JacobSeated

Interesting. How would this compare to making a while loop or recursive function, I wonder?

And, what about switch statements? In theory it is said they should be faster, but I am not sure that's necessarily the case.

Another option would be to keep a database with the numbers indexed, and then compare with performing a database query.

Consider yourself lucky, because often Bloatware is not so innocuous. Very far from it.

It is a heinous intrusion on our devices. Take Lenovo, for instance, with its addition of utterly useless fn hotkey pop-ups that covers the screen when hitting caps lock!

And MacOS is no better, as they actually completely break the caps lock key by adding a maddening delay to it. E.g. You have to press and hold for it to activate.

You could install a basic setup with a "apt install x x x" one-liner in ubuntu, and it would not take more than a few minutes to configure everything with sensible defaults.

The key here probably is, most people don't want to spend time learning enough about Postfix, Dovecot. Etc. To do that.

It's the average per user, not a precise figure that fits on every user, but nevertheless I have seen no evidence to suggest that it would be inaccurate so far. Maybe you can find some?

That, I suppose, is why ad-companies typically invest in anonymization. It may not be perfect, but it is good enough in terms of reaching an acceptable balance between respecting privacy and someone being able to monetize an app or a website imo.

Would anonymization change your mind? I am not saying it should be required, because I do not think that personally. But, anonymization with sufficient entropy should presumably invalidate any argument someone might have against targeted ads, and at the same time allow website owners to pay their employees salleries, while covering server costs. Etc.

It seems Google is also working on making the "tracking" more or less client-side, in the browser, which should also measure into considerations in these discussions.

Regardless, in public spaces. E.g. Streets, restaurants, banks, I expect increased surveillance is more or less inevitable, and in the future, AI will also be leveraged to track people. There is a slight double standard in all this, because people are demonizing online tracking while tolerating tracking and surveillance in the physical world. Or, worse, they are simply flat against tracking, ignoring the necessity of it.

Let us say, even if Meta offered a completely ad-free experience, your data would still sit on their servers, and by definition you would still be tracked even when opted out. The only difference would be that your data would not be used to target you with ads. That is a pretty whimsical accomplishment imo.

Offering a service devoid of tracking is close to being a physical impossibility with current technology. Not even decentralization would sufficiently destroy your unique signature while using the internet, and you would not want it to, because if it did, it would also be hard for others to trust that you are the person you claim to be.

Political parties and governments could use your data against you, and even data collected by companies. Potentially political entities could use this for malicious purposes, and that is personally something I am more concerned about than tracking itself (or being shown targeted ads by individual companies for that matter).

Apples and oranges. Eh? And yet, while completely rejecting my post so confidently, you somehow managed to miss a central point:

We can have targeted ads and privacy, and to an extent we already do, so that is not the issue.

What specifically do you mean by "wrong end of the stick"? It seems you are just a troll incapable of engaging in meaningful discussions.

Your comparison is quite disgusting and grotesque of course, but let os ignore that for a moment and address the false idea that users are "paying with their privacy"; such opinions is probably the result of a number of logical fallacies.

There is no exchange going on, quite literally, and users get a service, basically for free. Whatever definition you make up to describe the business model does not change this fact.

In addition, so-called tracking is not the problem in itself, and especially so since users are anonymized. It is things like political misinformation and resulting manipulation that is problematic – not targeted ads themselves.

Risks continue to be profoundly exaggerated, and people, even those in the know, seem bend on propagating such misinformation. Please, let's stick to a factually based discussion.

Derailing the discussion with grotesque and perverted irrelevant comparisons of organ trading is not helpful.