Heck robots.txt doesn’t even seem to be honored!
Eh. I make web pages for friends and family. We don’t want them indexed. In my server logs, most of the big scrapers are pretty good about honoring robots.txt. Google does. Meta does. At least some the AI scrapers do. Pretty sure Bytedance does too but I’d have to double check.
I’ll see a hit from let’s say G’s bot, fetching robots.txt, and then no other activity. For all the thigns I can shit on G and Meta for, this isn’t one of them.
Is it universal to heed it? Nah, ofc not. But it’s still more effective than you’d think, given it is voluntary.
Browsers are bigger than operating systems now.
Not only that, there are web pages bigger than operating systems!
looks like someone named…
It’s even funnier if you imagine it as the space program. Somehow, it’s still muddling along in 2026 on a shoestring budget that slipped below the notice of NASA bean counters, but it hasn’t got enough attention to be noticed on the internet.
it’s almost like cigarettes
It really is. They employed psychologists to make it as psychologically addicting as possible. They studied the ways to make ppl engage the most. Which turned out to be in-group vs out-group rage. They designed their algorithms to pump that, nonstop. And on top of htat, every other psych trick they could find.
Avg person has no chance, when an entire ass team of big dollar PhD psychologists comes at them.
Yah. Most ppl would. Not all! But most.
Which creates a perverse incentive, right? The ppl making s/w with no malware, no spyware, they are lucky if they even make a living. Often they do it volunteer, or for low income. But those who do it to amass power, and sell that power to somebody, as here, they can roll in money.
To fix the whole s/w world, I believe we must fix the bad incentives. Might be lots of ways to do it, but it certainly helps a lot, if most ppl shun spyware. And support OSS authors who are genuine about keeping it out. Right now, most ppl do the opposite.
I’m not sure many people would choose to go back…
I would.
There’s a school of thought, which says for all of human history, we interacted with “about” a few hundred people. Sure, a few exceptions like the king or w/e, but for most ppl it held. Restoring that interaction scale, or sth close to it, may be the only way to prevent what becomes of FB, X, Reddit, and the rest.
In the olden days, there were small NON-federated, topic forums. I’m sure some sucked, that’s fair. But very many were good. Right up until FB came and steamrolled that entire forum ecosystem into the dust of history. A few remain to this day tho, and they are STILL good. They are not the toxic dumpster fires of FB and the rest.
But I agree with you, Gemini is prob not going to grow beyond a minute niche.
From the map they show, Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, and Wyoming need to get off their butt! Edit -> and New Hampshire and Vermont.
And for the Canadians in the house, https://panopti.ca/ They have a heatmap you can click on.
Others mentioned LUKS. That’s IMO the best whole-partition encryption for Linux. I set up LUKS every time I install a system.
But pls be aware of the limitations! As long as the LUKS partition is mounted, the data is available. That’s prob almost the whole time your computer is running. For most people. Even if you log out of your user account. So this only protects your data if the computer is off. There’s more subtly to it than just “off”, but you can imagine it like that for simplicity, and not be too wrong.
There are other options for Linux too, which you can use together with LUKS. Ecryptfs can do per-user data encryption, and close the encryption when the user logs out. There are others like that too.
If I’m looking at the right thing (??) it seems to want just an email? It doesn’t ask for real names or anything. So you could just make a throwaway. Looks like they just want some way to contact local groups and people.
That’s waht I saw on their main page anyway at https://noalprs.com/index.html. Unless I’m missing another registration thing.
Haven’t tried myself but you could glance at,
the really big players contract that out to companies whose entire purpose is data-harvesting
For sure, blocking those scripts goes a LONG way. But that’ll only work until lots of ppl do it. If it ever catches on big, the Identity Brokers will adapt. They’ll integrate their shit into sites in ways that are hard or impossible to separate this easily without totally breaking the site you were trying to visit.
IDK for sure, but I fear we could be living on borrowed time.
What it got right,
- My OS. It’s in the user agent header, which I hate.
- I read the page methodically at a human reading pace.
- I am using a VPN.
What it got wrong,
- Location.
- Screen res.
- Num of CPU cores.
It’s good for ppl to think about fingeprinting. So demo pages like this are good. But I’m sure the identity resolution industry is MUCH better at it. They have capabilities like TLS fingerprinting, outside the browser. For most ppl, not the privacy crowd so mcuh but normal ppl, they fingerprint resource fetches to diff geographic servers. They can run 100’s of scripts on a single page from every identity broker. They employ the best data scientists, to figure out every possible way.
I’m pretty careful. More than 99.999% will ever do. Can commercial fingerprinters still ID me? IDK. But like Skywalker, I have a bad feeling about it.
What scares me is the future of this push.
In Australia, after their U16 social media ban, 4 in 5 U16’s still accessed social media they were banned from.
When these bills have little impact b/c minors figure out how to get past age gates, there will be pressure for more draconian measures. It isn’t like the ppl pushing these will shrug and give up. They will demand more and more erosion of local control. More and more corporate lockdown.
It is terrible. But there is a ray of good news in there too. Not for IL sadly, but for other states that went on this path,
The bill picked up language exempting operating systems and developers distributing software under terms that let anyone copy, redistribute, and modify it freely. It also added a clause blocking platforms from locking down modified versions.
California’s AB-1043 had the same gap. Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, the same lawmaker who wrote AB-1043, introduced AB-1856 to fix it. After several rounds of edits, the amended bill redefines “operating system provider” to exclude anyone distributing software under those same open license terms.
The IL law does not have those carve outs. So ti’s way more draconian than the other states listed.
OP has a righteous rant.
It’s why we must never give up control of Linux to BigTech. It’s OSS, yah… But there are lotsa ways they can weasel. Ex, see Google’s h/w attestation. Or co’s trying to monopolize the ecosystem. Or legal attacks. Or subtle ways to wrestle control, that most ppl won’t recognize until its too late.
There are LOTS of important contributions to Linux by big tech co’s. That’s fine and good. We need that! But that’s as far as we can let it go. Contributions, good. Taking control, bad.
Linux is a tempting target, since it isn’t yet vassalized. Vigilance is critical.
after which you can run OOBE\BYPASSNRO to reboot into a mode that allows you to skip ms account setup.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
Slate seems to be the only brand currently that intends to deliver vehicles with zero connectivity required.
Do you mean these guys? That’s the first I heard of them so thank you for that! I thought it would turn out to be a European make, but they’re on my side of the pond. A zero-connectivity electric car would be the dream. I like the idea of electric cars but so far they have all been even more wrapped up in telematics than internal combustion cars.
That’s one of my biggest peeves. Pre-surveilance economy, the crazies really were paranoid. There were not cameras in their walls! Then, the whole ass world went, “Hey! What if we make their paranoia into actual reality?” Now, here we are. Maybe not cameras in the walls, but in every other damn thing. Your vacuum? Check. Your car? Check. Kids toys? Check. Sunglasses? Check.
That’s made it harder to tell the diff between ppl who are actually paranoid (“vaccines are implanting Bill Gates tracking chips in your veins bro!”) and those who aren’t, but hate commercial surveilence. Plus, those who hate it, sound almost like an oldschool paranoid, to anyone who doesn’t pay attention to know how pervasive it is now.
It’s a fucked timeline, I’ll tell ya what.