But at some point to interact with any kind of large company … You could also consider not interacting with large companies at all

Actually the large corps are more likely to hold the data in-house. Small companies cling to outsourcing. E.g. credit unions are the worst… outsource every service they offer to the same giant suppliers. Everyone thinks only a small company has the data (and consequently that the small dataset does not appeal to cyber criminals) but it’s actually worse because they outsource jobs even as small as printing bank statements to the same few giants most other credit unions use. Then they do the same for bill pay with another company. It’s getting hard to find a credit union that does not put Cloudflare in the loop. So in the end a dozen or so big corps have your data and it’s not even disclosed in the privacy statement.

Of course it depends on the nature of the business. A large grocery chain is more likely to make sure your offline store purchase history reaches Amazon and Google than a mom & pop grocer who doesn’t even have a loyalty program.

Whether businesses get copies of information is usually included in a site’s privacy policy,

I have never seen a privacy policy that lists partners and recipients apart from Paypal, who lists the 600+ corps they share data with for some reason. Apart from bizarre exceptions privacy policies are always too vague to be useful. Even in the GDPR region. If you read them you can often find text that does not even make sense for their business because they just copied someone else’s sufficiently vague policy to use as a template.

If you really want to limit your information exposure, you either have to audit everyone you do business with this way (because most large companies do this) or hire someone (or a service) to do it.

The breach happened in a country where companies are not required to respond to audits. No company wants any avg joe’s business badly enough to answer questions about data practices. In the EU, sure, data controllers are obligated to disclose the list of parties they share with (on request, not automatically). And even then, some still refuse. Then you file an article 77 complaint with the DPA where it just sits for years with no enforcement action.

My approach is a combination of avoiding business entirely, or supplying fake info, or less sensitive info (mailing address instead of residential, mission-specific email, phone number that just goes to a v/m or fax). This is where the battle needs to be fought – at data collection time. Countless banks needlessly demand residential address. That should be rejected by consumers. Data minimization is key.

In the case at hand, I’m leaning toward opting out of the class action lawsuit and suing them directly in small claims court. I can usually get better compensation that way.

Self hosting would mean I could control account creation and make many burner accounts. But there are issues with that:

• If there are several burner accounts then the admin would have to make it easy for others to create burner accounts or else it would be evident that all the burner accounts are just the admin’s, which does not solve the aggregation problem. It introduces complexities because the DNS provider and ISP would have the identity of the self-hoster. One could onion host but that greatly narrows the audience.
• It does not solve the problem for others. Everyone who has the same need would then be needlessly forced to independently solve all these same problems.
• I do not have high-speed unlimited internet, so I would have to spend more on subscription costs.

I think it complicates the problem and then each author has to deal with the same. If it’s solved at the fedi API level, then the existing infrastructure is ready to work.

(edit) I recall hearing about a fedi client application that operates in a serverless way. I don’t recall the name of it and know little about how it works, but it is claimed to not depend on account creation on a server and it somehow has some immunity to federation politics. Maybe that thing could work but I would have to find it again. It’s never talked about and I wonder why that is… maybe it does not work as advertised.

Those do not obviate the use cases I have in mind. Secure drops are useful tools for specific whistle blowing scenarios. But they are not a one-size-fits-all tool.

I routinely use framadrop and then transmit the links to regulators or whoever I am targeting to act on a report. But what if the target audience is not a specific journalist or regulator but rather the entire general public? The general public does not have access to reports submitted to the Guardian’s dropbox or NYTimes’ dropbox. Those are exclusive channels of communication just for their own journalists. The report then only gets acted on or exposed if the story can compete with the sensationalisation level of other stories they are handling. If I’m exposing privacy abuses, the general public does not give a shit about privacy for the most part. So only highly scandelous privacy offenses can meet the profitable publication standards of Guardian and nytimes. The reports also cannot be so intense as to be on par with Wikileaks. There is a limited intensity range.

The fedi offers some unique reach to special interest groups like this one without the intensity range limitation.

NYtimes is also a paywall. So even if the story gets published it still ends up a place of reduced access.

They are great tools for some specific jobs but cannot wholly replace direct anonymous publication. Though I must admit I often overlook going to journalists. I should use those drop boxes more often.

(edit) from the guardian page:

Once you launch the Tor browser, copy and paste the URL xp44cagis447k3lpb4wwhcqukix6cgqokbuys24vmxmbzmaq2gjvc2yd.onion or theguardian.securedrop.tor.onion into the Tor address bar.

That theguardian.securedrop.tor.onion URL caught my attention. I did not know about onion names until now. Shame it’s only for secure drops.

That story is focused on #CloudSTRIKE but the bigger more remarkable demon here is #CloudFLARE.

This story demonstrates Cloudflare acting as a proxy bully of their own customer, on behalf of CloudStrike by pushing a frivilous #DMCA take-down demand. CF took the spineless route as it sees CloudStrike as having more muscle than their customer. After CF joins the Goliath side of the David vs. Goliath battle, CF ignores Senk’s responses and keeps proxying threats.

Senk bounced from Cloudflare and went to a provider who has his back. #ArsTechnica publishes Cloudflare’s conduct. As embarrassment hits Cloudflare and David (Senk) starts winning against Goliath (CloudStrike), CF changes their tune. Suddenly they are on Senk’s side, saying “come back, we’ll protect you – we promise we didn’t get your messages”. LOL. Senk should do a parody site for Cloudflare too.

Senk’s mistake: leaving CF. He should have waited until CF actually booted him. Then that would have more thoroughly exposed CF’s shitty actions. Senk gave CF an easy out.

Interesting to note how a human on the side of civil rights who advocates decentralisation was treated with hostility by Cloudflare. Yet CF is fine with sheltering actual criminals.

Customers should take several proactive steps to protect their personal information and reduce potential risks: Be Wary of Phishing Attempts

Customers should rethink their stupid ass decision to use AT&T in the first place since it has been known for over a decade that AT&T is the most privacy abusive of all US telecoms, most notably their role in project Fairview (archive for clearnet users and wikipedia).

AT&T customers don’t give a shit about privacy. But I do have some sympathy for all the non-AT&T people who communicated with AT&T pawns.

BTW, the OP’s link avoids reclaimthenet’s shitty popup if proxied through 12ft.io:

https://12ft.io/https://reclaimthenet.org/nearly-all-at

Not sure it matters since the text is in the OP anyway… guess if someone wants to share it around.

Folks, FedEx has always been on the extreme right. Some basic facts:

• FedEx is an ALEC member (extreme right lobby and bill mill), largely as an anti-union measure
• FedEx founded by an ex military serviceman
• FedEx gives discounts for NRA membership (though I heard this was recently discontinued). NRA is obviously an extreme right org who also finances ALEC.
• During the NFL take-a-knee protest, FedEx is one of very few die-hard corps that refused to give in to the boycott. FedEx continued supporting the NFL against all the Black Lives Matter athletes taking knees and getting punished.
• FedEx ships shark fins, slave dolphins and hunting trophies. Does not give a shit about harm to animals (even when endangered) or environment.

I have been boycotting FedEx for over a decade. Certainly being pro-surveillance is fitting with their history and should not be a surprise to anyone who is aware of this background.

The only moral inconsistency is that FedEx has a reputation for not snooping on your packages and seems to be favored by people shipping contraband. But to find the consistency it’s just about the bottom line. They make no money by ratting out their customers who break the law. But installing a surveillance system on their trucks is probably yielding revenue for FedEx.

I’m not on a good enough connection to watch videos but when I read “How the Religion called Atheism…” I know it cannot be coming from any sort of credible source. Atheism is absence of religion, not a religion in itself. It includes both agnostics and gnostics (both those who are convinced there is no god and those who are unconvinced either way). So I don’t suppose it’s worth it to note the URL and try to fetch the video when I have a good connection.

I’ve been out of the loop on games for a while but ReactOS may be worth a look.

The 1st ½ of your comment sounds accurate. But…

And also in Foss there are highly opinionated software where the devs completely ignore users, ban them from GitHub when they post issues,

Right, but to be clear non-free s/w is worse - you can’t even reach the devs, generally, and there is no public bug tracker. FOSS is an improvement in this regard because at least there is a reasonable nuclear option (forking). The nuclear option for non-free software is writing it yourself from scratch.

That all sounds accurate enough to me… but thought I should comment on this:

However - in larger enterprises there’s so much more, you get the whole SDL maturity thing going - money is invested into raising the quality of the whole development lifecycle and you get things like code reviews, architects, product planning, external security testing etc. Things that cost time, money and resources.

It should be mentioned that many see testing as a cost, but in fact testing is a cost savings. In most situations, you only spend some money on testing in order to dodge a bigger cost: customers getting burnt in a costly way that backfires on the supplier. Apart from safety-critical products, this is the only business justification to test. Yet when budgets get tightened, one of the first cuts many companies make is testing – which is foolish assuming they are doing testing right (in a way that saves money by catching bugs early).

Since the common/general case with FOSS projects is there is no income that’s attached to a quality expectation (thus testing generates no cost savings) - the users are part of the QA process as free labor, in effect :)

The new advisory, issued Monday by the FCC’s Privacy and Data Protection Task Force, says SIM swap fraud is increasing.

As a Tor user I’m increasingly more excluded. that “new advisory” link blocks Tor users and the IA Wayback Machine has stopped allowing Tor users to request saves. The FCC should be embarrassed that they are a comms authority and yet they have not figured out how to serve content to Tor users.

On the topic-- I was wondering if the SIM swap increase they are talking about is specifically in the US or worldwide. In countries that mandate SIM registration, criminals are stealing people’s phones simply to get a functional phone to use for crime, not to do any cyber attack on the theft victim. I could see SIM swapping being equally attractive.

And yes, the irony is that SIM registration is claimed to fight crime but in fact in creates more victims and crimes.

Apparently I’m wrong about this… the preview is said to be created by the server:

https://links.hackliberty.org/comment/1068761

EDIT: well, apparently it’s questionable. No one knows with confidence.

So does that mean jlai.lu is blocked by lecho.be? I figured it was more likely that lecho.be was blocking Tor, thus blocking my connection.

says someone who clearly has lived in a city their entire life.

The opening phrase has escaped you: “After living in regions that were (foolishly¹) designed exclusively for cars”.

To be against the Republican Party does not automatically make you a Democrat,

It does. You’re not accepting the reality of a 2-party system. Democrats encompass the green party voters as well, in effect, because it’s a 2 party system. Democrats broadly have extensive variation united in opposition to the republican platform. Democrats do not have a single org or two that sums up the whole party. The closest notable org that embodies the values of democrats would be the ACLU. But the ACLU is much more narrow to dem’s values than ALEC & NRA are to the republicans. But since you’re complexity averse, I suggest just looking at ACLU’s campaigns and missions compared to ALEC to understand the differences you’re trying to grasp between the parties.

yet you still could not credibly defend the Democratic Party.

Altruism in not compatible with the basic core agenda of the republican platform. Opposing the positions I listed is a sufficient defense for the party of any republican opposition with respect to campaign financing in a two party system. If you’re Sam Bankman-Fried claiming to spend money on altruism, the republican party is a clear antithesis of that endeavor, thus not a credible recipient. As unfavorable as it is to be trapped in a 2-party system, you’re lost on the simplicity of this.

For instance, communists staunchly attack republicans, yet they equally attack the democrats, arguing (rightfully, in my opinion) that both are two sides of the same coin which is capitalism/liberalism.

You’re not grasping the basic political framework of the US. You can finance communists in the US but the results are no different than setting your money on fire. They are not a viable party (assuming they even exist - they may be operating under a different name). Furthermore, bringing communists up only muddies the waters because SBF did not contribute to them. He only contributed to Ds and Rs.

I want to go back to the roots of our debate in order to recalibrate, and that is the fact that you’ve created quite the frail and unnecessarily complicated moral compass which, ironically, adds no philosophical value.

The 2-party system is not complicated. It’s the contrary. It’s simple to a detrimental fault. And because the republican values are what they are, it’s actually trivially simple to work out which party an altruistic philanthropist would favor. They have no choice.

Instead of basing your evaluation of SBF on a shallow criterion of political funding (which leads to many problematic conclusions due to the ideological indeterminacy which plagues American political parties), you can directly employ, like any sane person would, a humanist compass (granted that humanism has its caveats). You should then be asking whether EA conforms to the conceptions of humanism, on the short but also long term, and should future generations be prioritised over present beings?

You’ve misunderstood the thesis. It was not an overall appraisal of Sam Bankman-Fried. There are a lot topics we can discuss and countless approaches to solving the world’s social problems. The topic is specifically about Sam Bankman-Fried’s claim to adhere to effective altruism. If that does not interest you, you should not have entered the thread. You can create threads about whatever you find more interesting than SBF EA.

has there been a consensus among these self-style altruists what defines altruism?

I’m not sure that consensus would be needed, but apparently it’s defined as one person’s vision. Altruism itself is selfless behavior but (TIL) effective altruism is apparently an anti-poverty mission specifically.

I heard vague claims about impact on generations in the far future and I kind of tuned out at that point.

A charitable movement can impact people the day of the donation, or far in the future. Guardian mentions GiveDirectly, which is a program to distribute directly to poor people.

You’ve returned to describing POTUS administrations. The government is so much bigger than one person. W.r.t. to policy continuity, I agree that it’s shocking when dems continue anti-humanitarian policies. Obama indeed renewed the Patriot Act and failed to close Guantanamo. And Biden’s resumption of the border wall is notable. To some extent they expect the fallout to be pinned on those who initiated the policy. They also reverse some policies. E.g. Obama required ISPs to obtain consent from customers before collecting and sharing personal data. Trump reversed that so ISPs can collect data on people without consent.

You can spend days non-stop exposing dirt on any administration. But the party values are clear and they impact at every level nationwide. The core values of the republican party:

• fights public healthcare
• fights public education
• fights welfare
• fights income equality, affirmative action, worker’s rights & unions
• promotes xenophobia & Islamaphobia
• fights gun control
• fights voting rights
• fights environmental protection & pushes #climateDenial propaganda
• privatize everything (e.g. prisons)
• #citizensUnited (elevates corporate power to that of humans)

#ALEC is the republican bill mill and lobbyist who is supported by the biggest lobby in the nation: the #NRA. All of the above values culminate into ALEC and propagate into law from there.

Logically, we (or you, actually) cannot invoke the list of values enumerated above as “core values” to the Party if it cannot consistently abide by them.

Republicans consistently fight the above battles in the fed and state levels. They fought Obamacare and were even more opposed to Bernie’s plan. They want full privatization. They consistently fight against public education in every state, trying to defund public education & redirect public money into private education. Republicans oppose welfare and push for policies that exclude people from welfare (e.g. pee in a cup in Florida to prove you’re drug-free as a welfare precondition). The wall is a physical manifestation of xenophobia, but calling Mexicans “rapists & criminals” and their long history of scape-goating immigrants is historical. You can actually predict which party a state will favor based on demographics that xenophobia follows from. E.g. Ohio used to be a swing state, but the demographics changed so the state became whiter & less educated, which generated predictions that the population was more xenophobic and feared immigrants taking jobs, thus the state was expected to become solid red. And that’s exactly what happened. Of course republicans oppose gun control. The NRA is no longer a gun safety advocate, but pushes the extreme of no controls. The republican party is nothing without NRA support. All those bulleted positions above are held by ALEC, which the NRA backs along with republican politicians. Voting rights: there are countless shenanigans by the republicans to thwart voting. In some states they finance billboards by the road that say “Voting fraud is a crime” showing hand-cuffs, despite lack of notable voter fraud anywhere in the country. This is a voter intimidation move to make people in edge cases like who just moved into the state fearful enough to not register. They manipulate jurisdictional lines to get more electoral votes. They opposed Sunday voting because of “souls to the polls”. Blacks have a low voter turnout but they attend church in high numbers. So we can get more black votes by sending buses to churches on Sunday and giving them a ride to the voting poll. Of course a majority of blacks vote for dems. Hence why republicans fight Sunday voting.

If it would have fought for environmental protection, the past administrations would have stopped appeasing oil shells.

It’s bizarre to claim dems don’t oppose oil companies. Follow the money. Oil companies feed republican war chests. Greg Abbott in Texas is the most notable. When you fuel your car, you support republicans. Chevron in particular, as Chevron is also an ALEC member. Perhaps you are confused because a lot of jobs depend on the car industry. Obama bailed out the car makers because of the jobs, not out of love for oil or what they do to the environment. The EPA was neutered by Trump (a climate denier). ALEC & the republican party is the biggest barrier to environmental protection. If you simply visit the parking lot of a conservative fortune 500 company, the parking lot is packed with SUVs and pickup trucks.

If you oppose the positions I’ve put in bullets, then you basically oppose what the republicans are about. In which case you would vote democrat because it’s a 2-party system. Binary indeed.

This reveals, for most scholars of humor, that the superiority theory misses the mark. After all, sometimes things are funny without resulting from superiority, and some feelings of superiority don’t make things funny.[4]

It seems the author misunderstands “The Superiority Theory of Humor”. It’s not superiority in itself that’s funny – it’s the thought or projection of superiority (esp. miscalculation/misplacement thereof) where humor manifests. The banana peel slip seems like a bad example. You’re not laughing at someone’s failure to see and avoid the hazard; you’re laughing at the situation that the person is going through… that they were just walking along thinking in deep concentration about something other than their path and they are suddenly going for an unplanned ride.

There mere fact that people are fallible is not funny. Though I say that as an adult. Perhaps there is a schadenfreude factor among children or less developed brains.

🙄

That discussion is here if you want to go beyond emoji.

I agree that some of those transgressions contradict humanitarianism. You can always cherry-pick dirt on all individual politicians of course. That’s not interesting.

My comment draws from the broader principles of the party platform. One party fights public healthcare, fights public education, promotes xenophobia, islamaphobia, fights welfare, fights gun control, fights environmental protection & pushes #climateDenial propaganda, fights income equality, champions #citizensUnited, #ALEC, #NRA, etc. It’s clear from the values of the party platforms which parties are humanitarian and which are not.