always2slow

This is not obvious to me as my experience has been largely negative post-KYC/9-11 vs pre-KYC/9-11. I am a legal law abiding citizen [and voter!] and it's just added extra hassle on various occasions and then the background anxiety of knowing an institution with crappy security track records hold a photocopy of my ID. And yet all the things KYC was supposed to prevent still continue unabated: money laundering, terrorist financing, identity theft, and financial fraud.

I'm curious to hear why you think it's obviously good and if you were using these services before KYC.

Comment · 2 years ago

>Sorry; I just don't follow. Google isn't "protecting" me from F-droid

Yes, they give you a warning to scare off normal users and you have to enable installing from 3rd party sources. My point isn't that they're "protecting" you at all, my point is it's security theater.

>Nor is Google (AFAIK; if there's evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to see it) providing cellphone data to nations that are targeting them for death

Various subsystems on android are controlled by Google and they enable Google to collect and consolidate all of the telemetry/usage data etc (effectively google is root on your phone).

Google is also part of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#Media_disclosure_of_PRIS...

This information is used to select targets and kill people:

"Since 2002, and routinely since 2009, the U.S. government has carried out deliberate and premeditated killings of suspected terrorists overseas. In some cases, including that of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the targets were placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon. According to news accounts, the targeted killing program has expanded to include “signature strikes” in which the government does not know the identity of individuals, but targets them based on “patterns” of behavior that have never been made public. The New York Times has reported that the government counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutiona...

I'm upset that google is basically just the data collection arm of giant murder machine and it's being automated.

Comment · 2 years ago

Here's my experience.. got a Vive, ZERO motion sickness, was developing some games and toys with it for 6 months or so. Played about 20 minutes of some Resident Evil game on PSVR and got REALLY motion sick around the 10 minute mark and just powered through for another 10 minutes. I had to lay down and it took a good hour to fully recover. Now I can't play VR at all without getting sick, start getting the sweats and nausea as soon as I put my vive headset on. completely ruined VR for me, never finished my game I was working on, VIVE just collecting dust. Fuck the PSVR, I'm still mad about it.

Comment · 2 years ago

Can't believe Sublevel Zero Redux isn't on your list!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/327880/Sublevel_Zero_Redu...

This game is such an underappreciated hidden gem.

Comment · 2 years ago

Small steps get us things like pop ups on every webpage or TSA. You'll just slowly create a bureaucratic dystopia. We need giant sweeping reform of privacy laws in the US and a restoration of the 4th amendment.

Comment · 2 years ago

You're arguing in bad faith, making this about browser history, this is about data collection of the sensor array that is your smart phone device, two very different things. It's hilarious to claim that what google is doing by disabling app access matters at all when google created the problem and profits from it in a really shady way all the while pretending to be doing you a service by protecting you from those 'shady' apps (and 3rd party app stores like say.. f-droid). And then using that data to _literally_ kill people. I'm not saying those apps aren't shady, I'm saying google pretending to protect you is shady.

Comment · 2 years ago

Not in the context of the government buying the data, they'll just buy it from google instead of shadowgovt.databroker.com. It's a red herring, a feel good feature that just limit's googles competition and doesn't really change the information collected on us.

Comment · 2 years ago

Doesn't really matter when google itself makes its data and infrastructure available for "target acquisition" AI. See Project Maven and Nimbus.

Comment · 2 years ago

LOL - people have said shit like this to my face my whole life, including some CS admissions guy at CMU but he had the nerve to throw in a derogatory remark about ADD too. Just normal shit that happened in the 90's I guess.