231–240 of 374 posts
This reminds me of a dirty plan I had as a kid in middle school. 1. Make a legitimately useful Minecraft Bukkit plugin. 2. Wait for lots of installs. 3. Add a well-hidden backdoor that makes me "op" (admin) on any server I choose. 4. Surprise some mean op on a public server by suddenly banning him. I got through step 2 then decided to stop there.
No intention of "monetizing" as there is no non-shady way to monetize this feature. I perhaps don't maintain it as much as I could (sorry Windows and Linux users), but on the upside it is so little work that I'm never tempted.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-to-windowpopup...
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> the ad companies just work out what you're interested in The word "just" doesn't belong in that sentence. The ad companies being able to know things about you without actually listening to you is even more scary. Evil-Ad-Company Neo: "You're telling me I can know things about my customers by secretly listening to them?" Evil-Ad-Company Morpheus: "No Neo, I'm telling you that with the right license agreements, data…
sorry, i don’t mean to be dense here but could you spell out the implications for me? why is what you’re suggesting more scary?
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Ice Cream Sandwich was the best android, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Agreed. Android 4 was peak Android. Most of my favorite Android games are from that era and very few of them run anymore. I wish Google either make a sandboxed emulation layer for those old abandoned games.
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This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts do…
The documentary "Century of Self" by Adam Curtis [0] certainly opened my eyes to the damage that Bernays has inflicted on society in general. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
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Convincing offers to buy it for $10-40K. One offer said $250K but I doubt that one was serious, more likely just a straight up scam. I have often emailed them back feigning interest to see if I can get them to state what they plan to do with it, since I cannot see anything that could possibly be ethical, but they always just start talking mumbo jumbo about their innovative monetisation strategy. Recently I’ve had a s…
Thank you very much for the very informative response. As with any offer I think it's crucial to know what's at stake. You're very admirable for turning down tens of thousands, but if it had been tens of millions I'd have been questioning your judgement, as morally odious as the buyer might be. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14808881
The dev for uBlock origin must have received million and maybe tens of millions dollar offers, yet they refuse so much as token donations.
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You do realize all forms of media embed advertising directly into the content going right back to the beginning, right? There's nothing modern about it. Showing you a product when you actually want to see it is the most effective way to induce demand. All your favorite shows, movies, youtube personalities, etc. still do this.
This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts do…
and then bernays' nephew started netflix
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> this is what regulations like EU's and CA's should be enforcing. Imagine if the choice was: We have this data about you (a comprehensive list of all the fruits of our creepy stalking: a,b,c,d, etc...), if you let us violate your privacy in a myriad of ways, we will let you have this little trinket for free. Otherwise, it will cost you x. How many people would select privacy violation? Unfortunately under the GDPR w…
It is legal[1] to require users to agree to data collection or pay a subscription. Some news sites have already begun to implement this scheme. [1] At least according to some countries' DPAs, and as long as the price is "fair". https://www.iubenda.com/en/help/24487-cookie-walls-gdpr
FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would. I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want…
I used to have an extension that promised to never be sold or even updated beyond the initial release, since it was a one-liner that can't possibly ever need to change. The Chrome Web Store took it down after 5+ years, presumably because I never published an update so the the now-mandatory fields were empty.
I've got a few set-and-forget extensions I haven't uploaded a new package for in 5+ years but I have periodically had to log in (per email warning) and check a new box e.g. assert I'm not collecting user data or pledge compliance with a new privacy directive.
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sorry, i don’t mean to be dense here but could you spell out the implications for me? why is what you’re suggesting more scary?
They're saying it's scarier that ad companies can figure out these things without the data because it means that you can't protect yourself by withholding your data.
but what are you protecting yourself from? What's the threat model?