171–180 of 185 posts
with all the data they have on us WHY IS IT STILL SO DIFFICULT TO PAY TAXES. Why can't this be easier ? Why can't google produce a tool for this ?
It's not. It's difficult to file taxes, because tax prep softwsre and services firms have lobbied very hard on the issue, and the other side hasn't.
How feasible is it for Google/Facebook to infer/build profile of private browser activity? Since most sites implement google Analytics and Facebook tracking code (ghostery is reporting both on the guardian website). They could use browser fingerprinting, which has already been proven to be extremely accurate, to augment known user profiles and data. Facebook already creates shadow profiles for people without profiles…
I'm presuming that you're not talking about Firefox's Private Browsing mode, which comes with an actual tracking script blocker. The biggest factor for tracking without the ability to store things on the client is IP-based tracking. In many cases, the IP address narrows the number of possible persons down to a handful. Then you can use behavioural analysis, fingerprinting or factor in other data to narrow it down tho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets and those who have experienced traumatic events in their past that would cause severe distress, not as a synonym for "annoyed." A veteran who relives the horrors of war when fireworks go off is not nearly in the same space as a developer who is annoyed that someone misused technical jargon.
Words shift in meaning over time. They're defined by the active usage, not the ideal usage. Resisting that change is like trying to fence in water, however righteous it feels.
Simply giving up on definitions means always ceding power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets Certainly not. While many military personal certainly have faced mind-altering situations, they are far from the only ones who have ever suffered from traumatic events. Children and Women are the subjects of the most twisted and abusive stories I've ever been able to fathom.
The full quote is: > The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets AND those who have experienced traumatic events in their past that would cause severe distress (emphasis mine) You can't just cut a sentence in half and then try to form an argument against it. That's not fair.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The full quote is: > The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets AND those who have experienced traumatic events in their past that would cause severe distress (emphasis mine) You can't just cut a sentence in half and then try to form an argument against it. That's not fair.
I agree, I don't think it said that when I wrote my comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Words shift in meaning over time. They're defined by the active usage, not the ideal usage. Resisting that change is like trying to fence in water, however righteous it feels.
As with most things, the choice is more difficult than either giving up and accepting a new, more lax definition, or "righteously" rejecting it. That process requires an application of judgment. In this case, my judgment says that it's an unnecessary cheapening of a psychological term, and that pointing out its origins might help people understand why. Simply giving up on definitions means always ceding power.
The entire world is participating in shaping English and we have no Académie Française equivalent. Sometimes the changes are unflattering.
That said, I do appreciate your points and see your intention with empathy about this word in particular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As with most things, the choice is more difficult than either giving up and accepting a new, more lax definition, or "righteously" rejecting it. That process requires an application of judgment. In this case, my judgment says that it's an unnecessary cheapening of a psychological term, and that pointing out its origins might help people understand why. Simply giving up on definitions means always ceding power.
It's not giving up so much as accepting that there's theater in chastising linguistic drift. Telling strangers they shouldn't use a newer, ironic form of a word is as hopeless as The Very Smart Guy raging at people over "literally" not being literal. The entire world is participating in shaping English and we have no Académie Française equivalent. Sometimes the changes are unflattering. That said, I do appreciate you…
It's not so much "you shouldn't use that word in that manner because of some linguistic pedantry" but "you shouldn't use that word because the externalities of doing so have outsized effects on certain people," or for the self-centered and machiavellian, "you make yourself look bad when you use it such."
As you say, it is a matter of empathy. The N-word has been around for a while - it's still not acceptable for certain people to say it[0]. As for why, that's a matter of education, and it begins with pointing it out.
This person stored their PGP private key on Google Drive, which they use "to encrypt" emails. I'm glad the author is security-conscious enough to know what PGP is, I guess. And that they deleted it from Drive (didn't say why, hopefully they came to their senses about the more-than-usual amount of trust they were placing in Google). Is there a valid use case for "encrypting" email with a private key? I guess signing a…
One of PGP's functions is to encrypt email. Why would you expect someone be savvy enough to understand how PGP works but not be savvy enough to use its main function? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
This is nonsensical: > The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents. > Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents. This link [Google Takeout] includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve t…
This is typical. As a techie, you're triggered by technical detail because you understand the technical details of that example that is intended to illustrate the size of the data collected. Rest assured that this happens all the time and when people read news about a topic that they are an expert on, they cringe all the time. For example, a paraglider pilot will get triggered if the reporter uses the word "Jumped" i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets Certainly not. While many military personal certainly have faced mind-altering situations, they are far from the only ones who have ever suffered from traumatic events. Children and Women are the subjects of the most twisted and abusive stories I've ever been able to fathom.
The full quote is: > The word "triggered" should really be reserved for military vets AND those who have experienced traumatic events in their past that would cause severe distress (emphasis mine) You can't just cut a sentence in half and then try to form an argument against it. That's not fair.