201–210 of 215 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this reply is for you https://twitter.com/jjcollinsworth/status/139066623945075507...
To spell it out: it takes an increasing amount of effort to avoid any of your interests being tracked, logged, and almost immediately used in ways that you already know will be destructive. This is also an IT professional and a programmer saying this, so they do not want your advice. The fact that they can use many, many countermeasures which require many, many rabbitholes of research, that as a programmer they are a…
This isn't restricted to just Amazon either; as I understand it, this is the core of the current reCaptcha version (and even more so, its evil twin, reCaptcha V3, which is seemingly so effective it can rely on those mouse events exclusively in most cases)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These comments made me wonder if any smart TVs have something like built-in content-id detection, which then somehow gets shared with the mother ship. One precedent is Nielsen Audio's Portable People Meter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_... I assume that if surveillance can be done, someones are doing it.
yes of course. Roku tv does content recognition.
Is Roku actually capturing info about the content of the stream, or just the fact that I'm streaming from the PC? I'm fairly sure they aren't so blatant as to grab screenshots, but are they doing some sort of analysis of the video stream directly?
Just stuff I wonder about.
It's so weird, across all Google's products I occasionally get these weird Arabic and sometimes even Islamic content suggestions. I've never opened any of these links, am not behind a VPN, am very much not Arabic and do not understand the language, and - with all due respect - am completely uninterested in Islamic holy scripture. Why, even after all these years, Google thinks this is content I'd want to see is a comp…
For me it’s India. “xyz price in India” “restaurant in Delhi” “product - amazon. in” “how to say word in Hindi” and so on. tf?
yep the hyperparameters for the search suggester model need a lot more tuning
I don't know how common this is, but I've gotten into the habit of creating "personas"-- different users that have different habits and are interested in different things, yet all me. It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple personalities", but there it is. Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and too little of another…
Realistically, on the modern net you need to: Use a VPN, kill cookies and ads aggressively, have multiple accounts (or avoid logging on at all in some cases), and never, ever use 2FA except with financial institutions. That's the bare minimum. No point in just complaining that tech companies are evil all the time. The smart organism adapts to its environment, and uses the tools at hand.
I don't know how common this is, but I've gotten into the habit of creating "personas"-- different users that have different habits and are interested in different things, yet all me. It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple personalities", but there it is. Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and too little of another…
It infuriates me that we basically had this as a feature, lost it, and have to sort of reimplement it with an almost illicit feel. I can recall in the mod-late 1990s when Mainstream America was starting to go online for the first time, everyone was training their kids "never give out your real name." From that simple bit of stranger-danger paranoia, we built a lot of communities as psuedonymous by default-- your AIM…
The problem was (almost) no one was making money off it. Online advertising, as it was originally done, was a joke. Most of the early internet was based on ideals of quality, community, and freedom. None of these make much money.
So people started hunting for what DID make money, and they discovered data harvesting and targeted advertising. And like a cancer, that unholy pair devoured most of the web. Information really WAS power, like all those breathless articles and hacker manifestos in the 90s said. Power and MONEY. And the new masters of this realm have dedicated themselves to taking as much of YOUR information as possible. They need it, like Elizabeth Báthory would have needed the blood of virgins if she was an actual vampire and not just insane.
I don't know how common this is, but I've gotten into the habit of creating "personas"-- different users that have different habits and are interested in different things, yet all me. It's insane that I feel it helpful to take on "multiple personalities", but there it is. Part of it is that these algorithms are fairly one-track. They can mix it up a bit, but it's always too much of one thing and too little of another…
another solution is to use 2 instances of chrome or firefox with different --user-data-dir which can run in parallel . It's actually very convenient for checking up stuff without 'messing' the main setup
Put in an old DVD of Dr. Strangelove:... recently in the XBox. It was just a random thought to pop it in and enjoy. (okay, was cleaning up shelf) I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched. Flashback.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or your smart TV.
These comments made me wonder if any smart TVs have something like built-in content-id detection, which then somehow gets shared with the mother ship. One precedent is Nielsen Audio's Portable People Meter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_... I assume that if surveillance can be done, someones are doing it.
Put in an old DVD of Dr. Strangelove:... recently in the XBox. It was just a random thought to pop it in and enjoy. (okay, was cleaning up shelf) I eventually realized I could skip around and enjoy the parts I liked. Freely. Without that feeling of being watched. Flashback.
This is the default experience of vlc, mpv, and kodi. You have to do the surveillance-navigating work when obtaining content, but then when you're relaxing you're free to relax.