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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I honestly wonder if the advertising industry is just a house of cards, with everyone so far up their own asses that they couldn’t possibly realize how much energy, resources, and dignity is just getting wasted.

    I can’t help but feel sorry for whoever thought their “targeted advertising” worked when I just accidentally picked up my tablet and clumsily landed a finger on a banner, or let an entire video ad play because I was preoccupied and not physically able to skip it. The only ads I genuinely pay attention to are the promotional newsletters I actually sign up for out of legitimate interest from those sites, not out of pride or anything, it’s just the only instance where actually find myself interested in what’s being advertised. Everything else out there in the “targeted” web is just white noise to me, and people think it’s a gold mine.









  • Times where I’ve found myself pleased with my smart watch:

    • Keeping discreet timers.
    • Discreet taps on the wrist when a delivery is arriving or someone important is trying to call me.
    • Quick replying to texts from my SO.
    • Pinging my misplaced phone.
    • Directions to places via cryptic taps on my wrist (and having a little map if I want to check).
    • Remote camera view-finder and shutter button for group photos where everyone can be in them.
    • Having a money conversion calculator on my wrist when traveling.
    • Audio controls from my wrist. (Really nice if you like walking around without a phone in front of you.)
    • Paying through a subway turn-style with a tap from my wrist instead of needing to dig something out of my pockets.
    • Keeping track of my health, which I wouldn’t have otherwise.
    • Less general dependency on my phone itself, resulting in better battery life.

    Not saying you should or shouldn’t get one. These are just reasons I’ve found myself happy with mine.










  • It’s really worth reading the article.

    Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity.

    The company behind a VPN can still access your information, sell it or pass it along to law enforcement. With Tor, there’s no link between you and your traffic, according to Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University.

    I don’t know if it’s even possible, but it would be cool if I could use the fediverse over TOR just for the sake of supporting TOR. Not sure if there would have to be specific .onion instances, if normal instances could just be mirrored with a .onion address, or if a .onion instance would even be able to federated in the first place. I just don’t know how it works.

    Other use cases may include keeping the identities of sensitive populations like undocumented immigrants anonymous, trying to unionize a workplace without the company shutting it down, victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or, as Crandall said, wanting to make embarrassing Google searches without related targeted ads following you around forever.

    I’m certain an all-out legislative war would be waged against TOR if it were to become popularized for most of those reasons, under the more convenient guise of “criminals and children!”