No fucking roots shall hold.

A classic!

I think this is something most people rarely talk about but it strikes home to many of us. As a parent, I have a responsibility to defend my children against this persistent cognitive manipulation and experimentation. Just as I would not want a random stranger at the corner have exclusive attention of my kid and sell them insurance or grammarly or mesothelioma, I would also never want them to have that unfiltered access to my kids online. One can then say AdBlocks are a parental obligation.

Luddites were not as opposed to new technology as you say it here. They were mainly concerned about what technology would do to whom.

A helpful history right here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown

We demonstrate that political orientation can be predicted from neutral facial images by both humans and algorithms, even when factors like age, gender, and ethnicity are accounted for. This indicates a connection between political leanings and inherent facial characteristics, which are largely beyond an individual’s control. Our findings underscore the urgency for scholars, the public, and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy.

“peer-reviewed” bullshit.

Findroid/Finamp? Quite robust.

Link: https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp

I like the testing and hopefully they will share more detailed research findings in the next 6months. Especially on content moderation knowing they have decades of experience on this.

Sadly, yes. One would hope the more core sectors use it, the more the general population would use such tools. But alas!

Cold plain metrics can easily hide social complexity.

Assume 10 investigative journalists use modded privacy-friendly Firefox for year long investigation. Then their report is read by 10 million average news reader on stock browsers like Chrome. Network logics tell us that Firefox browser has asymmetrical value in the ecosystem than plain usage metrics can ever reveal.

The obsession with numbers (the more the better) is a major blinding effect in societies driven by hierarchical cultures.

My kind of hopes.

What is the obsession with numbers? Centralization mentality is the problem. The idea that unless 5 Billion people are on a network will it be “successful” denies the joys of effective and sustainable networks. I really honestly wouldn’t want to see a fediverse server with more than 100K daily active users. I would rather have 10 instances of 10K active users.

Meta and those billionaire centrists can go fuck themselves.

Your use case matters here. Perhaps there are other specialized tools for what you want to achieve.

Why is LibreOffice “meh”? I have used it for the last 10 years and would like to know what it is you find off with it.

Yes. The linked article points to Apple’s release notes.

CVE-2023-41064: The Citizen Lab at The University of Torontoʼs Munk School

The Federated Learning of Cohorts and now the Topics API are part of a plan to pitch an “alternative” tracking platform, and Google argues that there has to be a tracking alternative—you can’t just not be spied on.

your treatment on the web depends on whether Apple says your device, OS & browser configuration are legitimate & acceptable.

Very close to my arrangement but I noted VPN + Firefox + non-trackers are treated suspiciously by most remote work systems so one way or another you have to keep a chrome browser close by to authenticate through those gates.

PS: These kind of detailed comments are he reason I believe in the fediverse. It is refreshing to see the community grow.

I like this summary by Cory Doctorow:

History is written by the winners, which is why Luddite is a slur meaning “technophobe” and not a badge of honor meaning, “Person who goes beyond asking what technology does, to asking who it does it for and who it does it to.”

You can search for “refurbished” on your trusted shopping places like the known platform websites or town. For example, Amazon has a special section for refurbished laptops.

Documentation is well done. Good stuff. I use podgrab for some tests and while I like it for the simplicity, I had to move to Audiobookshelf as it combines audiobooks and podcasts neatly. I’ll check this out as it looks quite thought out (and sleek too).

Spread the gospel! Cite the primary sources as much as possible.