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Pumpkin spice flavored beer is horrendous. Change my mind.
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I thought it's more involved. Like the face ID tech used in phones
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Yeah, I don't think these cameras are used to ID people routinely. Government already has my photo - I have passport anyways. However, face scan is much more sophisticated and they cannot take it with overhead cameras
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I draw a line between a photo and biometric face scan. I have a photo ID, so my government already has my picture, but face scan that is tied to my identity and allows for accurate identification is something new
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No, I think that many people in my line were first timers, so they did both
Hey privacy community! A few weeks back I've seen an article posted here or in some other tech community about TSA rolling out biometric ID process in some US airports, that involved taking a face scan. I had an international flight planned and I wouldn't want to go through biometric ID, but I was anxious of potential delay and having to explain myself to TSA agents. I also convinced my wife to opt out, which could potentially double the delay. So for the folks who may have the same concerns, I'd like to share my experience. I went on my flight a few days back from Newark International Airport (EWR). We went through security check in new Terminal A. At the beginning of the security line there were a few clearly visible posters about biometric ID with opt out information. To opt out you just need to tell TSA agent that you don't want your photo to be taken. The poster also says that you will not lose your place in line if you opt out. Same posters are on each agent desk. The scanning machine is on every agent's desk, next to the opt out posters. It has a screen, about 8", with something that looks like a set of stereo lenses on top of it. The screen shows the live feed of the person in front of it during scanning process, with a template of a face that helps to properly position it. The scanning process seems to be very quick. Now, for the opt out - it is indeed as easy and seamless as they claim. I asked the agent to not take my picture, he just said OK and asked me for my passport. The scanning machine didn't turn on. He scanned my passport and gave it back, and I was done, no questions asked. Actually, I noticed that people who had their faces scanned also had to hand passports over. So they had to spend more time with the agent than I. I assume because it was their first time through this biometric collection and next time they just scan their face again and that's it. And while I was pleased how easy it was for me and my family to opt out of this, in my opinion, completely unnecessary privacy invasion, I have not observed any other person (out of maybe 100 who passed before me) who did the same. Unfortunately, we know here how easily and thoughtless people give away yet another piece of their personal data. In this case, the data that can be used next time to ID people via video surveillance without any consent.
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I think this is what home NAS systems evolved into already. It's not a network storage anymore, it's a server that has a bunch of available apps, both proprietary and free. And many of these little boxes have enough resources to actually run a few typical "home server" services for a family and maybe some friends. They are often even marketed as a "personal cloud" or something like that.
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Why, for tracking of course!
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Russia is no more totalitarian than any Western "liberal democracy", their elections no more rigged than ours.
Ahahaha.... Very funny. Can you please tell me how many politicians are imprisoned for their dissent in western democratic countries? Maybe there is a liberal democracy where the same person has been a president for 20 years plus 5 years as a prime minister? Or a democracy where a single party held majority in federal parliament for 21 years with last 8 years having more than 2/3 votes? By the way, it allowed them first to increase a presidential term from 4 to 6 years to let that one president to rule longer between elections, then to change Constitution to let that one president to be elected for his 5th term and potentially for 6th. Hey, what about a country where it is a crime to publicly say something about armed forces that contradicts what government tells people via government owned media? Up to 3 years in prison for that, you know... Like in any other western democracy, right? And that country has quite a few more laws criminalizing various public activities.
I get what you are saying about ruling class status quo, etc. Maybe from a perspective of someone who wants a radical change of the political system, Russian system might look not that different from western democracies. But totalitarian state feels very differently for people living in one. There is no political freedom, no freedom of speech, no choice, no chance to protest. Say something wrong and go to jail. It's not an exaggeration, there was at least 3.5k prosecutions for social media posts or sometimes even for likes. The situation with freedom got much worse in last couple of years since the war with Ukraine began.
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I gave maybe an oversimplified answer. I agree with you that a single person doesn't control everything. But the government system is built to control what political entities are allowed to exist and express their views publicly. So, again naturally, the only parties that remain exist only because they follow president and party lines.
All independent parties have been stripped of the party registration or removed from all elected positions. Independent politicians get "foreign agent" status, forced to immigrate, get jailed or killed. Rigged elections don't let almost anyone to be elected without government approval.
If we focus this discussion on LGBTQ topic, then I agree that many people in Russia are not "allies", but as you mentioned yourself it might be caused by media (which is also far from being free) and the fact that there are laws in Russia making support of LGBTQ a crime. However, even with that, according to 2021 survey about a 1/3 of people there believed that LBGTQ people should have equal rights. Here is the link to that survey, they also have some details on trends of public opinion on the topic: https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/10/19/the-attitude-of-russians-to-the-lgbt-community/
Anyways, don't judge people living in totalitarian state for the lack of progressive views.
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Just ignore Mironov and his party. There are no independent parties in Russia, it's all just a facade for Putin and his administration.
You still may find naive young members in Social Democratic, Communist, and even United Russia (the ruling party) that got ideas tey can do something but they either adapt to party lines or drop out over time. Mironov is a leader of the party and naturally he will say what Putin's administration let him or tell him to say or what he thinks they like him to say.
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Yeah, agreed. If I needed a filter for allergens I wouldn't trust noname brand too
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Air filters. For car, HVAC, etc. Branded or OEM stuff is usually overpriced.
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Yeah, apart from what another person said about alternative apps... Events organized by local communities or businesses are often advertised in Facebook only. I know of a few local businesses in my area with Facebook being their only online presence.
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Maybe it's because they have to? Keeping in touch with older relatives, following local events, etc
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Garmin. Works reasonably well without connection to the phone. Some models supported by Gadgetbridge
Edit: corrected app name
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Do you talk to your friends in Russia? If so, what do they think about you leaving the country? Do they support you or envy you or hate you for that?
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Well, they are saying they bring home $11k, not $17k a month, not sure where you got that number. With $11k of income, spending $5k on mortgage is less appealing. Especially if you consider a risk of layoff.
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Still not Europe or Asia, innit?
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Yeah... And the second source cited in article, VChK-OGPU "outlet" is an anonymous channel in Telegram, that published information from "an anonymous source". Doesn't sound trustworthy.
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That's what I love Lemmy for - a new perspective (and down votes, of course). Thanks for the link, it's an interesting read. I also looked up details on their taxation system and it's not that crazy, especially on business side. If someone wants it, here is the link to the article which compares Nordic countries tax system to US: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/scandinavian-social-programs-taxes-2023/
It seems that my opinion about lack of innovation was caused by me not knowing or hearing about big names of Nordic companies. No Scandinavian Apples or Googles around.
But as much as I enjoyed this conversation, I feel we have ventured way too far from Tim Walz...
Hey all, I've been using a commercial VPN for years on my mobile devices and home PCs. Recently I've started to use Tailscale and realized I can easily create a self-hosted VPN on a cheap VPS with unlimited traffic. But I'm not really sure if that's what I need. BTW, I'm not doing anything dangerous, no torrents, no illegal stuff, no journalism or whistleblowing, not even looking up abortion clinics. I just hate mass surveillance and I don't want to be constantly profiled. Commercial VPN allows to "hide in a crowd" by sharing IP with thousands of other clients. But there are a few issues: 1. Often sites blacklist VPN IPs, so I can't get in or pass captcha 2. Performance is not very good 3. I have to trust VPN to not keep the logs and not sell data. I used Mullvad and they are considered reliable, but you never know until it's too late With self-hosted VPN, I'm losing benefit of "hiding in crowd" as my VPN will be used only by me and maybe a couple of other people. My understanding is that my VPS outgoing traffic is from static server IP. So if I login to Facebook once, the address is associated with me. I'll also have to trust VPS provider to not analyze my traffic and sell it. On other hand, I'm still protected from my ISP spying, from exposing my real IP address to web sites, from dangers of public WiFi networks. And I might get better performance for about the same price. What's your take on VPNs? Tell me if you are using self-hosted VPN and why.
Hi! I'm seeking some advice and sanity check on hopping from Ubuntu to Fedora on my personal PC. I've been using Ubuntu LTS for almost two years now, switched from Windows and never looked back. But I cannot say I know Linux well. I use my PC for browsing, some gaming with Steam (I have AMD GPU), occasional video editing, tinkering with some self-hosted stuff that is on separate hardware. I don't like the way Ubuntu is moving with snaps. And LTS version falls behind too much. So I decided to move to Fedora. My plan is simple: 1. I will install Fedora on a fresh nvme drive. I want disk encryption, so I'm going to have LUKS over btrfs for /home, and the root will remain unencrypted. 2. I will copy all files from old /home to new /home, with the exception of dot-files. 3. I plan to make use of flatpaks, so I don't think configuration for my apps is easily transferable. I'll have to install and configure apps from scratch, unless I'll have to use an RPM package. Does all of this make sense? Is there a way to simplify app re-configuration in my case? And as I never used Fedora extensively (booting from live image doesn't count), are there any caveats I should be aware of?
Hey, In the past I used Duolingo to study languages, but now I'm more privacy-conscious and looking for better options. And their recent data breach only solidified that intention. I recently saw someone posted a comparison table for privacy policies of Duolingo and a number of competing products. Unfortunately I cannot find it now. Can you give any suggestions? I'm not opposed to paid services, btw
Hey all, I'm looking for something that can track location of my preschooler who starts new school soon. He's too young to get a smartphone, so I have to rule out app based solutions I guess. My initial research found virtually nothing. One candidate is GeoZilla, which sells nice devices and their pivacy policy looks okayish regarding location data, but it still relies on their servers of course. Another option would be an iWatch, which again puts trust into 3rd party, and the device is quite expensive for a small kid. Any privacy-oriented trackers out there that I'm missing. Maybe there are some smartphone alternatives that can have cell connectivity and GPS and apps installed, but with much simpler interface? Update: Thanks everyone! I got GeoZilla tag for now. The app doesn't require personal information, which is good. However, it's annoyingly reminds to enable location for itself to track "me", which I don't need at all. Garmin came as a strong second, mainly due to my child age. Garmin devices are not for very young kids, I believe. And it costs more than GeoZilla. I still have some time to think if I really want this, though. It's not too late to return GeoZilla tag
What it was and what did you like/hate the most about it? It's slightly offtopic, but firsthand experience may help first time car buyers to choose.
themarkup.org
Might be old news for some... TLDR: Some big online tax prep sites have tracker pixels from Meta and Google, which collect things like income, filing status, tax credits, etc. [Original congressional report file](https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Attacks%20on%20Tax%20Privacy_Final.pdf)
Hi everyone, I've created this community as a replacement for r/whatcarshouldibuy that I was subscribed to on Reddit. I used it a lot and I valued content and advice there a lot. It definitely influenced my recent car purchases and I'd like to have similar community here in Lemmy. Please be polite and follow Lemm.ee instance rules.