markovbot

Most likely google will just turn off that silly opt out functionality. It's not like anyone's going to stop using their spyware browser.

not that it WILL pay each adult $13.5k/yr, it'll just go to the few billionaires at the top, while the rest of us can pick up the scraps.

I have no doubt Amazon will be highly innovative in making healthcare worse for everyone long term

for-profit corporations should not own our communications infrastructure.

it gave me a very zoomed in view of what I assume is Null Island (GPS coordinates 0, 0). Zooming out several times eventually reveals map elements.

sounds like the system is working as intended

Probably a pretty good reason not to get whatever the hell a "Neuralink 2030" is

This is excellent, and remarkable! I'm hopeful that similar legislation will be considered by other cities.

It is unfortunate that providing people such basic protections from some of the worst evils of surveillance capitalism.

And no one would ever lie about such things for a profit.

No, it does not. It demonstrates that they were successful at getting a lot of people to install their dangerous software

> Are there databases that could be lost without consequence except to their owner

I would certainly hope the owner of the insecure database would face massive consequences. IMO there's not _nearly_ enough of that. This sort of breach should be financially ruinous for _any_ company.

Only if the government tells us when they find a back door, which they obviously would not do.

I assume they won't be doing that to the main-stream spyware pushed by US companies.

I was not trying to suggest defeatism, just sick of hearing voting in the current system as a reasonable response to anything. Not saying don't vote, just saying stop suggesting it's the way to fix specific problems. Voting probably won't fix most problems.

Absolutely, one of the big systemic changes we need to effect is a switch to ranked choice voting. There are several other significant changes to the US's voting system that would also be needed. Things like a complete elimination of voting machines, and honestly a full switch to vote-by-mail would probably help.

Of course, the voting system in this country isn't even the biggest problem, some how. Things need to change before next election, not in a few election cycles.

I'm not proposing not voting. I'm just sick of hearing it offered as if it's somehow a solution to the increasingly obvious fact that the US government is fundamentally incapable of doing the basic things expected of it by it's citizens, like being trusted to not abuse it's power when doing things like gating access to potentially dangerous software.

Obviously it would be really REALLY nice if there was a trustworthy entity who could do that, but it's pretty absurd to suggest that if we simply vote for the other guy suddenly the US government will be that entity.

This is a pretty common response: just vote for the other guy. Too bad no one trustworthy is running for the executive office.

I would find it very problematic if the US government attempted to interfere with it's citizens downloading whatever software they want. I absolutely do not trust the US government to be the arbitrator of what app's are "safe".

Actually, it only impacted the part of the web that is trying to track it's users. Things that didn't have cookies aren't impacted.

The only world in which your statement makes sense in one where user tracking is assumed to be acceptable and something that must be done. Neither of those things are true.

We should encourage websites to stop tracking us.

non-amp link to story:

https://www.wcvb.com/article/3-million-masks-ordered-by-mass...

What are your concerns about TLD "pollution"?

opening up TLDs for sale seems like a (somewhat) logical way to expand the available namespace for domains. We have zillions of hosts, why require them to conform to one of a few random categories.

Certainly, I have issues with how TLDs are allocated and controlled, but that doesn't mean that the general idea of allowing essentially arbitrary top level domains the same the way we do with second level domains is inherently a bad thing.

They also don't mention that Venmo (and presumably PayPal also) won't actually let you sign up with a Google Voice number. They check to make sure it's an actual cell phone.

What parties are trusted to spoof? Having a telecom industry group play favorites with who is and isn't allowed to spoof anyone's phone number sounds like it would be bad.

is there any reason to believe this is anything other than the next step in a long, slow-moving process? SHAKEN/STIR has been being rolled out for a few years now, IIRC most major players said they were going to have it deployed by the end 2019 (see response column of table towards the bottom of https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication), now they're just setting a deadline of June 2021 to start authenticating calls.

are you asking if this will impact Google Voice? If so, I would imagine the answer is almost certainly that it will not at all impact Google Voice.

Google Voice works by acting as a proxy for outbound calls. You dial your friend's number, your phone dials Google, who in turn dials your friend with your Google Voice number displayed. Since Google is the legitimate carrier for your Google Voice number, I can think of no reason why they wouldn't be able to correctly sign the call.

Additionally, Google is listed as one of the companies that the 14 companies that the FCC appears to be working with (see the table towards the bottom of https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication), so I assume they are planning to use it for Fi and hopefully Voice as well.

> Have you actually read anything about either of those APIs or are you just reacting to the names?

I admit, this is exactly what I did :(

appreciate the info

How about the upcoming "SMS Receiver API" and "Contacts API"? Those look absolutely terrifying, and as soon as Chrome implements it, every shitty ass newspaper that is currently refusing to display their articles in private browsing windows will refuse to display their articles unless you fork over your contact list.

Amazon is profiting off a global health crisis. How could one not be cynical?

no, this is microsoft "embracing" (buying control of) a huge point of centralization in a software distribution ecosystem, positioning them to have greater power over a huge number of developers.

>that may or may not actually be paid.

Please tell me, how do I avoid paying overage fees? I have zero moral qualms about defrauding Comcast to the maximum possible extent.