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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It feels unfair to Lawson, he got to drive 2 races on the tracks he never drove before, with not much of adaptation time to the car that even Max and others at RB admit is hard to drive. I hope that car will not break Yuki's career in the same way. Although he was probably on the way out from VCARB by the end of the season without Honda's backing anyway, so that might be the best chance for him.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Well, I realize that 1970s sounds like an age of dinosaurs to some people... But, people back then weren't cavemen. They had electricity, batteries, video cameras, telephones.

The concept of an electric outlet in a couch is easy - not sure, but they might even had such things back then. Like to feed a lamp or something. USB is just low voltage and different connector, from the power transmission perspective.

The concept of a speakerphone with video signal is also easy. The only thing to grasp is that the devices and batteries became that miniature and efficient. Oh, and wireless.

Explaining that all video and voice recordings from all these neat devices are actually stored by a gigantic corporation, processed with voice and face recognition algorithms, and used to enrich personal profiles collected on all parties of the conversation to boost profits of said corporations, and many people even pay for this - THAT I would find complicated to explain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Fennec is a poor alternative because it connects to Firefox services. Sync is optional, but some internal components will talk to Mozilla, and Mozilla changed their mind about "never selling your data" recently.

Brave is Chrome with a history of suspicious moves, toxic leadership, involvement with crypto and AI

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not a very bad idea. Tor browser provides good tracking resistance in clearnet, but there are more chances that uneducated person leaks personal information there and at the same time will have a false feeling of safety because they are using Tor, not Google Chrome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

LibreWolf is a decent alternative. I switched to it a while ago as Firefox enshittification required more and more tweaks in configuration to close leaks.

I've heard good things about Mullvad browser too especially on fingerprint resistance, but LibreWolf works for me well enough to not search for alternatives.

For rare sites that I need to use and which don't work in Firefox based browsers, I just use Brave.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

No. I'm using Tor for Reddit all the time since they banned VPN. Reddit even has their .onion site

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago

The title of this is a misleading simplification. $4.5 tn is not "Tax Giveaway to the Rich". It's a maximum cap on total tax cuts that could be in this budget. It is likely to include renewal of 2017 income tax cuts and increased child tax credit - both of these were popular and not just "for rich".

They may also raise SALT cap which benefits higher income people from states with high property taxes. Living in one myself, I can tell you that you don't need a mansion in a top school district to pay much more than $10k in property taxes. So this one is not just for billionaires for sure, but maybe from upper middle class.

There are promises Trump made to eliminate income taxes on tips and social security, which are obviously not beneficial only to rich. But I heard it would cost a lot, especially SS one. Not sure if $4.5tn is enough.

Unfortunately, it looks like proposed spending cuts to Medicaid and food stamps are favored by GOP and may be easy to pass, but they don't cover tax cuts by a big margin. So they can hurt people in need, and still have to balloon national debt even more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think this should be baked into client apps.

The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.

Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone's mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.

Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

"According to fedidb" - so this is a rating of ActivityPub platforms

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Well, luxury and rich are closely related terms, aren't they? I think what you described is a financial independence.

I'd add that if you can support your desired level of luxurity for yourself and your family without working anymore - that's being rich.

Edit: I misread the original question, which was asking about wealthy, not rich. Still, I think my answer applies

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Social Security fund invested in government bonds, so the interest from that goes into the fund.

To be fair the budget deficit was there before Trump. His campaign promises are going to increase it, but they can offset that partially with spending cuts. Also, the government has been using money from the Social Security fund routinely, again nothing new under Trump. They just count it as an internal debt. According to Wikipedia, by 2022 it's been already about 20% of the fund "borrowed" by the government.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Apple does extensive audit of mobile apps, including limitations of tracking. So the app cannot spy on something you are not letting it to know. But you are giving it a bunch of info voluntarily.

I'd say using that app on iOS is similar to making a food delivery order using a loyalty member ID. Basically, you are letting the company (McDonald's) know who you are, what is your phone number, where do you live, and what do you like to eat. And if they wish to, they could use all that to purchase your profile from a data brocker. Or they can sell that info for a few cents to make up on that discount.

 

Hey privacy community! A few weeks back I've seen an article posted here or in some other tech community about TSA rolling out biometric ID process in some US airports, that involved taking a face scan.

I had an international flight planned and I wouldn't want to go through biometric ID, but I was anxious of potential delay and having to explain myself to TSA agents. I also convinced my wife to opt out, which could potentially double the delay.

So for the folks who may have the same concerns, I'd like to share my experience.

I went on my flight a few days back from Newark International Airport (EWR). We went through security check in new Terminal A. At the beginning of the security line there were a few clearly visible posters about biometric ID with opt out information. To opt out you just need to tell TSA agent that you don't want your photo to be taken. The poster also says that you will not lose your place in line if you opt out. Same posters are on each agent desk.

The scanning machine is on every agent's desk, next to the opt out posters. It has a screen, about 8", with something that looks like a set of stereo lenses on top of it. The screen shows the live feed of the person in front of it during scanning process, with a template of a face that helps to properly position it. The scanning process seems to be very quick.

Now, for the opt out - it is indeed as easy and seamless as they claim. I asked the agent to not take my picture, he just said OK and asked me for my passport. The scanning machine didn't turn on. He scanned my passport and gave it back, and I was done, no questions asked.

Actually, I noticed that people who had their faces scanned also had to hand passports over. So they had to spend more time with the agent than I. I assume because it was their first time through this biometric collection and next time they just scan their face again and that's it.

And while I was pleased how easy it was for me and my family to opt out of this, in my opinion, completely unnecessary privacy invasion, I have not observed any other person (out of maybe 100 who passed before me) who did the same. Unfortunately, we know here how easily and thoughtless people give away yet another piece of their personal data. In this case, the data that can be used next time to ID people via video surveillance without any consent.

 

Hey all,

I've been using a commercial VPN for years on my mobile devices and home PCs. Recently I've started to use Tailscale and realized I can easily create a self-hosted VPN on a cheap VPS with unlimited traffic.

But I'm not really sure if that's what I need. BTW, I'm not doing anything dangerous, no torrents, no illegal stuff, no journalism or whistleblowing, not even looking up abortion clinics. I just hate mass surveillance and I don't want to be constantly profiled.

Commercial VPN allows to "hide in a crowd" by sharing IP with thousands of other clients. But there are a few issues:

  1. Often sites blacklist VPN IPs, so I can't get in or pass captcha
  2. Performance is not very good
  3. I have to trust VPN to not keep the logs and not sell data. I used Mullvad and they are considered reliable, but you never know until it's too late

With self-hosted VPN, I'm losing benefit of "hiding in crowd" as my VPN will be used only by me and maybe a couple of other people. My understanding is that my VPS outgoing traffic is from static server IP. So if I login to Facebook once, the address is associated with me. I'll also have to trust VPS provider to not analyze my traffic and sell it. On other hand, I'm still protected from my ISP spying, from exposing my real IP address to web sites, from dangers of public WiFi networks. And I might get better performance for about the same price.

What's your take on VPNs? Tell me if you are using self-hosted VPN and why.

 

What it was and what did you like/hate the most about it?

It's slightly offtopic, but firsthand experience may help first time car buyers to choose.

 

Oh, this is not good

 

Hi everyone,

I've created this community as a replacement for r/whatcarshouldibuy that I was subscribed to on Reddit. I used it a lot and I valued content and advice there a lot. It definitely influenced my recent car purchases and I'd like to have similar community here in Lemmy.

Please be polite and follow Lemm.ee instance rules.

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