The jimi-halloween trend from Japan but it’s /r/nosleep instead

Looking up more information about this I found a much less sensationalized analysis on this from the UofC:

https://cjil.uchicago.edu/print-archive/kids-no-phones-dinner-table-analyzing-peoples-republic-chinas-proposed-minor-mode

I think that was the draft proposal for this.

there are internet filters you can buy

Seems like that’s exactly what this is, it’s a mode that you turn on on the phone and it uses a government supplied list of vetted websites for the kid to visit.

Interestingly the way this feature set reads out is exactly the same way that Nintendo’s parental controls work.

I realize that this being the Chinese government, them keeping usage stats has connotations that go beyond the data itself… But in a country with a more liberal government I’d rather have them keep records of my kids’ internet usage than a private company. The idea being that you can pass protections around that data. (Not that that seems to be stopping the current US government so maybe that’s a pipe dream).

Ideal is, of course, completely on your own hardware (the device or your server at home), but between this and a system where Apple/Google/Nintendo does all this instead I’d prefer the government method.

Parents can invoke minors mode with a single click and set usage time limits. Devices set to minors mode will even remind users to take breaks, and collect stats so parents can make sure their offspring are surfing the web in an age-appropriate and socialist fashion.

This sounds awesome. This isn’t the weird shit like some states in the US have for determining if you can log into porn, or South Koreas weird government-login-page-in-everything scheme, it’s part of the parent’s family plan for their kid they can turn on/off.

I realize there’s worrying undertones (that already exist on the Chinese internet regardless) but the actual feature as-is seems like the ideal for this sort of thing.

It would! This is just an extra layer of data they can use to identify and infer!

Sooooo. This is actually scarier than it may seem…

You can tell what outlet or building a phone is plugged into sometimes by micro aberrations in power output.

Also interestingly you can kind of tell what webpages somebody visits by their phone’s power usage:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284567929_Current_Events_Identifying_Webpages_by_Tapping_the_Electrical_Outlet

edit: for stuff like this they kind of need existing power profiles to like compare against, so this is sometimes used to tell if you’re “at home” by identifying the charging profile of the charging apparatus you use at night etc.

It’s pretty scary what information you can infer from geolocational data, it’s why you should try your best to not use it as much as possible.

When an app asks for your location only give it the minimum geolocation and time if you’re absolutely sure it needs it (for delivery make sure there’s not a place you can manually enter the dropoff location first, etc).

Also, “fine location” is a much more invasive technology than people think. Apple and Google have giant databases of Wifi broadcast locations and associated positions, which is what gives you the “more accurate location.”

If you want to help do your part to mitigate that turn off your router’s SSID broadcast and make sure none of your devices attempt to “auto connect” to your wifi.

pre installing flatpaks

Did the room just get a bit colder or is it just me

Aren’t there a lot of split units in Europe? Here I just needed an IR blaster to make my AC(s) “smart”.

And do what? Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?

Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text. That’s something even the new fancy LLMs struggle with.

Unnecessary when there’s way better targeted models trained on years of data that people willingly send as part of everyday smartphone use.

If you use android google grabs your GPS data regardless, you have to root and disable it.

Apple does the same thing but they didn’t have their pants occupied by third-party network’s fingers like google did until the pixel came out.

Google maps is basically a beacon for AdMob to target you nearly perfectly.

Also using “fine location” in any app grabs the nearby wifi list and sends it to Google/apple if it’s not cached.

Also most ad providers these days have made deals with major networks that let them tell what tower your IMEI pinged off of.

It’s why google tried to push android/ad IDs, way less info for the networks to advertise over, and it also put the tracking in their hands instead.

Libreoffice has a database engine and frontend that’s pretty applicable to Microsoft Access

guix and/or nix

Both are functional package managers and manage dependency trees better than flatpak IMO (also the package description languages mean you can manipulate the package definitions at install time much easier)

If you can’t find a package in guix/nix then it behooves you to use flatpak

I used to work for a mobile advertiser, and we installed hella bloatware on phones.

This idea was floated a couple times but was deemed not very effective cause you’d have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn’t tell us much more than just having a week or so of GPS data, your Facebook profile, and your phone IMEI.

It’s pretty easy to see if you’re near a Popeyes and what other IMEIs are connecting to the same tower, extrapolate that to you being near your wife and you and your wife thinking about shit on the Popeyes menu.

Boom targeted ad/video for fried chicken.

The rest is general tech paranoia leading to Apophenia.

There’s no microphones or cameras, it’s just the already gigantic mountain of data anyone who uses a smartphone is constantly broadcasting getting ground through the big data machine that has been the pillar of all tech since the last recession.

The level that waymo operates requires an insane level of digital space mapping.

Considering san Francisco is the most 3d scanned city on the planet I’m not surprised the expansion is happening at the rate it is.

If you enjoy this sort of stuff make sure to support the Kiwix Project which like 90% of these commercial offshoots are based off of.

I’m reminded of that AI-written book that misidentified poisonous mushrooms.

I wish philosophy was taught a bit more seriously.

An exploration on the philosophical concepts of simulacra and eidolons would probably change the way a lot of people view LLMs and other generative AI.

Some additional nice things about guix:

Everything is guile. The system definition, the service definitions for shepherd, everything.

Shepherd is hands down the best init program I’ve ever used. It’s just incredibly simplistic but because it just runs the guile definition you give it, you can do some incredibly complex things that systemd etc. can do as well.

The OS documentation is built into the distro, with “info guix” you get reams of configuration information for the distro without ever needing to look it up online.