tpllaha

They have an autosuggest feature in the browser which shows search results as you type. Goes without saying that this requires a request per keystroke. If each request contained a unique user id, that would be concerning, but that is not the case. that the search query itself goes to their servers is just common sense, but those requests are anonymized. (Disclaimer: I'm a former employee)

That's true. But also trackers (especially big ones) deliberately try to make it as easy as possible to accidentally include them in your page. e.g: the if you use their cdn for fonts/style sheets, if you include a fb like button etc.

A friend of mine covers this more extensively in this blog post which I found a very interesting read: https://remusao.github.io/posts/static-comments.html

So I think it's still concerning that once they're in, they start crawling. Although not very surprising I have to say... That's their business after all.

Well... when it comes to data privacy, I'd say better the Germans than the Donald.

Interesting approach. Trying to make sure that any data that is sent out to third parties cannot be used as a user ID seems like the way to go. I like that this approach makes a strong statement and cannot discriminate between different trackers.

If you read the paragraph before that sentence, you'll se that this part refers to Kosovo albanians (so in Kosovo, not Albania). Though the culture and heritage between the two countries is similar, there are actually no cases of Jews that were given up in Albania, a fact which I find interesting, because no other country in Europe has such clear statistics. The way most people helped Jews in Albania was by not only offering them a home, but also giving them albanian names and teaching them albanian customs and the language, so they would blend in . Additionally, there have also been many reports of locals sending anonymous threatening letters to officials who were looking for the refugees.

I don't think they took in serbs (maybe a few, but definitely no number that is comparable to the kosovo albanians). I don't even know if any serb would seek shelter in Albania. I agree, the noble thing to do would have been for people from both countries to try and feel some empathy for each-other. But I think a better question to ask would be whether albanians from northern Kosovo protected serbs who lived there from ethnic albanian nationalists (which I do not know). Albania doesn't share a border with Serbia.

Regarding jewish immingrants in WW2, I don't think there are reports of any attrocities in Albania. The number of Jews before the war was 200. After the war it was 2000. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Alban... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Albania

Anyways, the article probably does make it sound a bit bigger than it is, and even somewhat emotional. I just think that it must speak at least some truth regarding hospitality as a value among the population.

Religion is one of those things that doesn't really play a role in Albania. Granted, the majority of the population are officially muslim. However very few are religious. This is probably the result of one of the toughest communist regimes in Europe, which fought religion very aggressively, but also because Albanians have been forced to change their religion by the Ottoman empire, eventually reducing the extent to which people identified themselves with a religious group and giving birth to the phrase "albanians' religion is albanianism".

While it is true that most refugees that were hosted during the Kosovo war were ethnic albanians, and that nationalism is still present (expressed mostly as a disliking of neighbouring countries), the article does mention the case of jewish immigrants during WW2, who came from a quite different culture and religion.

Hospitality in Albania is one of those few older values that is still obviously present. As I already mentioned, nationalism still exists, but that is a whole different discussion.

I think the article is more about the culture than the ability of the country to provide. When people host refugees in their homes and try to provide them with a life as good as their own, I think they're being very welcoming and friendly, regardless of how much that is in absolute terms.

I think the article is more about the culture than the ability of the country to provide. When people host refugees in their home and try to offer them a life as good as their own, I think they're being very welcoming and friendly, regardless of how much they can offer in absolute terms.

Well... I can see how it can be easy to reach conclusions like this. The same result (most likely even worse) would be reached even if the effect of alcohol was studied instead of cannabis. This is not surprising, but neither is it interesting in my opinion. Of course there is a correlation between time spent doing mentally engaging activities and success, and surely smoking weed is not a mentally engaging activity. But this does not imply anything about moderate consumption in leisure time, neither does it mean that we should never engage in activities in which we do not exercise our brain.

Right... But isn't "judgement before actual evidence" all ML algorithms do? They try to statistically evaluate something about a set's members based on other features, because actual evidence of what we want to find out is missing. In my opinion this means that we either: 1) ignore the problem during the algorithm design phase and analyze the output with caution, or 2) decide that any statistical classification of human beings is "unfair" or even illegal (because it will have to discriminate people based on some properties that we know about them - be it race, or height or whatever) I don't see any middle-ground, since "prejudice" in my opinion is an unavoidable effect of ML algorithms as we know them.