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

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  • Search engines like DDG should really begin maintaining their own index, and they should exclude sites that use the tech from the index.

    If this gets implemented, it would ruin the ability for competitor search engines (such as DDG) to exist. If Google convinces site operators to require attestation, then suddenly automated crawlers and indexers will not function. Google could say to site operators that if they wish to run ads via Google’s ad network they must require attestation; then, any third-party search indexer or crawler would be blocked from those sites. Google’s ad network is used on about 98.8% of all sites which have advertising, and about 49.5% of all websites.


  • Isn’t someone just going to fork Chromium, take out this stuff,

    Yes, upstream Chromium forks will likely try to remove this functionality, but

    put in something that spoofs the DRM to the sites so that adblocking still works?

    This is the part that is not possible. The browser is not doing the attestation; it’s a third party who serves as Attestor. All the browser does is makes the request to the attestor, and passes the attestor’s results to the server you’re talking to. There is no way a change in the browser could thwart this if the server you’re talking to expects attestation.





  • 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.


  • What a weird take. You’re allowed to pay for whatever you’d like. Personally, I can’t afford to pay for any JetBrains product, even if I wanted to.

    Not only are there alternatives which may be better overall or better suited to someone’s needs, that wasn’t even my point. My point was more that it is only temporarily free, and so the parent commenter’s comment of “it’s free” should be taken with a grain of salt if you’re considering the product.

    Moreover, we’re in the Open Source community: Fleet is neither free nor open source, and pointing that out here is relevant.





  • Have you been keeping up with the story? Few people are saying there is absolutely zero value in telemetry as a concept. Most people have an issue with it being on by default. For a FOSS community, especially one who tries to act as if privacy matters, the very nature of the concept “telemetry that’s on by default” is the problem. I wouldn’t personally use the phrase corporate shilling because I think it’s not the most precise descriptor of the situation, but it’s not entirely innacurate either. I think all of their talk about “it’s anonymized” or “it’s not excessive” or what have you is just distraction: the real issue is that it’s on by default.



  • Oh it’s vile.

    Lots of people list a property, take loads of applications, each with a nonrefundable application fee (often $100+), then close the listing and pretend it was leased out. They wait a bit and repeat the play. They can rake in thousands of dollars for literally making a posting on a website, and repeat this often. And it’s often desperate people victimized too: not only are these people renting so they’re already in a vulnerable situation, the people willing to pay high application fees typically are desperate to get a lease.

    I’ve also seen places that make you pay an application fee, and as part of the screening process they run a credit check; if they aren’t satisfied with your credit score, they’ll deny you and of course keep the application fee. What’s more nefarious about this though is that they don’t give you a score cutoff; you don’t know if your score meets their criteria until after you’ve paid a nonrefundable fee.


  • 133arc585@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat is the most opinionated linux distro?
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    1 year ago

    I consider their past behavior to be counter to their stated goal of privacy, and counter to the notion that they deserve to be trusted.

    They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak; also I’d take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn’t the most savory:

    … Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.

    On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance

    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.

    With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance. He also spreads COVID misinformation.

    As others have pointed out, it’s also Chromium based, and so it is just helping Google destroy the web more than they already have.