AustinDizzy's comments

AustinDizzy | 1 year ago | on: USPS shared customer postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn and Snap

This just highlights the pervasive privacy issues in adtech. Many platforms today even support server-side events tracking which bypasses client-side detection & prevention like an adblocker would do to a tracking pixel. The true scope is alarming: way beyond clicks and views, they track events like "MakeAnAppointment", "AddPaymentInfo", "LoanApplication", etc.

This is the real reason why TikTok is a national security risk. Their ad platform, widely used by Shopify, Adobe, Segment, WooCommerce, etc., collects intimate data on non-TikTok users: prescriptions, medical appointments, loan applications, credit card details. Millions who'll never use TikTok, Facebook, etc. are still subject to this data collection in the name of "converting users to customers".

https://abs.codes/blog/2024/03/tiktoks-all-seeing-eye-survei...

At the policy level, we urgently need a national data privacy act to address these types of systemic issues. At the technology level, things like zero-knowledge advertising could mitigate a lot of the user privacy risk.

AustinDizzy | 6 years ago | on: GoPro cuts workforce, changes sales strategy

The northern counties of West Virginia have also issued a prohibition order for all non-residents, so that only West Virginians can purchase alcohol because apparently there have been hundreds of cases of Pennsylvanians crossing the border just to buy alcohol.

Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.

AustinDizzy | 8 years ago | on: Backblaze B2, Cloud Storage on a Budget: One Year Later

rclone [0] has great support for B2 [1]. The functionality you want is also available with rclone simply by making a B2 remote then a local encrypted remote which saves to your B2. This will encrypt everything locally before you save it to your B2, and it also has functionality to mount as a system drive. Plenty people do (ahem did [2]) the same with Amazon Cloud Drive's previously unlimited storage.

0: https://rclone.org/ 1: https://rclone.org/b2/ 2: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/23/amazon_drive_bans_r...

AustinDizzy | 9 years ago | on: A self-driving Uber ran a red light last December, contrary to company claims

Forget if you're behind a school bus as I'd hope it would stop for any vehicle stopping in front of it. If you're on a normal rural highway (i.e. one with two but oppositely travelling lanes) and a school bus which is coming towards you makes a stop, you must stop so that any exiting kids can safely cross the street to their homes. What happens when a school bus makes a stop and the car decides to keep rolling through the bus's displayed and flashing red stop sign?

AustinDizzy | 10 years ago | on: Show HN: Davine – An open-data social analytics site for Vine

Hey HN. Slowly over the past year, I've built Davine on the Google Cloud infrastructure to allow Vine content creators to see where and how their profile has grown over time. Davine is just a side project I whipped up to get experience with Google Cloud and using Go for a slightly larger project than I typically was. I've learned do's and don'ts for next time, so I'm already happy with it.

The current idea was to be 100% open-data, open source, ad-free, open ops, etc. to build a following who would get use from the service. Then, introduce data analysis offerings and offer to watch detailed posts as well for a small fee to turn some revenue.

Let me know what you think or if there's any potential at making this thing self-sustaining enough to just keep it alive and worthwhile.

Thanks!

AustinDizzy | 10 years ago | on: Windows 7 Update appears to be compromised?

Well, two years ago I tried to report a few fairly critical security vulnerabilities on update.windows.com and they responded saying it wasn't an issue. I'd consider denial of service, buffer overflow, possible remote code execution (didn't test because I didn't want to make MSFT mad), and sensitive configuration information enumeration critical vulnerabilities. Especially on update.microsoft.com, which distributes Windows updates. But apparently they don't. So who knows.

I'm not saying the OP's link is a result of these vulns being exploited, but them being exploited is always a possibility in the future if it hasn't already happened or been fixed.

AustinDizzy | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook for dev? What is your toolchain?

I've been using a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (4GB, full-HD display version) that I got on sale at Best Buy for ~$280 during their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales and it's really done good for me so far. Crouton took no time at all to set up, and I only use it when I can't do something in the cloud or SSH'd to one of my servers. Since most of my time, including most development time, is spent "in the cloud" then the only thing I really need my Chromebook for is basic web browsing and an SSH client. I also occasionally use Koding for development, and I'm looking into Cloud9 just for the added ability of being able to hook it up to my own server(s). Most of my work is web development (Go, JavaScript/Node.js, HTML stuff, python, ruby, etc.), software development (Go, Linux stuff, etc.), and security auditing/light pentesting (which I can do with a small set of tool using crouton or other tools that live on my servers).

Overall, if you have something that's nearly always on - like a server or VM - then the Chromebook will treat you really well. Even if you don't have one, you can easily use free services such as Koding and Cloud9 for development systems, all without even touching crouton. The only thing you'd really need crouton for is if you want more fine grain control of the software living on your machine, install other program (e.g. firefox, tor browser, atom, or any linux programs).

As far as hardware, the Chromebook has just what I need to survive. The speakers on the Toshiba Chromebook 2 are awesomely loud, and made by SkullCandy which explains that. The battery life at 100% can easily last 10-12 hours of full use. The display is a gorgeous 1080P IPS display, and it has HDMI out just in case. The 4GB full-HD model also has a 2.58 GHz intel celeron processor, so I don't have to worry about ARM compatibilities and it just runs very well, plus it has 4GB of RAM to help with that processing. One factor I was very surprised about was the weight: it's barely there. Seriously though, I didn't expect it to be that light. But it doesn't have a fan, so that could explain why it's so light - not enough thickness to pack heavier componentry into. And it doesn't get too hot at all either, unless you're using it from 100% to dead constantly with heavier processing then it gets just a bit warm.

Overall, if you can shell out the couple hundred dollars for a Chromebook, I'd go for it.

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