#Canada-based University of #Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data…
Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe," displayed after the machine failed to launch a facial recognition application that nobody expected to be part of the process of using a vending machine.
Goodreads is horrible for readers and books. The technical platform is very badly maintained with bugs in the extreme. Amazon mine user data for nefarious purposes, for example, in building concentration camps (ICE).
I recommend anyone who's interested in keeping track of their books in a social way (if one wants; one can also use the platform so that nobody else can see your activity) to use Bookwyrm (https://bookwyrm.social), which is completely open-source and actively maintained by very kind people—you can host your own #Bookwyrm instance, which is BTW built on ActivePub—to whom I donate money to keep the site rolling; no ads, no tracking.
I think at least part of the reason free software apps lack in ambition is that many of us don't use any mainstream apps, so we're not even aware of the cool stuff we could be stealing from them.
@tbernard Chatting with different minded people! I find it quite exhausting after a while, but it is a great exercise: I am full of new ideas and insights about how to destroy #SurveillanceCapitalism every time I do.
Deleting nazi bar twitter is a good start. I've now eliminated the following:
google
facebook
twitter
reddit
tiktok
discord
linkedin
amazon
ebay
paypal
airbnb
airtasker
uber
spotify
vimeo
soundcloud
bandcamp
substack
apple
microsoft
I use a privacy-focused browser, encrypted email, a VPN, and a degoogled phone. If an app or website absolutely requires surveillance or commercial exploitation for it to work, I don't use it, I just ignore it and move on.
Way back in 2019 I created a Hotmail account for testing purposes. After a few tests I never went back.
Such a requirement surfaced again. I rummaged around my logins file and re-discovered this Hotmail account, from nearly five years ago.
I was flabbergasted to find I was still able to login. It was like a time capsule inside, everything was still there, untouched, and maybe a little dusty. 😃 It was like going back in time.
Actually, I don't use an ad blocker. I use uMatrix, so, I can decide whose cookies I accept, and whose scripts I run on my computer.
If a company wants to display static adverts on their site, that's fine by me. What isn't acceptable are scripts which allow third-parties to track me, all over the Internet. I'm not willing to compromise my privacy.
You’d think folks writing the HTML spec would know the difference between an HTML attribute and inline JavaScript but you’d be mistaken and that’s why we can’t open a modal dialog without client-side JavaScript in 2024.
🤷
PS. What would be great to have is:
<dialog modal open></dialog>
So that a modally-open dialog can be streamed from the server without requiring client-side JavaScript to trigger it open when it loads.
(Of course the real reason you can’t modally open a dialog in HTML in 2024 is because doing so doesn’t help Google gather more data. If it did, fuck me, it would’ve been implemented the day that issue was filed six years ago.)
The state isn’t the only one doing the surveillance-ing these days: a whole network of private devices and companies allow anyone to collect and share data on other people (e.g., Ring cams). Great new article on “surveillance deputies”.