But it does explain some conversations with Gemini when I wonder why it's talking about particular things. Like asking it about consultation processes for changes to parks only to get a response that's uncannily tuned to the email I got prompting the enquiry.

No mention of I just read your emails etc .

in case the reply is not clear, I mean to emphasize and amplify the alarming Google behavior described above

There’s nowhere to go.

Cloud is no different: 3 major cloud vendors, with 1 clear leader...and now a long tail of tier 2s and neoclouds that are also investing incredible sums to compete.

Where is the pre-structured duopoly? Where is the profit moating?

You can’t build a fighter jet in your garage.

One scenario could be if they nudge it into answering the above question incorrectly, to encourage the user to correct it, especially where it triggers an emotional response. For example, getting their basic details wrong along with sexuality.

Gemini- if it knows anything about you- would be employing some sort of RAG- I didn't mean this as a test of what Google knows about you overall.

Unfortunately, the alternatives are all so bad...

I am also looking into how to selfhost my email (and yes I know, the horror of inboxing from self hosting. But I am at the point of not only willing to give it a tr, but actively saying "fuck you" to everybody that does not receive my email, because they are on Outlook or O365 (or Google, bt inboxing into Google is easier imho).

Especially with my paid Google now daily having spam in my inbox, while valid emails are so often in spam, that I have to check spam at least once per week.

Self hosting email is a nightmare and can bite you in the ass big time.

Self-hosting receiving emails isn't too bad. And you can still control sending too as a relay to the actual sender.

Btw immich is incredible. I recommend Nextcloud AIO instead of raw Nextcloud. Absolutely great tools

That way Google has no ability to read the data and it's only a just in case backup if my NAS goes up in flames.

You could write down a document on exactly how to pull the data off the backup.

I think I paid $300/year for 20TB, so it's not free, but it's offsite, well encrypted, and I'm pretty sure it will still be there if I need it next week.

I still configure my clients (Thunderbird, K-9, etc.) to send to my mail server, but that just forwards on to the actual email sender (if authenticated). This way I can change email senders without needing to change all my clients. There are still risks though because if you choose the cheaper plan (as I do), then you get grouped onto a sending pool that spammers might use and then you might get periodically affected if that set of IPs take a reputation hit.

My config for sending: With OpenSMTPD, process it with DKIM:

    action "process_dkim" relay host smtp://127.0.0.1:10027
    match from auth for any action "process_dkim"

    listen    127.0.0.1:10027
    relay     127.0.0.1:10028
    [...] DKIM signing config [...]

    listen on lo   port 10028 tag DKIM
    action "process_outbound" relay host smtp+tls://label@... auth <secrets>
    match tag DKIM for any action "process_outbound"

I've been doing this for years, and spam and deliverability issues have been minimal and I've dealt with some big names.

[1] https://www.filestash.app/docs/plugin/#storage

[2] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

My setup is Nextcloud behind tailscale and if I need to share something I just put it on google drive temporarily.

I guess it's choose your poison. What are?

P(companies&governments spying on you)

P(hacker stealing your files)

The impacts of the latter are probably more dangerous but unless you're a juicy target, I'd imagine most hackers are going to go for rich grandmas (sadly). So my gut feelings are ~0.95 and ~0.01, respectively.

I might eventually look in to an automatic updates setup for nextcloud to keep up on patches faster than I could do it manually.

Vibe coding is one thing, but calling employees losers for caring about quality.. It sounds like he forgot why people use proton.

It might also explain why Google do not provide a page to view transcription job queues from meet

This gist is specifically about the consumer version of Gemini used in Gemini Apps. Basically if you connect your consumer Gemini (which always sends stuff to the training pipeline) to your personal Google Apps account, it gets tools that it can invoke to read your Google Apps data, which then might appear back in your consumer Gemini transcripts that are getting sent to the training pipeline.

Doing this is a stupid product move from Google (per the usual) because it confuses their enterprise customers into thinking Really Bad Stuff like this is happening.

Clearly the person who bakes my bread should've known better and learned Linux a decade ago to be prepared for this. Sucks to be them I guess.

If only there was some kind of rule about what they can or can't do, which would not be up to them to interpret and enforce.

Something that would make it simpler for regular folks to live their lives without having to rely on trust.

Call it regulation or something.

I am just fed up with people having no choice but to trust giant corporations.

Yes, I liked blockchain in 2018, because it was the only environment where I could really trust the code. But, it was public, slow and expensive. So I invented something new this year, called the Safebox. Imagine if you could run your entire company from one or more Safeboxes in whatever cloud you want, not have to actually manage anything, but trust auditors of your choice to sign off on the software stack. All your data goes in, and no one can exfiltrate it. Your policies and business rules are guaranteed to apply to every single piece of data. Oh, and it's also nigh-unhackable, unlike your on-prem unpatched Linux and employees' laptop. Wouldn't that be nice?

This is my vision: https://safebots.ai/layers.html

You mean the default prompts we use in safebots? https://safebots.ai/safebots.html

https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/generative-ai/g...

So basically if you use consumer Gemini and specifically authorize the GMail app, for example, then it will sometimes use the GMail tool to load your mail from GMail, and that data (like all data in consumer Gemini) might be given to the human annotation pipeline.

It’s not clear what clicking yes does. Is it my entire drive and Gmail? Do I have to give permission per-file/folder/email?

So I click no. And it just gives me the popup again later

It should be illegal and the tech companies using these patterns should incur massive fines. Do it retroactively. Screw the assholes that think it’s acceptable.

It seems like as things get more advanced, you don't really have alternatives, and companies can get away with things knowing you don't have much choice.

"The best product on the market that everyone wants to use" is not remotely the same as a monopoly.

These comments are insane.

bet you gemini would tell us who it is too

I won't share that information, because I'm a decent human being and an adult. That said... yikes.

It hasn’t been that simple for a very long time.

It's really embarrassing that Google does these things, its even more embarassing that their UI / UX is just really awful and all over the place. I've never been in the shoes of having to push a dark pattern into production, but I can't help but feel I'd start looking to work literally anywhere else.

I have a strong 'told you so' feeling right now.

> Google Photos data is used to infer your interests, relationships to people in your photos, and where you've been, including by associating your face with corresponding location data and timestamps. This data is also used to do things for you, like look up your info or add items to your grocery list, and to improve Google services, including training generative AI.

How does that work exactly if the images aren't even real and are generated by AI? When Google siphons up these photos to help them train their AI, the AI is now going to make associations as depicted in that photograph?

That you really were with that person, in that place, in that situation, on that date? As some sort of a fact?

Can someone else create that image and just put it in their library and then have that become a fact on your behalf when picked up, analyzed and trained on?

Where does that all lead?

I did run CyanogenMod / LineageOS for several years but the reliability I needed just wasn’t there. This may have improved since then, though.

I was looking for things like backing up my phone contents to a PC or syncing a music/photo library to my phone and the options I found were brittle python scripts using adb.

FolderSync does exactly what I want and just works. No affiliation just happy customer/user.

(me neither, but i should)

I wouldn't recommend rsync though, better something that can allow you to get back files you deleted before the last backup.

You could setup some lifecycles in the bucket as well to prefer deep glacier storage for the cheapest storage tier

Immich + Nextcloud + Dawarich behind Tailscale has been a dream. I picked up a second hand HP mini PC for cheap, 3D printed a mini server rack to mount it in with some hard drives.

You can go grab a model off Hugging Face and install ComfyUI and make as many as you want - right now - on consumer hardware. Not watermarked and very realistic.

And there are techniques to remove watermarks as well.

That is a losing battle on that front. It has to be taken on by not allowing for this behavior that Google is doing. Which I have no solution to.

Does HN like censorship that much?

But no, they had to go full AI psychosis - and it will cost them everything.

Strangely, they let you opt out of using your data for AI training, but not opt out of human reviewers.

Please note - I had to disconnect connected apps from both the Gemini App and Google search separately. They don't share settings. Just Google things I guess.

I look forward to stop using more and more Google products and shift to alternatives completely.

> How your data is used

> This data is used to create personal insights about you, your relationships, and the people and things in your world. For example, depending on your settings, your Google Photos data is used to infer your interests, relationships to people in your photos, and where you've been, including by associating your face with corresponding location data and timestamps. This data is also used to do things for you, like look up your info or add items to your grocery list, and to improve Google services, including training generative AI.

https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16836988#common_que...

> How your Connected Apps data is used to improve Google services

> Gemini Apps activity, which includes data from apps you connect, is used to improve Google services for everyone, including by training generative AI models, if your Keep Activity setting is on.

> When connected to Gemini, a subset of Connected Apps data processed by Gemini is reviewed by human reviewers (including trained service providers) to debug our services, help keep them safe, and improve them.

> Human reviewers improve Google services, including generative AI. Reviewers assess if Gemini responses were low-quality, inaccurate, or harmful. They also suggest better responses. We use their suggestions to help our models respond better in the future.

> Important: Please don't connect your apps to Gemini Apps if they contain confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see.

But also we will keep pestering you to allow access to all your emails and files. Like why would anything in my gmail be non confidential, its not a message board.

From what we found out about a few days ago, Apple Intelligence does the same thing on your device using your data without any consent prompt.

At least they claim the associations never leave your device, while Google is cloud-first.