Comment by ProllyInfamous

1 month ago

At this point, Mac Mini M4's are cheap enough and capable enough to just purchase two: one for off-line use, another on-.

Perhaps this is marketing genius (from an AAPL-shareholder POV)?

----

I'm laughing at the insanity of all this interconnectivity, but an NDA prevents me from typing the greatest source of my ironic chuckles. Described in an obtuse way: a privacy-focused hardware product ships with an undisclosed phone-home feature, letting the feds see every time you use the product (to produce a controversial product, at home).

Kick in my fucking door / sue me: it'll just re-enforce that I'm correct about concessionary-allowances...

Can you be more clear?

  • Computer are inexpensive enough to own both on- & off-line hardware.

    ----

    Even privacy-focused hardware manufacturers will allow undisclosed usage tracking (in order to continue existing, themselves). In my example, the OEM delivers a physical product which allows users to make tangible objects, at home. Every time you launch the hardware's control software (to make more controversial objects), it phones home.

> letting the feds see every time you use the product

This does not happen.

  • Traffic analysis by the government totally happens: https://lifehacker.com/how-cia-director-david-petraeuss-emai...

    Now they probably don't care about you personally, but you'd be surprised how many people are connected indirectly to a person of interest. Google "Maher Arar" for the horrific consequences of false positives.

    • >you'd be surprised how many people are connected indirectly to a person of interest.

      I get called "paranoid," often, but I'm being honest when responding to people requesting my phone number: "you don't want my number in your phone, because it'll associate you with people you probably don't want to be associated with" [see Five Eyes' 3-Degrees of Separation].

  • Wrong. Anything that makes any network request is by definition a privacy leak. The network itself is always listening, and the act of making any connection says that you are using the computer, and where, and when.

    • If every app and system is making network connections by default without the user's knowledge or intervention then it doesn't really prove that you are using the computer at all.

      5 replies →