Miscellaneous Tech News
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@pmoncho said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Google defends tracking cookies—some experts aren’t buying it
Google: Banning tracking cookies "jeopardizes the future of the vibrant Web."
Google's Chrome team is feeling pressure from competitors over ad tracking. Apple has long offered industry-leading protection against tracking cookies, while Mozilla recently announced that Firefox will begin blocking tracking cookies by default. Microsoft has been experimenting with tracking protection features in Edge, too. But Google has a problem: it makes most of its money selling ads. Adopting the same aggressive cookie blocking techniques as its rivals could prevent Google's customers from targeting ads—potentially hurting Google's bottom line. So in a blog post last week, Google outlined an alternative privacy vision—one that restricts some forms of user tracking without blocking the use of tracking cookies any time soon. "Blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant Web," Google's Justin Schuh writes. (Those publishers, of course, include Ars publisher Conde Nast. We use cookies to serve targeted ads because they generate more revenue to support our journalism.)Maybe Google has a point. If not ads how else do millions of websites make money to continue publishing content?
One way would be - cheaper products so people have more money - then people spend that money on the site they are trying to support.
Of course - yeah I know this will never work, because vendors will never make cheaper products.
TV and radio and newspaper and magazines didn't have this grandular level of tracking and they seemed to do well - at least until the internet came along and people discovered the ability to track people...
Lots of sites just can't make money. It's just how it is. If a site isn't important enough for anyone to sponsor, maybe it shouldn't exist.
I feel like "uh, duh?" here.. but I feel like I'm missing yet another point you're trying to make.
The points just that... people often say "but how are we supposed to make money"... whether it is tracking cookies, or just ignoring PCI compliance requirements, or stealing software... because there is a mentality that all businesses have an entitlement to profits, even if they don't offer something legally or ethically profitable on its own.
so when someone asks that say - make a product people want that is legal and hopefully ethical profitable.
They just say "I can't" and still act entitled. That's how entitled works.
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BBC News - Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154 -
How insurance companies are fueling a rise in ransomware attacks
Insurers prefer to pay the ransom. Why? ProPublica says attacks are good for business.
On June 24, the mayor and council of Lake City, Fla., gathered in an emergency session to decide how to resolve a ransomware attack that had locked the city's computer files for the preceding fortnight. Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Mayor Stephen Witt led an invocation. "Our heavenly father," Witt said, "we ask for your guidance today, that we do what's best for our city and our community." Witt and the council members also sought guidance from City Manager Joseph Helfenberger. He recommended that the city allow its cyber insurer, Beazley, an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, to pay the ransom of 42 bitcoin, then worth about $460,000. Lake City, which was covered for ransomware under its cyber-insurance policy, would only be responsible for a $10,000 deductible. In exchange for the ransom, the hacker would provide a key to unlock the files. "If this process works, it would save the city substantially in both time and money," Helfenberger told them. Without asking questions or deliberating, the mayor and the council unanimously approved paying the ransom. The six-figure payment, one of several that US cities have handed over to hackers in recent months to retrieve files, made national headlines. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
How insurance companies are fueling a rise in ransomware attacks
Is anyone actually shocked about this? Restoring an entire city is no small feat and paying your insurance premium is an easy way to get back to operational if in fact the keys work.
So of course Insurance would want people to get hit, pay the ransom and move on, they make money, increase the monthly premium and move on.
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@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
How insurance companies are fueling a rise in ransomware attacks
Is anyone actually shocked about this? Restoring an entire city is no small feat and paying your insurance premium is an easy way to get back to operational if in fact the keys work.
So of course Insurance would want people to get hit, pay the ransom and move on, they make money, increase the monthly premium and move on.
You could almost call it a conflict of interest.
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@nadnerB said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
How insurance companies are fueling a rise in ransomware attacks
Is anyone actually shocked about this? Restoring an entire city is no small feat and paying your insurance premium is an easy way to get back to operational if in fact the keys work.
So of course Insurance would want people to get hit, pay the ransom and move on, they make money, increase the monthly premium and move on.
You could almost call it a conflict of interest.
All insurance is a conflict of interest.
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Chrome's Tab Context Menu Is Losing Options
If you're a power user reliant on the Chrome web browser, you're probably going to miss some of the menu options being removed.
If you're a Chrome user who regularly right-clicks tabs to access the context menu options, prepare yourself for some changes. That menu is about to get a lot shorter. As Techdows reports, after years of debate on the matter and a lot of data crunching, the Chromium team has decided to remove four options from the tab context menu. There's a discussion on the Chromium bugs forums dating back to 2015 discussing the removal of context menu options "if the usage does not outweigh the cost." A 2016 usage review found all of the above options now being removed had well below 10 percent usage by Chrome users. Bookmark all tabs was the lowest with 0.64 percent. -
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
really? why? that solves the - I need to reboot but I have 40 tabs open and want them back after the reboot.
I have a plug-in just for that purpose called Tab session manager - it records the tabs I have open like once an hour and allows me to restore those tabs later.
This is really helpful if the browser crashes, or, as I mentioned, I need to reboot and don't want to loose all of my tabs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
I use "Bookmark All Tabs" when I wanted temporary add them to my Read Later folder.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
really? why? that solves the - I need to reboot but I have 40 tabs open and want them back after the reboot.
There are other tools for that that don't create a huge sprawl of bookmarks that need to be immediately cleaned up. That's not what that tool is good for, because it doesn't even reopen them. Chrome does that on its own, though.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
This is really helpful if the browser crashes, or, as I mentioned, I need to reboot and don't want to loose all of my tabs.
I don't think my browser has crashed in years without bringing all of the tabs back for me. The protection against that is already built in to all major browsers, has been for a long time.
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BackBlaze opens new Data Center
Announcing Our First European Data Center
Big news: Our first European data center, in Amsterdam, is open and accepting customer data! As part of this launch, we are also introducing storage regions. When creating a Backblaze account, customers can choose whether that account’s data will be stored in the EU Central or US West region. Whether you choose EU Central or US West, your pricing for our products will be unchanged. Learn more about all our settings and options to take advantage of our new European data center in today's announcement. -
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@black3dynamite said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/08/microsoft-is-bringing-exfat-to-the-linux-kernel
Nice, that'll be very helpful.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
BBC News - Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154That's fucked. Why would you have any expectation of privacy in a public school?
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
BBC News - Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154That's fucked. Why would you have any expectation of privacy in a public school?
Why would anyone have any expectation of privacy in public?
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Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
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@notverypunny said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
Except it was used with permission
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@notverypunny said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
Except it was used with permission
Exactly. And they don't need to keep the video - just record the results of the facial recognition.
