133arc585 @ 133arc585 @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

I consider their past behavior to be counter to their stated goal of privacy, and counter to the notion that they deserve to be trusted.

They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak; also I'd take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn't the most savory:

... Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.

On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance

In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,

In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.

With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance. He also spreads COVID misinformation.

As others have pointed out, it's also Chromium based, and so it is just helping Google destroy the web more than they already have.

Here's the eleven categories of projects that CWSRF loans can be used for.

Here's the six categories of projects that DWSRF loans can be used for. The DWSRF also publishes a periodic Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey that lays out approximate costs for various system sizes, and the distribution of system sizes across communities.

There is also a lot of overlap; quoting the OP article:

The [CWSRF] provides low-interest loans for infrastructure projects like wastewater facilities while the [DWSRF] provides assistance for initiatives like improving drinking water treatment and fixing old pipes.

The CWSRF Environmental Benefits Report from 2014 says:

• 14,838 Projects Financed
• To 5,222 Communities

with one of the highlights being:

95% of Subsidy Goes to Recipients that Could Not Otherwise Afford the Project

With the variety of activities they support, and the fact that they are permitting projects that communities could not otherwise afford to engage in, I'd say they're very valuable.

Ah I see they did say seal. I still read it as one of these stickers, but reading it as gasket seems sensible too.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but my first guess is: you pronounce is like the moderately common name Simone.

I don't think they're referring to something like a "rubber seal", I think they mean these things:

I don't believe so. A battery standard would specify the interface, not the actual battery design from a technical standpoint. It would specify:

• size and shape, i.e. where connectors go, assuring it fits in a phone
• voltage and amperage provided

The rest is up to the battery manufacturer and is completely open to innovation. You want to put a Li-ion battery in there? Just make it the right shape and as long as it can provide the output required, it's fine. Want some future-tech fusion battery? As long as it's the right shape and puts out the required power!

The point is that opposing this is directly showing support for Russia…

Which guess what: isn't high treason. If you'll notice, I havent offered my opinion here or participated elsewhere in the thread.

I was simply pointing out that using the term "high treason" here is rather silly and nonfactual.

It follows rather directly. For it to be high treason to be against sending more military resources to Ukraine would mean that either the representatives are members of the Ukrainian government or, as was implied here, that Ukraine is a puppet state.

It's not high treason against the USA to be against the USA sending military resources to another country. You can only commit high treason against your own country.

The precautions necessary to allow researchers on a college campus to access tiktok should be taken even if tiktok is banned, it’s basic cyber security.

I am not sure how to interpret this sentence. How is allowing access to something that is banned cyber security?

How would you have a Java class without allowing unverified software to run on the schools network?

I said unsafe software. I specifically said spyware. If you're caught running malicious Java code on the network, you'll be reprimanded. If you're running known malicious apps by Big (Ad)Tech, you should also be reprimanded.

And just because it’s state schools now we should be extra worried, the Texas gop has been working to systematically disassemble all avenues of public education

If they were to completely cut all funding to public education, it's the state schools that would disappear. Private schools, who already are not affected by this ban, would be fine.

Somehow Israel is a genocidal imperialist government driven by blood and soil nationalism, and it's supposed to get a pass for...handwavy reasons...

Did the telemetry vote already happen and succeed? Last I saw there was only an informal "feeling out" vote, but I haven't been following closely since then.

Is this sarcasm? You're saying if they stopped fighting back against invaders who want to take their land they...would have land? If only they'd give up their land, they'd have land? Do I have that right? I hope I'm just misreading this.

If you listen to more than one podcast, either

• you visit once a week anyway, and just have podcasts delayed a few days from release to listen, or
• you visit every day that one of the podcasts is released, which means you may be visiting several websites every day.

Some podcasts I like to listen to the day they come out, or perhaps the next day if I don't get to it, such as news podcasts.

Also, if you listen to even more than a few podcasts, you aren't going to "a website" once a week, you're going to a dozen websites once a week.

I just go to the website, download the show, throw it on my phone

That's three steps, per podcast per episode. Not everyone has their phone set up where it's zero-effort to copy files to the phone from their computer, so that may be a multi-step process itself.

Also, podcast apps offer some other features that to do manually either is more work, or more mental overhead:

• Favoriting episodes, so that they stay downloded: to do this manually you need some sort of filesystem hierarchy where you put favorited episodes, or keep a list of favorited episodes, or keep track some other way.
• Notifications for new episodes, for podcasts that don't follow a strict release schedule, or those that put out "special" episodes off their typical release schedule, or even just not having to memorize which podcasts have what release schedules.
• Viewing of "show notes" inline instead of having to open the browser, navigate to the podcast's webpage, then navigate to the episode page.
• Listening software designed for podcasts/human speech: silence trimming, speedup ratios, start/end trimming, smart chapter-based seeking and navigation, remembering where you left off. Some of these features may be available in whatever generic multimedia player you listen to podcasts in, but not all of them.

Of course, a podcast app is not required to listen to podcasts by any means. But if you listen to a lot of podcasts and value time your time, there is undeniable benefit offered by podcast apps.

Also, there are plenty of FOSS and tracker-free podcast apps, so it's not a situation where you must sacrifice privacy for convenience.

Not anymore. As of May 29th, "[n]ew port forwards will no longer be supported, and existing ports will be removed 2023-07-01"--meaning by now, no port forwarding is supported.

So you're acknowledging that form over function, even to the point of making the end user's experience worse with no upside except to Apple in the form of more potential future profits, is so important to Apple that they'd rather pull out of an entire massive market than respect their customer.

Just like you can't get a "nicer looking" microwave that has a completely clear glass front rather than the mesh screen (becasue it's bad for the consumer), and just like you wouldn't accept someone marketing a cell phone that bricks itself after 45 outbound phone calls (because it's bad for the consumer, and the environment), you shouldn't accept Apple being anti-consumer and anti-environment by refusing to allow user serviceability.

Don't allow Apple to externalize environmental costs on to the rest of humanity simply because it'd be ever so slightly less profitable if they can't force consumers into a (needlessly) rapid replacement cycle.

Should we let every potentially (or even verifiably) unsafe piece of software to operate freely on government networks? No, we shouldn't, even if it's in the name of research. Knowingly running spyware on a government network isn't a good idea.

Precautions need to be taken, perhaps via cooperation between network operators and researchers, to assure that having unsafe software on their network is not potentially harmful to other users of the network.

Also, again, not every college in Texas is a state college. In fact, I think the vast majority aren't state colleges. They aren't subject to any of this regulation anyway.

Also why the hell should a government care what is on a random students phone?

They don't. They care about what is on their network. As I said twice, you can use TikTok by turning off WiFi. Or by going to another WiFi at, say, a coffee shop.

It’s about studying and understanding the socioeconomic impacts of these apps, it’s about research.

Which is valuable, absolutely. But I'm not sure it's the responsibility of the network operator to take extra precautions that make researchers operating with potentially unsafe software safe to have on their network.

It's probably an issue of English not being the first language, or of translation. It's obviously a link to Documentation, which is a pretty safe assumption when you see a nav item named Document. You could have confirmed this yourself by simply following the link.

Good point. And it's not just time wasting, it goes against the point of being in school for education. These apps ruin attention span, erode critical thinking skills, turn beliefs into a popularity contest, contribute to bullying, destroy self-confidence and self-worth, peddle conspiracy theories, and waste time.

Edit: I want to add that I don't personally think it should be blocked in colleges. My reasons above apply to younger students; not that I don't think the app still poses risks to older students in college, but they are permitted to take the risks they wish to take. I do understand the security justification, and if that is the purported reasoning, I think it's acceptable. In reality, the security angle plus it only being TikTok being targeted is just playing on Sinophobia. If they were serious about it being a security threat, they'd not stop at TikTok.