madisfun

> Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants.

The soul craves for what's not easily attainable.

Commercial transactions are all the same.

Feasibility is sweet but one-dimensional.

There're things you can buy, and things you cannot.

You cannot buy a different self.

Politics, volunteering, social games, arts and sports

are the new frontier.

And we act to define what we are.

The companies like 23andMe can do anonymous tests. They can even sell "gift cards" for cash (or bitcoin, for digitally inclined). Don't deliver kits, let them be picked up without asking for an ID, just by the gift card number. As long as the test results are not linked to a specific address or name, it's fine.

They will still have clues about the state and the city and the IP address of the person. It's enough to do whatever research they may want to do with aggregate data. It's not good enough to sell this data to insurance companies and advertisers.

> Sideloading on Android is dodgy enough with dodgy APKs.

Sideloading is what allows to use third party app stores like F-Droid and to run apps Google banned like Blokada (system-wide ad-blocker).

I saw a link "Netflix sends journalists on pricey trips". "Support great journalism," said the link I followed.

(paywall)

GDPR requires consent for the processing of the personal data. Displaying an ad per se is not regulated by GDPR, and does not require consent. Though personalization of this advertisement requires processing of the PII, and thus it is supposed to be regulated.

Facebook UI is full of dark patterns, but it is possible to withdraw consent through settings: www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/

Teams on Firefox enters in a loop of infinite logins.

Saudi Arabia is a US ally, so family region block against them is unlikely. Even if it is a country that tolerates and promotes open slave trade (look up #maidsfortransfer on BBC).

What it shows is that it's risky to rely on a "cloud"/subscription service offered by a company from a different jurisdiction. In particular, if the service provider is a US company, it's a red flag. If it's Chinese, it's a red flag too.

Sometimes. It's not a good defence of a thing, if it is good only sometimes and only for some people. By implication it's not good for the others.

Round-robin and privacy do not dwell well together. Like mike-cardwell pointed out in another comment, it just distributes the same information to more parties.

As there has to be at least party which will know the request, some information will be leaked. But what can be prevented, is giving "unrelated" requests in the hands of the same resolver. Few of the request per se are interesting, the combinations of them allow to build user profiles.

The policy should not be round robin, but somehow based on the domain itself, so that all requests about the same domain go to the same resolver, but to nobody else.

An even better mechanism would take into account who is the owner and the controller of the domain. So that requests about, let say, facebook.com and fbsbx.com land at the same resolver, but github.com and microsoft.com by another.

I'm not sure if transferrable and sellable rewards make CCGs less of a gambling activity. If anything, obtaining a physical object which can be exchanged for cash, with a potential for profit, is the definition of gambling.

Non-transferrable rewards exploit the same weakness of the human psycology, but offer even less in return.

Both kinds of gambling in games should be regulated. It's not easy to define what constitutes a lootbox, and what kind of randomized output is safe. The industry will probably argue that the lootboxes are actually randomized content, not prizes.. From that point of view they sell a non-transferrable experience (service), not a tangible item (product).

I wonder when someone in power finally recognizes that Magic the Gathering and other CCGs, especially their digital versions, are essentially gambling machines.

Living in Europe, I have yet to see a smart navigation app, which would allow to take into account:

- tolls and fuel consumption (Via Michelin is great at offering 2-3 routes with different and realistic costs, but the app is an ad-nest and their navigator is bad; Here can avoid tolls but the UI is bad; Google Maps is useless if you want to optimize the costs).

- altitude changes (a marginally shorter road which has to climb and descent 1000 m / 3000 ft is not the same as doing extra distance on the flat ground).

- the shape of the road, prefer wider and more direct roads (there are many narrow and extremely curvy roads that can't be driven fast, and some may be very stressful to drive).

- the realistic median speed as an estimator (not the speed limit; sometimes it is set unrealistically high; also do not assume that all tarmac roads are equivalent).

- local and temporary traffic restrictions (respect car-free hours in some areas and restrictions on a particular kind of vehicle or engine).

- eventual stops during long trips

Google Maps is far from an ideal navigation app at this point. The only reason it is used, IMO, is the abysmall UI experience in built-in car navigators. (Anecdotal evidence: I rented a car last week, it took me five minutes to enter destination, and then I couldn't figure out how to interrupt navigation. Eventually just used the phone to drive around).

Tl;dr: Dear Google, Waze, etc., distance is not everything.

I use Firefox and have setup a monthly donation anyway. I understand that many people need something extra in return to give their money. So if there is a paid version which gives access to some _services_ like VPN or storage, and it works better than donations, then why not.

Might be a good idea to have a throwaway SIM and a phone for travelling, not logged in into any cloud or social network services, and not tied to your main google account. Maybe just a couple of chat apps to stay in touch with your friends/relatives. Switch SIM back to your main number and reset phone once you're beyond the border... It seems exactly what EFF recommends by the way. With a laptop it's more complicated.