macallik

@[email protected]

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Report: Amazon made $1B with secret algorithm for spiking prices Internet-wide (arstechnica.com)

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging that the online retailer was illegally maintaining a monopoly. Much of the FTC’s complaint against Amazon was redacted, but The Wall Street Journal yesterday revealed key details obscured in the complaint regarding a secret algorithm. The FTC alleged that Amazon...

macallik,

Yeah I've got my RSS camel feeds to alert me on price drops. Anything that isn't needed immediately goes there

macallik,

IIRC, the fediverse pertains to an interconnnected network of servers that are managed individually. Privacy is an option that led many current users to the fediverse but is by no means a requirement.

If/when threads joins the fediverse, it will have addictive algorithms and collect large amounts of user data.

My guess is that it will be like the banking system in the US where many ppl go to the exploitative larger banks out of seeming convenience w/o realizing that the alternative, less popular Credit Unions actually have the consumers' best interest @ heart

macallik,

Yeah. I forget that we're still likely in the 'early adopter' phase of things for now, which is why a lot of the UX is hit or miss depending on the instance and iteration

macallik,

Installing on my 4a 5G now. Gonna read to see what alterations to play around with

macallik,

Great response 👍🏾

macallik,

Good to know. I finished the series late last month and plan on diving into the show this month

macallik,

I'm sure most of us are old enough to remember when citing directly from wikipedia was seen as stupid and in poor taste because 'anyone could edit the articles'.

It's likely still premature to fully trust in definitions from LLMs, but it's worth noting that AFAIK, basically every LLM is trained off of wikipedia articles because the data is free, easily accessible and contains the answers to lots of random human questions

macallik,

Random and sad

macallik,

Battery life is my biggest concern. I see 24 hour battery life w/ Always-On display... does anyone have any references that speak to the battery life when the feature is turned off?

Looking to replace a Garmin watch that lasts 4-5 days and trying to see whether it'll be worth it

macallik,

Yup. Came out a few months before the 4a 5G:
https://endoflife.date/pixel

macallik,

Didn't expect a lot out of A14 tbh. I think that Operating Systems have matured to become mostly an intermediary between the user and apps as opposed to the conductor. As long as they stay out of the way, most users will be content.

Personally tho, I wouldn't be surprised if 15 is a huge release. Right now, the next frontier seems to obviously be transitioning phones towards AI personal assistants and w/ full integration. Microsoft is already leading the charge from the desktop OS front, but phones imo will be the most familiar integration opportunity.

macallik,

7 years support for (new & future) Pixels & 10 years of support for Chromebooks. WATTBA

macallik,

Ran nala after seeing this post and got a libc update on Debian myself

macallik,

m/TheyDidTheMath

macallik,

I agree re: malicious compliance. Also leading w/ the web price knowing that the majority of their base uses mobile devices to connect

macallik,

Good insight. We must protect @bug at all costs.

macallik,

Come on over to Linux yall, the water's open-source vibes are fine

macallik,

What surprised me was the amount of Android users. I guess self-hosters are predisposed to tinkering in general perhaps?

macallik,

Paywalled

macallik,

Yeah I think this.

You can't even make deals w/ him anymore because he won't abide by them. On top of that, he has to bend to the most fringe aspects of his party to stay in power so it appers that he's reaching the same conclusions (impeachment, reneging on his words, etc) as a more conservative speaker, w/ just the semblance of moderate leanings

macallik,

It feels like every other post on privacy and technology is someone pushing the (paid) search engine Kagi nowadays...

macallik,

Didn't we see similar snap memes yesterday and the day before?

macallik,

Woof.

Degenerate vibes for sure.

macallik,

It is worth noting that they updated their support to be 10 years moving forward, so I disagree with the eWaste sentiment. I agree that Linux as a permanent alternative isn't super easy, and I say that typing from a Chromebook running Debian 12.

macallik,

Good point when you frame it that way, but also worth acknowledging that relative to the alternatives, it is an uphill battle that most won't be bothered with. My experience involved reading this site + joining their discord + digging into Github for troubleshooting, which is not a viable option for 80% of users

macallik,

I decided to create a few threads after a few months hiatus and was surprised by the levels of engagement. I think the audience is hungry for content and that more people need to take the plunge and start threads.

With that said, going to /all instead of /subscribed is largely frustrating since the most frequent posts are just memes and inside jokes

macallik,

TBH, the fish tld is kinda lame, and I say this as a firefish user. But yeah, here are my $0.02:

gefilte.fish
wearethe.world
fishkey.world

macallik,

I think the article appears biased because searxng appears to offer the same functionality as Kagi, in spite of being free, yet Kagi is shown to be the best in class for some reason? Also it doesn't touch on the critique that kagi having a login potentially aggregates all of your searches into one account that is stored by one company.

macallik,

This guy was selling classes on being a pedophile-stopper while most of these youtube pedo chaser operate in ways that don't lead to prosecution.

He stopped a 17 year old from talking to a 15-year-old, which isn't exactly making the world a better place

macallik,

I use NewPipe and what has helped me the most is not having to deal w/ the recommendation algorithm.

I reset my subscriptions to only be the most relevant feeds from YouTube and then I only check the subscription page. I've consciously curated the feed to be more productive and I'm much less likely to get distracted when watching videos

macallik,

Currently @ jfk. Good luck to those waiting

macallik,

I use it. It's great for seeing your progress of reading a book over time. I update the # of pages I read for every book and the dates show me my pace.

Amazon lawsuit protects ‘free and fair competition,’ says FTC Chair Lina Khan (www.cnbc.com)

One day after filing a massive antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan defended the agency’s decision to pursue the company and explained how its use of monopoly power allowed it to leverage an effective 50% tax on sellers....

macallik,

Good to see her bouncing back and standing strong after the media dragged her through the mud a month or two ago when one of her cases was thrown out

macallik,

My 4a 5G screen cracked beyond usage three weeks ago. I thought about it & ended up buying a used 4a 5G for $100 on swappa. I get too much usage via the earphone jack and don't see any new features that warrant an upgrade.

Gonna keep it until the first update skips me and then root & flash it w/ Pixel Experience

macallik,

During the urine test:

"Duncan stated that she was not aware of the pouch/container in her shorts until after she was providing her second sample," police wrote in their affidavit. "Duncan stated that she does not know how or when the pouch/container got into her shorts that day. Duncan stated that there may be another one of them at her residence but that they were not purchased by her, but by someone she knows who probably uses them to pass drug screens."

I laughed

macallik,

Same. It completely ignores exact phrase match so you can't drill down with the most important aspects of a query. Ecosia was the same way IIRC, so it might be related to people using Bing data as a 3rd party perhaps

Ecosia.org updates its Privacy Policy (www.ecosia.org)

From September 2023, we will be gradually rolling out our new unique search offer. This will happen over several months and won’t apply to everyone at the same time. This means that when you search through Ecosia, we work with either Microsoft Bing or, with your consent, Google to provide you with search results and ads. In...

macallik,

I used it as my primary browser on my laptop/desktop. I supported the cause and through my usage I planted +150 trees, but the trade-off is steepening so I'm going to have to jump ship.

I'll be pivoting to DuckDuckGo as my main search engine, and use Brave for more nuanced/specific results.

macallik, (edited )

I am not blaming them as much as I am reevaluating the level of privacy I'm sacrificing given the additional context in their updated statement

  1. 'Their' privacy policy now roughly equates to "We don't really do anything but you should read the privacy policy of Microsoft (and optionally Google)." It feels less like an alternative search engine and more like a middle-man that still passes the data along. Speaking of which:
  2. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but they are touting 'non-personalized results and ads' as if that's the privacy end goal, when it's really just the side-effect of companies not having data on you. Based on their updated policy, they are giving the illusion of privacy via 'non-personalized results' while capturing/sharing searches, behaviors & IP address that I'm guessing can easily be deanonymized @ Microsoft.

Maybe I'm misreading something? It reads like the same experience of using Bing without the marginal benefit of a personalized experience.

I think it's a catch-22 because I'd imagine a sizeable cohort of their pro-environment demographic is likely pro-privacy/anti-'corporations knowing everything about you', and so while the increase in usefulness in data can increase their charitable donations, it will rub lots of users the wrong way.

macallik,

Very pessimistic take. I highly doubt they are planting trees that are unlikely to be sustained.

macallik,

The questionable privacy policy doesn't negate the actual work being done. I'm no longer using them, but calling it tree NFTs is misguided

https://youtu.be/pPg_vDMeiJY?si=pmeBAG7HDXhmAOgV&t=73

macallik,

Wooof. I've started using Brave for less then 24 hours and I'm already jumping ship. Anyone backed by Peter Thiel is an immediate 'no' for me.

I'll have to try Whoogle or SearXNG but search engines seem to regularly block my queries so that I only get random results from wikimedia. Maybe I can resolve the issues w/ self-hosting? Otherwise, I might just try to redirect most of my questions to open-source LLMs

macallik,

Was struggling through an attempted self-install of SearXNG. So far so good, w/ this one, thanks for sharing

macallik,

Wayback Machine ftw. Here is August 2023:

The only piece of personal information we collect is the IP address your internet connection runs over at a given moment. Why? We need to protect ourselves against “spammers”, meaning ad fraud and bots trying to up-rank certain search results. Your IP address is anonymised after one week or less. For example, 192.168.152.223 becomes 192.168.XXX.XXX.

We still use Microsoft Bing to deliver search results, but using them through Ecosia is very different from searching on Bing directly. At Microsoft or Google, you are likely to have personal IDs which track you across all of their services: email, calendar, video platform, gaming, video conferencing, maps, locations, location history, and so on.

We don’t sell any data to anyone and we don’t buy any data either.

We are interested in the performance of our social media advertising, as well as answering your search results. We would like to know if users stay with us once they have seen our ads and installed us. This helps us run the right advertising campaigns on the right platforms. We never let those platforms know your search terms, though. We only share whether you are still searching with us or not. We only do so with your consent and you can remove that consent at any time.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230729030327/https://www.ecosia.org/privacy

macallik,

bad bot

macallik,

Anyone backed by Peter Thiel is guilty by association at this point.

macallik,

Redirector did it for me. The I found out about libredirect and started using alternative front ends for everything. from there I switched over to Linux and that's all she wrote

macallik,

Thanks for the heads up

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