LWD

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Android 15 will run Bluetooth with your phone still turned off.

I'm pretty sure the old Privacy Sandbox was called FLoC, wasn't it? This is definitely part of Google's continued efforts to kill the (third-party) cookie in such a way that tracking your user activity will still be possible, but that Google itself will maximally benefit from because they're the ones controlling how it'll get implemented.

And given Google's near-unilateral control of web browsing standards, who will say no? Their biggest partners? Mozilla?

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

I don't think we have an argument except maybe on technicality, so I'll do my best to use your points as a springboard for further clarification/critique of Kagi and not of you.

They promote their search engine but their users don't get to see ads. I don't know what's wrong about that.

What's wrong is Vlad had just said "That community is 100% responsible for Kagi's growth as a business through word of mouth (Kagi does no paid advertising)"

And he should be the first person to know that statement isn't correct.

may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

The problem here is that nobody in this community will recommend a corporation that "may know everything about you but respect your privacy."

• When recommending a messager service, common consensus always leans towards the one that knows the least about you.
• This is because corporations can change or be forced to give up data, which would render the pinkie-promise of "we won't" moot
• I've seen an argument posted here or on Reddit that Google is technically private because they know about you and won't sell ads; it's basically the Kagi line. Basically nobody cares even if it's true (and it's turned out to not be true).

Vlad said "kagi.com" - which doesn't mention AI or AI tools.

Maybe not the homepage, but the site itself is very explicit about AI being the point of their project. And if Kagi will change their statements about everything else on a dime, and have such poor views on privacy, why not also follow their own manifesto?

You can read their pro-AI manifesto on the Kagi.com domain right here.

You can read a critique of this manifesto and how it talks about you "volunteering" your data to search engines, and other creepy stuff, right here.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

This is the second CEO to be a weirdo to a random person in the past month. First it was the Tumblr CEO, now it's the Kagi one.

Kagi was already in hot water for ignoring its paying customers' previous complaints, so this whole "I really want to know your opinion, we are a human first company!" thing really sounds disingenuous after the same CEO overruled away all criticism or tried shuffling it away from public channels and onto his much more closed-off Discord.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

It's barely a blog that was barely reformatted from the nearly inaccessible Gemini protocol. It's a glorified Lemmy post. If that's an article, then I'm a journalist and I want my Pulitzer

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

Kagi is one of the least trustworthy companies I've seen recently. I know it has fans, but it constantly talks out of both sides of its mouth.

Turns out Kagi does do advertising

Kagi does not give a solitary damn about privacy as the average person understands it.

We did not say we maintain anonmity, but privacy, which are two different things. For example. your parents may know everything about you, yet still respect your privacy.

Kagi lied in its emails.

"AI is mentioned zero times"

https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/112/255/132/620/576/206/original/9eb0d03616f4e47e.png

...is clearly incorrect.

https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/112/259/430/662/373/613/original/b3392d8d788976d9.png

There's quite a lot more to distrust about a company that wants to lock you into a filter bubble.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Android 15 will run Bluetooth with your phone still turned off.

"Privacy Sandbox" is just Google-controlled surveillance carried out with your phone/PC as the primary data provider. We've reached maximum perversion of the English language.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in As the Internet Gets Scarier, More Parents Keep Their Kids’ Photos Offline

My friends keep my photos offline too.

Anything that's genuinely good, is good in more ways than just "for the children".

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule?

From the looks of it, Trillium is halfway between Standard Notes and hosting your own wiki.

If you're happy with Trillium, I'd say stick with it. It looks pretty good, TBH. Standard Notes is self-hostable more as an afterthought, which is to its detriment.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers

I'm... Not exactly sure. They severed their connection with the OneRep company but say they still want to provide subscriptions.

If you think that's wild, just wait until you look up what their FakeSpot subsidiary sells to advertisers...

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Apple Warns Users in 92 Countries About 'Mercenary Spyware' Threat

What was the surveiling government? I did a quick search on the article and didn't see it mentioned

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers

ICYMI, Mozilla goofed with their offering. They partnered with a business that had previously sold personal data and then shifted to a "pay to remove it" model. They've since reversed course on it entirely.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Proton AG and Standard Notes joined forces

Standard Notes has an unfortunate business model. Instead of charging for the convenience and security of syncing your stuff on your behalf (which is the model of Obsidian, Joplin, and Bitwarden), it wants to sell you a Markdown compatible note editor that

• They didn't write
• They don't maintain
• Can just sit on your phone/PC

This isn't just true for their markdown editor. Most of their editors are wrappers for code that other people made, sometimes last updated years ago.

Fun trivia: Filen, the E2EE cloud storage service, actually implemented "notes" that include the rich text ones free of charge.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of the "everything under one roof" model regardless... You might pass up perfectly good services that cost less or are even free.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule?

Thanks for the detailed answer! I was aware of the community plugins (and I'm very pleased Obsidian isn't trying to sell them to anyone) but wasn't sure if there was anything else going on under the hood... Plugin configuration definitely makes sense.

And gives me an excuse to start exporting the stuff I've got in my local Standard Notes instance too. I like their interface, but their mobile clients kept throwing me out by switching to the default server, and the web client disabled non-official synching too, so I'm starting to like the idea of having an actual copy of the notes rather than hoping SN doesn't have another fit.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in DuckDuckGo Is Taking Its Privacy Fight to Data Brokers

I was wondering how they were planning on capitalizing on their own VPN service.

LWD , 2 months ago to Privacy in Standard notes: what about don’t put all your eggs in one basket rule?

It seems like apps are all using web apps as a shortcut for deploying cross platform functionality. Which is sometimes fine until you run into compatibility or UI issues like those.