Less bad, maybe?
Either way it’s definitely a good example of why you should write good emails to your customers that explain things properly.
If this is what they’re saying I’m assuming they didn’t want to be too clear about what info they’re storing if you don’t opt out and ended up making an email that sounds like a threat.
Either way I won’t be using Gemini as an assistant any time soon. Or any other voice assistant, for that matter.
Right. They have an opt-out for Gemini storing your in-app activity, which I believe is a requirement to get the assistant to be able to do things in the app. This seems to say you may be able to interact with some messaging apps even if you opt out (presumably they would have a rebuilt way to interact with those that doesn’t store any of your data?).
So there’s an opt-out.
The article seems concerned that the email announcing this doesn’t include a specific path to the opt-out right in the email (which is a weird concern, considering the email provides two links to… presumably that information)?
I’m not sure what this means, either, but it seems the “whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off” line is saying that you can still have Gemini send texts for you even if you disable Google storing your apps usage server-side? I don’t use Gemini as an assistant, so I’m not sure, but looking at the Gemini settings menu on my Android phone that’s what it seems to map to.
It absolutely does not. Nintendo hardware is built like a freight truck. The teardown guide references the JerryRigEverything “durability test” and I am pretty sure unless you use it to bash someone’s head in this thing will last (and even then).
What it reeks of is Nintendo wanting to make things cheap and sell you multiple of them. Which they do. My launch Switch 1 lasted until I got a Lite and then an Oled and I expect this one will do pretty much the same. That doesn’t mean their joycon won’t need fixing or replacing (and I did have to open and mod my Lite, which wasn’t easy).
I think Nintendo hasn’t adjusted its industrial design to modern repairability concerns yet, which is a very Nintendo thing (and definitely not the same as Apple artificially holding down the repair ecosystem to itself artificially). I like neither option, but I’d take Nintendo’s approach over Apple’s any day. They absolutely need to comply with modern right to repair regulations, though, and that will mean doing more than they’re currently doing.
I implore people to watch the teardown guide itself, which is way more nuanced than the clickbaity The Verge article.
I’m not a fan of the use of glue in the joycon sides and the fact that the color strips under the controllers are hiding screws. The bigger complaint is the battery glue, especially because you can imagine aftermarket parts with bigger capacity could be a thing here. I definitely wouldn’t open this thing unless it has a problem.
Some components are still modular, which is nice. I can’t imagine the sticks not having changed design is great, but it’s entirely possible they’re way more durable, which the teardown acknowledges. Keep in mind that, while all controllers can drift, most controllers don’t fail that way. It’s possible to build this type of stick without widespread issues. Time will tell, though.
No, the bans stem from the EULA. I am not breaching the EULA. Whether Plex can verify that or not is not much of a concern for me.
But to be clear, I have zero to lose here. The outcome of Plex banning me for not breaking their EULA (for some reason, which is technically possible but unlikely) is the exact same as the outcome of me dropping Plex in case they ban me. In both cases the only thing that happens is I’m not using Plex anymore.
Also, in your hypothetical Plex already knows the stuff you are worried about. The SSO has nothing to do with it. Plex doesn’t need data from Google to know, they already have your personal information.
I guess adding to the list of reasons to use Plex “being berated by online randos wanting to be performatively tech savvy”. Which, again, changes nothing practical, but hey.
You might not care about it, but a lot of us do. Nobody is trying to convince you to stop using Plex, we’re just trying to explain why we really do not want to use it ourselves
No you are not. This thread straight up opens on “why would anybody use Plex” and this whole branch is about how people don’t want anybody using Google for login.
You are presenting a lot of great hypotheticals and I’ll be happy to stop using Plex if and when they stop being hypotheticals. They are, though, so I don’t particularly mind.
Especially because we’ve moved from “oh, maybe get your family to not use Google to log in” to “actually, get them to move to F-droid or install from source and do so under proper DNS filtering to stop telemetry gathering”.
Friend, if people’s relatives were willing to install their Plex client from source they wouldn’t need anybody to host a Plex server for them. What the hell are you going on about and how detached are you from how people use software?
I swear, online… man, “posers” is so harsh, but I can’t find a better word. They always pretend they are running some top secret off-the-grid operation like big corpo is coming after them specifically. Your data is probably not that tightly kept (mostly because a bunch of it probably doesn’t depend on you) and it’s not that much of a priority.
Oh, and while I get that you get a kick of repeating what your understanding of US law is at me, over here backing up to additional media is explicitly supported by the right to private copy. As is, implicitly breaking DRM.
Not that it matters because nobody is enforcing these at individuals for private use anyway because the rules being sought are absurd and holders know it and they just want scary tools to wave in front of individual users and to actually deploy against major sharers. You are playing out this weird scenario where a company goes to Plex to get your name as if Plex doesn’t have a business built on helping you do the thing you think they’re chasing you for and has a ton more money they could be sued for. It’s nonsense. The reality of it is it makes you feel cool and savvy to secure your home computer as if it held state secrets.
And that’s fine, but don’t act like anything else is insanity. It’s kind of obnoxious.
Well, if you have an issue with people knowing you use Plex at all, then… tough luck, because I hate to tell you this, but a media server needs a client and it’s a vanishingly small group of people that will use either Plex or Jellyfin clients and not let Apple, Google, LG, Samsung or whatever other device is running the client software that this is happening.
I give zero craps about whether Google knows I or anybody else uses Plex via their login because they already know this form the Google Play Store, along with the manufacturer of every TV we collectively own.
And for the record I do not live in the US and the way their absolutely idiotic copyright loopholes apply here is very much in question. It doesn’t get tested in court much because the times it has been it didn’t go particularly great for copyright holders. Private copying owned media is a right regulated by law here and I will continue to do so. If a corporation wants to deliberate with our local courts whether my owning a drive that happens to not be super picky about on-disc DRM I don’t have anything particularly intense going on this week.
Ironically, in our own dumb legal implementation we are allowed to back up movies but there is a carved exception for software, so making a copy of a game you own is a bigger deal. Go figure.
Yeah, you kinda got to the breakdown in this conversation. Google sure knows that you’re using Plex.
That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.
I think people are taking me saying “Google doesn’t know what you’re streaming with Plex, but Plex does, so that’d be a bigger issue” as irrelevant because they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn’t.
It’s weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you’re paying somebody.
I don’t know that Google gets to log your access in that scenario, Plex is just using their login system.
Plex sure does know, though, whether you log in via Google or not, so “I don’t share videos using google to log in” is still a bit of a weird statement and not the reason you’d be worried about your piracy habits.
Incidentally, if a friend or family member is hosting a service and “tells me these are the options to sign in to the service I’m hosting” I’d tell them to go away, which is something my own relatives have done to me a bunch when my proposed self-hosted alternative isn’t perfectly smooth and just as convenient as the corpo alternative.
Not surprisingly, the only two selfhosted things my family has ever used are Plex and Home Assistant.
It is entirely possible that the entire construct of copyright just isn’t fit to regulate this and the “right to train” or to avoid training needs to be formulated separately.
The maximalist, knee-jerk assumption that all AI training is copying is feeding into the interests of, ironically, a bunch of AI companies. That doesn’t mean that actual authors and artists don’t have an interest in regulating this space.
The big takeaway, in my book, is copyright is finally broken beyond all usability. Let’s scrap it and start over with the media landscape we actually have, not the eighteenth century version of it.