By "real mail services", I mean ones that at least appear to value your privacy and say so in their ToS. (That's the condition that makes gmail fail). Typically, this means ones that you pay for. One example would be the email account provided by your ISP.
it's really no different than writing my password on a post-it on my monitor from an *actual* security standpoint.
It's actually worse than that. If you have the password on a post-it on your monitor, then only people who have physical access to your machine can get it. If you store it online, then anyone could. The attack surface is much smaller with the post-it note.
I bet that's it. Mine is relatively recent (a couple of years old), and when I signed up for it I had to sign up for Google's stupid "one ring to rule them all" Google account. I'll bet you have a grandfathered in account that is gmail-only.
I'd certainly not want to give them my phone number if that's what they use for the 2nd factor.
This is precisely why I don't do the 2FA. Google knows way too much about me as it is. They don't need my phone number as well.
My server is in my closet, but most of the tech-savvy people I know use a real mail service and avoid gmail. A lot of them refuse to send email to gmail addresses as well.
They will charge your account a service fee. And there won't be any money in the account to cover the service fee. And so they will charge you an overdraw fee. But at the end of the statement period, many banks will see your negative balance, and then deposit a "credit to avoid account closure"... they will do this forever.
And eventually the bank will send the total of all those accrued fees and overdraft loans to a collections agency, as a friend of mine found out.
Biometrics are not acceptable for secure authentication for a whole host of reasons, including too high of an error rate (both false positives and false negatives) and that they aren't that secure -- fingerprint scanners are easily fooled, as you point out (even when they take pains to ensure the finger is a living one), and face recognition is even worse.
This may change in the future, but it appears that effective biometrics at a reasonable price point are many years away.
If your bank gets hacked, you take the hit, the merchant takes the hit, the bank walks away clean.
Not usually. I spent a number of years doing software development for banks, and amongst the interesting things that I learned was that banks get hacked a lot more often than you think. You usually don't hear about it because the banks typically just replace the money that was taken from their customer's account and shut up about the whole thing. The odds aren't terrible that at least once, you've had money stolen from your account and never noticed that it happened.
I've never seen anything but user/pass needed to create or access a gmail account?
You've managed to stop GMail from pestering you to sign up for two factor authentication? How did you manage that? I can't seem to get it to stop (without actually signing up for it, which I'm not willing to do.)
IMO, rolling releases are great for desktop/laptop machines, but not so great for servers.
I would have said exactly the opposite. I strongly dislike rolling releases in general, but my experience is that they're less annoying on servers than on end-user machines. Rolling releases mean that you have to put up with unexpected UI changes, which is what makes them hurt.
How do you figure? That's not their goal at all. Their goal is to improve the quality of the search results. Now whether they are succeeding at this is up for debate but I don't see how it degrades it.
I understand that's their goal. I'm just saying that my experience with it is that it accomplishes the opposite of their goal, that search results that they have "optimized" are less likely to fit what I'm looking for than ones that they leave alone. It degrades search because it makes it more difficult to find what I'm looking for.
Done correctly, it should help them get better results just as humans use context to better understand conversions.
Then they don't do it correctly -- probably because they maintain that context across multiple search sessions. The "context" my searches take place in is not the same every time I'm searching for something. Also, I can't help but wonder if Google is misled when I click on result links. It seems that Google thinks that because I clicked on a result link, that result was relevant to my search -- but it's often not. You can't always tell if a result was correctly until you click through.
That's optimization. It's attempting to optimize my results to give me better results. That's completely different than pushing someone to the top of the results because they paid them money even if it makes my results worse.
True, it is a different thing, but it has a similar effect: it degrades the quality of the search results. This is perhaps the single worst aspect of Google Search.
taking a black and white view of advertising is naive.
It would be a lot easier to take a nuanced point of view if I could even come up with a single internet ad company that didn't behave in a reprehensible fashion. But I can't. Even the "well behaved" ones insist on spying on you.
I'll probably do something like Google Contributor to offer ad-free versions, but I doubt that will be more than an error bar in revenue.
Don't do it that way. There are too many people who would be willing to pay you money, but wouldn't be willing to do it through Google Contributer. You'd be limiting potential contribution sources by using it (unless you did it in addition to other mechanisms.)
I've started a number of websites, some quite popular, and have never needed to put ads on any of them. Unless your website is getting a truly tremendous amount of traffic, hosting is very, very cheap. Most of my sites cost me around $20/mo for hosting fees. That's easily sustainable out of pocket, even if you just have a minimum wage job. On the more popular ones, I mitigated some of that cost by a combination of a donation button and selling merch. None of that earned me a profit, but it did keep the operating costs low enough that it they were easily sustainable.
I would never consider putting ads on a website I run if those ads were through an ad exchange or hosted elsewhere. Third party ads are completely untrustworthy in terms of user privacy, so I would want to be certain they weren't doing the usual nefarious things that ads do. If I wanted a website to actually earn a living for myself, I'd make it a membership site and skip the ads entirely.
The issue is when manufacturers change the product you bought without your consent, after you've bought it. In the case of the self-braking car, that's not wrestling ownership away from anybody. That's a feature that existed when you bought the car, and one that you probably paid a premium for.
If they added this functionality without your permission after the purchase, then there's a big issue. It doesn't matter if they're adding or removing features at all. This is why I always disable autoupdates of connected devices when possible, otherwise I firewall them off or just don't connect them to the net, otherwise I don't buy them.
Not sure if you missed it, but Balmer is no longer in charge. Things are changing.
So people keep saying. Personally, I'll wait until I actually see substantial positive change (which I haven't, yet) and it lasts for a while, before I actually trust that.
ads should come from the site itself, not the server of some nosy ad company.
As long as the ads aren't doing any tracking, I agree. I am much less bothered by ads that are being hosted on the same website I am viewing than ones coming from third parties.
that's like saying you're entitled to mug someone unless they have a gun or a bodyguard.
No, it's not, blocking ads isn't even on the same planet as mugging people.
You are ripping them off -- they get 0 benefit from you using their commercial service. That's theft.
I strongly disagree. I am under no obligation, legally or ethically, to accept all the data that a website sends my way. I am stealing from no one by blocking ads, any more than I am stealing from television broadcasters because I go to the bathroom during commercials.
True, ABP is not being even remotely deceptive. I don't like the practice, but they aren't doing anything wrong here. For the record, I react to not liking it in an even more effective way than using their checkbox: I avoid using ABP.
But the reality is, if the sites don't make money, they won't exist.
Some won't, sure. But many will. I remember the web before the infestation of ads. It was better.
We need to find a way to let them find ad revenue without being obnoxious.
Why? Why not help them to find ways of generating revenue without advertising at all?
So if we let the user control what ads and what kind of ads are allowed, and if the web sites make good faith attempt to respect the wishes of the user, they might both benefit.
Only if ads stop all tracking. Personally, any ad that includes any sort of tracking is an objectionable ad.
So you are for a feature that you pay a monthly fee to an ad-block agency that will take the bulk of your fee and pay money for the sites you are visiting
Absolutely not. But I will (and do, when the option is available) pay the sites directly.
People don't really mind ads all that much, they just hate it when they're noisy (literally and metaphorically) and get in the way
I don't mind ads as such, but what I do mind more than anything else -- more than being noisy and obnoxious -- is the tracking that comes with them. That's why I block all advertising that I can, and why I always will.
Slashdot Mirror
By "real mail services", I mean ones that at least appear to value your privacy and say so in their ToS. (That's the condition that makes gmail fail). Typically, this means ones that you pay for. One example would be the email account provided by your ISP.
it's really no different than writing my password on a post-it on my monitor from an *actual* security standpoint.
It's actually worse than that. If you have the password on a post-it on your monitor, then only people who have physical access to your machine can get it. If you store it online, then anyone could. The attack surface is much smaller with the post-it note.
My account is quite OLD...maybe that's it.
I bet that's it. Mine is relatively recent (a couple of years old), and when I signed up for it I had to sign up for Google's stupid "one ring to rule them all" Google account. I'll bet you have a grandfathered in account that is gmail-only.
I'd certainly not want to give them my phone number if that's what they use for the 2nd factor.
This is precisely why I don't do the 2FA. Google knows way too much about me as it is. They don't need my phone number as well.
My server is in my closet, but most of the tech-savvy people I know use a real mail service and avoid gmail. A lot of them refuse to send email to gmail addresses as well.
They will charge your account a service fee. And there won't be any money in the account to cover the service fee. And so they will charge you an overdraw fee. But at the end of the statement period, many banks will see your negative balance, and then deposit a "credit to avoid account closure"... they will do this forever.
And eventually the bank will send the total of all those accrued fees and overdraft loans to a collections agency, as a friend of mine found out.
Biometrics are not acceptable for secure authentication for a whole host of reasons, including too high of an error rate (both false positives and false negatives) and that they aren't that secure -- fingerprint scanners are easily fooled, as you point out (even when they take pains to ensure the finger is a living one), and face recognition is even worse.
This may change in the future, but it appears that effective biometrics at a reasonable price point are many years away.
I'm guessing those who use gmail are some of the more tech savvy of the population.
Really? I tend to assume the opposite.
If your bank gets hacked, you take the hit, the merchant takes the hit, the bank walks away clean.
Not usually. I spent a number of years doing software development for banks, and amongst the interesting things that I learned was that banks get hacked a lot more often than you think. You usually don't hear about it because the banks typically just replace the money that was taken from their customer's account and shut up about the whole thing. The odds aren't terrible that at least once, you've had money stolen from your account and never noticed that it happened.
What two factor auth for Gmail?
I've never seen anything but user/pass needed to create or access a gmail account?
You've managed to stop GMail from pestering you to sign up for two factor authentication? How did you manage that? I can't seem to get it to stop (without actually signing up for it, which I'm not willing to do.)
Your bank may have less secure login methods than gmail, but Google doesn't have access to your bank account.
IMO, rolling releases are great for desktop/laptop machines, but not so great for servers.
I would have said exactly the opposite. I strongly dislike rolling releases in general, but my experience is that they're less annoying on servers than on end-user machines. Rolling releases mean that you have to put up with unexpected UI changes, which is what makes them hurt.
How do you figure? That's not their goal at all. Their goal is to improve the quality of the search results. Now whether they are succeeding at this is up for debate but I don't see how it
degrades it.
I understand that's their goal. I'm just saying that my experience with it is that it accomplishes the opposite of their goal, that search results that they have "optimized" are less likely to fit what I'm looking for than ones that they leave alone. It degrades search because it makes it more difficult to find what I'm looking for.
Done correctly, it should help them get better results just as humans use context to better
understand conversions.
Then they don't do it correctly -- probably because they maintain that context across multiple search sessions. The "context" my searches take place in is not the same every time I'm searching for something. Also, I can't help but wonder if Google is misled when I click on result links. It seems that Google thinks that because I clicked on a result link, that result was relevant to my search -- but it's often not. You can't always tell if a result was correctly until you click through.
My experiences with rolling-release software has been unpleasant, so I will continue to avoid it to the best of my ability.
Serious question: But how do I totally block Google?
The same way you block Google from desktop computers: install and use a firewall. You'll have to root the phone first, of course.
That's optimization. It's attempting to optimize my results to give me better results.
That's completely different than pushing someone to the top of the results because
they paid them money even if it makes my results worse.
True, it is a different thing, but it has a similar effect: it degrades the quality of the search results. This is perhaps the single worst aspect of Google Search.
taking a black and white view of advertising is naive.
It would be a lot easier to take a nuanced point of view if I could even come up with a single internet ad company that didn't behave in a reprehensible fashion. But I can't. Even the "well behaved" ones insist on spying on you.
I forgot this part:
I'll probably do something like Google Contributor to offer ad-free versions, but I doubt that will be more than an error bar in revenue.
Don't do it that way. There are too many people who would be willing to pay you money, but wouldn't be willing to do it through Google Contributer. You'd be limiting potential contribution sources by using it (unless you did it in addition to other mechanisms.)
I'm considering starting a website
I've started a number of websites, some quite popular, and have never needed to put ads on any of them. Unless your website is getting a truly tremendous amount of traffic, hosting is very, very cheap. Most of my sites cost me around $20/mo for hosting fees. That's easily sustainable out of pocket, even if you just have a minimum wage job. On the more popular ones, I mitigated some of that cost by a combination of a donation button and selling merch. None of that earned me a profit, but it did keep the operating costs low enough that it they were easily sustainable.
I would never consider putting ads on a website I run if those ads were through an ad exchange or hosted elsewhere. Third party ads are completely untrustworthy in terms of user privacy, so I would want to be certain they weren't doing the usual nefarious things that ads do. If I wanted a website to actually earn a living for myself, I'd make it a membership site and skip the ads entirely.
The issue is when manufacturers change the product you bought without your consent, after you've bought it. In the case of the self-braking car, that's not wrestling ownership away from anybody. That's a feature that existed when you bought the car, and one that you probably paid a premium for.
If they added this functionality without your permission after the purchase, then there's a big issue. It doesn't matter if they're adding or removing features at all. This is why I always disable autoupdates of connected devices when possible, otherwise I firewall them off or just don't connect them to the net, otherwise I don't buy them.
Not sure if you missed it, but Balmer is no longer in charge. Things are changing.
So people keep saying. Personally, I'll wait until I actually see substantial positive change (which I haven't, yet) and it lasts for a while, before I actually trust that.
ads should come from the site itself, not the server of some nosy ad company.
As long as the ads aren't doing any tracking, I agree. I am much less bothered by ads that are being hosted on the same website I am viewing than ones coming from third parties.
that's like saying you're entitled to mug someone unless they have a gun or a bodyguard.
No, it's not, blocking ads isn't even on the same planet as mugging people.
You are ripping them off -- they get 0 benefit from you using their commercial service. That's theft.
I strongly disagree. I am under no obligation, legally or ethically, to accept all the data that a website sends my way. I am stealing from no one by blocking ads, any more than I am stealing from television broadcasters because I go to the bathroom during commercials.
True, ABP is not being even remotely deceptive. I don't like the practice, but they aren't doing anything wrong here. For the record, I react to not liking it in an even more effective way than using their checkbox: I avoid using ABP.
But the reality is, if the sites don't make money, they won't exist.
Some won't, sure. But many will. I remember the web before the infestation of ads. It was better.
We need to find a way to let them find ad revenue without being obnoxious.
Why? Why not help them to find ways of generating revenue without advertising at all?
So if we let the user control what ads and what kind of ads are allowed, and if the web sites make good faith attempt to respect the wishes of the user, they might both benefit.
Only if ads stop all tracking. Personally, any ad that includes any sort of tracking is an objectionable ad.
So you are for a feature that you pay a monthly fee to an ad-block agency that will take the bulk of your fee and pay money for the sites you are visiting
Absolutely not. But I will (and do, when the option is available) pay the sites directly.
People don't really mind ads all that much, they just hate it when they're noisy (literally and metaphorically) and get in the way
I don't mind ads as such, but what I do mind more than anything else -- more than being noisy and obnoxious -- is the tracking that comes with them. That's why I block all advertising that I can, and why I always will.