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AIM will be discontinued today

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Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#121

Post by pathseeker »

jimmaswell wrote: post #106
mynewtb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why let Google invade your (and your friend's) privacy just something easily done locally.

This is ridiculous FUD, you're not compromising anybody's privacy by letting google drive do an OCR for you. The chance is extremely remote that there would somehow be a leak of the information to malicious parties or the like out of Google. Is this is all over the possibility of their advertising engine seeing keywords and giving you an ad based on it? Even if that's the case then that's not a privacy violation, no…

>Even if that's the case then that's not a privacy violation, no human ever can see how that's associated with a specific identity

How can no human see the data that Google has? Google is not a magical place where machines cannot be compromised.

>To my knowledge there has never been a hack of Google's data or any leak connecting any user's identity to PII.

The Snowden leaks say otherwise. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/30/nsa_smile...

>This is ridiculous FUD, you're not compromising anybody's privacy by letting google drive do an OCR for you.

So it depends on your threat model. If you care about rogue Google employees or other actors with 0-day exploits, then putting information into the hands of Google is a risk.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#122

Post by SilasX »

Cknight70 wrote: post #64

Something I'll miss about AIM and older chat clients is how compact they were. Most of these newer chat programs seem to assume you're going to have their application take up the entire screen.

Yes, and will continually bloat with upgrades since "computers get faster, what's the problem?" (See: Electron platform.)

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#123

Post by vkou »

drdeadringer wrote: post #96
fragsworth wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even consider that. All those shitty things I said when I was a teenager...

I am again reminded that "youngsters these days" pretty much no longer have this option unless their online footprint is actively managed from Day One. A part of me can't wait to see the President whose entire life can be cherry-picked from various servers and datacenters.

The US just elected a president with decades of his incredibly shitty life cherry-picked by his detractors. I'm not sure that him having a Facebook profile at the age of 16 would have changed anything.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#124

Post by huxley »

adamcharnock wrote: post #86
52-6F-62 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have my ICQ number burned into my brain. There are other, more important, numbers I should be remembering and at times cannot, but that ICQ number is there.

Tangent for UK people: I have the emergency services number from The IT Crowd burned into my brain too: 01189998819991197253 WHY?!

Well, that's easy to remember!

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#125

Post by oblio »

Cknight70 wrote: post #61
decasteve wrote: post #36

I used AIM entirely through Trillian and that’s what I associate it with. I remember having it alongside ICQ, Microsoft Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger, all running under Trillian. It gives me a “Those were the days...” moment.

Same here! I'm really sad they never added anymore chat protocols, and now most of the ones I used are obsolete or don't work. I stopped when all my friends switched from Skype (which I used Trillian for) to Telegram, but I missed how compact Trillian was.

I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really remember just gave up at some point.

I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially regarding emojis.

Before anyone asks, it's in C and I'm nowhere competent (or interested enough in gaining the required competency) to contribute.

With stuff like Pidgin you notice what mindshare really means. A "crappy" Electron based app is nicer to use than the "native" one. In the end, it's all about coders polishing code. No hours put in, no end result coming out.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#126

Post by jedberg »

Goodbye. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0

Since everyone is sharing their AIM memories: When I was in college (1995-1998), AIM was the #1 way to flirt with people. Today the kids worry about whether they got a like or not.

Back then, you'd sit and stare at your buddy list waiting for that person you liked to come online so you could say something witty, and then stew with worry if they didn't respond but remained online.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#127

Post by ct0 »

klez wrote: post #79
kodt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, am happy to see all my old AIM conversations deleted and lost forever.

Ok, but that should be your choice, not AOL's.

It is your choice to save it locally. They are just saying that their copy will be deleted.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#128

Post by herf »

nerdponx wrote: post #19

Unfortunately you are not able to save or export your Buddy List. Your data associated with AIM will be deleted after December 15, 2017. Yes, you can manually save images and files to your computer until the morning of December 15, 2017. Whatever you thought of AIM, it's stuff like this that makes you realize just how important software freedom is. Insane that there is just no way at all , without outright hacking th…

Identity is super hard to export and it always has been.

There are privacy issues: do you disclose email addresses to establish identity?

Imagine exporting a Facebook group, it is incredibly hard to do.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#129

Post by ouid »

jimmaswell wrote: post #106
mynewtb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why let Google invade your (and your friend's) privacy just something easily done locally.

This is ridiculous FUD, you're not compromising anybody's privacy by letting google drive do an OCR for you. The chance is extremely remote that there would somehow be a leak of the information to malicious parties or the like out of Google. Is this is all over the possibility of their advertising engine seeing keywords and giving you an ad based on it? Even if that's the case then that's not a privacy violation, no…

If that algorithm is building a model of me, then yes, it's clearly an invasion of my privacy. Google itself is the entity that I do not want to have access to a model of me.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#130

Post by Frondo »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #17

Truly sad. So much of my young social life was experienced through AIM. Screen names are still part of the identity of some of my friends. For some folks that have already passed, our last conversations are on AIM. Don't know what else to say, but it definitely feels like a link to another era of my life is fading away. Nothing is permanent. RIP running man!

Nothing is permanent, exactly so.

Our ability to slog around drives full of data lets us gloss over this fact, but when we're dead, are our kids gonna keep slogging around our drives? Nah.

Better way to get permanence in your life is to do things that people will remember you for, if permanence is what you're after. Crowd-sourced in other people's memories.

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