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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 31st, 2023

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    • Decreased performance, as DRM is often hooked deep into event loops and adds non-negligible overhead.
    • Decreased privacy, as DRM often requires pinging an external server constantly.
    • Decreased security, as DRM is a black-box blob intentionally meant to be difficult to peer in to, and has been the target of attacks such as code execution vulnerabilities before.
    • If you own a game but don’t have an active internet connection, DRM may prevent you from playing the game.
    • If you own a game but have multiple computers, DRM may force you to buy multiple licenses when you’re only using one copy at a time (c.f., a physical CD with the game on it).
    • Eventually, a DRM company is going to go out of business or stop supporting old versions of their software; if you want to play an old game that had that DRM, you won’t be able to even if you own the game.
    • &c.

    DRM exists to "protect’ the software developer, i.e. protect profits by making sure every copy has been paid for and to force people to buy multiple copies in certain cases. DRM never has and never will be for your (the consumer’s) benefit.





  • 133arc585@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlPrivacy Search Engines
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    1 year ago

    It’s interesting how you went from “it’s not relevant at all” to “it’s relevant in general but not in this case” after I gave you a reply.

    If you have found a new security or privacy flaw, I would love to hear about it. But pushing your irrelevant opinions on others who are not interested, is unpleasant for us, and a waste of time for you.

    My opinions are not irrelevant, as I laid out in my previous comment that you just agreed with. Others are obviously interested, and it’s not “unpleasant” for them, as people responded and upvoted (and no downvotes)–indicating it’s relevant. It’s not a waste of time for me, because not only did it take me negligible time to type literally three sentences (actually, I copy-and-pasted the comment from one I made earlier, I didn’t even write it fresh here), but it has value to others and as such is not a waste of time for me.

    So whether he agrees with you that guys can become girls or vice versa, or whether he believes the same narrative that you do regarding corona is simply irrelevant.

    The strawman construction was a nice little touch. Completely ignoring the part where I laid out that my personal stance and agreement or disagreement with the CEO is irrelevant, you act as if I personally disagree with the CEO and then use that to dismiss me.

    You obviously have an agenda. So be it. But this conversation is truly a waste of time: you were obviously wrong and as soon as that was pointed out you shift goalposts.


  • 133arc585@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlPrivacy Search Engines
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    1 year ago

    If you think the two are unrelated you’re oblivious to the considerations that must be taken into account when discussing potential privacy concerns in software. It’s not ad hominem to acknowledge that the personal convictions and values of the CEO (and indeed other employees) can potentially decrease the sense of privacy of a product.

    If the CEO is so adamant in his anti-X stance that he decides it’s acceptable to censor access to materials about X, or perhaps worse that he decides to expose anyone using his software that discusses or supports X, would not consider those valid concerns?

    Companies are made of people, and software is made by people. Since people are not neutral, companies and software are also not neutral. The stances of a company or software on privacy, freedoms, etc are all influenced by the stances on those exact issues by the constituent people of the company and developers of the software.

    Consider Elon Musk and Twitter. Given Elon’s personal beliefs and how adamant he is to enact and enforce those beliefs, do you consider him a neutral influence on the privacy of Twitter as a product? There is no way to see him as a neutral influence; he has direct influence by his ideological stance on the software. As such, if you have enough distrust in him or his ideological stance, that can transfer to distrust in Twitter as software.

    In fact, it’s not even about whether I support the CEO or whether I think his stance is “right” or “wrong” as you imply. It’s entirely about how the CEO sees his beliefs in relation to the company and product he’s overseeing. I could entirely agree with the CEO and still consider their influence to be a detriment to the product if he puts his ideology ahead of pragmatism, for example.


  • It depends on how Google wants to play this. If they require website operators to use WEI in order to serve ads from Google’s ad network (a real possibility), then suddenly 98.8% of websites that have advertising, and 49.5% of all websites would be unusable unless you’re using Chrome. It’s probably safe to assume they’d also apply this to their own products, which means YouTube, Gmail, Drive/Docs, all of which have large userbases. The spec allows denying attestation if they don’t like your browser, but also if they don’t like your OS. They could effectively disallow LineageOS and all Android derivatives, not just browser alternatives.


  • A fork like Vivaldi, Brave or Opera could opt not to implement these changes

    It doesn’t quite work like that. They wouldn’t choose to not implement the change, because the change comes from upstream via Chromium. They would have to choose to remove the feature which, depending on how it’s integrated, could be just as much work as implementing it (or more, if Google wants to be difficult on purpose). Not implementing the change is zero effort; removing the upstream code is a lot of effort.


  • Within the context of Chrome and other Chromium based web browsers, this means that Google will be able to monitor your web browsing in a new way any time you’re using a browser based on Chrome/Chromium.

    With only slight hyperbole, we can say that Google can do this monitoring already.

    What’s worse, is now they can:

    • Refuse you access to information by refusing to attest your environment.
    • Restrict your browser, extensions, and operating system setup by refusing attestation.
    • Potentially bring litigation against you for attempting to circumvent DRM (in the USA it’s illegal to bypass DRM).
    • Leverage their ad network to require web site operators to use attestation if they wish to serve ads via Google. AKA force you to use Chrome to use big websites.
    • Derank search results for sites that are not using attestation.

    In my opinion, the least harmful part of this is the ability to monitor page access, because they can more or less do this for Chrome users anyway. What’s really harmful here is the potential to restrict access to and destroy practically the entirety of the internet.




  • Depends on how much you want to set up. For my purposes, I just check for connectivity every minute, and record true or false as a new row in a sqlite database if there is connectivity.

    This is what I use on my raspberry pi,

    #!/usr/bin/env python3
    from datetime import datetime
    import sqlite3
    import socket
    from pathlib import Path
    
    try:
        host = socket.gethostbyname("one.one.one.one")
        s = socket.create_connection((host, 80), 2)
        s.close()
        connected = True
    except:
        connected = False
    timestamp = datetime.now().isoformat()
    
    db_file = Path(__file__).resolve().parent / 'Database.sqlite3'
    conn = sqlite3.connect(db_file)
    curs = conn.cursor()
    curs.execute('''CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS checks (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, timestamp TEXT, connected INTEGER)>
    curs.execute('''INSERT INTO checks (timestamp, connected) VALUES (?, ?);''', (timestamp, 1 if connected else 0))
    conn.commit()
    conn.close()
    

    and I just have a crontab entry * * * * * ~/connectivity_check/check.py >/dev/null 2>&1 to run it every minute.

    Then I just check for recent disconnects via:

    $ sqlite3 ./connectivity_check/Database.sqlite3 'select count(*) from checks where connected = 0 order by timestamp desc;'
    

    Obviously, it’s not as full-featured as something with configurable options or a web UI etc, but for my purposes, it does exactly what I need with absolutely zero overhead.




  • There seem to be three categories for how podcasts deal with ad spots.

    Some podcasts mark their ads inline by using Chapter Markers. For example, ATP marks its ads by putting them in a new chapter with a name like “Ad: X”. In theory, you could have a player that skips any chapter who’s name begins with "Ad: ", though I don’t know of any existing apps that do that. Unfortunately, the number of podcasts using chapter markers seems to be a small portion of the podcasts I listen to, so this wouldn’t be very useful.

    Another method that could work on some podcasts that don’t use chapter markers is identifying a delineating tone. Using ATP as an example again, every ad spot starts with the same jingle, and ends with the same jingle. In theory, an app could skip the delineated sections. Mind you, this would require work from the user to set up (or it could be crowdsourced): you would have to tell the app what specific sound snippet delineates the ad read. Luckily, many podcasts seem to be structured in this way, with a clear audio cue to delineate ad spots.

    Then, you have really free-form podcasts where the hosts may just say, in everyday speech, something like “time for ads”, and the ads will insert. Sometimes it’s always the same phrase (e.g., the use of the phrase “the money zone” on MBMBAM), but that’s not always the case (e.g., there is seemingly no consistent verbiage in the Aunty Donna Podcast). This category is the most difficult to deal with.

    In summary, I don’t know of any existing apps that enable skipping ads for any of these three categories. Of the three categories, one is very easy to implement, one less easy, and one quite difficult. All potential solutions would require a shared/crowd-sourced database of which category each podcast falls into, at the least.





  • 133arc585@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlSignal. Privacy.
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    1 year ago

    Ok, two things are happening here.

    they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify.

    One, is that they did provide what they considered reasonable basis for distrusting Signal. Given that they thought Signal should not be trusted, the quote you posted is pretty obviously to be interpreted as: thankfully China hasn’t naively adopted a compromised communications platform with a USA intelligence backdoor. Now, if you want to say their basis for distrust is not reasonable, or is false, that’s completely fine. But in doing so it doesn’t change the author’s intent behind the quote which you posted.

    Given said dev’s past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.

    Two, is that it should be pretty clear they are saying China should be followed here in a very specific and explicit way: they aren’t saying follow China in every way under the sun. It’s very obvious from context and from what is explicitly said that they mean: China’s distrust and refusal to adopt (what they consider) a platform with USA backdoors should be followed. And I think that’s an entirely reasonable statement to make. No one should naively adopt compromised communications platforms.

    There is no honest reading of the quote (especially given the rest of the context of the essay leading up to the quote) that could lead someone to conclude that this particular essay is (1) advocating for and supporting China spying on its citizens and (2) advocating for other countries following China in spying on citizens. It’s pretty obvious the only honest reading of this is: “I believe Signal has USA backdoors. Given that, I’m glad China hasn’t adopted its use heavily. I also think other countries should follow China in not naively accepting such technologies”.

    Again, you can disagree with the foundational reasons for distrust, and that could be very useful. But painting the essay and quote the way you (and others here) are is just intellectually dishonest. Disagree with what is actually said, not with what you imagine (or wish) was said.



  • Edit: My comment below was based on a faulty understanding of how EDDM mailers worked and a faulty assumption I based on that ignorance. What they did in reality is little more than sending out spam mail, it was not a privacy violation.

    Purely from a privacy standpoint, however, there has never been an indication they have violated users’ trust in that regard.

    That’s simply not true though.

    They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak.

    In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

    In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

    I hope you consider a customer list leak to be a breach of privacy. And seeing how they didn’t take responsibility but tried to pass blame, they didn’t take such a mistake very seriously or respond in a manner that instills further trust.