Ilandar

Ilandar , 1 day ago to Privacy in The Shady Business of VPNs

I like his videos too and I think this is one of the better ones I've seen on this topic. Still, it has been absolutely done to death at this point, to the extent that I find the "don't trust VPNs" videos to be just as annoying as the VPN ads themselves. I wish everyone would just shut the fuck up about VPNs lol

Ilandar , 1 day ago to Memes in Rishi Sunak announcing national service plans

I agree with you. Military conscription is shit, but mandatory community service for young people on the cusp of adulthood could be very beneficial for a society. Particularly if it involves regular interactions with older members of the community (something Western countries lack due to households typically being limited to immediate family). Young people in developed Western nations are more disillusioned, detached and depressed than ever while some older people are really struggling to keep up with the pace at which life and technology is changing. Getting both groups together in their local communities could potentially build some important life skills and confidence for younger people while helping older people to feel included and relevant. I'm not saying a Tory government would be able to implement this effectively, but I can get onboard with the general idea.

Ilandar , 2 days ago to Technology in OpenAI says Russian and Israeli groups used its tools to spread disinformation

it was better than banning AI in the free world and giving dictators advantages in AI tech.

The US doesn't need to ban AI. It just needs to stop publicly deploying it, untested and unregulated, on the masses. And some of these big tech companies need to stop releasing open models that can be easily obtained and abused by bad actors. Dictatorships don't actually like AI internally, because it threatens their control of the narrative within their country. For example, the CCP has been very cautious of it when compared to the US because it is concerned about how it could be employed against the party.

And this whole arms race argument sort of ignores the fact that the US continuing to mass deploy this shit at breakneck speed is already giving the dictators the advantages they need to fuck with democracy. No one needs to have a real war with the US if it starts one with itself.

Ilandar , 2 days ago to 196 in Aussie Rules

Meh, pales in comparison the majesty of the Bubble O' Bill!

Ilandar , 3 days ago to Technology in A look at search engines with their own indexes

Affiliation with Brave and, therefore, Eich is relevant and deserves to be mentioned in the interest of potential users. I just think the way the author extrapolates their own opinion of that comment into an implication that "Kagi allows blatant homophobia on their forums because of company bias/their affiliation with Brave" to be really misleading and underhanded.

Ilandar , 3 days ago to Technology in A look at search engines with their own indexes

it seems happy to use Brave’s commercial API (allowing blatant homophobia in the comments)

The "blatant homophobia" claim is an overreaction. The closest thing to this is one post by a single user who said "there's nothing wrong with being against gay marriage...it's political opinion and everybody has the right to theirs". That user was basically the only one arguing in support of Eich in the thread and that was the most controversial thing they said. I think to try and frame this as Kagi implicitly supporting homophobia through a lack of moderation is very disingenuous. If you read through thread you can see many attempts to moderate the discussion, including several locks and warnings.

Ilandar , 3 days ago to Technology in A look at search engines with their own indexes

Same. I switched to it earlier this week and it's better than I remember. It's either improved or I was being too picky last time, though the image search is unusable IMO.

Ilandar , 4 days ago to 196 in Autism rule

Everyone has a different social perspective. Misunderstandings are very common in human discourse and they are often repeated. When this happens it is not solely because the speaker is autistic; there are many things that can contribute to our struggle to communicate with one another.

Ilandar , 4 days ago to 196 in Autism rule

I was, yeah. Thanks for not instantly assuming the worst of me. People like yourself make social media a better environment than it otherwise would be.

Ilandar , 5 days ago to 196 in Autism rule

Being autistic is taking a normal interaction every human experiences and pretending it is unique to you and your autistic peers.

Ilandar , 5 days ago to Privacy in Saw this funny clip making fun of all the youtubers that make clickbaity "DON'T USE A VPN" video, only to say they still use a VPN

As always, work out who you are trying to keep away from your data, learn how a VPN works, what it does and doesn't do and properly investigate the privacy policies of your VPN provider before signing up. Don't rely solely on these clickbaity privacy and security charlatans - they thrive on paranoia so it is often in their best interests to publish "hot" takes and confuse their viewers. And even if they're trying to spread awareness in good faith, they still don't know anything about you or your circumstances and therefore can't reliably recommended you products.

Ilandar , 6 days ago to Privacy in See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy. Stil a good choice?

This is my question as well. I am happy to leave it on if they can provide a clearer explanation of what my data will be used for, but for now it will remain off.

Ilandar , 6 days ago to Privacy in Search engines and privacy

This is a very comprehensive summary, thanks for the effort you clearly put in.

If I can make one correction, it would be to clarify that Ecosia is not really comparable to DuckDuckGo in terms of privacy. Not only does it log your IP address, but it also logs your search queries and forwards both of these to Microsoft and/or Google (depending on how you choose to search). Ecosia anonymises your IP address after a week, but for Microsoft that process takes 6 months and for Google it takes 9 months. In contrast, DuckDuckGo does not log your IP address and only collects anonymised search results, completely separated from any personal identifier. It does not forward this data to any third party. DuckDuckGo has also made privacy-guaranteeing agreements with Microsoft around ads (which are provided by Microsoft). Ecosia has not made similar agreements with Microsoft and Google from what I can tell.

Ilandar OP , 8 days ago to Privacy in Is it impossible to be private online?

At least you did a good job summarising it for everyone else!

Ilandar OP , 8 days ago to Privacy in Is it impossible to be private online?

I notice you quoted the sentence from the description - did you watch the video itself? You are actually repeating a lot Eric's points and are really in agreement with him. He mentions how privacy is becoming increasingly mainstream to the point that even his "normie" brother started using Brave without his knowledge or input, and he also has a section in there on threat modelling (he calls it the "privacy spectrum") which he has made an entire video about in the past.

The "pessimistic" introduction is really just a setup for his positive counterargument. He's not actually pessimistic about digital privacy as you seem to believe.