Blue Shield of California shared the private health data of millions with Google for years | TechCrunch

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-23T14:48:32+00:00

Some people still believe that if they are paying for a product or service, all of their data won't be shared with advertisers. lol

"Not only does Google know what kind of naughty videos I like, but they also know about this strange growth on my pecker!"

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-23T03:27:03+00:00

China should hold the line and still refuse to back down on their recently implemented bar of exports of rare minerals to the US, to show Trump who is boss. I would.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-22T02:35:26+00:00

There is 0 chance the government will break Google up; they just want some money. And even if they do, Microsoft would just seize the opportunity to return the Internet to the Windows-centric shitfest that it used to be by way of forced integration of Bing and Edge in Windows.

PS: Haven't used Google search in years, and probably won't again.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-18T15:28:05+00:00

No reason? There are millions of reasons! Frequently the reasons are exchanged as a piece of rectangular paper that have faces of former presidents printed onto them. Generally, these "reasons" are exchanged for goods and services.

In fact I'm surprised the Trump administration hasn't created a law that mandates the replacing of all circulating bills with new ones that have his face printed on them. Maybe when he secures his third term in office, they can get working on that.

As for the general public, now they can go back to using the "free" tax filing services from the big companies that are full of dark patterns and impossible to find.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-11T19:00:34+00:00

I made the mistake of buying a game from this company once. It won't happen again.

Much older and wiser me knows that literally the entire point of DRM is to ensure that I can't keep what I buy, and to ensure that I'll have to buy it again in 8 years to keep using it. And that's only if they feel like gracing me with that ability, as demonstrated here.

So my strategy now, is to just nope the fuck out of the entire relationship with these companies.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-10T21:50:19+00:00

No more being able to watch remakes of remakes of remakes, oh the horror.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-09T15:22:01+00:00

We aren't the only country who buys Iphones though. And if the rest of the world, who we are also pissing off, decides that they have collectively had enough of Dementia Don's behavior and as a result they all decide to cease exports to us at the same time, we will be really screwed.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-09T14:43:30+00:00

If I were China I would just completely disallow export of Iphones to the USA. Not at any price. If people here couldn't buy Jesus phones, which are seen as a status symbol, Americans would absolutely lose their shit. And if that doesn't work, I would cease any and all technology exports to the USA. Again, not for any price. No finished products, and no critical components like batteries, nothing. "You need them for your medical equipment? Here's a quarter, call someone who cares."

Think of it like taking away junior's Game Boy, to give him an incentive to correct his behavior. It's about showing him who is boss, and he can have it back when he's not flunking math, science, and history all at the same time.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-04T18:35:58+00:00

Could they possibly have picked a worse time to launch something like this, while Trump and his buddies are burning the economy to the ground with tariffs? They could have released it two years ago, or something. Not that I would want one. I am staying as far away from the cloud and subscriptions as possible.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-03T16:21:50+00:00

Bitchin!

My personal strategy for the next four years is to not buy anything but food and basic/fundamental necessities, and to just save as much money as possible. I already have plenty of crap to keep me entertained. Take that, corporate America.

Only thing that makes me sad, is that whatever amount of money I save over the next four years, will be worth half what it is today.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-04-01T19:00:51+00:00

Office software is one of those things that could probably be provided for free, while the company operating the service still makes money hand over fist. How? By using all your data to train their AI, and targeting you with ads, of course.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-03-07T01:50:50+00:00

I wonder if this is true, and if so, why would Brother lie? Other printer makers do stuff like this literally all the time, and their response to the public is always "Yeah we blocked your third party ink, and we will do it again too. Suck it down."

So if Brother really is doing this, I don't see why they would bother lying about it, as the government would not punish them anyway. The only thing lying about it would do is enrage consumers even more if/when someone disassembles the firmware and figures out either way.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-03-01T00:04:12+00:00

Buying services and then shutting them down, reducing competition and choice in the market, should be illegal.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-28T17:10:28+00:00

You know what's really fascinating to me, is how all of this is going on with Mozilla at the exact same time the Chromium browsers are finally nuking Ublock Origin compatibility. Quite convenient timing. Almost like it was scheduled to be a multi-pronged war on the general web browsing public by the advertising industry, who are worse than the creepiest stalker.

"I'm disgusted with Mozilla, so I'll switch to a Chromium based browser. Oh, now I can't use Ublock Origin to protect myself, so now I'm being ass-reamed by advertisers and trackers, resulting in both my bandwidth and personal information being stolen while my battery gets depleated twice as fast."

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-27T17:03:28+00:00

My typewriter manufacturer does not get any kind of license to what I write. Neither does my pencil manufacturer. Nor do either of them have any business whatsoever telling me what I can write. Big tech can fuck right off with this shit.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-27T16:58:23+00:00

It will be fun to watch the already tiny market share of Firefox completely crater when these terms of service are introduced to what few users the browser has left, a lot like it will be fun watching Trump crash the US economy over the next few years.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-26T01:13:24+00:00

Give it ten years and all proprietary/commercial software will function in this way, both to facilitate maximum stalkage of the end-user (e.g. targeting you with ads based on the content of your personal files as well as training their AI on your data), and to enforce minimum end-user control.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-21T20:16:20+00:00

Oh yes, I was certainly thinking that if Sony is handed a monopoly on high performance console gaming, they will exploit it and do nasty stuff too to consumers. There are a lot of people who don't care at all about computers, have no interest in learning and only want to play games. That's why there will always be a place for consoles. But if the situation arises where there is only one company producing consoles that can compete on a performance level with the PC, that will be very very bad for those consumers who have 0 interest in computers.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-21T05:45:46+00:00

Looks like the console wars are over, and Sony won. Although actually it's more like Xbox slit it's own wrists 12 years ago and is finally bleeding out today. That whole "connect to the Internet daily or else we disable all your games" thing was a real eye-opener for me in terms of dislike and contempt for the Microsoft brand. It sticks with me, and they haven't done themselves any favors with their bullying of Windows users.

If I were Sony, I think I would wait until the Xbox consoles completely collapse in the market, and then just reject Microsoft games from the Playstation system. Over the years I've decided that the best way to engage with people who act like assholes (as outlined above), is to become a bigger asshole myself. Imagine Microsoft buying all these once beloved game studios, and then being blocked from publishing on the biggest console platform on the planet.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-18T19:42:37+00:00

The rules when buying anything from a big company are thus:

Don't buy anything from them that you can't hold in your hands, and which is not subject to traditional and conventional property laws. Wrenches and couches okay, digital video games and digital movies, not okay.
If a product requires an Internet connection at all, at any point to perform it's functions and fulfill the purpose that you bought it for, the vendor is going to screw you over. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually the product is going to be remotely altered by the vendor to be more favorable to them and less favorable to you. Count on it.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-02-18T17:39:34+00:00

Dad recently had to dump and get a new tablet because the library service that he uses for digital books, is switching apps, and the new app is not compatible with his older tablet. So that's another fifty metric tons of e-waste in the ground.

If he had PDF or text files of the books, he would not have that problem. And neither would the planet.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-01-18T19:21:29+00:00

No. It is about setting a new precedent where the government can ban any service at any time. If the government actually cared about me, my safety and my privacy, then they would stop American companies from crawling up my ass by e.g. refusing to take no for an answer (I don't want a Microsoft account), refusing to respect my personal space (not allowing disabling of telemetry), uploading my browsing history and files to the cloud without asking first, rifling through their contents on my local device with AI, etc etc.

Reportedly they won't even be enforcing the Tiktok ban, they just wanted to set the precedent.

And that is without going into all the ethical issues of ruining someone's business just because they won't sell to a company in the USA.

Myocarditis-Man · 2025-01-16T05:30:47+00:00

Wow, they really are going all Apple on our asses. "You don't need a reasonable amount of memory, trust in our magical texture compression algorithms that will probably make your textures look like an N64 game, while also ensuring you can't do any professional work on the card that costs as much as the rest of your PC does, because of lack of VRAM.

It's just like when Apple was telling the world that 8GB on a Mac is equivalent to 16GB or more on a PC. Even Android phone manufacturers are getting in on the action by marketing their phones as having more RAM when all they really have is a swap partition.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-20T19:46:31+00:00

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI

Who cares if it can't even get basic stuff right?

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI

Did I mention this stuff is being used in criminal investigations and administering health care?

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-11T05:21:49+00:00

Apparently this robot was subscription as a service, costing $50 a month. Rather than shutting it down due to lack of funding, I'm surprised they didn't just wait until individuals had bonded with it, and then raised their subscription to $200. Have they even heard of cable TV?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-11T01:14:09+00:00

Terminated!

Yes, I have been playing Duke Nukem 3D. As for this robot, I have only two questions.

Is it powered by Linux?
Can I make it play Doom?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-03T21:15:17+00:00

Another thing that really makes me laugh though is how the commercial software industry gets away with doing stuff like this literally all day, but as soon as it starts pertaining to hardware, the public suddenly realizes how much they are getting ass-reamed.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-03T16:14:36+00:00

I just purchased another backup power station the other day. It has 3 times as much inverter capacity as the one I bought three years ago does, for the same price as the old one. THREE times. Meanwhile the graphics card industry would rather sell 8/12 GB graphics cards forever. RTX3060 is almost 5 years old. It's almost like they all have a gentlemen's agreement to not put a reasonable amount of memory on these things and to not actually compete with each other or something. Remember that GPUs are used for much more than gaming today, and for many other tasks, memory capacity is crucially important.

I still laugh at NVidia reducing the RTX4060 to 8GB, when the RTX3060 was 12GB. You could send that shit to a third-world country and they would laugh at you and send it right back, telling you to keep your garbage.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-12-02T21:37:07+00:00

Not a scam if the terms are disclosed up front and the consumer accepts them. Besides, Windows will be moving to a subscription/rental model soon enough.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-29T16:21:29+00:00

This is being done at the very last minute before they leave office, purely to score political points, and so that the upcoming administration can promptly shut it down.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-22T18:11:54+00:00

That thud sound you hear, is Firefox collapsing due to loss of funding from Google as a result of this decision. Don't get me wrong, it is as much Mozilla's fault; because Mozilla had a decade to leverage their (at one point) relatively high browser market share and invest wisely to secure their future, but instead, they wasted loads of money on e.g. making a competitor to Android and political crap, among other things. Creating a competitor to Android was the absolute worst decision of them all. Even Microsoft couldn't do it successfully. lol

The decision being made by the US will probably just steer the web back in the hands of Microsoft, and we'll end up in another IE6 world again where anything that's not powered by Windows becomes a second class citizen online. They're doing it already, by using DRM (digital restrictions malware) to reserve 4k Netflix playback for Windows exclusively. Once the US takes Google down a peg, Microsoft will simply capitalize on this.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-20T01:14:52+00:00

You'll be able to watch the subscription fees constantly rise, as the desktop is simultaneously more and more overtaken by advertisements like mold on a slice of bread. lol

Think logically and critically for a second here. They are already putting ads on your lock screen and in your start menu. And that's on your fully standalone (for now) and privately owned (well not really) PC. Once they have you in a position where the entire computer is streamed to you and all you have is a dumb box that literally can't do anything without the Internet, things will get much, much worse.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-15T15:59:10+00:00

Government: "We're really mad at you, Microsoft. Really, really mad. You done fucked up with security, and among other things, our emails were breached by China as a result."

Microsoft: "Here's some free stuff to lock you in some more to our products and services, and to further limit competition!"

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-13T00:30:30+00:00

Funny thought, picking between Edge and Chrome is just like politics. Both sides are equally terrible.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-12T21:40:34+00:00

First thought is that Windows needs a giant red button for users to click on that says "Fuck off and respect my personal space", in huge italic letters.

Second thought is that we have something like that already, it's called Linux.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-11-06T04:55:21+00:00

They have Tetris and they have Doom, (it's open source). So they have the only two games that are actually worth playing.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-10-31T17:44:04+00:00

To game developers who refuse to support Linux...

Have fun when Microsoft finally finds a way to get the general public to accept some sort of Windows S version that only allows programs blessed by Microsoft, and then they will be taking 30% of your sales while Valve is taking another 30%. lol

And don't say we didn't warn you!

This is assuming Microsoft doesn't just buy out your company and fire you first, which is what they've been doing to studios lately.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-10-11T22:26:06+00:00

Instead of actually preventing people from getting fucked over, the law simply requires that companies tell consumers up front, and in plain English, that they are getting fucked over. Progress!

No wonder I quit paying for games a long time ago.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-10-11T04:58:10+00:00

It won't happen. The US does not have the balls to break a large company like Google up. And even if they did, then Microsoft would just swoop in and return the world to the glory days of 25 years ago where they had control of everything. Tying the Windows operating system to their web browser, to search, to their growing monopoly in video games, to their monopoly in operating systems, and then promptly drop support for all platforms that are not Windows.

Back in the day, once Internet Explorer took over the world, Microsoft promptly killed Internet Explorer for Mac and Unix, and even quit caring about it's development on Windows too.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-10-09T01:56:12+00:00

Nice to know that I will be able to install mainstream commercial apps on Android if I choose, without being forcefully dragged into the Google ecosystem, which I want nothing to do with. But I avoid commercial apps as much as I can, too. Not only do commercial apps drain my wallet, but they will violate my privacy at the same time.

Paying for products and having my privacy invaded or being bombarded with ads is sort of like someone is fucking me from both sides simultaneously, if that were physically possible.

With smartphones, commercial app developers want to gather your location in real-time, while with PC, they want to tie you into some online DRM service so that they can render all your purchases inoperable six years from now.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-10-03T14:06:27+00:00

"Offensive" terms like master and slave.

There's a case on my desk; on the front of it, there's a label that says Cooler master. I probably should turn myself in right now. lol

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-25T04:07:26+00:00

It's hard to believe that any biological organism that eats, sleeps, shits, and reproduces could possibly be dumb enough to connect the most vital service that humans need in order to live, (water), to the Internet, where some asshole on the other side of the planet who doesn't have to drink the water and is frequently even outside legal jurisdiction can arbitrarily mess with it.

Apparently the attackers didn't mess with the chemical levels in the water this time, but others have tried to do this before (in Florida), and the only reason they were stopped is because an employee was there and saw what they were doing and intervened.

https://www.wired.com/story/oldsmar-florida-water-utility-hack/

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-21T16:48:41+00:00

Humanity generating more nuclear waste, all for the sake of AI deepfakes, and so that random websites can tell people to put glue on their pizza.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-07T03:14:43+00:00

I can only imagine how the jurors who served on this case must feel right now.

"Thanks for wasting weeks of my time, which I could have spent doing something infinitely more constructive and productive, like playing video games, or playing with myself."

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-06T14:05:29+00:00

From the comments: "You never know what hackers and agenda driven authorties could use that for."

On the contrary. We know exactly what this will be used for. No point pretending that we don't.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-03T18:26:36+00:00

The quote about it being "incorrectly listed as an option" takes the cake.

Will you go out on a date with me? Yes, or yes? (No was incorrectly listed as an option.)

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-03T09:53:36+00:00

Pretty funny, sick and twisted that we have wound up in a world where they can arbitrarily download and install whatever they feel like onto your PC whether you actually want it or not, and then classify it as a bug if you have the ability to get rid of it. At some point in this relationship, things took a very, very wrong turn.

If only governments would protect us from shit like this, but their sole function and purpose is to jerk off corporations and shred our civil rights.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-02T13:36:09+00:00

I loved this website. Unlike the rest of the web, they held out against enshitification for as long as possible. For example they would allow free users to view the entire article on one page if that's what you wanted to do. And every time I browsed to their website, Google didn't nag me to sign in, as is the case with more and more of the web today.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-09-01T12:51:43+00:00

Even if this is true, it somewhat pails in comparison to knowingly lying to the entire country that the vice president Pence could have arbitrarily decided that the election results were invalid and overruled them, especially while a riot was going on at the capitol at that very moment, which the president was also well aware of.

One might even think that particular president was actively trying to add fuel to the ongoing fire, with his post-riot comments about the people who did it being "patriots" and comparing them to "hostages" only strengthening this particular argument against him and his behavior even more.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-30T12:58:08+00:00

It's amazing how so many FOSS projects that get big and successful always wind up burning through so much money. Mozilla, Gnome. Thankfully Wine and Blender have not done this. Clearly they are run by smart people who care about their mission and the quality of the product they deliver.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-29T14:27:51+00:00

I believe that people (moles posing as average Joes) are being paid by their political campaign to say things like this, in order to soe divisiveness, engage in psychological warfare, and to turn the public against one another.

The fact that the US government worked literally for ten years to extradite Kim Dotcom from NZ, while they let Trump commit crimes with impunity (and they hold him legally accountable for literally nothing), tells me all I need to know about who both political parties actually work for and serve.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-28T01:40:38+00:00

I love stories like this, because, eventually the general public will come to the realization that connecting products to the Internet is guaranteed to result in them being enshittified, much like the average person already understands that leaving food outside is guaranteed to attract bugs.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-27T18:01:56+00:00

Big tech is well aware of this particular strategy, and they have various ways to combat it.

Exhibit 1: Shadow profiles. Basically they don't know who you are, but they have already fingerprinted your browser/system, and have been following you around online for years. Then one day, you sign up for an account, and so they just link the fingerprint to the account you signed up for, associating all past activity with the new account you just created!

Exhibit b: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-chrome-automatic-secret-sign-in,37835.html

Big tech wants your data, all of it, and they stop at nothing to get it. Here's one more example for the road.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2376883/attention-microsoft-activates-this-feature-in-windows-11-without-asking-you.html

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-26T17:59:45+00:00

I still love what happened to people who bought the original Minecraft before Microsoft acquired it. When Microsoft bought it, they gave people a set amount of time to migrate to a Microsoft account. If you didn't do it in time, then you lost your purchased game, period. But the thing is, maybe I never wanted a Microsoft account, because there's a difference between a small game studio and a huge corporate Goliath that is more above the law than Donald Trump, and who wants to spy on everything I do.

Just because I chose to enter into a business relationship with a small, independent game studio does not mean I want to associate with a known predatory corporate Goliath. But such is the case when everything's a service; the seller can decide to change the terms any way they like tomorrow and the consumer just has to suck it. No wonder I don't buy any digital crap from these companies if it puts me on any kind of leash, because I know exactly what they're going to do to me once they have leverage over me.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-25T18:39:00+00:00

I am thoroughly enjoying watching Microsoft mutate their software into something out of Idiocracy, and I only wish they would go faster. Not every square inch of the interface is covered with advertisements yet!

Sincerely, a Linux user.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-24T11:39:20+00:00

I wonder how many friendships they ruined with all of their calculated divisive bullshit, engineered to turn people against one-another, all for something that made little to no difference in the end anyway. People are still vaxing, and (frequently the same people) still getting covid.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-22T19:40:15+00:00

Recall is dangerous, wasteful, and irresponsible. As a Linux user, I can't wait to laugh at the clusterfuck of a mess this is going to make.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-21T15:40:12+00:00

Microsoft can always do what they do to consumers and force it on them whether they like it or not. lol. As a police officer would say: Stop resisting!

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-21T02:02:14+00:00

Apparently they will now patch Zen 2, but Zen 1 users are SOL. (I bet Zen 2 has way more market share than Zen 1.)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/20/amd_sinkclose_ryzen_3000/

Still, I would just patch all processors on the AM4 socket. How hard could it be? And it's good publicity.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-19T14:04:50+00:00

No micro-sd slot means I would not touch one of these phones with a 10 ft pole anyway. I like my data offline, and I don't want to support the cancer that is subscription everything. A year from now you wind up paying twice as much, and half the content catalog has been pulled from the service.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-13T20:00:24+00:00

"What are you gonna do, buy an Intel?"

That didn't take very long. The questions to ask, are whether the heavily DRM'd shitboxes, AKA game consoles, will be patched, (a platform where the industry cares about securing the machine from you, not for you). And how long until someone files a lawsuit for refusal to patch 4 year old desktop/consumer processors?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-12T14:55:18+00:00

Yep unfortunately when you become an artist associated with the conventional music labels, you have no say when, how, and where your music is used by them or by others who license it from them. Record executives manage the licensing rights, not you.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-12T14:52:00+00:00

Dear Celine Dion,

The guy walked away from 34 felony convictions the same way many American dads walk away from their kids and from paying any child support. Effortlessly, without giving anything resembling a fuck, and without any legal consequences for doing so. The supreme court has also confirmed that he is literally above the law. Good luck.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-08T00:57:34+00:00

You can't force people to do business with you if they don't want to. Kind of like how I can't force people to be my friends if I go around acting like a dick to everyone all the time.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-06T03:57:39+00:00

They don't have a monopoly on search. Their search engine has been going to shit for years, and it's so bad and obvious that even Joe Q Public knows it now. More censorship than China, and enshitification to the max.

What they do have a monopoly on, is the web. Browsers, web standards, etc. They're so integrated into the core of the web that literally every mainstream website nags me to sign in with Google, and if I don't, I'm punished with Recaptcha hell. Because I'm apparently obligated to serve Google in one way or another, either by letting them track my online behavior and monetizing that, or by working for free to train their recognition algorithms.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-04T19:01:27+00:00

They're laying off lots of people too. Hopefully Arc GPUs don't get cancelled though. We need Intel to catch up and repair competition in the graphics card market the same way AMD repaired competition in the CPU market with Ryzen. Otherwise, Enshittia will still be charging $800 for a 16GB graphics card in the year 2030!

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-08-03T05:10:33+00:00

It's pretty awesome that this notion of "fuck off, take no for an answer and respect my personal space" does seem to finally be spreading into the mainstream when it comes to companies like Microsoft. How can we accelerate the trend of public sentiment turning against them, other than continuing to expose the shady things they do?

Myocarditis-Man