varsock

The article discusses the use of targeted advertising data by government agencies, particularly focusing on how a technology consultant demonstrated the security risks posed by Grindr's data to national security agencies. It highlights the widespread availability and potential surveillance applications of advertising data, as well as the government's interest in obtaining and utilizing such data for intelligence purposes.

Why is this worth the read? It goes into detail how these data exchanges work and the mechanisms of obtaining such data. We often hear about the result of these actions, but how these actions are performed are described within.

(clear your cookies to read the paywalled article)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to poll the community and pick up tips on DIY cable labeling and management.

At work, we label both ends of Ethernet cabels using a Brady Label maker. They are awesome but run about $200 USD.

I don't need such an expensive device to create (one-time) 40ish labels.

I was hoping for DIY suggestions that balances durability and ease of installation. Was thinking tape, sharpies, or even thick zip ties etc. Some forums even suggested bread ties (but I'm concerned they will fall off in hard to reach places). And sharpies are great but can wear on some materials (like those plastic sticky tabs for books and notes)

What are some pros and cons of approaches you guys have tried?

EDIT:

I was pointed to this video which suggests you:

1. Grid up a piece of paper so each rectangle's height is the size of a circumference of a cable. It will later be wrapped around the cable.
2. Then hand write the labels.
3. Cut out each label/rectangle.
4. Then use clear masking tape slightly larger than the label to secure it to the cable by wrapping it around the circumference of the cable.

The finished product looks like those shrinking labels where the label is flush against the cable and text is behind a clear film and can't be smudged.

For those that suggested borrow the label maker from work or print them at work: that has occured to every one of our engineers on staff and now our printers are locked away and are signed out bc we would always find them either low on ink/toner or more frequently out of lable paper. Yes, ordering those supplies is negligibly cheap for a budget at work but the issue lied in whenever you picked up the label maker at work, you immediately had to either change the roll or ink. sigh this is why we can't have nice things :)

Below is a disturbing amount of information data brokers have ammased from buying your data from trackers in ads and apps.

"a staggering amount of sensitive and identifying information about consumers," alleging that Kochava's database includes products seemingly capable of identifying nearly every person in the United States.

... can access this data to trace individuals' movements—including to sensitive locations like hospitals, temporary shelters, and places of worship, with a promised accuracy within "a few meters"—over a day, a week, a month, or a year. Kochava's products can also provide a "360-degree perspective" on individuals, unveiling personally identifying information like their names, home addresses, phone numbers, as well as sensitive information like their race, gender, ethnicity, annual income, political affiliations, or religion, the FTC alleged.

... target customers by categories that are "often based on specific sensitive and personal characteristics or attributes identified from its massive collection of data about individual consumers." These "audience segments" allegedly allow advertisers to conduct invasive targeting by grouping people not just by common data points like age or gender, but by "places they have visited," political associations, or even their current circumstances, like whether they're expectant parents. Or advertisers can allegedly combine data points to target highly specific audience segments like "all the pregnant Muslim women in Kochava’s database," the FTC alleged, or "parents with different ages of children."

For all you USA peeps:

A bipartisan team of U.S. lawmakers has introduced new legislation intended to curb the FBI's sweeping surveillance powers, saying the bill helps close the loopholes that allow officials to seize Americans' data without a warrant.

The bill follows more than a decade of debate over post-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance powers that allow domestic law enforcement to warrantlessly scan the vast mountains of data gathered by America's foreign surveillance apparatus.

A bipartisan team of U.S. lawmakers has introduced new legislation intended to curb the FBI's sweeping surveillance powers, saying the bill helps close the loopholes that allow officials to seize Americans' data without a warrant.

The bill follows more than a decade of debate over post-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance powers that allow domestic law enforcement to warrantlessly scan the vast mountains of data gathered by America's foreign surveillance apparatus.

I have a device that reached end-of-life support and I'm burned out loading ROMs to extend it's support. Upon from my return from the trip I plan on purchasing a new device anyway, so buying one while traveling is also an option.

I'm traveling to a European Market that has stronger privacy rules GDPR and their devices must have lower SAR (regarding phone RF emissions).

Regarding RF and SAR

My carrier frequency bands in my home country are supported by European phones I'm looking at (Android and Apple). But do the phones dynamically manage the RF emission based on locale or are the limited at hardware or software?

Would purchasing the device abroad have an effect I think it does when I bring it home?

Regarding Privacy

This one is tricky, typically the account (gmail or Apple ID) is associated with the locale. If I were to create a new account and set up my device while abroad, will this have lasting effects? I have a friend who have immigrated and set their devices up abroad and their locale is still their OG country. One of them changed locales (for android) because spotify (app) wasnt available in their home country locale. So I speculate this is a solid approach if I were to do so.

I know I might have issues with availability of content (downloading from app stores). But as far as accounts go, my Spotify (and netflix if i stil had it) account is associated with my home country so I will still be able to watch shows in my locale. Being able to download the app is the limiting factor but there are ways to get around that with side loading.

So yeah, if anyone has experience with this and could call out some things I didn't consider or validate my expectations, would be appretiated.

Wanted to share a resource I stumbled on that I can't wait to try and integrate into my projects.

A GPT4All model is a 3GB - 8GB file that you can download and plug into the GPT4All open-source ecosystem software. Nomic AI supports and maintains this software ecosystem to enforce quality and security alongside spearheading the effort to allow any person or enterprise to easily train and deploy their own on-edge large language models.

https://radar.cloudflare.com/domains

Source of this is from Matthew Prince, Co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare posted at 11:34 Jul 9,2023. It was posted to his twitter (@eastdakota). Not linking to twitter bc don't want a deadlink next time twitter makes API changes. And not to drive traffic to twitter :D

Edit: July 11th update, arstechnica published a detailed explanation

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/twitter-is-tanking-amid-threads-surging-popularity-analysts-say/

I am not one for policies restricting choice but I fear the situation where Meta sets up instances that become big, say like Lemmy.world. Then one day when their instance is popular, they decide to charge other instances to federate with Meta's instances.

Big corps like YouTube, twitter, Meta, etc are known to offer services at a loss to grow their service and then drop the hammer and demand payment to use what people already rely on.

I feel a policy that prevents federated corp instance from profiting early on from FOSS, self hosted, and volunteer federated servers is something to think about - though I do not know the best approach.

I like what Open Source software does with their licensing approach where you are free to view, use, and contribute but if you take you must distribute the source code to others. Some outright ban usage for profit without a license.

Obviously licensing applies well for software to prevent abuse, and I would like a discussion about what Terms of Use policies can prevent volunteer work from being abused - if any are desired.

see the following cross-post from: https://programming.dev/post/427323

Should programming.dev defederate from Meta if they implement ActivityPub?

I'm not suggesting anything, just want to know what do you think.

Here is a link if someone don't know what Meta's Threads is: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

I want to discuss a topic, say a recent event like "Google Search will omit links to Canadian news sites in Canada". So I find communities where that topic might appear but I cannot search the contents of a community to see if that thread exists.

Has anyone figured out good approaches to searching in Lemmy? I mostly use mobile apps like Jeroba or Liftoff so my experience is limited to them.