Correlating device type & OS version, IP address and time of access is a pretty good way to connect the dots between “anonymised” IDs. If the same IDs always show up in quick succession from the same IP and device type/version chances are it’s the same person just checking multiple apps on their phone. Time of access and IP address can be used to infer where the person lives (to a certain degree or accuracy), when they are working, etc.
> Are you entitled to a DNA sample from some skin cells that floated in the air while you were having said conversation?
Yes. Why wouldn't I be. Those DNA are in my body. They might be infecting me in some way. Why would I not be able to inspect them however I want?
> Does that conversation entitle you to know of every other place that person goes that day?
If I'm with them the entire time then yes. If other mutual friends were with them I'm fully entitled to ask them and they are fully entitled to answer.
I went to Disneyland with my sister yesterday. I just shared with you that my sister was at Disneyland yesterday. My mom told me she and my sister went to dinner at McDonalds on the east exit of Disneyland after they got out. I just shared with you something my mother told me about my sister. I have broken no laws nor done anything considered wrong AFAIK in any country in the history of the world up to this point.
> Are you entitled to share a full recording of that conversation with anyone you'd like?
Personally I believe the answer is effectively yes and should be yes though I understand it might legally be no in certain places at the moment I believe those laws will eventually be overturned. Why do I hold this position? Because my brain recorded the conversation. So, first off if I have good memory I can dictate the conversation. Second, if I can make a machine to pull that data out of my brain it doesn't feel like the law can tell me I can't. It's my brain and my memory. Further, it's arguably we will enhance brains digitally at some point. First for people with brain disability. At that time it will be trivial for them to digitally extract their memories and being their memories again the law should have no say. In other words, tech will eventually make this question moot. Conversations will be recorded and just like I can tell you that while at Disneyland yesterday my sister said she was going to Hawaii in June (I just shared a lo-fi recording of that conversation with you) eventually I'll be able to do that with hi-fidelity.
Let me add I'm a little scared of such a world but I personally see it as inevitable. I believe digitally augmenting brains is inevitable and I believe telling people what they can do with their personal memories and who they can share them with is impossible/untenable so that world will come eventually.
Let me add though that I'm not against laws that say such data can not be collected in mass quantities. I have no idea how to word those laws so as it's possible for me to share all the data mentioned above with whoever I choose and yet not allow FB to do the same and also still allow services to help me share that data with who I choose to share it just like HN just facilitated me sharing info about my sister with you above.
Regarding "records of conversation": The difference is that when you tell a memory, it is not proof of it actually happening. If I claim "Hubert said he stole a car", it is far less relevant to anyone interested than an audio recording of him saying "I stole a car".
I 100% agree with this post up until the bit about recording conversations. We don't have computer-augmented brains yet, and until we do, remembering something is absolutely not the same as a true digital recording.
example: blind person has cameras installed for eyes. Are they no longer allowed anywhere there is a no camera sign or is it seen as the restructing their rights?
Can a person with long term memory issues augment to record so they can review later? Will you need to DRM things to an insane level to prevent them from sharing? Why should my augmented brain be under someone else's DRM ?
> > Are you entitled to a DNA sample from some skin cells that floated in the air while you were having said conversation?
> Yes. Why wouldn't I be. Those DNA are in my body. They might be infecting me in some way. Why would I not be able to inspect them however I want?
So, by that interpretation, we don't have much of a right to privacy.
> > Does that conversation entitle you to know of every other place that person goes that day?
> If I'm with them the entire time then yes. If other mutual friends were with them I'm fully entitled to ask them and they are fully entitled to answer.
I'm not saying you're with them.
> I went to Disneyland with my sister yesterday. I just shared with you that my sister was at Disneyland yesterday. My mom told me she and my sister went to dinner at McDonalds on the east exit of Disneyland after they got out. I just shared with you something my mother told me about my sister. I have broken no laws nor done anything considered wrong AFAIK in any country in the history of the world up to this point.
But what has changed is that one can know with far more precision all of this stuff, at far lower cost, and without your conscious help. That's a very different context that maybe requires some rethinking of our laws.
> Personally I believe the answer is effectively yes and should be yes though I understand it might legally be no in certain places at the moment I believe those laws will eventually be overturned. Why do I hold this position? Because my brain recorded the conversation. So, first off if I have good memory I can dictate the conversation. Second, if I can make a machine to pull that data out of my brain it doesn't feel like the law can tell me I can't. It's my brain and my memory. Further, it's arguably we will enhance brains digitally at some point. First for people with brain disability. At that time it will be trivial for them to digitally extract their memories and being their memories again the law should have no say. In other words, tech will eventually make this question moot. Conversations will be recorded and just like I can tell you that while at Disneyland yesterday my sister said she was going to Hawaii in June (I just shared a lo-fi recording of that conversation with you) eventually I'll be able to do that with hi-fidelity.
You are working from a common, but mistaken, model of how memory works. There is a world of difference between what is recorded in your mind and a full recording of the conversation.
> Let me add I'm a little scared of such a world but I personally see it as inevitable.
It may be inevitable, but I don't think either of us have enough context to determine that. There was a point in time where things like copyright protections seemed impossible, and now they're so etched into our legal structures that we have a hard time imagining a world without them.
> I believe digitally augmenting brains is inevitable and I believe telling people what they can do with their personal memories and who they can share them with is impossible/untenable so that world will come eventually.
Well, we tell people where they can and can't pee, whether they can eat something, where they can't sleep, what they can't take, what they can't kill, etc. The difference between anarchy and society is pretty vast and seems more inevitable than anarchy.
> So, by that interpretation, we don't have much of a right to privacy.
Not in terms of DNA, no. We leave traces of our DNA wherever we go, and if someone takes the time to read it, they'll learn what they learn.
What is the alternative? Outlaw DNA sequencing? Only allow it if you know the owner? Even if it's on my property?
> I'm not saying you're with them.
Then how would you know every other place the person went that day? Either they told you (not a privacy violation, they told you), or you were with them. Or you installed a hidden camera, in which case the data was clearly stolen and wholly unlike when someone knowingly shares contact information (which was how this analogy originated).
We're in agreement about memory recording, so no comment on those points! :)
> Not in terms of DNA, no. We leave traces of our DNA wherever we go, and if someone takes the time to read it, they'll learn what they learn.
Which also means you don't have a way of preventing all your movements from being followed, much of your health information being public knowledge, etc.
> What is the alternative? Outlaw DNA sequencing? Only allow it if you know the owner? Even if it's on my property?
The alternative is to establish rules and restrictions for circumstances for when DNA sequencing can be done... In fact, we already have some rules about that.
You might think legal restrictions are ridiculous or impractical, but are they any more ridiculous or impractical than say copyright protections in an era when the copying & distribution of data is so frictionless and legitimately necessary?
> Then how would you know every other place the person went that day?
So many different ways... Tracking their DNA trail. Having a drone follow them as they move. Hacking their phone over bluetooth (hey, it's just emitting low power radio signals, are you going to ban that? ;-). Touching them with some radioactive tracer and then following its trail. Tracking radio transmissions from their phone. Planting a GPS tracker on them. Running a retargeting ad campaign and collecting the logs. Track their mass & its movements by analyzing how it alters the flow of neutrinos. :-)
> Or you installed a hidden camera, in which case the data was clearly stolen
I think this is more analogous to the present situation. Facebook has a public 'camera' - they record you every time you're on their site. It's up to them if they want to share what you did on their site - that data belongs to both of you.
But their camera is also on every site that you visit that pulls in FB resources - I would consider this a hidden camera.
When FB shares this data, they're sharing the composite recording of their one public and many, many hidden cameras.
This could be true and false in some circumstances I think. For example if I give a phone number to someone and specifically ask them not to share it, and in another situation where I allow a photo to be taken with the express terms that it is not shared online or with any other person... and then someone installs an app like messenger and that app sucks in all contact info and starts uploading photos in the background - sure you could say that they gave permission to share all that data, but I think a majority of people are not understanding what all those permissions mean.
I believe there are a lot of people who have expectations in the way that apps would use data and they are being duped partially by group trust trust / ignorance.
I have spoken to many people who do not understand the terms of use for instagram, and after discussions about such they start to question if they are going to allow their children to continue to use it. I think this is common with many apps and web sites - people have an expectation that video of them taken at target is going to used in certain ways that maintain privacy - not that target it going to be taking images and videos of their kids and selling it off to people behind their back.
These are just a few examples where I think you could say technically it's true, but actually being are being defrauded or some other term, which is essentially stealing from people based on their ignorance.
or conversely not getting mugged on the street. Having lived in Singapore for a while there are trade-offs. I liked the feeling of safety I don't get in the west. I saw lots of fun times as well so to each their own.
maybe not exactly the same but it is aguable if the majority of people had to write check to pay their taxes instead of having their taxes auto-deducted by their employer they'd push much harder for lower taxes and less government spending
it's much harder to make $40k a year and write a check for $5k than to just get a net pay of $35k with the $5k never reaching your bank account. (note: No idea what income tax is at $40k)
PS: don't have an opinion if this would be a good or bad idea. can see it both ways
What you suggest is exactly how it worked before 1943 and there was a massive expansion of government, government services, and tax rates between 1913 and 1943.
The actual historical evidence strongly suggests this theory is spurious and easily dismissed.
there are lots of other issues. AFAICT HTML is allowed inline in markdown but the flowing inline HTML is interpretted differently depending on implementation
some markdown text
<div>
some
**inline**
text
</div>
some more markdown text
some will take that as one block. some will process each line separately. some will convert the asterisks
...
HTML inlined into markdown is easily my least favourite feature of markdown. In my opinion it breaks the very point of of MD (namely that it's formatting makes as much sense in a graphical render as it does in a plain text editor).
Personally I disagree, from the perspective of an average user. While you and I are able to tell the difference between an adblocker and a nefarious vpn collecting all my data under the guise of adblocking. For the average user, they have absolutely no idea and don’t care, which is why disallowing vpn-based Adblock makes sense to me from an average user privacy standpoint.
Those ad-blocking local VPNs lead to terrible battery life. And nobody can know what they are doing behind the scenes. I agree with Apple blocking them. I just wish they had a public API for developers to offer apps that block the resolution of DNS names, just like they allow ad-blockers in Safari. They already have it, but it is restricted to supervised devices used inside organizations: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/c...
Why would the local VPNs drain battery? Isn't VPN just an encrypted pipe through which traffic from your phone is routed? If some app or the other is not using the network, why would the VPN be even at work (hence draining the battery)? Or, are you suggesting that the local VPN apps are poorly implemented?
Good question, and in fact your logic totally makes sense. But my personal experience differs. I used to use both AdGuard Pro and Weblock and they both used up to 10-15% of battery life (as indicated in the Settings app). I’m not sure why this was happening. One possible explanation is that the VPN binary running in the background prevents the phone from entering some battery saving configurations it normally enters when there is no network activity, perhaps. I don’t know how VPN clients are handled behind the scenes, so if someone could chime in that would be great.
Thanks. Yeah probably being run in the bg all the time might be the reason along with encryption CPU overhead. Some apps might have also been poorly implemented.
I keep plenty of containers and use them to store food or at a party to give people leftovers.
I know in SF, Rainbow Groceries require/allows you to use your own contaners for many things. spices, gains, nuts, pickled things, ... The only part I hate is I don't trust the other patrons to use each dispenser in a clean way.
