I imagine he means being able to set the default view for everyone accessing your server from the settings on your server. So that everyone who accesses your server gets those defaults that they can then change for their user if they desire.
Which would be a nice feature.
He didn’t use encrypted everything. He had a public telegram group chat in which he stored a lot of his material. Which, as many people in the comments on the article pointed out, is not encrypted, but is presented by telegram as if it is. That’s likely how they caught him.
I would say the potential for misuse, while definitely present, is outweighed by the potential benefits.
A creep watching you from their basement is less likely to act on their dangerous impulses.
An overcrowded bar, poses a lot of risks in itself and the ability to determine how crowded the bar is without having to be physically present can mitigate your exposure to those risks.
In a crowded bar you have a higher risk of being drugged or assaulted because security and staff will likely be distracted or simply unable to notice and intervene. Also, in the event of an emergency that requires you to be able exit quickly, such as a fire or earthquake not only will it be much more difficult to leave it’s also more likely that people will panic and exasperate the problem.
Is a camera with a public live feed the best way to achieve that? No, probably not. But it’s simple, cheap, and gets the job done.
A bar is also a public venue. In a public place you have absolutely no reasonable expectation of privacy. So, while in most circumstances it’s unreasonable to expect that you’re being recorded, it’s equally unreasonable to expect that you’re not.
I’m generally in favor of privacy, but a bar is public place. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Unless they’re putting cameras in the bathrooms, I don’t see how this is an issue. They likely already have security cameras that are recording, this just makes some of those publicly viewable. Other than an additional layer of convenience, how is this any different from walking into a bar, seeing it’s packed, and leaving.
I’m currently using this. It doesn’t appear to have a way to auto import a list of subscriptions. But it fits all of OPs other requests. It also has a jellyfin add on to import the videos into a library there with title and thumbnail.
If it’s been more than 30 or 60 days (can’t remember which) you will be unable to sign in if you don’t have an active internet connection. I found that out in 2022 when I had to travel for work (90 days in a fairly remote area) and the only internet connection I had was at the worksite on a company computer.
The candy crush thing, or more generally the fact that since Windows 8 they preload third-party applications, is a relatively speaking small problem. However, the fact the specific applications that get preinstalled are based on a targeted advertising profile for the user signed into the PC, assuming you sign in with a Microsoft account is a bigger problem. While I’m sure they take every possible effort to make those profiles anonymous the data in aggregate is impossible to anonymize. There is a setting in Windows to disable that data collection, at least for advertising purposes, but it gets toggled back on “accidentally” after some updates.
They also have a number of features, like copilot (the chat bot), previously they had Cortana, that do similar kinds of data extraction. Mostly, in order to actually process the user request, but also to be used to train the model. They store it in an anonymized form, but again, it’s impossible to actually do that in practice.
That’s just two things that are installed and enabled by default that: collect user data for, what I and many others find to be unwanted purposes, don’t give the user the option to disable that data collection (only limit it), and seemingly doesn’t even consistently respect the users choice in that matter. That is by definition spyware.
They also place advertising on the desktop for things like OneDrive subscriptions, MS Office, and other paid Microsoft services. Those preinstalled apps I mentioned before are effectively ads for those applications, many of which are paid apps or have paid components to them. That is by definition adware.
Spyware and adware are forms of malware. Which makes Microsoft a malware vendor.
So, between the inherent security nightmare that is this feature and the myriad of other things in Windows that push ads, steal user data, and generally make the simple act of using the computer less secure, when do we give Microsoft an APT designation and start treating them as the world’s largest vendor of malware on the planet?
Changing the default settings wouldn’t mean changing any individual user’s settings. It would mean changing the default settings you get the first time you login. Which the user could then change to their preference.
If you have a bunch of elderly/non-savvy people who are using your server, being able to change the default settings to something sensible for that set of users would be a good feature to have.