> My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been right all along.
The problem is that being philosophically right doesn't always mean being practically right. In order to create the perfect Stallman-esque machine, one would have to design everything from the logic chips up from scratch, because in the end, no third party can be trusted. He says this himself about the Loongson system he uses daily; he considers it a compromise but one heavily weighted in his favor.
In short, Stallman has been right all along, but there's little we can do about it from a practical standpoint.
Cherry-picked from that thread. I just have to point out this awful slippery-slope argument.
Like what happened with the NSA? Not to be rude, but you can be vocal all you want, but as long as the majority of the public doesn't care, there's not much you can do.
The enterprise fizzbuzz does exactly what is asked of in the spec, allow room for expansion, split all responsibilities into modules which could be concurrently worked on by many different people/teams, and the testing ensures that miscommunication doesn't ruin a code base. In my books, that's clean.
back to the actual topic, I suppose8 it could be done today. (If you're gonna say, 'just wait til our benevolent omnipotent robot overlords show up' then I encourage you to sukkit.) But if you're going to replace human teaches, then you need your computer-aided learning program to know that I (for example)
\ find graphics challenging, but narrative is easy to keep track of.
\* remember events and experiences well, not so much facts and figures.
\* get unproductively competitive over desirable assignments.
And so forth x1,000,000. This is all the stuff that gets glossed over by strong AI proponents, and I think pushes it way out into the 2-300 year timespan the way we're going now.
I think that strong AI most likely to be a materials science breakthrough.
Now think about what a company like Google or Facebook knows about you. And then ask yourself if you ever want to use their services again (besides those that everybody is forced to "use", such as GoogleAnalytics.).
Tracking server-side is fine, it is assumed the server logs contain a record of my visits and I have no problem with that. I think what most people object to is the third-party tracking that so many people use.
Company A tracking my visits to Company A's website = OK
Company A using Google Analytics to track my visits (while also enabling Google to track me across multiple sites) = Not OK
EDIT: (replying here as we've reached max comment depth) - I was unaware that it is possible to use Google Analytics server-side only (is this true?) but I hope my original point is still clear, DIY tracking is fine.
You misunderstand. There have been several commentators here on HN saying that they are moving Google Analytics server side. They seem to think that people are only objecting to the cookie or the presence of the JS rather than objecting to the pervasive cross-site tracking.
Are you are aware that Google provide you with a method to do this regardless that doesn't rely on random script blocking? Details here https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Yes. GA has server-side API's available to premium accounts.
You can also just host the ga.js file yourself. Or run a reverse proxy or any of a dozen other methods to collect data and pass it to GA. Using the standard 3rd party tag is just for convenience.
You mean GoogleAnalytics-tracking on the server side? Please expand on that, I'm not very versed in all that marketing spy-modules. Do you mean that some internet-shop (or blog or whatever) makes a request to GA or some similar service to share that I was at their website? If so, what information do they share? My IP, cookies or what? I always assumed that very point of GA was outsourcing tracking users to some other service (Google) which could try somehow guess who I am based on flash-cookies and me appearing on other websites with GA. But how would that work server-side?
Even just your UA string is enough in most cases to make educated guesses. See here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/tracking-by-user-agent... . The server will get that UA string, and it can make subsequent calls (or serve you content that will automatically make calls, like hidden <img> tags...) to further restrict the search space. You can have middleware that does this transparently.
I'm not in that particular market, but I know people who are and tbh more often than not I think it's an arms race the individual simply cannot win. Unless there's a conscious effort from browser-makers to actively counter tracking practices, you should assume everything you do on the web is public and can be tracked by multiple parties.
But the question is if GA and others actually accept these kind of requests: remember that someone with such and such UA (or IP, or whatever) has visited that website? And if people actually use it? I still have my doubts that tracking someone by UA is possible — there will be collisions for the large part of the market — but that some analytics service is actually doing it? It's easy to track me if Google can "reach" to the client side when visiting some website: they can use cookies, all HTTP-request data, even flash-cookies maybe. It's a no brainer to track individual with information like this. But guessing who is who just by UA? This doesn't seem that trivial, so I wonder if they really do that.
Yes. It's all just data in the end. Javascript can handle collecting all the information outside of setting cookies. But cookies are outdated and just a fallback now so all you need is the javascript to run.
This can be as simple as hosting a copy of GA.js yourself but there are plenty of options like using the server-side API if you have GA enterprise or just using a reverse-proxy like Nginx with some rewriting logic.
3rd-party only means it's a different domain (with security usually implemented at the browser level) - it's not some magical wall of isolation.
Everytime you access a website a server is serving you files. Apache (and most web servers) keep logs of this. With Apache defaults you get IP address, the route accessed, and the User-Agent of the user. This is rudimentary information, but if you have these logs from multiple sites, it's pretty easy to roughly track someone. Tracking images in emails use this same principle, a unique link to krick.png is put in an email sent to you, and if it gets served by the server (shows up in the access logs) it's pretty reasonable to assume that you read the email.
If you want to see a simplified version of what this log looks like, run 'python -m SimpleHTTPServer' and visit localhost:8000.
Have you even read my message? Or the thread you are answering to for that matter? The question is not how website owner knows I visited his website, that much is pretty obvious, but if it is the case that server-side tracking somehow allows to use GoogleAnalytics as well (that is, to notify Google from server side who has visited their website) and if this is the case — how does it exactly work. Because that's what JupiterMoon seems to be claiming.
Because non-capitalist countries have a much better record of protecting and respecting personal privacy. Really?
The answers to this are twofold: Better national information security support* and regulation; Consumer action to chose vendors that demonstrate that they value personal privacy and prioritise information security.
* Which includes not deliberately, as a matter of policy, undermining security technologies and standards.
The best track record of protecting have Social Market countries. Social Capitalism, also called "Social Democracy", "Nordic Model", "Democratic Socialism", etc is generally the best model.
In a pure capitalist model it is okay if Facebook shares all your data with advertisers – if you don’t like Facebook, just vote with your money and go to Google+.
Sure but no country on earth, not even the USA, has anything close to a pure capitalist system in that sense. Furthermore Nordic Model countries vary, but are very much capitalist. From wikipedia:
"Sweden's industry is overwhelmingly in private control; unlike some other industrialized Western countries, such as Austria, Italy or Finland, state owned enterprises were always of minor importance."
In fact I think I can make a strong argument that capitalism relies on property rights and therefore the rule of law, which tends to support individual rights in general including privacy.
Yes. Every country is in some way "social", but social market economies focus strongly on keeping a balance.
Especially in the US the balance has been skewed since forever towards capitalism.
Historically, Social Market Economies evolved in countries where the population was supportive of socialist and communist uprisings, but the ruling class tried to keep the economy, and implemented the same benefits as in a socialist system in the existing market economy (See Bismarck’s Social Welfare model in Germany and the history of Bismarck vs. the Social Democrats on this).
What I'm arguing against us the implication that such 'social market' economies are in any way not capitalist or less capitalist than others. Its a false premse. Nordic model national economies can be very capitalism friendly or very statist.
It already happens unofficially. How do you think banks assess your lending/borrowing habits when you apply for a loan? There are detective agencies who track credit cards and other things (like a few examples someone gave in this very thread).
There is a huge difference between a "private" rating system and a public rating that uses your friends against you as manipulation. See Extra Credit's description[1] of how this works.
We aren't there yet, but consider that Facebook wants to use your social network associations in your credit score[2].
Jesus. If that first video is true, then that's what should be top-upvoted submission on HN. Why isn't it better known? I mean, at least I personally never heard about it and I might be not the most informed person on the Internet, but certainly I'm not the least. And this is much more important thing to know than… well, everything I usually hear on the news.
I don't get often surprised by all that dystopian stuff, because I assume we already are quite fucked, but this one did surprise me. That's just crazy.
That video has been submitted numerous times, but it never got any attention.
To be clear, I believe there is some disagreement as if this is one or multiple programs in China, but that doesn't really matter; we need to defend against the establishment of this kind of program regardless.
The trick where positive reinforcement is used to trick people into wanting to participate is utterly terrifying... because it will work. It's obvious that it will work, because it is effectively the weaponization of "high school clique"-style tribalism and carefully re-framed self interest.
For some perspective, the weaponization of cliques and "othering" is very old, and it has worked for just as long. We call it politics.
But a state sponsored gamified social network where the incentives are all designed by the ruling class, and the penalties have the force of law, is pretty darn awful.
Hopefully the affected citizens prove to be as unpredictable and hard to control as others have in the past, because that's really their only hope.
It looks like it is starting to get some attention at least. Here is HN discussion of the article that seems possibly the primary source for the video:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10329733
It sounds like the system does not currently use politics and such, but the government would like to combine it with the existing citizen tracking system which is employer based.
I think the US system is fairly insidious as well and has more government influence than it might seem (look into "redlining" for instance and the role the government played). Creditors can know quite a bit about your private life (particularly if you significantly outside the mainstream) and I don't think it is that uncommon for individuals to share credit scores. In any case, I think it is worth considering how "social trust systems" work everywhere and not just in the worst imagininable case. It is harder to think about in the less obviously centralized cases.
Thanks - that is a really good video - I had heard about that scheme but I hadn't thought about the implications for an entire society of using gamification in that way.
American living in Europe here. In some ways, having no credit history is worse than having bad credit. For example, when I signed up for my first 'post-paid' mobile contract, I had to put a much larger deposit down than my friends with bad credit did. Theirs was about $500 and mine was $1000.
Look at ways to establish at least some credit history sooner rather than later, as this will make things easier in the future. For example, even if you do not need a store credit card, you might get one and charge routine purchases and pay the full about each month. This avoids any extra costs and builds credit history.
You're a "ghost". Your FICO credit score will probably be pretty OK (in the 600s) if you have no derogatory credit, but with no (US) history of high credit, and no established history of attachment to your job and address, any loan analyst worth their salary will be skeptical.
You will probably have to pay a rate premium unless you go through a lender such as a credit union that you have an existing relationship with. Your provable income will be your biggest asset.
As a non-US citizen, it makes sense that you will be perceived as a higher risk of absconding since you could leave the country permanently at any time.
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