I was referring to the website. This article goes in a lot more detail about how it works.

I’m pretty sure they are consulting lawyers to see how much data they can sell to third parties without breaking the law.

Typically trackers are implemented client side because it’s more convenient. It’s closer to the user, it can collect more data, and there is only one programming language it needs to support, Javascript.

But the disadvantage is that it can be blocked by the users. Data collection and user tracking can also be done on the server side. There are many analytics packages that support it, including Google Analytics. This is much easier to hide from the users. Here is an article I found on the topic.

It’s not hacking because the website developers integrate it willingly.

The bad part is that even if you block everything on the client side with ad/tracker blocking extensions, there’s nothing stopping them from collecting data on the server side.

The problem is that there are no good alternatives. I don’t like Apple and I don’t want to support them. The Android world is terrible, all devices are locked down and sold by awful companies, or if they aren’t, they are probably made by non-reputable Chinese manufacturers.

The only option is to buy a mini PC (like a NUC, or similar) or reuse some older/second hand PC/laptop, and install your own software.

It’s not convenient, but the only way you’re not going to get burned. And the software is rough, I personally don’t like Kodi… I just use it like a computer with a wireless keyboard with integrated trackpad.

The cost of the parts necessary for the network connectivity is nothing in comparison to the money all that data brings. That’s probably why it’s happening everywhere.

Skill issue of the developer to fix it or skill issue of the submitter?

I’m guilty of doing this (just reading the headlines) as well. I usually do it for these reasons:

• I don’t care enough to want to read more. For example, news about US politics. I don’t live in the US. I feel that reading the headlines is enough to keep me informed about what’s happening, but I really don’t care any more than that.

• The details aren’t valuable to me. For example, the Apple anti-trust lawsuit… Is it important? Yes. I’m already well aware of the horrible anticonsumer practices of Apple. But do I need to know all the particular details about the lawsuit? Not really. In fact, the only thing that matters is the final verdict, which hasn’t happened yet.

• I care, but I already know enough details.

• I don’t feel like the article would bring a lot of value, especially if the title is click-baity. I’ve encountered too many articles that are void of content, just the title repeated in 10x more words.

I don’t like visiting news sites because, in addition to all of them being obnoxious and ad riddled, I feel like I’m wasting a lot of time reading long articles that could be rewritten as 3 bullet points. On platforms like lemmy, users will highlight the important bits in the comments which saves a lot of time.

A good start would be to require that companies put an expiration date on the products they sell, and until that date they are legally required to support the product. Also, it should be put into law that companies cannot remove features, services or content in a product after it was already sold until the expiration date.

You can’t use traditional sails on a ship of that size and mass, they wouldn’t make much difference and would need a large crew to operate.

If you want to apply the concept to modern ships, you need to design stronger sails (e.g. made of metal), you need to make it easy to operate with a small crew and you need to also design them in a way that doesn’t interfere with cranes in ports.

It’s not as easy as just slapping sails and calling it a day.

Did you even read my post? I said that you need plates to drive, but you don’t need plates if you are parked (or on private property). If a car is parked, you have plenty of time to read the VIN. Driving on public roads without plates is illegal and you risk jail time.

I highly doubt cameras would be able to recognize this as a valid plate.

Where I live, you only need valid plates to drive on public roads. If the car is parked or you drive on private property, there’s no problem. The procedure for getting plates requires you to not have plates for like 2 or 3 days.

Cars can still be identified by the VIN which is on the windshield.

They make decent laptops. I had Elitebooks, ZBooks and an Omen, excellent machines. I liked them more than Dell or lenovo.

Because Amazon is shitty with the sellers, the good ones can’t make profit on the platform. All that’s left is the Chinese garbage sold at huge margins, where the seller doesn’t care if it gets returned.

You mean selling unrepairable beta products of questionable usefulness at insane prices?

Not an issue if you don’t have friends.

With all the recent hype around AI, I feel that a lot of people don’t understand how it works and how it is useful. AI is useful at solving certain types of problems that are really difficult using traditional programming, like finding patterns that aren’t obvious to us.

For example, object recognition is about finding patterns in images. Our brains are great at this, but writing a computer program capable of taking pixels and figuring out if the pattern is there is very hard.

Even if AI is sometimes going to misclassify objects, it can still be useful. For example, in a factory you can use AI to find defects in the production line. Even if you don’t get it perfect, going from 100 defects per 1M products to 10 per million is a huge difference and saves the factory a lot of money.

When you release something, your work is not done. You have to maintain it, fix bugs, release patches, and probably the worst part, keeping it up to date.

For example, Apple decides to deprecate some API, or decides to switch cpu architecture, or for the millionth time change how app signing works, or add some new security feature that breaks your app. Now you need to make your app work properly on the new platform, switch APIs, all the fun. Or, there’s some critical vulnerability in library you used and customers are deleting your app from their computers (a lot of companies use automated scanners that check against published CVEs). It’s most fun when you learn that the new version that fixes the vulnerability completely breaks compatibility with the old one and now you have to rewrite all the code that used that library.

Also, maintaining open source projects is not fun. It’s a lot of work, in most cases unpaid, thankless, and building a community around a project is really hard.

Opera gave up a long time ago when they abandoned Presto. Today it is owned by some Chinese company, and they are just chasing the latest buzzwords, crypto, AI, you name it.

I wouldn’t recommend a phone. It would kill your battery, and speeds would be terrible. Find an older computer or a beat up laptop and install qbittorrent on it. You might also need to forward the port.

To allow multiple simultaneous connections over the network, computers use these things called ports, which are numbers used to identify the connection. When the operating system sees that a network packet has arrived, it looks at the port and then forwards the packet to the right application.

Routers create a local network that is isolated from the outside, and all the traffic that goes to or comes from the internet, goes through the router.

If someone wants to connect to you, they have to go through the router. By default, routers will just refuse any connection coming from the outside. They do allow connections from the inside going out. Note that after the connection is established, communication can be bidirectional. Think of it like a social network where you need to be friends with someone to chat. Establishing a connection is like sending a friend request.

Port forwarding basically means telling your router “if someone tries to connect to you on port XXXX, forward those connections to port YYYY on computer ZZZZ”.