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(2023)

If you install 100 apps on your phone, and 50% are participating in the kind of ad network that this data is sourced form, and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out. The math is on the trackers' side, not the users'.


>If you install 100 apps on your phone

Why do you need 100 apps? Moreover why do you need 100 apps that have location permissions? Both android and ios makes it easy to tell which apps have location permissions. The list should be a very small list, and limited to "while using app".

>and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out.

I'm not claiming that nobody is getting picked up by data brokers. The fact that they're in business implies that there's enough people careless enough to make it a viable business. But what I am claiming that such tracking isn't too hard to avoid. You can see some people in this thread who think otherwise, thinking that they need to go of the grid or switch to burner phones, when they all need to do is spend 1 minute to check the location permissions list.


> Why do you need 100 apps?

You don't. But a high percentage of the population will install apps for the sake they've been offered to install it.

I use eBay, I get bombarded by eBay telling me to install their app for 10% off. I use Gmail for work, if I don't use their app, I have the search engine to tell me to use their app. Facebook is an app, WhatsApp is an app too. Bejeweled Deluxe is an another app and $Reality_TV_show wants you to install their app. Your local supermarket has an app to give you % off your shopping list and probably not to far off in the future oxygen will be an app.

Some venue for a ticket for that odd one-off gig requires an app and every single restaurant order at the table has different app. You're then forced to install the app to use your Dishwasher, Fridge, TV, WiFi Router. I bought a new heater as my old one broke this winter and if I desire to configure WiFi for it, you guessed it I have to install an app.

And that's how you you end up with 100 of apps that are never really used, leaking information, spying on you and never deleted because people don't. I bought Christmas presents and I was unable to track delivery information without installing an app, I had forgotten about that until now. Thanks for reminding me you, can watch me delete it. That again is how you end up with apps.

We use discord at work and when I walk past co-workers screens they are within multiple of dead discord servers. They never leave and it's not just discord I've seen people idling in dead channels on IRC. I just question why and walk away as if the server is dead, I leave.

Hanging on to things that are never needed again is what we are best at it seems. FOMO?

> 1 minute to check the location permissions list.

Most users are not you and I, they don't know about permissions. They just want to accomplish what they set out to do. And if you do remove that permission; that app refuses to co-operate frustrating the user, nagging them until they do re-enable that permission.

It's now rather than how it used to be. Smart humans using a dumb phones, the now is dumb humans being used by smart phones.

* With sympathy to those who are actually mute/non-verbal, that must suck.


You should install the absolute minimum amount of apps possible and should prefer a website whenever you can. And, of the apps you do install, install them from trusted open source repositories, and allow them the absolute minimum permissions to do whatever you need them to do. They're tools for you.


People use crypto all the time to buy dollars. Thats its main purpose: spend sanctioned rubles to buy crypto to buy dollars; use randomware to coersively obtain crpyto to buy dollars, etc.


Is there a good heuristic now for which things on nih.gov.or cdc.gov are real science?


This is a paper published from 2001 with no bearing on the current political climate.


The concern is whether the file is unaltered from its original 2001 release.



The first footnote here had me cackling aloud. Don't miss the footnotes!


The very similar "stepped in it" definitely has the same connotation in English.

But it needs the "it". "step in" alone or in any context where "it" isn't a mystery doesn't do it.

"step into the function" or "step into the hallway" doesn't do it even slightly.

The opposite even. In the case of "step into the hallway" where "step" does actually refer to literally using ones feet, saying step is a bit more sophisticated option for something like walk or go, invoking a sense of dancing vs merely relocating. So the "step in" is actually more elegant and tasteful.

Stepping into into or through a function doesn't invoke any dancing, merely the non-continuous, non-analog nature of the process.

But "here's where we stepped in it" has exactly the image and meaning he means.

Perhaps there is some other word in Russian that would do a better job of expressing something that proceeds in hard jumps? Maybe "step" was always just a too-literal translation from English or other languages because there is obviously a Russian word for "step"?

Is the 90-degree shape of stair called a step in Russian? Were instructions called steps in Russian before the western world put our own words for computer stuff into everyone else's languages overnight? Would a 400 year old document describe the recipe for a soup as a set of steps? In that case "step" was not merely a too-literal translation.


"I stepped into a management role. Then I had to scrape it off my shoes."


In this case there wasn't even any trial, here or abroad. Just sent to the torture gulag with zero process whatsoever. So its even worse than that.


> In this case there wasn't even any trial, here or abroad.

Above is #19; see #18:

> "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Jury trial:"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...


In the before times the close eyes were by directors and funding committees at the institutes like NIH and NSF. Now those roles are played by political appointees and funds controlled at the whim of the office of the President and their fundamentally anti-science agenda.


"It just radiates jank" ... that line resonates with me, but is sonehow a bit attractive. Like this is how things might be done in some alternative grittier universe. Like this is how Kaylee would make data formats execute on the Firefly. Its steampunk programming.


Thanks. I watched a few snippets of the video but I hate video. It did look like it would have been an interesting blog post but no way I am sitting thru that.


Google maps is doing the same thing to local business success that social media algorithms are doing to political success. The algorithm controls what you perceive as the consensus of others. It is a dangerous world to have such power so highly concentrated.


Perhaps such things should be controlled democratically instead of by a single person or a small group of people whose companies are organized as dictatorships.


It is controlled democratically. The people have democratically ceded their knowledge gathering to large companies. Because people are above all else lazy


That's not what democracy is. The algorithm is developed in an organization that is structured as a dictatorship.


And each user decided of their own volition to use the service under the pretense of delegating to such an algorithm.


"Decide" is a heavily weighted word here. From what did they decide? Was the field from which they were deciding, perhaps monopolized, or ologipopalized? Was there information skewed by the entities hoping to be chosen? Do said entities have stunning amounts of capital and power that let them prevent competition?


How exactly would you fix this? Seems no different than any arbitrary person or groups ranking.


First off, let me see ALL the restaurants in my city, not just the 10 recommended ones.

Second, stop moving the map when I search for things. Why does google maps on both mobile and desktop, change your search area. I put the map in one place because I want to search there.

Third, stop scrubbing bad reviews. When every restaurant is 5 stars, theres no point


> Second, stop moving the map when I search for things.

When I search for 'chicago' I like having the map move to Chicago, even if there's a Chicago Grill, Chicago Pizza and Chicago Trading Company closer.


> stop moving the map when I search for things

Are you saying that if I want to find, for example, where Athens, Georgia is, I need to basically find it manually in the world map?


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