it on charts of “real active user data”, helping reddit continue to look profitable as a business. They’ll likely be able to hold on a bit longer and get funding until adblockers go away.

Just visiting reddit isn’t in my list though, it doesn’t help reddit that much. Either way I don’t see why I should leave my helpful content up for others to view. I don’t get to pick to show my post only to adblock people, so OP definitely has an impact deleting them.

datavoid,

That’s totally fair, I deleted my comments and account as well. Definitely not interacting with the site anymore besides the occasional search for niche info

octobob,

“the internet is turning into a hellscape so I’m going to make it worse”

Cool? I guess?

RedditWanderer, (edited )

Reddit is turning into a corporate hellscape so I’m going to help make it worse.

FTFY. The community didn’t start this and Reddit shouldn’t succeed just because we want good memes. There are other ways.

FutileRecipe,

now that Google’s search engine has gone down in a bullshit flaming AI crapshoot

Tried Kagi yet?

Melody,

SearXNG is free. Don’t waste your time with Kagi.

averyminya,

Users deleted comments was the only power we really had. How is reddit worth anything when all the people who shared information now lead to deleted comments?

I deleted a lot of my guides because of reddit. I still have them, but they’re no longer online due. Reddit is even kind enough to say that my account which I deleted no longer exists, maybe because it was banned. So that’s nice, all of us who deleted it in protest have been labeled as banned users.

I’ve had to use search “reddit” a couple times for various niche things but I stopped after multiple “answers” were just directing to deleted comments.

ioslife,

Except most of Reddit of bots now too lol

Unmapped, (edited ) in Plex starts narcing on its own users' anime and X-rated habits with an opt-out service, and it's going terribly

I’ll admit this feature should have definitely been opt-in. But when the update came out there was a big pop-up on your screen when you logged in. Where you just turned all of this off and hit save. It is super easy to disable.

The sharing what I watch with friends part is dumb. But it is pretty cool how you can recommend stuff to friends.

CmdrShepard,

I followed the instructions and opted out yet I’m still seeing what my users watched along with getting emails listing the same. I’m certain none of my users are interested in this and likely skipped through the pop-up without reading/comprehending it.

LufyCZ,

I think that as the server owner it’s a given that you’ll be able to see what people watch.

CmdrShepard, (edited )

Having the ability to see it versus having it pushed in your face in the app and in weekly emails are two completely separate things.

ISometimesAdmin,
@ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone avatar

Yeah, considering how in-your-face this popup was, I can't really take someone seriously when they just say that it was "opt-out"...

Like, I get it on a technicality. But c'mon.

EncryptKeeper,

I didn’t get any popup, many others haven’t either.

dirtbiker509,

I got the pop up. I disabled it. But I just got an email from Plex telling me everything my family member watched in the last week. This is complete shit!!

TheWildTangler,

You opted out, but they didn’t

dirtbiker509,

I thought I was opting out of my account and my server. But nope, Plex is scraping up everything that’s on my server and shipping it in an email to other people including me.

CmdrShepard,

Which is still an issue. “Opting-out” means opting-out not halfway opting-in.

TheWildTangler, (edited )

It’s not perfect, but at least you’re only seeing others’ activity.

There’s hopefully a “discover” email notification you can disable. I haven’t been bothered enough to check yet. Worst case, it could be filtered out pretty easily.

RampantParanoia2365,

I’m not following.

MoonRaven,
@MoonRaven@feddit.nl avatar

What popup? I never got one.

OR3X, in Plex starts narcing on its own users' anime and X-rated habits with an opt-out service, and it's going terribly

Lol, I just finished building my JellyFin server last weekend too. Bye Plex!

artaxthehappyhorse,

I have both currently. Only reason I’ve kept Plex around is bc the jellyfin Roku and android apps need a bit of polish.

1hitsong,
@1hitsong@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m one of the programmers of the Jellyfin Roku client. What are some of the things you’re seeing that need polish? We’re always looking for what to work on next to make it better for users.

artaxthehappyhorse,

Ok here’s my personal gripes/nitpicks

Music:

  • overlay band name on band tile. I know the name is up top, but I don’t recognize a lot of those tile pics and have to go one by one trying to find the right one.
  • when I click a band tile, the “Albums” icon is too small. Ideally have album tiles horizontal along the bottom, but at least make the icon bigger and put next to Instant Mix, also a “all songs” next to “albums”.
  • Instant Mix is confusing, it seems to be shuffle just name it shuffle, and if you hit shuffle from a band details I’d expect it to shuffle just that band, vs “Shuffle All” from main screen, or Shuffle album from album details, etc.
  • when playing and play/pause is focused, if I could push “up” to focus the progress bar, and then left/right to fast fwd/rewind, or “ok” btn to enter a time to skip to (think, where I left off in this 20 hour long audiobook)

Movies section had some nitpicks too. Like wishing there was a quick bar when you focus a movie, or at least putting “un/mark watched” in the asterisk menu instead of having to drill into it. The rest is probably just me needing to get used to the playback button design, like pushing up I’d expect to see progress bar and some quick functions but instead I see file info which doesn’t seem like a common thing I’d care to look at. Similarly, being able to click the progress bar and skip to a time would be wonderful vs hitting “right” a hundred times on my crappy Roku remote 🙂

Hope you found my complaining useful!

1hitsong,
@1hitsong@lemmy.ml avatar

Here are bugs you’ve identified.

overlay band name on band tile. I know the name is up top, but I don’t recognize a lot of those tile pics and have to go one by one trying to find the right one.

There is a setting to always show the titles on the items. On the home view press *, then go to Settings / User Interface / Libraries / General / Grid View Settings / Item Titles. Ensure this setting is set to Always Show. In your music library you will see titles for all your artists, but only if you’re using the Artists (Grid) view - accessed by pressing * while in your library. The titles in the Artists (Presentation) view aren’t honoring this setting. That’s a bug 🐛

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/31d941c6-6ccb-4443-b63d-8cb1a1ee06b3.jpeg

Here are new features you’ve identified that I’ll made enhancement tickets for so we can work on them in the future.

also a “all songs” next to “albums”.

Create a new section that shows a selectable list of all the artist’s songs.

when playing and play/pause is focused, if I could push “up” to focus the progress bar, and then left/right to fast fwd/rewind, or “ok” btn to enter a time to skip to (think, where I left off in this 20 hour long audiobook)

This has been on my mind ever since I first wrote the audio player. It’s coming once we get the last of what I call “the foundation” items completed. In a nutshell, we needed the behind the scenes code to be improved before we could jump into adding more “advanced” functions to the audio player.

Movies section had some nitpicks too. Like wishing there was a quick bar when you focus a movie, or at least putting “un/mark watched” in the asterisk menu instead of having to drill into it.

We’ve had other people mention a similar menu in other locations. We’ve started calling it a context menu. We need to think more about how it interacts with existing * menus and all that, but it’s another good idea.

Hope you found my complaining useful!

Very helpful, thank you!

1hitsong,
@1hitsong@lemmy.ml avatar

Gonna unpack these in small groups. I’ll start with things I believe the client already does or will do soon.

when I click a band tile, the “Albums” icon is too small. Ideally have album tiles horizontal along the bottom, but at least make the icon bigger and put next to Instant Mix

If the artist has albums, you should be able to press down on the remote to get to the album section without having to use the left icon menu. That menu is really only there to help people like me who have some artists with dozens of albums and I don’t want to have to press up through all of them to get back to the top. It’s a little jump menu.

Instant Mix is confusing, it seems to be shuffle just name it shuffle, and if you hit shuffle from a band details I’d expect it to shuffle just that band, vs “Shuffle All” from main screen, or Shuffle album from album details, etc.

Instant mix is kinda like a radio play option. It generates a playlist based on the band you’re on. To play all the songs by the selected band, press the Play button on their artist page. To shuffle play the artist, currently you can press the play button on their artist page then enable shuffle mode.

The upcoming 2.0 release will provide a new option where you can simply press the play button on your remote and it will shuffle play all the songs by the currently highlighted artist.

The rest is probably just me needing to get used to the playback button design, like pushing up I’d expect to see progress bar and some quick functions but instead I see file info which doesn’t seem like a common thing I’d care to look at. Similarly, being able to click the progress bar and skip to a time would be wonderful vs hitting “right” a hundred times on my crappy Roku remote.

The upcoming 2.0 release replaces the playback info and subtitle select popups with an OSD (on screen display). It has buttons to play/pause, skip by chapters, a chapter list, and the moved playback info and subtitle select popups. It also shows you where you are in playback (but this bar is not selectable due to technical reasons - thanks Roku 👎

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/2918145a-f07d-40f3-b17e-09eb9ae20be0.jpeg

CosmicTurtle,

Doesn’t Plex require you to buy their premium service in order to use it on mobile devices?

I remember setting up my Plex server and was shocked that I had to pay to view my own media.

warmaster,

devs have to eat too, open source software (when fully free) is sometimes built as a hobby like Jellyfin, or as a portfolio project, or worst case scenario as a bait and switch to paid (sometimes it’s death sentence). Then there are sponsored projects like Vulkan, or others that live off of donations like Mozilla.

ScoobyDoo27,

I always see this but I used Plex on my iPhone for months before I bought the Plex pass. I did buy the Plex app way back when and maybe that’s why but I’m also using a new Plex account so I don’t see how’d they be tied together.

Wogi,

I do not pay for Plex and watch stuff on my phone all the time

LUHG_HANI,
@LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world avatar

Buying the premium app and Plex pass are different things. You need to buy the app to be able to watch on mobile via the app.

Unmapped, (edited )

I’m not sure if it is exactly the same on Iphone. But on Android you can choose to either pay for the app( a one time payment) or have Plex pass. Either way lets you watch on the mobile app.

wildcardology,

I use VLC for mobile to access my Plex server.

Bonehead, in Police across Britain equipped with live facial recognition bodycams

The good news: Police are wearing body cams that they can't turn off.

The bad news: It's because the cameras are using constant facial recognition to tag everyone.

echodot,

How are they tagging everyone though? Where’s this database they’re comparing against?

If this is like any other government project it won’t work, it will cost 10 million pounds, and is developed by a company that previously specialized in the manufacture of plastic cutlery.

rmuk,

10 million pounds

Hahahaha. Gonna need a few more zeros there, bud.

specialized in the manufacture of plastic cutlery

But no actual experience in the manufacture of plastic cutlery.

Anticorp,

Where’s this database they’re comparing against?

Microsoft has had facial tagging and tracking software in the wild for at least a decade. It can also accurately estimate your age, race, gender, and even your mood. I’m guessing they’ll probably be using that database overlaid with a criminal wanted list.

leraje,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

The Met are already using it - just not (yet) on bodycams.

The company behind it, who supply the data are called Facewatch. I’m not going to link to their site but they’re the ones supplying the tech and db. They did it by scraping social media sites as well as government documents and the plan is to add the UK Passport db data soon.

tankplanker,

Where is the footage stored? As I am conscious it often goes missing in the US for problematic cases.

Mac, in Facebook Watches Teens Online As They Prep for College – The Markup

I’m always watching, Wazowski. Always watching.

possiblylinux127,
cheese_greater,

How can I do that, like linking to an image and there being thumbnail so you don’thave to click it?

MigratingtoLemmy,

![img](link)

cheese_greater, (edited )

You’ve done well[You’ve done well]

[You’ve done well]

Edit: I FUCKING LOVE YOU, WAHOO!!!

Edit: is there any way to caption the text or abstract over displaying the link with the text you want go caption it as? Is that somehow possible?

MigratingtoLemmy, (edited )

I don’t think so. AFAIK there is no native method to caption images in markdown, which is what this editor uses. People try to bring about this effect by italicising the part they would want as a caption right underneath the image. However, in your case, I see a [You’ve done well] banner underneath the image, which I assume is the caption you meant. Not sure how that happened but if that works, great!

*some text* = some text

cheese_greater, (edited )

What do you think about my workaround I edited in? It works, however inelegantly

MigratingtoLemmy, (edited )

Hmm, I’m on my computer now and I can’t see the image for some reason.

Edit: sorry, just my browser. But why do I see two [You’ve done well]s?

cheese_greater,

U see it?!

MigratingtoLemmy,

Your reply to your comment above is better: just one italicised caption makes it easy to understand. Great job!

cheese_greater,

We did it Lemmy

We did it Lemmy

cheese_greater,
cheese_greater, (edited )

You’ve done well

You’ve done well

cheese_greater,

We did it Lemmy

We did it Lemmy!

possiblylinux127,
waratchess, (edited ) in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

Voyager

It’s a FOSS privacy respecting Lemmy client.

It’s available on Android and IOS

You can also try it as a PWA: vger.app

labbbb,

Another one URL I use: wefwef.app

waratchess,

The OG

crispy_kilt, in Here's what telegram's founder say about Whatsapp's privacy

What a load of hipocrisy. The dude uses unauthenticated DH for his apps “secret chats”, which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds. Other chats use just TLS, meaning they get to read EVERYTHING.

Use Signal, people.

clot27,
@clot27@lemm.ee avatar

which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds

No, how can a bored student breach e2ee in seconds? note that no such cases have been reported by any telegram user so far.

crispy_kilt, (edited )

Because the DH is unauthenticated, as I already said. Users can’t report it because there is no way to tell for them.

clot27,
@clot27@lemm.ee avatar

Users can’t report it because there is no way to tell for them

Atleast the one who breached can tell? no telegram users data have been seen on dark web yet, no person/org have claimed to get any vulnerability in their system. Also if its that easy to breach why govt’s keep banning telegram for not giving them userdata? despite telegram is the biggest app where most terrorist orgs operate, hub of piracy and illegal things, you can call it “public” darkweb.

Gooey0210,

Check stories about russian journalists…

I have some friends working in the police, many years they showed me how they can read messages of like anyone on telegram I was trying to tell people to stop using telegram for years, but now at least therecs some conversation is going on because of the journalists

clot27,
@clot27@lemm.ee avatar

I have tried to google, most of them were assumptions or russian agencies using ISPs to login to their account in which case its not telegrams fault. Can you provide a substantial proof?

Rose,

The data is available. See this article - it’s a Google link.

clot27,
@clot27@lemm.ee avatar

That article literally praises telegram despite being non e2ee by default, authorities can only get ip address and phone number from it (those are public info already and both of them could be avoided by using voip amd paid VPNs), that just proves how solid mtproto have become. Also they are saying one can see your telegram message when they are physically logged in your account for which the Russian authorities took the help of their ISP, in that case its not telegrams fault, set up 2fa on your account or use VoIP.

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Signal is based in the United States, enjoy having CIA and NSA reading all your messages.

NounsAndWords, in Cryptographers Just Got Closer to Enabling Fully Private Internet Searches

Just in time for all the searchable information to be completely drowned out by low quality AI content.

SendMePhotos,

This is my nightmare

wahming,

It’s already drowned out by low quality SEO spam, so no difference

GarytheSnail,
@GarytheSnail@programming.dev avatar

Thank God I did all my searching before this happened.

iAvicenna,
@iAvicenna@lemmy.world avatar

did you also make hard copies of everything you found?

GarytheSnail,
@GarytheSnail@programming.dev avatar

Dang it! No! brb

Underwaterbob, in This is how I KNOW it works as intended

Hahaha! “We need access to your private data to protect your privacy.” We’ve come full circle.

LWD, (edited ) in The AirDrop flaw exploited by China, explained

deleted_by_author

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  • moreeni,

    They sat on this since at least 2016

    digipres.club/

    BearOfaTime,

    Like they sat on (and still haven’t resolved) the iMessage issues they’ve known about for years.

    news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38537444

    taladar, in Is this even legal? Hiding data deletion behind login (after email request)

    What would prevent someone else from requesting the deletion of your account if there was no proof that you are the person whose account it is?

    pacjo,

    I’m writing from the email associated with the account, this is enough for most services I encountered

    mp3,
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    Emails can be spoofed.

    lazynooblet,
    @lazynooblet@lazysoci.al avatar

    But spoofing doesn’t allow a 2 way conversation. Confirming the email should be enough

    pacjo,

    That’s just how it is. If you try hard enough everything can be spoofed. You can also try guessing someone’s password and creation date of an account. This is not the issue here.

    mp3,
    @mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

    The issue is with support not giving you an adequate account recovery method, they’re correct about validating ownership of the account tho.

    parpol, (edited )

    what they mean is emails can be extremely easily spoofed. It is pretty much like me changing my username to pacjo to gain access to your account.

    taladar,

    Email (on domains without DKIM and SPF at least) can be spoofed so easily, you could literally do it with on-board tools and a few lines of typing though. It is literally just sending an email that has your email address in the From header.

    lud,

    What are the odds that OP is emailing from an email that’s not configured correctly? Very low.

    taladar,

    If you mean from a domain without DKIM and SPF on the sending domain and DKIM and SPF validation on the receiving one? Pretty high.

    lud,

    Not really since Microsoft, Yahoo (I guess), and Google dominate the email space really hard.

    taladar, (edited )

    In terms of domains not really. Only the free-mailers use domains by one of those. The corporate users still need to set up their DNS properly for those technologies even if they use one of them as a mail hoster.

    lud,

    Why would OP contact OPPO using a corporate email?

    It’s extremely likely that they don’t have their own domain since it’s very uncommon for personal usage. Some absolutely do but they are in the minority.

    Of course custom emails need to be set up properly, otherwise all mails would just go to spam.

    cralder, in the encryption keys, why can't the government just sneak on them?
    @cralder@lemmy.world avatar

    You are describing symmetric encryption where both parties have the same key. There is something called asymmetric encryption that solves this. Basically you have a public key and a private key. You can give your public key to youtube, they can use that key to encrypt the symmetric key that will be used for the actual communication. The only way to decrypt the symmetric key is by using your private key, which is only known to you. So youtube can safely send it to you so you can decrypt it. Now you both have the same key and nothing was sent unencrypted.

    Well your public key was sent unencrypted but that’s fine because of how asymmetric encryption works.

    Septimaeus, (edited ) in Are Phones and Smart Speakers Listening to You? Cox Media Group Claims They Can | Cord Cutters News

    I usually wear the tin foil hat in these debates, but I must concede in this case: the eavesdropping phone theory in particular is difficult to substantiate, from a technical standpoint.

    For one, a user can check this themselves today with basic local network traffic monitors or packet sniffing tools. Even heavily compressed audio data will stand out in the log, no matter how it’s encrypted, streamed, batched or what have you.

    To get a sense of what I mean, run wireshark and give a wake phrase command to see what that looks like. Now imagine trying to obfuscate that type of transmission for audio longer than 2 seconds, and repeatedly throughout a day.

    Even assuming local audio inference and processing on a completely compromised device (rooted/jailbroken, disabled sandboxing/SIP, unrestricted platform access, the works) most phones will just struggle to do that recording and processing indeterminately without a noticeable impact on energy and data use.

    I’m sure advertising companies would love to collect that much raw candid data. It would seem quite a challenge to do so quietly, however, and given the apparent lack of evidence, is thus unlikely to have been implemented at any kind of scale.

    Cheradenine,

    Fucking thank you. As I said in another reply, if this was true my firewall logs would be full, or my data cap blown in a week.

    library_napper, (edited )
    @library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

    What if the processing is done locally and the only thing they send back home is keywords for marketable products?

    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Yeah they’d have to it seems, but real time transcription isn’t free. Even late model devices with better inference hardware have limited battery and energy monitoring. I imagine it’d be hard to conceal that behavior especially for an app recording in the background.

    WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml mentioned that mobile devices use the same hardware coprocessing used for wake word behavior to target specific key phrases. I don’t know anything about that, but it’s one way they could work around the technical limitations.

    Of course, that’s a relatively bespoke hardware solution that might also be difficult to fully conceal, and it would come with its own limitations. Like in that case, there’s a preset list of high value key words that you can tally, in order to send company servers a small “score card” rather than a heavy audio clip. But the data would be far less rich than what people usually think of with these flashy headlines (your private conversations, your bowel movements, your penchant for musical theater, whatever).

    Fungah,

    My own theory is that they tokenize key words and phrases with an AI so that they’re not sending the actual audio data. Then it’s stored in a form some AI can parse but isn’t technically user data so they can skirt legislation around that.

    A tokenized collection of key phrases omitting delimiters in text format is going be much, much less than audio, or a transcript.

    Septimaeus,

    That certainly would make the data smuggling easier. What about battery though? I assume that requires inference and at least rudimentary processing.

    How would a background process do this in real time on a mobile device without leaving traceable evidence like cpu time?

    BrownTree33,

    Can it be implemented on pc? They often turned on and people speak around them too. Cpu activity much harder to trace when there are a lot of different processes. Someone can blame their phone, while it listening pc near by.

    Septimaeus,

    Yeah outside mobile devices I imagine there’s a lot more leeway technically speaking. I’d be far more inclined to suspect a smart TV or a home assistant appliance like Amazon Echo, for example. And certainly there are plenty of PCs out there that are 100% compromised.

    But it’s the phone that people often think of as eavesdropping on their conversations. The idea is stickier perhaps because it’s a more personal violation. And I wouldn’t put it past data brokers by any means. They would if they could. I’ve just yet to hear a feasible explanation of how they can without being caught. Hence my doubt.

    steveman_ha,

    What if its not streaming? What if its just cached for future access, e.g. next time the user opens the app (and network traffic spikes anyways) maybe?

    Septimaeus,

    That’s possible too, and in general I’d think a foreground application currently in use alleviates most of the technical restrictions mentioned (read: why we never install FB).

    But again we must assume some uncommon device privileges and we still haven’t solved the problem of background energy usage required to record and/or process a real time feed.

    Mossheart,

    Or plugs in their phone at night, bypassing energy use concerns?

    BigPotato,

    Cox also sells home automation bundles which advertise “smart” features like voice recognition which are always plugged into the wall.

    ben_dover,

    as someone who has played around with offline speech recognition before - there is a reason why ai assistants only use it for the wake word, and the rest is processed in the cloud: it sucks. it’s quite unreliable, you’d have to pronounce things exactly as expected. so you need to “train” it for different accents and ways to pronounce something if you want to capture it properly, so the info they could siphon this way is imho limited to a couple thousand words. which is considerable already, and would allow for proper profiling, but couldn’t capture your interest in something more specific like a mazda 323f.

    but offline speech recognition also requires a fair amount of compute power. at least on our phones, it would inevitably drain the battery

    andrew_bidlaw,
    @andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

    most phones will just struggle to record and process audio indeterminately without a noticeable impact on energy and data use.

    I mean, it’s still a valid concern for a commoner. Why my phone has twice the ram and twice the cores and is as slow as my previous one? I’d love to fuel this conspiracy into OS, app makers to do their fucking job.

    There’s no reason an app can weight more than 50mb on clean install*, and many socials, messengers fail to fit in. A client I use to write this is only 30+, and that’s one person doing that for donations.

    If there could be a raging theory that apps are selling your data to, like, China, there would be a push to decline it and optimize apps to fit that image.

    • I obviously exclude games, synths, editors of any kind with their textures and templates.
    WetBeardHairs,

    The filesize of most binaries is dominated by text strings and images. Modern applications are loaded with them. Lemmy is atypical in that it doesn’t need tons of built in images or text.

    andrew_bidlaw,
    @andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I get it. It’s just I don’t see any dev-put images in many big apps, besides a logo and a welcome screen. Updating them with dozens of megabytes doesn’t feel okay. It seems like there’s some bloat, or a vault management problems. Like in some seasonally updated games that put dupes to speed up load of a map or easily add new content on top of them instead of redownloading a brand new db. Some I followed shawed off tens of gigabytes by rearranging stuff.

    Like, messengers. I don’t get it how Viber wants more than 40+ mb per update having nothing but stickers, emoji already installed and probably don’t change them much. Cheap wireless connection could allow them to ignore that for some reason and start to get heavier in order to offload some from their servers, for many images are localized. Is that probably what their updates are? Or they consequentially add beta patches after an approval, so you download a couple of them in a close succession after they get into public?

    Goun,

    I agree.

    What could be possible, would be maybe send tiny bits. For example, a device could categorize some places or times, detect out of pattern behaviours and just record a couple of seconds here and there, then send it to the server when requesting something else to avoid being suspicious. Or just pretend it’s a “false positive” or whatever and say “sorry, I didn’t get that.”

    I don’t think they’re listening to everything, but they could technically get something if they wanted to target you.

    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Right, I suppose cybersecurity isn’t so different than physical security in that way. Someone who really wants to get to you always can (read: why there are so many burner phones at def con).

    But for the average person, who uses consumer grade deadbolts in their home and doesn’t hire a private detail when they travel, does an iPhone fit within their acceptable risk threshold? Probably.

    admiralteal,

    There's also a totally plausible and far more insidious answer to what's going on with the experiences people have of the ads matching their conversations.

    That explanation is advertising works. And worse, it works subconsciously. That you're seeing the ads and don't even notice you're seeing them and then they're worming their way into your conversations at which point you become more aware of them and then start noticing the ads.

    Which does comport with the billions of dollars spent on advertising every year. It would be very weird if an entire ad industry that's at least a century old was all a complete nonsense waste of money this whole time.

    To me, this whole narrative is just another parable about why we need to do everything possible to limit our own exposure to ads to avoid being manipulated.

    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. The chicken egg question of spooky ad relevance. Insidious indeed.

    I feel like the idea of some person or group having enough info to psychologically manipulate or predict should be way scarier than the black helicopter stuff, especially given that it’s one of the few conspiracy theories we actually have a bunch of high quality evidence for, just in marketing and statistics textbooks alone.

    But here we are. Government surveillance is the hot button, not the fact that marketers would happily sock puppet you given the chance.

    Zerush, (edited )
    @Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

    Smartphones by definition are Spyware, at least if you use the OS as is, because in them all aspects are controlled and logged, either by Google on Android or by Apple on iOS. Adding the default apps that cannot be uninstalled on a mobile that is not rooted. As COX alleges, they also use third-party logs and therefore can track and profile the user very well, even without using this technology that they claim to have.

    Although they feel authorized by the user’s consent to the TOS and PP, the legality depends directly on the legislation of each country. TOS and PP itself, to be a legal contract, must comply in all its points with local legislation to be applicable to the user. For this reason, I think that these practices are very different in the EU from those in the US, where legislation regarding privacy is conspicuous by its absence, that is, that US users should take these COX statements very seriously in their devices, although in the EU they must also be clear that Google and Apple know exactly what they do and where users live, although they are limited from selling this data to third parties.

    Basics:

    – READ ALWAYS TOS AND PP

    • Review the permissions of each app, leaving only the most essential ones
    • Desactivate GPS if not used
    • Review in Android every app with Exodus Privacy, maybe Lookout or MyCyberHome in iOS (Freemium apps !!!)
    • Use as less possible apps from the store
    • Be aware of discount apps from the Supermarket or Malls
    • Don’t store important data in the Phone (Banking, Medical…)
    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Agreed, though I think it’s possible to use smart devices safely. For Android it can be difficult outside custom roms. The OEM flavors tend to have spyware baked in that takes time and root to fully undo, and even then I’m never sure I got it all. These are the most common phones, however, especially in economy price brackets, which is why I’d agree that for the average user most phones are spyware.

    Flashing is not useful advice to most. “Just root it bro” doesn’t help your nontechnical relatives who can’t stop downloading toolbars and VPN installers. But with OEM variants undermining privacy at the system level, it feels like a losing battle.

    I’d give credit to Apple for their privacy enablement, especially with E2EE, device lockdown, granular access permission control and audits. Unfortunately their devices are not as affordable and I’m not sure how to advise the average Android user beyond general opt-out vigilance.

    Zerush,
    @Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar
    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Yeah those push token systems need an overhaul. IIRC tokens are specific to app-device combinations, so invalidation that isn’t automatic should be push-button revocation. Users should have control of it like any other API on their device, if only to get apps to stop spamming coupons or whatever.

    It’s funny though: when I first saw those headlines, my first reaction was that it was a positive sign, since this was apparently news worthy even though the magnitude of impact for this sort of systemic breach is demonstrably low. (In particular, it pertains to (1) incidental high-noise data (2) associated with devices and (3) available only by request to (4) governments, who are weak compared to even the smallest data brokers WRT capacity for data mining inference and redistribution, to put it mildly.)

    Regardless, those systems need attention.

    WetBeardHairs,

    That is glossing over how they process the data and transmit it to the cloud. The assistant wake word for “Hey Google” invokes an audio stream to an off site audio processor in order to handle the query. So that is easy to identify via traffic because it is immediate and large.

    The advertising-wake words do not get processed that way. They are limited in scope and are handled by the low power hardware audio processor used for listening for the assistant wake word. The wake word processor is an FPGA or ASIC - specifically because it allows the integration of customizable words to listen for in an extremely low power raw form. When an advertising wake word is identified, it sends an interrupt to the CPU along with an enumerated value of which word was heard. The OS then stores that value and transmits a batch of them to a server at a later time. An entire day’s worth of advertising wake word data may be less than 1 kb in size and it is sent along with other information.

    Good luck finding that on wireshark.

    Septimaeus, (edited )

    Hmm, that’s outside my wheelhouse. So you’re saying phone hardware is designed to listen for not just one but multiple predefined or reprogrammable bank of wake words? I hadn’t read about that yet but it sounds more feasible than the constant livestream idea.

    The echo had the capacity for multiple wake words IIRC, but I hadn’t heard of that for mobile devices. I’m curious how many of these key words can they fit?

    markkdark, in Smart android keyboard respecting privacy?

    I use a openboard + native library for flow typing. I was long time gboard user but open board is now best for me. github.com/Helium314/openboard

    Ohh,

    Not sure I trust a random repo here. I dont have the skill to look through the code. In this regard I prefer - after all - gboard. The changes me login credentials get stolen by google are smaller than the chanches I am duped into installing a random keyboard from github. Just based on my threat model and my skillz.

    Bluefruit,

    Openboard is my go-to as well. I like how customizable it is as well. I need bigger keys otherwise i fat finger everything lol.

    simple,

    Oh neat, I had no idea someone was upgrading Openboard. I thought it was abandoned.

    markkdark,

    Last update was 3.Nov.2023 but use OpenBoard debug from Helium 314 from github and use Optanium for upgrade on android. github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium

    Tramdan,

    Do you know where we can get the apk?

    22rw,

    On the releases tab of the project ;D

    Tramdan,

    Thanks. I don’t know how I missed that.

    ScrambleVerdict,

    Download obtanium and add it on there to get automatic updates

    southernwolf,
    @southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

    Holy crap, I didn’t know about this fork before now. I kinda thought that OpenBoard was sorta… abandoned at this point, but seeing the improvements from this fork just made me go and try it again. Normally I just use GBoard with it’s connections disabled (CalyxOS, so that is possible to do in a secure way), but trying this out now to see if I can dump Gboard entirely.

    selokichtli,

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    markkdark,

    Futo, I didn’t find on fdroid or github, where can I looking for it? Thanx

    selokichtli,

    I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with the word “futo”. Do you mean the swipelib file?

    reboot6675, (edited )

    You need to add the repository to fdroid

    markkdark,

    Thanx. Best regards

    SE_DeepFried,

    So helpful, I’ve been trying to find a replacement for gboard for so long that has the gliding functionality, plus clipboard and easily accessible microphone for speach to text typing (using Futo).

    Can finally really consider replacing Gboard for good.

    Than you!

    IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI,

    Where I can get native library?

    MeWantHoneycomb,

    Read the first entry under Features on the GitHub page.

    IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI,

    I ctrl+fed “native” and “features” and got nothing. What am I missing?

    IlliteratiDomine,
    @IlliteratiDomine@infosec.pub avatar
    IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI,

    I did not found it because it is needed to switch to “new” branch. The installation of the library is not trivial (adb and such), so I ended installing AnySoftKeyboard. Thanks for your help.

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