I don't think you need to be civil to puppy-smashers

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on · · 5 comments · 350 words · read ~245 times.
AI generated image of a small industrial machine crushing a cute puppy.

My good friend Jess wrote this a little while ago: The function of a system is its output. If you have dog grooming machine that sometimes smashes puppies and you keep running it, you're in the dog smashing business. If you work for a mass surveillance company that keeps enabling genocide and undermining democracy... — […]

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Let's track footballers' heart rates!!

By
on · · 9 comments · 550 words · read ~139 times.
Photo of a football match. The striker's BPM is a high 150, the goalie a more leisurely 75. Original photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonker/8603265115/

I don't follow football - or any sports - which made me an unusual choice for this particular pitch. Let's wind back the clock a decade... A relatively unknown hardware company has just released one of the first "fitness trackers" which can measure a wearer's physiology. As well as counting steps, it now has the […]

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Fediverse Account Portability And Blocking

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on · · 1 comment · 600 words · read ~130 times.
Cartoon of a tusked mastodon holding a phone.

One of the many great things about the Fediverse (Mastodon, PixelFed, Lemmy, etc) is that your account is portable. Let's say you're bob@social.boring and, one day, you decide to move your account to foxyfun@furryextreme.yif. Well, with a few clicks of a button, all of your old followers are now following your brand new account. You're […]

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The IAB loves tracking users. But it hates users tracking them.

By
on · · 20 comments · 550 words · read ~10,265 times.
Logo of the IAB tech lab.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is a standards development group for the advertising industry. Their members love tracking users. They want to know where you are, who you're with, what you're buying, and what you think. All so they can convince you to spend slightly more on toothpaste. Or change your political opinions. Either way, […]

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ProctorU is dystopian spyware

By
on · · 23 comments · 350 words · read ~10,871 times.
To take this exam online you will need to borrow a friend or family member's laptop.

As part of my MSc, I have to take an online exam. Obviously, this means I am highly likely to cheat by looking up things on Wikipedia or by having a bit of paper with notes on it. EVIL! So, the exam body requires me to install ProctorU. It's a service which lets someone watch […]

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Alexa leaks your private wishlists

By
on · · 9 comments · 450 words · read ~4,233 times.
People who access your list will see your recipient name. If you have an Alexa-enabled device, Alexa may alert you when there is a deal for items in your list. Notification Preferences.

This morning, my wife noticed that Alexa was insistently flashing its little blue lights. "Alexa... Notifications?" "You have one notification. An item on your wishlist has dropped in price. The … is now only £…" And that's how my wife found out what I planned to get her for her birthday! What happened to cause […]

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I know how many microphones and cameras you have

By
on · · 8 comments · 300 words · read ~372 times.
Web browser asking for permission to access microphones. On the page, the number of microphones is displayed.

A curious little data leak, but one I struggle to care about. Perhaps useful for a bit of fingerprinting? Websites can access your system's camera and microphone. That's how modern video conferencing works in the browser. In an effort to retain user privacy, the browser asks the user for permission to use the camera and […]

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Book Review: Privacy is Power - Carissa Véliz

By
on · · 1 comment · 350 words · read ~323 times.
Book Cover.

Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your location, your likes, your habits, your relationships, your fears, your medical issues, and sharing it amongst themselves, as well as with governments and a multitude of data vultures. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide […]

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Open Data - but not *too* open

By
on · · 2 comments · 700 words · read ~213 times.
If this address is correct and relates to your enquiry, please confirm that you are entitled to view the gas supply details.

I'm an advocate for open data - both in my professional role and in a personal capacity. One of the hard things is succinctly explaining that "open data" means "non-personally identifiable data at a sufficient granularity to be useful without proving a risk to any individual's (or group's) reasonable expectations of privacy while still being […]

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GDPR and common sense

By
on · · 3 comments · 400 words · read ~150 times.
Some giant question marks standing in a field.

Every so often, I get a glimpse into the thought processes of someone who has a very different view of the world to me. I don't deal with people's personal information often. So I was surprised to receive an email with a multi-megabyte spreadsheet called "Pay and Bonuses 2020". The email contained this doozy of […]

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