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Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

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Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#161
post #54

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... what the hell did I just read. Let me correct the record so those that end up here don't actually buy into this. > Not all cookies are used for tracking. No, but third-party cookies are basically used for tracking. A legitimate site does not depend on a third-party cookie to handle features or login. At all, full stop no ifs, ands, or buts. > Be prepared to start losing your settings in web apps or being logged o…

> A legitimate site does not depend on a third-party cookie to handle features or login. At all Sites which use Disqus, or similar, for comments. I hate Disqus with a passion and wish horrible flaming death upon it, and am actually quite pleased that this will break it. But nonetheless it's a "legit" use of third-party cookies to provide a feature (remembering login on an embedded commenting engine).

>I hate Disqus with a passion and wish horrible flaming death upon it

I mostly just ignore it, why do you hate it with such intensity? hahah

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#162
post #149

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There is probabilistic vs. deterministic cross-device tracking. Deterministic assigns a unique device identifier to each device and then uses more data to connect device IDs to an individual. Probabilistic cross-device tracking uses machine learning algorithms to match up devices and identities. For this they can use basically any data that you happen to give them, including behavioral data (you check a website both…

Probabilistic cross-device tracking uses machine learning algorithms to match up devices and identities Is there any application of machine learning that isn't evil? Genuine question. It seems to be exclusively used to exploit people.

Sure there is! ML helps with medical diagnosis, cures, and treatment, ML helps automate services that are unavailable to third world countries, ML helps catch criminals, money laundering, and fraudsters, ML saves wasteful energy consumption, ML improves customer support, ML helps optimize resources to focus on those in immediate need, ML supports science like high-energy physics, ML creates a new generation of digital artists.

All good uses of ML, but maybe not so sexy.

I bet the majority of ML is used neutrally: to add business value to a company. Depending on your view of capitalism of course.

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#163
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probabilistic cross-device tracking uses machine learning algorithms to match up devices and identities Is there any application of machine learning that isn't evil? Genuine question. It seems to be exclusively used to exploit people.

Sure there is! ML helps with medical diagnosis, cures, and treatment, ML helps automate services that are unavailable to third world countries, ML helps catch criminals, money laundering, and fraudsters, ML saves wasteful energy consumption, ML improves customer support, ML helps optimize resources to focus on those in immediate need, ML supports science like high-energy physics, ML creates a new generation of digita…

ML helps with medical diagnosis, cures, and treatmen

Sure that's what IBM says with Watson but that's just exploiting people too.

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#164
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is! ML helps with medical diagnosis, cures, and treatment, ML helps automate services that are unavailable to third world countries, ML helps catch criminals, money laundering, and fraudsters, ML saves wasteful energy consumption, ML improves customer support, ML helps optimize resources to focus on those in immediate need, ML supports science like high-energy physics, ML creates a new generation of digita…

ML helps with medical diagnosis, cures, and treatmen Sure that's what IBM says with Watson but that's just exploiting people too.

An example of what I was aiming at is to use ML methods like deep nets to detect early-onset diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness and at least 90% of new cases could be reduced with early detection and proper treatment. [1]

Especially in third world countries where there is no eye doctor in sight, these cheap automated methods can be deployed on a mobile phone and achieve near-human expert level accuracy. [2]

Then organizations like Watsi can use data science and predictive modeling to reduce fraud and get both detection and treatments to those most in need. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_retinopathy

[2] http://blog.kaggle.com/2015/09/09/diabetic-retinopathy-winne...

[3] https://dssg.uchicago.edu/

About IBM Watson, the entire thing is unfortunate, I completely agree. Their marketing department upsold IBM Watson for cancer treatment. But I know that a lot of great research scientists worked at IBM on Watson. What they were doing was legit advancing machine learning too. That's the thing about marketing: if IBM were to deploy 10.000 phones with a neural net to improve early detection of disease in a third world country, I probably won't even hear about it, and I work with ML. But for IBM Watson, everybody and their grandmother goes: That's the AI that beat Jeopardy. It's a thin line between being majorly successful in marketing and crossing the line into damaging your reputation and goodwill (or in this case: the entire ML industry).

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expand?

I'm posing the question: Will the cure be worse than the disease? They won't just roll over and say "oh well".

Fair enough. Though Google seem to be trying to specify a minimum standards floor.

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#166
post #150
post #84

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Aren't the site in the iframe uses its own cookie? (So it doesn't count as 3rd party, no?)

That's not how it works. Even if you're setting the cookie on your own domain, if you're embedding your site in an iframe on a different domain, you won't be able to read your own cookies from within the iframe after this change.

Oh! Could you show the relevant post/source from webkit for this?

After reading the webkit blog post on ITP I had no idea they changed this, but yeah, they are probably going to anyway if haven't yet. Otherwise it'd be too easy game this.

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good arguments. None the less, i think it's usefull to know the age, sex and interests of readers ( small client websites with some blogs). Religion, political affiliation, your living arrangements, your relationship with your family, ... are none of the concern. But i'm not sure that people are unhappy that ads are there. They just don't want to see them, without knowing why they are there or that it's privacy relat…

I work in advertising. I've even worked literally trafficking ads. Targeting any more specific than a good contextual match is usually a waste and not any more effective. Advertisers do not need this information and should not be given it. The agreement is that they show an ad in return for you seeing the page, that does not (and should not) mean that they get access to any more information than is absolutely necessa…

> Targeting any more specific than a good contextual match is usually a waste and not any more effective.

I'd like to believe this. But why then does user tracking adtech exist? Why is the advertising industry opposed to this move to limit user tracking? Advertisers (the ones paying $ for adtech) are conned? Can you point at evidence for your claim?

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#168
post #166
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. Even if you're setting the cookie on your own domain, if you're embedding your site in an iframe on a different domain, you won't be able to read your own cookies from within the iframe after this change.

Oh! Could you show the relevant post/source from webkit for this? After reading the webkit blog post on ITP I had no idea they changed this, but yeah, they are probably going to anyway if haven't yet. Otherwise it'd be too easy game this.

Well, that's how cookies in iframes have always worked. The only difference is that these changes explained in the blog post you mentioned means that since you never interact with the domain in a first-party context, you won't be able to read the cookies while in a third-party context. See the heading "Actions Taken After Classification" in https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

Re: Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari

#169
post #61

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A lot of macOS is open source. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15251891 https://developer.apple.com/opensource/

Unless I can build and install a completely custom version, it isn't open enough to be safe.

You compile (After reading and understanding the source) of the firmware used on your machine? You take your time to read & understand the millions lines of code of all libraries needed? You know & trust your compiler?

As much as I appriciate the sentiment, I have to admit I personally gave up trusting OSS for the soul reason that I / someone might be able to read and understand it.

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